City adding, subtracting turn lanes

The City’s plans for improving traffic flow on Huntington Drive will mean more turn lanes at several points and no  more left turns at two spots.

This driver exiting alley at right will no longer be able to cross Santa Anita and make a left turn.

The work is part of a plan to revise three intersections along Huntington Drive between San Rafael and Santa Anita in hopes of improving traffic flow on Huntington. The projects include (see photos):

1. Creating additional left turn lanes on southbound and northbound Santa Anita at Huntington. This will include closing off the cut-through from the alley south of Huntington on the east side of Santa Anita (photo at right and bottom right).

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2. * Adding another northbound right turn lane where Huntington makes a sharp turn to the east at the intersection with Santa Clara by shaving off a piece of the County’s Arcadia Park property  (photo at left).

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Closing off another median cut-through for left turns at San Rafael near Citizens Bank and to the 100-to-1 bar. The City announced at the Council meeting Tuesday that this work will now be delayed since the Gold Line’s impending closure of Colorado Boulevard over the next month to take down the train bridge would severely limit access to the residential area north of Huntington Drive and south of Colorado. (Photos at right)

The overall project, which has been in the works for some time, was initially budgeted at more than $2 million but will now come in at closer to $1.5 mil.

All sixteen open businesses along the alley on the south side of Huntington Drive signed an informal petition created by Arcadia Blues Club owner Robert Dahms and the Arcadia Chamber of Commerce, saying they were opposed to the left-turn cut-through to and from Santa Anita, which was presented to the City Council before their approval Tuesday night by the Chamber.

— By Scott Hettrick (A version of this article detailing the concerns of the business owners is published at the Arcadia Chamber of Commerce web site, where Hettrick is Executive Director.)