PACOIMA : Signal to Unclog Busy Intersection

There was a time when a left turn off Vaughn Street onto Foothill Boulevard was like taking a shortcut through Malibu during a flood.

But four years after residents requested it, a new $70,000 traffic signal stands ready to regulate an orderly flow of traffic down Foothill at Vaughn Street in Pacoima.

“We’re just waiting for them to put in the crosswalks and turn on the electricity,” said Ray Jackson, president of the Northeast Valley Community Improvement Assn.

Jackson first asked elected officials to install a signal at the intersection in 1990, when traffic started getting clogged on Vaughn Street.

The situation was worse on weekends, in part because bargain hunters descend on the mega-sized San Fernando Swap Meet.

Add a virtual convoy of trucks heading to the Lopez Canyon Landfill, trucks entering and leaving the nearby Pepsi plant, and more trucks shuttling packages hither and yon from a United Parcel Services branch, and the result is a lot of vehicles squeezing through a relatively small artery.

“We want people to know it’s there, and we want to thank those who helped us get it in,” Jackson said of the newly installed traffic signal.

He also has requested that the city repave Pacoima’s long-neglected roadways.

The new traffic signal is not yet working, but should be turned on by the second week in February, city officials said.

The money for the traffic light was taken from a $5-million amenities fund established in 1990 to benefit neighborhoods bordering the Lopez Canyon Landfill.

Another project on tap for the improvement association: installation of a barrier on Osborne Street across from Hansen Dam Recreation Area, where dirt and rocks often roll downhill into the road and sidewalk.