TITLE
Recommendation to request City Manager to immediately initiate a strategy to ensure that the following concerns are addressed in the planning process of the OCTA 405 project:
· Potential Traffic impacts for 405 freeway ramps including Lakewood Boulevard, Bellflower Boulevard, Woodruff Avenue, and Palo Verde Avenue.
· Potential impacts to traffic for CA-22 and its connections to the 405 Freeway and CA-1.
· Potential impacts for the 605 freeway Carson street ramp.
· Address alteration of 405/605 interchange and its potential impact on future widening projects (north of Orange County).
· Other pertinent concerns as raised by staff.
DISCUSSION
The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) is currently in the planning process for a project that will widen the 405 Freeway from the 605 Freeway interchange to the SR-73. A draft environmental impact report (DEIR) discusses three alternatives for freeway widening, ranging from the addition of one general purpose lane in each direction to the addition of express and toll lanes. The widening of the 405, in any version of the proposal, will end abruptly at the Long Beach border, causing a bottleneck of traffic. This will have major impacts on our neighborhoods and infrastructure. And, as with the West County Connectors project, long Beach has not been considered in the planning process,
The DEIR contains no analysis of traffic impacts to long Beach. Further, the entire planning process for the project has not been coordinated with CalTrans District 7, which oversees Los Angeles County. The lack of coordination will exacerbate traffic congestion into Long Beach, potentially causing motorists to cut through our neighborhoods to avoid the bottleneck, For these reasons, it is imperative for long Beach act now to provide input and be included in this process.
The City Manager should work immediately with appropriate staff to bring long Beach to the table on this matter and ensure that our concerns are met
FISCAL ...
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