Maybe we could stack ‘em

WHAT’S SO FUNNY

Summer’s approach calls to mind the one community disaster Laguna

Beach will never face. We may worry about fire, flood, mudslide and

earth tremors, but we are in no danger of becoming a ghost town.

In summer, Downtown is jammed and the canyon road is choked. This

is all part of life in Laguna and I take it philosophically when it

isn’t me in the canyon.

But I read recently in a local paper that R.O.C. Link is proposing

a tunnel through the mountains from the Inland Empire -- a tunnel

which will bring 230,000 cars to Laguna Beach each day, initially. By

2010, according to the article, the tunnel is expected to bring us

450,000 cars daily.

Now, I’m keenly attuned to quality-of-life issues, or anyway

partially attuned. Patti Jo got me to join a save-the- canyon walk

when it looked like the Irvine Co. was going to chop it up into lots,

and I voted firmly against the El Toro airport. It doesn’t pay to get

me riled.

And I gotta tell ya I’m getting riled again, because once more,

somebody’s rocking my dreamboat. This tunnel deal is a new menace, a

new intrusion. It’s small consolation to reflect that tunnels go two

ways and this one should make it a lot easier to get to Hemet.

I have a project I’m working on right now, and I don’t multi-task

very well. In fact it’s hard enough for me just to task. But by golly

I’m going to find the time to vote against the tunnel, if there’s

ever a vote, and I’ll even walk against it if it’s not too far.

But as I prepare to head for the barricades once again, I can’t

help thinking that those numbers don’t sound right. In fact they

sound impossible. It’s not that you can’t run that many vehicles

through a tunnel. It’s just that I’ve been Downtown often enough to

know a finite area when I see one.

The new master plan for the Inland Empire can’t be founded on the

premise that all those drivers are going to Laguna Beach every day.

There’s only one place I know where people congregate even remotely

like that, and we don’t have Splash Mountain. I have to think the

plan is for the vast majority of those tunnel people to peel off and

go north or south before they get to us. Otherwise, I have a

prediction:

If 230,000 to 450,000 extra cars come into Laguna Beach in one

day, they won’t do it again. Whoever comes in last is going to have

to park in Temecula.