Taming Traffic in Santa Monica

After years of increased traffic due primarily to overdevelopment, the citizens of Santa Monica have reason to cheer. As The Times reported Oct. 3, Santa Monica has just approved a traffic calming plan for the Mid-Cities neighborhood. Those of us who live on heavily impacted streets in other neighborhoods applaud the City Council for taking this first step and look forward to approval of similar plans. It is particularly gratifying that six of seven City Council members support the concepts of traffic calming to, as Paul Rosenstein put it, “put the traffic back where it belongs” on arterial streets.

Traffic calming opponent and former Mayor Reed should wake and smell the exhaust fumes. It was her council’s pro-development policies that directly led to the destruction of Santa Monica’s residential streets in the first place (it also led to her defeat at the polls). Instead of complaining about someone who honked his horn in front of her house almost 10 years ago, she should start thinking about the rest of us who can’t sleep at night, walk safely or do many of the other things that Reed probably takes for granted on her relatively quiet street.

RICHARD H. BLOOM

Santa Monica