WHY L.A. traffic sucks: On second thought - inter-city coordination

WHY L.A. traffic sucks: On second thought - inter-city coordination: WHO's controlling the DAMS?

LA City Nerd made a "technical clarification" [RE: "Just to clarify...] about our post WHY L.A. traffic sucks #1: Serving too many masters on your daily commute

"Major east/west streets that cross different jurisdictions are somewhat limited [...] The true coordination should really be focused between Beverly Hills & L.A. on Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards."

On second thought, I disagree. Let me explain.

Take Wilshire. Wilshire jams in three places: at the intersection with the 405/Westwood Blvd., which backs it up all the way to Ocean Blvd.; at the intersection with Santa Monica Blvd., which backs it up all the way to the 405; and in Beverly Hills (all those short cross-streets that intersect it), which backs it up all the way to the intersection with Santa Monica Blvd. By the time, it reaches Beverly Hills, Wilshire Blvd. has gone through three different cities: Santa Monica, Los Angeles (Brentwood/Westwood), Beverly Hills. And it has jammed and backed up traffic three times.

I don't know exactly under whose jurisdiction these three intersections fall. Wilshire will always be jammed at certain times of day unless traffic is allowed to flow through those three intersections. If making that happen requires the coordination of all three cities, then that's exactly what I'm talking about.

As far as I know, the same thing applies to Sunset Blvd., Santa Monica Blvd., Olympic, and Pico. They all go through three different cities. They all jam at roughly the same places (except that they don't intersect Santa Monica Blvd.). They all definitely jam at the intersection with the 405. All five of these roads -Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico - are the five major roads carrying the load of traffic East to West and viceversa (let's leave I-10 out of this since it's not releveant to this issue). Except for Sunset, which goes through West Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvd, which, in addition to the other three cities, also goes through West Hollywood, they all go through at least three different cities.

I am sure some kind of inter-city coordination is required to make sure traffic on these roads flows smoothly. If Beverly Hills does anything, anything at all, slightly different to affect traffic as Wilshire goes East through it, then it is backing it up - by simple ripple effect - all the way to Ocean Blvd. in Santa Monica by way of Westwood.

The same is not true of the city of Santa Monica on Wilshire going East. Actually, the opposite is true. If traffic backs up in Santa Monica (the city, NOT the Blvd.), it frees up traffic on the rest of Wilshire. If you could somehow by magic stop ALL traffic going East on Wilshire at its intersection with the 405, the rest of Wilshire would be traffic-free all day.

It is the volume of cars and buses coming all the way from Santa Monica, and the cars and buses that increase that volume as sidestreets and the exit ramps of the 405 feed more into it, that eventually jams the whole corridor. My suggestion of turning these roads into "virtual freeways" by keeping the lights GREEN for 3 to 5 minutes or longer, would never work without some major inter-city coordination.

As traffic flows East or West, the cities DOWNSTREAM have to make sure their "DAMS" (those major traffic light intersections, anything, anything at all, that may affect traffic) allow enough "WATER" to flow through or the "RIVER" and the 'LAKE" UPSTREAM are going to overflow and flood.

Get it? A better analogy than that I cannot give you.

So WHO's controlling the DAMS?
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Photo collage by italianesco: Hoover Dam over Wilshire: Who's controlling the Dams?