Friday, November 05, 2010

Universal City expansion: necessary for growth or traffic nightmare?

Update 11/10/10: the terrific Burbank, CA blog has a great post about this. As you may know, Universal City plans to expand by adding more buildings to its lot.  This includes almost 3,000 housing units.  Here's the article about the environmental impact report from today's L.A. Times.  Some of the more interesting items in the article with my comments in color:

"The 39,000-page report identified noise and solid waste removal during the construction process as the primary negative effects of the development. " Hmm, since construction is slated to go on for twenty years...


"Our principal concern continues to be traffic," said Daniel Savage, president of the local residents group Hollywood Knolls Community Club. "Especially traffic driven by the apartments on the back lot." I'm with you, Daniel.  Traffic comes to a standstill on Barham on a regular basis.

"About half the $100 million would be spent on improving traffic flow on nearby streets and intersections, which would have to handle an additional 2,750 car trips each afternoon.  That's similar to the traffic generated by a regional shopping center (italics mine), said Patrick Gibson, a traffic consultant for NBC Universal. Mitigation measures such as street widening would ease the flow at most intersections, though Lankershim would remain a bottleneck where it is flanked by the subway on one side and an office tower on the other." Yes, that's similar to a regional shopping center -- especially on those days when all 2,750 cars try to get into the Costco lot between 6:05 pm and 6:15 pm.

I just don't see that traffic won't be a nightmare.  I also don't see that the area needs another 3,000 housing units.

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