Sounding Off:

In the wake of the latest south swell that produced 15- to 20-foot waves at the Wedge, which in turn produced even more traffic on the Peninsula than a normal summer weekend, City Manager Homer Bludau said of the volume of traffic, “[I]t was far worse than anything we envisioned or were prepared for” (“Wedge gridlock prompts concern,” Saturday). Owing to the fact that City Hall is on the Peninsula, this makes me wonder about Bludau’s observational skills, and just how aware he is of life in Newport Beach.

The incredibly high volume of traffic on the Peninsula, particularly during the summer and on weekends, is only one problem among many related to the city’s laissez-faire attitude about life on the Peninsula. A short list of these issues includes:

1) The annual Fourth of July mayhem. This year, I chased a random drunk out of my house, discovered a pair of woman’s underwear in our driveway on the next morning and was otherwise unable to leave our house for fear of never being able to return because of the crowds.

2) The relative impossibility of walking on the sidewalk without having to move out of the way of bicyclists who think the sidewalks are exclusively for them. When I asked a police officer about this, he told me, “We have a judge who won’t support enforcing those laws.” Too bad, since there are many businesses I would frequent on the Peninsula if I could actually walk to them.

3) The near-death experience Peninsula residents experience pretty much any time you try to cross the street in the crosswalk. Drivers simply don’t stop for pedestrians. And, to make matters worse, having dodged the cars to cross the street, the motorcycle police officers who have been assigned to chase down motorists for going the wrong way down the alley somehow fail to notice the pedestrians who are nearly killed by other motorists because, hey, they’re minding the alley.

4) The general bad behavior and manners of many of the people who visit the Peninsula — we are constantly picking up discarded food, beer cans and other drink containers, and all sorts of trash. Just last week, four young men got out of their car and proceeded to pour out the beer they hadn’t managed to consume; one fellow decided to urinate in the street.

5) Parking — always parking. We are constantly chasing people out of our driveway, and, just like a few people on Peninsula Point recently experienced, we have long received tickets for parking in our own driveways. It seems fair that if they get a reprieve, next time we get a ticket for parking in our driveway, I’ll expect the same.

This is not a rant about how bad it is to live on the Peninsula. We love it and simply expect certain things to happen here that would never happen, say, in Corona del Mar. But when the city manager says that the city was completely unprepared for something that everybody knew was going to happen, it does make me wonder about the leadership of this city and whether it has the skills, let alone the vision, to figure out how to make our part of Newport Beach a better place to live.

RICHARD FLORY is a Newport Beach resident.