WHY L.A. traffic sucks: OPEN DISCUSSION #3

On 4/28/06, calwatch wrote:

calwatch has left a new comment on your post "WHY L.A. traffic sucks #2: bad (or not exactly forward-looking) design ":

Once again, this idea [keeping light GREEN from 3 to 5 minutes for long stretches over many intersections] , while interesting, ignores the fact that at those side streets there are cars and pedestrians that want to cross the street. And they won't be able to do so in the hours you mention. The Laurel Canyon Freeway (SR-170) and the Beverly Hills Freeway (SR-2) were really the solution to this problem, but you can blame Jerry Brown for that cancellation. I'd like to see a test, though, on Wilshire for a five minute green time similar to roads in Orange County and the Inland Empire, and watch what happens.

Posted by calwatch to L.A. traffic sucks: Let's fix it! at 4/27/2006 11:54:32 PM

italianesco replies:

Thanks again for your new comments.

No, I did not ignore "the fact that at those side streets there are cars and pedestrians that want to cross the street. And they won't be able to do so in the hours you mention." I did say that some kind of north-south uninterrupted traffic would have to be allowed for traffic to flow east-west uninterrupted. Overpasses, or better, underpasses, might solve this problem. The pedestrians can EASILY be take care of with skywalks or pedestrian crossing tunnels. Many American cities already have them and use them.

Yes, I, too, would "like to see a test [...] on Wilshire for a five minute green time similar to roads in Orange County and the Inland Empire, and watch what happens." But I'd like to see it not only on Wilshire but on Olympic, on Pico and on Venice as well (Santa Monica seems too complicated to try it there). This is the thing: no one seems to be willing to try any really INNOVATIVE ideas. At the same time, they don't realize that old and tired ideas (widening freeways, building subways, etc.) will not work. Or they might work temporarily but not in the long run. An overweight person might take a pill to lower his cholesterol. But unless he changes his lifestyle and starts to diet and exercise to get those arteries flowing, he is doomed. American metropolitcan areas are doomed to gridlock unless they start trying something new.

I wasn't aware of the Laurel Canyon Freeway (SR-170) and the Beverly Hills Freeway (SR-2) projects you mentioned, nor was I aware that Jerry Brown had been responsible for their cancellation. This should give you an idea of the DAMAGE that politicians in office can cause to the future of a city, a state, a country. Jerry Brown was in office a long, long time ago, wasn't he? I am amazed at the lack of foresight. Politicians and constituents seem to be caught up in the present and lose sight of what things might be like 20 years down the road. Whatever solutions are adopted to solve the traffic problem in L.A. should envision a city of L.A. 20 or 30 years from now. How will the current system be able to handle 3, 5 or 10 million more cars? SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE.

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WHY L.A. traffic sucks #2: Bad (or not exactly forward-looking) design

Before proposing solutions, we might want to figure out WHY L.A. traffic sucks so bad. "WHY" there is a problem might yield some answers on "HOW" to solve it.

WHY L.A. TRAFFIC SUCKS #2: BAD (or not exactly forward-looking) PATCHWORK DESIGN
If you look at a layout of the city and get a bird's eye view of traffic at the busiest times, you soon realize that a lot, if not most of the traffic is moving east to west (a.m.) or west to east (p.m.) (Let's forget about the 405 for now and traffic coming from the Valley either through the 405, Laurel Canyon or the 101. Traffic from the Valley is a whole other animal). For traffic moving east or west of the 405 freeway at any of those times, the problem is compounded by the fact that when the freeway was built, it was built in such a way that only a few major streets (Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico and Venice) were chosen to have overpasses built over them. The rest (essentially all other minor streets) were BLOCKED by the freeway. Whether you're going east or west, to get past the 405, you have to go through one of these major streets. Smaller, stop-sign riddled streets are good only to get as far as the 405, then you have to get on one of the major ones to get past the 405. Having so much traffic redirected through these major streets (Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico and Venice), which were not meant to handle such a high volume of cars, is one major problem that needs to be addressed and fixed. Either more overpasses need to be built, or the whole 405 from Sunset to Venice needs to ELEVATED (or INTERRED) to allow more traffic to flow UNDER IT (or OVER IT) east to west and west to east.

This is about as realistic a project as expecting a complete subway system or a monorail to be built any time soon.

For traffic going north-south, anywhere in the middle of the so-called "West Side", there is NO freeway that allows you to get from, say, West Hollywood (the Strip) to I-10 in a hurry (if you take the 101, you'll have to go in a circle all the way around downtown. A risky proposition at busy times). La Cienega (or better yet, Crescent Heights) is your best bet. I never counted them, but there's a lot of lights from Sunset to I-10. The absence of a fast track north-south thoroughfare is a glaring oversight. Most of the gridlock that develops on the streets going north-south from La Cienega to Vine is a direct result of this "missing freeway," one that apparently no one in the 40's and 50's had the foresight to build.

SOLUTION #2: WHAT CAN BE DONE TO FIX IT?

Someone told me in L.A. that the METRO RAPID red buses had a device (a transponder?) that would signal their approach to all the forthcoming traffic lights and turn them to GREEN so that they would have a straight shot all the way down Wilshire to the ocean. There's an idea! If you look at the traffic going in any direction on Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico and Venice at peak hours, you find that what is slowing down traffic and keeping it from flowing are all those traffic lights. There are way too many cars on the road to allow any one of them to advance quickly enough past enough intersections before the lights turn RED and traffic has to to stop and back up for miles. The result is a constant bottleneck backed-up traffic jam gridlock.

The SOLUTION has to be keeping those lights GREEN long enough to allow as many cars as possible to flow past as many intersections as possible. In other words, these major streets (Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico and Venice) should become for three to five minutes, if not longer, virtual freeways. Digital cameras with sensors could be installed in the whole L.A. area and linked to a computer system that would regulate the flow of traffic east-west and north-south. A 21 century solution for a state on the cutting edge of science and technology. Radio and television could be used to educate, remind and help the public to enforce the system.

If anyone counters that giving precedence to east-west traffic over north-south traffic would force redirecting twice as much traffic onto the already super-clogged 405 freeway, I'd say that this solution cannot be applied without allowing some kind of traffic to flow north-south. This, in turn, cannot be done without building some overpasses north-south over some key intersections over these major streets (Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico and Venice). OR regulating traffic in such a way that traffic north-south WILL keep flowing on selected streets (La Cienega and Crescent Heights to get to the I-10, etc), whereas on most minor streets, precedence will be given to traffic east-west to keep flowing longer. The current system of allowing as much GREEN light for traffic to flow east-west as for traffic to flow north-south is NOT working. Here's one instance in which equality fails, and fails miserably: allowing as much GREEN light to east-west traffic as to north-south creates constant bottleneck backed-up traffic jam gridlock IN EVERY DIRECTION. SOMETHING HAS TO GIVE.

Complete freedom to get in your car and go anywhere in any direction at any time is creating an unmanagable mess, a mess that the current freeway and road system cannot handle. This mess needs to be regulated somehow. If regulating use of your car won't work in a city where everyone is so dependent on the car and where no politician would dare implement it, then where that car goes and how it gets there at peak hours CAN BE regulated, HAS TO BE regulated, MUST BE regulated or the city will continue to have this bedlam.

A website could be created for commuters to input their daily routes. Obviously, if there is a larger area east to west than north to south, then there must be more traffic going east to west (and viceversa) than north to south (and viceversa). If more people are going east-west than north-south, then traffic should flow longer, faster in that direction at that time. This is a simple democratic solution: majority rule.

This is America, the land of science and technology, the land of "ingenuity". A test could be run to see how many MORE cars can make it from Ocean Boulevard (Santa Monica) to Highland (Hollywood) or viceversa on any of these major streets (Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico and Venice) if the lights are kept GREEN for one, two, three, four, five... minutes longer UNINTERUPTEDLY. Once the system is in place in coordination with all the cities that make up the area, it can be tweaked until it works perfectly and works for everybody.

This system might have the unintended consequence of forcing drivers to drive more intelligently and find creative ways of getting where they're going WITHOUT having to rely on the same old ways of getting there.

These measures need to be applied only during rush hour: 7:00-9:00am and 4:00-7:00pm.

No one solution will work magic and solve all of L.A.'s traffic problems. This will work ONLY in conjunction with all the other ideas I am proposing: a sum total of ideas working together in concert.

It's an idea worth trying. Anyone have any better ideas? I doubt it. According to most science-fiction writers, when it comes to transportation (especially public transportation), we're way behind schedule (especially here in America. Europe and Japan are light years ahead in public transportation). Keep on dreaming of electric "air surfing" and flying saucers, subways and monorails...
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Photo: FOCUSING ON THE SOLUTION [solutions are in GREEN: go! let's do it! problems are in RED: stop!]
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