Letter to the Editor: Resident Upset About Changes to East Olive Avenue

The realignment of Olive Ave. from Glenoaks to Sunset Canyon

I can’t imagine who among our city’s planners thought this was a good idea.  To those of us who have lived here all our lives, the elimination of one lane in each direction is an exercise in tyranny – an attempt to control  drivers for no discernible reason.   The new yellow lines make the street look like a child got a hold of a yellow crayon and scribbled. It cannot be for buses as they do not travel above Glenoaks.  Why was this done?

Now each lane is narrow, so narrow that drivers who try to get out of their cars parked on Olive will be at risk.  So will the side mirrors on any vehicle bigger than a Fiat. When the UPS or Amazon trucks park in the lanes as they do countless times a day, it appears that if a driver goes around them into the median they could be ticketed. 

Olive above Glenoaks has always been an especially beautiful street because it is wide, with the view to the arch at Country Club Drive.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what has been done.  Adding insult to injury is that many hundreds of new apartment buildings are going up all over town.  Those additional residents will only add to the already-clogged traffic in the afternoons.  If continuing this absurd plan down Olive is still under consideration, please stop and reflect on the enormous inconvenience it will bring to Burbank residents.  Return Olive to what it has been for the last 75 years. It worked just fine.

Patricia McCarthy
Burbank