While it’s always fun to watch the prevailing hypocrisies at work (such as tonight’s evasion about why the retail parking requirements are totally different on Riverside Drive v Magnolia) it’s even more fun to watch our city council get completely snookered by some outside agency. These guys would laugh all the way to the gas chamber while they were also getting fucked in the ass.
We suddenly got this horrible feeling tonight after watching Cal-Trans’ presentation on their I-5 project. Do these council members really think that the state is doing Burbank a favor here?
What Cal-Trans wanted tonight was council approval for an early closure to San Fernando Road. But Burbank acted as if it were a high-five celebration of a job well done. There were smiles all around and a speedy unanimous vote.
But Earth to Burbank: what Cal-Trans wanted from you was to let them bottle up SF Rd even more than they had originally told you about last year. And in return, they were dangling in front of you the mere possibility that they might get done early with the project, pending builder incentives and a workable timetable.
They weren’t promising you anything. Big difference.
And if anyone’s seen what Cal-Trans has already done to the Western offramp then you’re not going to be too crazy about the efficacy of the rest of the project. Can someone please explain why redirecting traffic onto Flower Street 300 feet south of the old offramp is an improvement?
It means that Western-bound cars will now have to take a cumbersome route onto Flower well before they can get to Western. And that I-5 traffic will be backing up 300 feet closer to the 134.
How’s that a help?
And how is creating a giant Empire Street/Victory Place/Grismer/San Fernando Rd/Scott Road/I-5 mega-intersection going to be an improvement over here in Burbank?
It’s going to be a madhouse instead. Just wait and see. We’re going to rue the day that we ever extended Empire into that relatively quiet area to create a logjam of mixed-business traffic.
Cal-Trans couldn’t come up with a good reason either tonight about why this project is an “improvement.” Gordon tried to ask them that question directly. So they talked a lot about their HOV lane from Northern California and airport access and the Empire Center. But they said nothing about what’s in it for the rest of us. Outside of the B/V grade crossing we don’t see it.
And Gary Bric is crazy if he thinks Glendale will ever approve a southbound I-5/134 interchange. Because unlike Burbank, they don’t want to allow their own neighborhoods to get so demolished. That’s why they’ve blocked the idea for almost 50 years. It’s why it never went in (affluent Glendale residents got so burned on the ’2′ property-grab at about the same time that they were averse to giving the state anything else. Many of those were newer houses up there, and full of young families).
Why do they keep talking about Empire and Buena Vista? That intersection works just fine, except the crazy driveway for the giant housing development. They made a big deal about eminent domaining a buch of businesses at that intersection for no reason at all, it’s the other end! that is f’d up Burbank and Victory place that’s where they need to buy those shit house buildings and widen the road. A paint ball supply store and some awful furniture store why do they keep avoiding that mess a right turn only lane with proper signage would be an easy start. Just like the stupid re-stripping at Victory Alameda that was supposedly for traffic mitigation for NBC? But they can’t see the need at 5 points?
They think that opening up Empire to the Hill will solve the problem for Victory Place.
But it won’t. It’ll just shift it onto SF Road. What a mess that 7-way intersection is going to be.
Empire + SF Road + Grismer + Scott Road + I-5 on- and off-ramps + Andover + Amherst = one huge disaster within 300 feet of itself.
It’ll turn Glenoaks into the worst street in Burbank. Glenoaks will make Buena Vista look like Pass Ave.