Coastal Panel OKs Widening Lincoln Blvd.

The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously Monday to allow Caltrans to widen a stretch of Lincoln Boulevard between Marina del Rey and Westchester to help ease traffic that is expected to grow worse as the giant Playa Vista development comes online.

Playa Vista opponents immediately countered that the $9-million road project is bound to exacerbate the already nasty traffic by creating a mini-freeway with bottlenecks at both ends of the stretch of road between LMU Drive and Jefferson Boulevard.

“That does not solve traffic problems; it makes them worse,” said Marcia Hanscom, executive director of Wetlands Action Network, which has long fought development of the big residential and commercial project.

Peter M. Douglas, the coastal commission’s executive director, said the 10 commissioners meeting in Huntington Beach expressed strong doubts that the project will relieve the severe traffic along that stretch of road. They urged the California Department of Transportation and the city to move aggressively to bolster public transit in the area.

“It’s so obvious that we have to move to public transit,” Douglas said. “The notion that this somehow will address congestion into the future is simply misplaced.”

Still, Caltrans maintained that the expansion of Lincoln to eight lanes--10 including the two turn lanes at Jefferson--from six “will help to move traffic,” said spokeswoman Deborah Harris.

The agency said the project will also provide improved coastal access for pedestrians and bicyclists by creating two bike paths, one that would run alongside vehicles and a wider one that would be separated from traffic by a strip of vegetation.

The Lincoln Boulevard expansion is one of a handful of projects planned by Caltrans to relieve the traffic that Playa Vista is expected to create. A few weeks ago, the Coastal Commission approved a lengthening of the Marina Freeway. In coming months, the commission is expected to vote on Caltrans’ plans to widen Lincoln to the north between Jefferson and Fiji Way in Marina del Rey.

Catherine Tyrrell, Playa Vista’s director of coastal and environmental affairs, said that widening Lincoln should go a long way toward improving the road’s safety, particularly at the curve near Loyola Marymount University. She said that stretch of road has three times more fatalities than is the average for Caltrans roads statewide.

But Hanscom said the Coastal Commission has erred in considering Caltrans’ proposals piecemeal. “There’s no way for someone to ascertain what the real environmental impacts would be when you’re deciding them one by one,” she said.