Santa Rosa Road

I am writing to register my disgust with the Santa Rosa Road reroute/repair debacle in Camarillo. This project has been going on for several years and appears to be totally without purpose, direction or completion in mind. This mess is a safety hazard, an impediment to the businesses that reside there and a blight to the landscaping of Camarillo. As a resident of Camarillo who travels this road daily, [I feel] it has to be the worst-managed construction project I've witnessed in my 38 years of California residency.

After years of trying to make the roads safer, Santa Rosa Valley residents have agreed to tax themselves to pay for street improvements aimed at better controlling traffic through their rural community near Camarillo. The Ventura County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to form an assessment district into which property owners will pay to add four signal lights to Santa Rosa Road, a two-lane, six-mile stretch of road in an unincorporated area bordered by homes, farms, nurseries and ranchettes.

A broken water line flooded a portion of Santa Rosa Road near Camarillo on Sunday night and created a large sinkhole that has closed the road indefinitely, California Highway Patrol officials said. Traffic was being diverted around the damaged section, which was flooded with four to five feet of water, for about a mile and a half from Hilltop Lane to Gerry Road, CHP officials said. "It is completely closed," CHP dispatcher Claude Ball said. "This was caused by a broken water main."

MOORPARK Ventura County supervisors Tuesday said they won't decide on a congestion-relief plan for Santa Rosa Road until they get more information on its cost. Supervisor Linda Parks asked the county board to add four traffic signals along the rural highway so that local residents would have an easier time pulling out onto the busy road. The road runs between Camarillo and Moorpark. But other supervisors said they wanted more information about how the $885,000 cost would be covered.

A strike by heavy-equipment operators has halted work indefinitely on the widening and paving of a one-mile stretch of Santa Rosa Road near Camarillo, officials said. Art Goulet, director of the county Public Works Department, told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 12 abandoned work on the $1.5-million road project last week just before paving was to begin.

MOORPARK Ventura County supervisors Tuesday said they won't decide on a congestion-relief plan for Santa Rosa Road until they get more information on its cost. Supervisor Linda Parks asked the county board to add four traffic signals along the rural highway so that local residents would have an easier time pulling out onto the busy road. The road runs between Camarillo and Moorpark. But other supervisors said they wanted more information about how the $885,000 cost would be covered.

Dear Street Smart: We live in Leisure Village, and Santa Rosa Road runs right behind our home. When we moved into the village some 12 years ago, we were aware of the fact that Santa Rosa Road was near our backyard, and we expected some noise. But the stretch from Oak Creek Road beyond Upland Road is now a speedway--not only for normal traffic, but for many heavy trucks.

Construction crews are putting the finishing touches to a section of scenic Santa Rosa Road this week while preparing to step up work on the final one-mile leg of the road that slices through the Santa Rosa Valley between Thousand Oaks and Camarillo. With four miles already paved and widened since 1990, construction workers are now beginning heavy grading on the last mile of the 90-year-old thoroughfare that runs from Camarillo's eastern border to the Norwegian Grade.

Concerned that a stretch of Santa Rosa Road in Camarillo is too dangerous for motorists, the City Council tonight will consider hiring a local engineering company to tell the city how to make the road safer. The council will consider awarding M3 Civil Consulting Engineers a $19,890 contract to offer suggestions for improving a curvy section at the 7300 block of Santa Rosa Road. A 1993 study of the road found that it had the fourth-highest accident rate of all roads in the city.

Santa Rosa Valley residents are complaining that a county plan to improve safety on Santa Rosa Road, a narrow and rugged route connecting Camarillo to Thousand Oaks, may backfire by encouraging more commuters to travel the already congested route. The Board of Supervisors has initiated a $2.5-million project designed to improve safety on one of the more dangerous stretches of Santa Rosa Road, where at least three people have died in automobile accidents in recent years.

Ventura County supervisors today are expected to again debate whether rural Santa Rosa Road can be widened to more easily handle commuter traffic without destroying the rural lifestyle of the surrounding valley. County transportation staff last year recommended that supervisors begin the process of converting a stretch of the road from two lanes to four.

Santa Rosa Valley residents could gain a little more clout with the Ventura County Board of Supervisors under a proposal that the panel will consider today. The board will decide whether to approve the establishment of a five-member Santa Rosa Valley municipal advisory council that would review issues regarding planning, traffic safety and public health in the upscale, semirural community. The council would then advise the supervisors on what it considered appropriate actions.

A traffic signal has become the latest battleground for Santa Rosa Valley residents who are fighting to maintain their rural lifestyle in the face of encroaching suburban sprawl. Westbound commuters driving through the valley -- a five-mile stretch of homes, farms, nurseries, ranchettes and horse trails surrounded by growing bedroom cities -- want to make a right on red from Moorpark Road onto Santa Rosa Road. Locals want them to stop awhile.

Two portions of old Moorpark Road will be renamed to prevent confusion among firefighters and other motorists who drive the route to Moorpark. The renaming will follow a $5-million realignment intended to eliminate a dogleg that creates dangerous 90-degree turns, said Butch Britt, director of the county Transportation Department. The Ventura County Board of Supervisors approved the renaming Tuesday, the first such change in a decade.

Re "Parents Sue Ventura County Over Traffic Death of Girl While Jogging," Dec. 10: The parents claim that Ventura County was somehow responsible for their daughter's death because of poor conditions on Santa Rosa Road that have existed for years. So how is the father not responsible also? He obviously knew it was a dangerous road to be jogging on, yet he placed his daughter in harm's way when he took her jogging. Now, somehow, $25 million is supposed to make everything better?

The parents of a popular Camarillo High School cross-country runner killed a year ago by a car while jogging on Santa Rosa Road have filed a lawsuit contending that the county's failure to remedy dangerous road conditions contributed to their daughter's death. Paul and Dorothy Bonds filed the suit late last month in Ventura County Superior Court, accusing the county of negligence in the death of their 14-year-old daughter, Jennifer.

A team of archeologists and Chumash Indian experts said Thursday they are determining whether further study of an 11-mile section of Santa Rosa Road is needed after a human tooth and other artifacts were discovered there recently. Construction on the road where the artifacts were found earlier this month was halted to allow archeologists and Chumash Indians time to determine whether the discovery of the tooth and some stone tools requires more detailed excavation.

Ventura County supervisors this week approved a series of projects aimed at improving safety along Santa Rosa Road near Camarillo. A new traffic signal at Yucca Drive is intended to slow traffic along the rural two-lane road, which is heavily used by motorists as an east-west alternative to the Ventura Freeway. Other improvements include cutting deep grooves along the road's center and shoulders to warn drivers when they are drifting from their lane.