alleymon Supervisor Buster,
Your suggestion, recorded in the North County Times on April 29th, was quite arrogant and thoughtless.This is a hot button issue to many transplanted OC workers who can not afford the housing prices now in OC.
From North County Times April 29th:
As for those motorists headed for Orange County jobs, Buster suggested they shouldn’t have based their choice of where to buy a house on always being able to drive to work along a winding mountain road.
Your suggestion implies that the only factor in purchasing a house is its proximity to work. Im sure your choice of where to live had little to do with where work was. Of course, you probably didnt have to worry muchabout housing costs either.
I moved my family from an OC rental to buy our first house in Lake Elsinore 5 years ago. Ifelt the move was well worth the sacrifice of an hour commute through Ortega to be able to give my family a nice home in a good neighborhood.Thousands of other OC workers have done the same and the recent housing boom our area has had is a direct result of these decisions. The booming economy ofthe Lake Elsinore/Temecula Valley is also a direct result of the migration of workers like me.
The lack of corporate business and industry has turned the area into a bedroom community which is dependant on transportation and its improvements. Every week I search in vain for local openings in my chosen career. The career opportunities just arent here. Im now spending 2 hours daily commuting to OC to provide for my family and my commute through Ortega is actually quite nice. I encounter about 5 accidents a year during my commute times of 6 7 am and the return trip at 4 – 5 pm. About 50% of those accidents occurred on the area of roadway currently planned for improvement.
I agree that improvement of this and other areas of Ortega Hwy are absolutely necessary and that safety is very important. However, dismissing out of hand the concerns of commuters who are part of your voter base is irresponsible and insensitive. I believe that Ahmed Abou-Abdou has done a good job with the closure schedulingand I am in favor of the improvements if the proposed schedule will actually work and if an alternative expansion project is out of the question. Im concerned about actual delays being considerably different from those suggested by Ahmed Abou-Abdou.Assessments and adjustments to scheduling will be needed when implemented to fine tune the traffic.
I would prefer to see the capacity of Ortega Hwy increased to handle the volume of traffic that continues to increase. Spending money now to make a small road safer, rather than re-funding and re-designing the project to both increase volume and increase safety seems short-sighted. I understand that this is a complex issue and Im sure that you and your peers are working on solutions, but as always, transportation is an afterthought and action is therefore reactive. Unfortunately the reaction time is usually a decade.
Sincerely,
Keith Allen