Mailbag

Parking crisis solved: Roads are lots

Nowadays we just use all the lanes of Coast Highway and Laguna Canyon Road as parking lots, since with the unprecedented glut of traffic we sure aren't using the roads to get anywhere, even midday on weekdays!

I wonder if the development interests in town who claim to be a benevolent part of our community are willing to be honest in their private thoughts and acknowledge, even if only to themselves, that there has been a huge increase in the backup of cars at red lights and intersections, and that their projects have contributed to the problem. There is now officially a traffic crisis in our town, where there used to be mostly just a summertime parking crisis.

I once had a development executive tell me that Laguna is now "his hometown" too — if that is so, he must have noticed that Coast Highway has become as congested as La Cienega Boulevard, and not just on summer weekends.

I wonder if this developer "gets" that his projects have contributed greatly to the problem, in an incremental way, along with the projects of every other developer in Laguna and South Orange County.

Does this developer's family complain about the extra time it takes to get to the supermarket, pick up kids at school, run down to the hardware store, etc.?

He may be willing to trade quality of life for money, but I am not — money is useless when you're sitting through two red lights just to get through the intersection in front of the Montage on a Tuesday morning at 11 a.m.

Next time a project comes up for approval, I hope the city doesn't buy the line, "There will be no net increase in car trips..." when the developer's traffic analysis makes this pathologically dishonest claim.

Every development brings with it a corresponding diminution in the quality of life for the rest of us. Someone please make it stop before I have to move away to find the peace that I used to enjoy in Laguna Beach.

Have a nice summer everybody. Be nice to the tourists — somebody wants them here so they can pick their pockets.

JAMES DORF

Laguna Beach

Goats needed to protect hillsides

This letter is in response to the article that appeared in the June 22 edition of Coastline Pilot titled "City to reevaluate goat herds."