Cul-de-sacs are alive and well

RE “Dead-end for the Cul-de-sac?” [March 22]: Your “experts” are daft. Cul-de-sacs are wonderful, which is why California still builds them.

If the experts really wanted to open up access for teenagers and to advance walking as a means of transportation, they might better espouse small areas of green space connecting cul-de-sacs. Open spaces and streets without through traffic are good! Huge grid-like constructs of asphalt are bad (and ugly).

Just my un-expert opinion, of course.

BOB WINNERS

Glendale

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WRONG, wrong, wrong. I have lived at the end of a cul-de-sac since 1978, my oldest daughter bought at the end of a cul-de-sac, and I pray that each of my other children will be as fortunate when they purchase a home.

I bet living on a through-street raises the chances that your kids will be hit by a car, that your home will be burglarized and that you even may be assaulted in your home. I bet statistics would prove me right. Homes at the end of a cul-de-sac probably experience less crime because strange cars or individuals loitering on the street are noticed.

That is one of the reasons I have never sold.

JANET CAMPBELL

Glendora

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FAR be it for me to challenge a person with such a lofty title as director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, and an author to top it off.

However, Jeff Speck’s comments and those of Michael Southworth, Colin Drukker and Randal Jackson beg a response by someone who has lived in an offending community for 30 years.

Like colors in a Crayola box, cul-de-sacs are varied. Some work better than others.

My residence is at the end of a cul-de-sac. My lot is about 30 feet above the road below, allowing for hill vistas south to San Juan Capistrano and cooling breezes that come up the valley from Doheny and Dana Point.

I can walk to the beginning of my cul-de-sac, approximately 200 paces, turn right and be at City Hall and the library as well as most of the commercial amenities one would need, all within five minutes. In a shorter amount of time I can hop the northbound bus or cross Marguerite Parkway and hop a southbound bus.

I discovered one Halloween with my son that it’s possible on continuous sidewalk to hit close to three miles of houses and cross only two streets.

R. THOMAS MOORE

Mission Viejo

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I would gladly trade my speedway of a street for a cul-de-sac any day!

LISA STEVENSON

Valencia