SPEED CORRIDORS: East-West

Most of the panel discussion at the L.A. Press Club focused on "mobility," "capacity" and "flow" on the freeways in L.A. I believe that this is a misplaced and misguided emphasis. We have to get away from this idea that the only way to increase mobility and traffic flow in the L.A. area is by increasing flow on the freeways. The idea that the only way to increase mobility is by increasing flow on the freeways is a totally misguided idea. DO NOT believe it.

Any solution to the congestion in L.A., especially on the Westside, will have to include increasing traffic flow on the streets as well, as an alternative to the freeways.

The only way to achieve increasing traffic flow on the streets is by creating temporary SPEED CORRIDORS.

The only way to create SPEED CORRIDORS is by keeping the lights GREEN on ALL major roads going east-west from Sunset to Venice (Sunset Blvd., Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica Blvd., Olympic, Pico, Venice Blvd.) for at least 5 minutes or longer at certain intervals from 7:00am to 9:00am in the morning going east to west, and from 4:00pm to 7:00om in the evening going from west to east. This would create unbelievable flow that would get most cars and buses in and out of the Westside (west of he 405) every morning and evening at a very fast rate.

It is this mass migration of workers going east to west in the morning and west to east in the evenings what creates unbelievable congestion on I-10 and all major roads east-west from Sunset to Venice.

By creating these SPEED CORRIDORS, you would be creating an alternative I-10, which cannot possibly handle such an unbelievable volume of cars without getting jammed. You would be creating an alternative to I-10 without increasing capacity on the freeway and without building another freeway.

It's a great idea. BELIEVE IN IT.

Detractors of this idea would counter: "Well, what about traffic going north-south? While the lights are green for east-west traffic, north-south traffic would be getting jammed on all those roads running north-south that cross the roads you mentioned. And what about pedestrians? They'd be stuck waiting for 5 minutes or longer for the light to change to cross the road!"

My answer is that this idea of SPEED CORRIDORS cannot be implemented without creating a few overpasses for north-south traffic and some skywalks for pedestrians (see my posts WHY L.A. traffic sucks: OPEN DISCUSSION #3 and WHY L.A. traffic sucks: Open Discussion #6: Pedestrian Under/Overpasses for more on this issue).

The idea of tolls on freeways as a solution to congestion would be not only self-defeating, tax-regressive and eventually useless, but it would also be COUNTERPRODUCTIVE: ALL those who are unwilling or unable to pay the tolls would simply spill out onto the streets and roads to avoid paying the tolls, thus creating even more congestion, congestion of unbelievable proportions on the streets of L.A. To believe that tolls are going to change behavior and keep people from driving as single drivers in one car is an illusion. Whoever said that freeways are the only way to "get there"?

Since, according to Tom Rubin, former Administrator for Public Transport in Southern California, "we" (whatever that means!) have decided NOT to increase capacity on freeways, ANY solution to the traffic congestion problem in L.A. MUST include increasing flow on streets and roads as an alternative to the freeways. There's NO question about it.

Any solution, or set of solutions, that focuses on freeway flow at the expense of street flow is part of the problem, NOT part of the solution.

ANY great and creative solution, or set of solutions, for the traffic congestion in L.A. and other metropolitan areas, will have to consider flow EVERYWHERE, NOT just on the freeways.

L.A. is like a 500-pound individual whose arteries are clogged and whose blood is not flowing like it should. This "individual" needs to slim down, start exercising and increase blood flow to ALL parts of the body.

It is that simple a solution.

Whether this "individual" will have the willpower and determination to change or continue to stumble along at the current sluggish pace, is another question.

If you were one of those "blood cells" inside this "individual", what would you say?

Would you say this?

DAMN LOS ANGELES TRAFFIC! [From: ACCDzek]



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Dylan: "Don't follow leaders/Watch the parking meters"!

In LA Traffic Panel Discussion - Volume II, Tom Rubin, former "Administrator for Public Transport" in Southern California says the following,

So what we have is a situation where if we made a decision we aren't going to add capacity, we have to either use what we have smarter, or as has been said [by Mr. Moore], ration it through various means. And this being the United States, where capitalism--I don't think--has totally completely died, tolls are very realistic. And tolls, particularly time of day tolls, will encourage people to change their behavior.

"One of the things that has happened that is the single most significant thing that has happened in U.S. transportation is work-at-home. You take a look at all the model splits: how many people are driving, how many people are car pooling, how many people taking transit, time after time after time, year after year, area after area, there are only two things that are going on: single passenger vehicles and work-at-home. And as the technology increases and as that way of work increases, that is going to change as well more and more.

"We are responding to it, but it's not a question we can't do it, we can't add capacity. We can. The problem is that we have decided NOT to."

Don't you find it especially miffing that this former beauraucrat, who's probably partly responsible for the current mess, and who does not even admit it or take responsibility for it, much less apologize for it, is not even smart enough to leave the word "capitalism" out of it when proposing such a bad idea of "tolls" as the only realistic solution to making people "change their behavior"? At least, he should be smart enough and leave the word "capitalism" out of it! I guess he doesn't realize how he's giving himself away completely by having said that.

I'm telling you. This is the last person in the world you should listen to for solutions to this problem. He is exactly the kind of person Dylan was referring to when he sang, "Don't follow leaders/Watch the parking meters"! Follow him and your "parking meter" is going to go UP, WAY UP, in the form of "tolls" designed to make you "change your behavior."

Does he mean to say that you cannot educate people in America?

Does he mean to say that you cannot appeal to their sense of civic duty?

Does he mean to say that NO ONE in L.A. would give up driving for the good of the entire urban community?

If so, then it is hopeless, completely hopeless. Because it is a fact that there will always be enough people in the world with enough cash to pay ALL the tolls in the world, and NOTHING, NOTHING IN THE WORLD --not the high price of gas, not tolls of ANY kind-- will ever deter them from driving.

Have they ever tried? Have they ever mounted a citywide campaign in all media to educate drivers and appeal to their sense of civic suty to help solve the problem?

Have they ever offered L.A. drivers a REALLY GOOD and REALLY RELIABLE altervative to driving?

He is also overlooking the fact that the driver demographic in L.A. is not only made up of commuters and truck drivers and service van drivers and bus drivers and people running errands, but also of TOURISTS and BUSINESS PEOPLE in car rentals. Thousands of them pour into L.A. every day, and they would be willing to pay any toll they have to pay to get where they are going. The out of town trucks just passing through on their way north or south on the interstate freeways, will have to pay tolls unless you limit their access to the freeways going through town to nighttime.

Tolls would be self-defeating, tax regressive, and in the end, useless. They would have to raise them more and more to REALLY make some people change their behavior.

I only have one thing to tell you. Or better yet, I'll let Bob Dylan himself tell it to you: "YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS!"

Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues



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LA Traffic Panel Discussion - Volume II: "NO" to adding capacity, "YES" to tolls?!?

Here's the second part of that LA Traffic Panel Discussion: Ever-Lasting Gridlock? that took place at the L.A. Press Club on March 29 of this year.



And here's my response:

Mr. Johnston starts out with a very basic question:

"Why is it that when there's more traffic it moves more slowly?"

Mr. Moore, the USC professor of civil engineering and "expert on the technical side," replies:

"What transportation engineers really focus on is flow.

"At very low densities and high speeds, you got low flow, and you got very densities and very low speeds and you got low flow. And it's that region between jam density and no density at all where your flow would be theoretically maximized. And that's for most folks a low level of service. That's in the neighborhood of, say, 35 miles an hour--faily congested conditions in the minds of most folks. So when I'm driving around in the freeways, I'm thinking in terms of flow. [...]"

Mr. Johnston then asks why the 101 always gets jammed from Cahuenga to downtown.

Mr. Moore replies that "what you're seeing is a period of extended demand that exceeds capacity." That's why. And you have only three options:

"[1] You can add capacity--That's an option. That's expensive.
[2] You can better manage the capacity you have.
[3] We can try to suppress the demand.

Short of that I don't see any avenue for improvement. [...]"

Got it?

That's the technical assessment. In other words, the choices are stark. Expect to drive not faster than 35 mph on freeways in L.A. because at such high densities (a lot of cars on the freeway), drivers drive too defensively and cannot keep up higher speeds.

Then Mr. Johnston asks, "What about the issue of... if we build more roads, we simply generate more traffic."

Mr. Rubin "would be happy to take that." Here's his answer. Read (or listen) CAREFULLY.

"We can build our way our congestion. We have just decided NOT to!

"The problem we have is,... these are taken so seriously: the cost restrictions and the [sic] restrictions, that it becomes almost impossible in this day and age to think of adding capacity in an urbanized area. In many cases it can be done and it has been done successfully. But the limitations are there. And you add the statutory requirements.

"At the present time, in an area undergoing congestion, which therefore has some air quality problems [....], it is virtually impossible to get permission from the federal government to either build a new freeway or add general-purpose lane capacity to existing freeways. What you can do is add an HOV lane. That's the exception. So in many cases, we have seen HOV lanes being added, not necessarily because they're the best solution, but because it's the one thing you can build [...]

So what we have is a situation where if we made a decision we aren't going to add capacity, we have to either use what we have smarter, or as has been said [by Mr. Moore], ration it through various means. And this being the United States, where capitalism--I don't think--has totally completely died, tolls are very realistic. And tolls, particularly time of day tolls, will encourage people to change their behavior.

"One of the things that has happened that iis the single most significant thing that has happened in U.S. transportation is work-at-home. You take a look at all the model splits: how many people are driving, how many people are car pooling, how many people taking transit, time after time after time, year after year, area after area, there are only two things that are going on: single passenger vehicles and work-at-home. And as the technology increases and as that way of work increases, that is going to change as well more and more.

"We are responding to it, but it's not a question we can't do it, we can't add capacity. We can. The problem is that we have decided not to."

Let me get this straight:

We can add capacity, but we have just decided NOT TO in order to tax people with tolls to change their behavior?!?

If anybody out there gets any other conclusion from what he said, let me know! Because every which way you look at it, that's the ONLY conclusion one can get from what he said.

If I understand this correctly, in a country where capitalism "[hasn't] totally completely died," they CAN but they have decided NOT to add capacity. Why? In order to TAX you and make you change your behavior that way!

It may be a very "capitalistic" solution, but it's not a very fair and not a very "democratic" solution. We all know what would happen if tolls were implemented as a cure for traffic congestion. The rich and the upper-middle-class, and to a large extent the middle-class, would get to ride the freeways in absolute comfort at whatever speed they want. But the minimum-wage earners and the poor would have to take the streets to get to work, thus spilling the congestion from the freeways onto the strets. Tolls implemented to cure congestion, as Mr Rubin sugests, would be a form of regressive taxation that would affect the minimum-wage earners and the poor. Just like the high price of gas has not affected high and middle-income bracket wage earners but it has affected the the minimum-wage earners and the poor, tolls would affect the minimum-wage earners and the poor.

Moreover, can you imagine the jams, the congestion, before every toll booth? In L.A.? Are you kidding me? Not everybody would have a fast-lane electronic tag to get through the toll booth fast enough. Want proof? To take the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, you have to pay toll. Almost always, at certain times of day, there's an unbelievable JAM right there before the toll booth. And to require every car to purchase a tag would really mean that only those of high or middle-income level would be able to fork out the extra $50 or $60 a month to purchase a tag just to drive on a freeway. So THEY, the minimum-wage earners and the poor, would create a jam before the toll booth every day.

DO NOT LET THEM SELL YOU SUCH A DUBIOUS, SHODDY BAG OF GOODS, SUCH AN IDIOTIC IDEA.

You already pay enough tax to maintain freeways and roads. DO NOT let them now TAX YOUR RIGHT to drive on those freeways and roads. You should OPPOSE this idea with everything you've got. Pressure them to come up with REAL solutions, not IDIOTIC ideas.

See? This is what happens: politicans, under pressure from the electorate to find solutions to problems, put then pressure on these beauraucrats and academics, so-called "experts," to come up with solutions, and this is "the best" they can come up with: IDIOTIC IDEAS.

I deal at greater length on this issue in my posting Would taxing the Modern Hell (rush hour) turn it into the Modern Heaven (traffic-free cities)? as a response to Nobel Prize winner economist Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, who's one of the original proponents of this idea of tolls to cure congestion.

He may be a "Nobel Prize winner," but he should know that he is proposing an idiotic idea. And, as an economist, he should know that tolls would be a form of regressive taxation on lower-income earners and the poor.

Moreover, I think that to frame it in these dire, stark, black-and-white terms -- IT'S EITHER NO MORE CAPACITY OR TOLLS, MAKE YOUR CHOICE! -- is rather pathetic from people from whom we should expect REALLY CREATIVE SOLUTIONS. (For a really creative approach to solving the traffic congestion problem on the Westside, see my post: WESTSIDE SOLUTION AT A GLANCE)

DON'T YOU THINK?
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LA Traffic Panel Discussion - Volume I

1 minute and 55 seconds of the video clip are dedicated to the reception: people snacking, drinking and mingling to the tune of the Beatles' "Baby, You Can Drive My Car." Then the three panelists are introduced by Mr. Johnston and given an opportunity to give a "brief summary of the crucial issue facing us this evening." This is where it gets interesting... Watch!



So Mr. Tom Rubin goes first, and what he has to say in this brief intro. is very interesting: "Transportation decisions in the United States really have virtually nothing to do with transportation. And that pretty much drives the results. When you're making transportation decisions ignoring transportation impacts, [you get] a transportation system that reflects that in its performance."

That's a very interesting observation, but what the heck does it mean?

If transportation decisions are not based on transportation issues, then WHAT, pray tell, are they based on? And WHO makes them? WHO's accountable?

Obviously, this is the approach that's behind the current mess (and a former insider like Mr. Rubin should know better than anybody else).

So right off the bat, we get confirmation of something we've been saying over and over here on this blog, that at the policy decision-making level, a paradigm shift has to take place. The whole approach to how these decisions are made and who makes them needs to change. Or the "high expectations" that Mr. Balaker trumps about later are an illusion. NOTHING will change for the better or for the long-term without this fundamental change.

Then it's Mr. Balaker's turn (we don't know whether Mr. Moore got a chance to have his say on "the issue facing us this evening" or whether he got skipped over or simply cut in favor of the reception). Mr. Balaker makes two points we have also been harping on here in this blog since April 2006, perhaps not in the same words, but in exactly the same meaning and spirit:

1. "The point I want to make is that mobility matters... These days the term 'geographically undesirable' is becoming more and more commonplace among people who date in urban areas... Mobility is good."
2. "We've fallen into this fashionable defeatism where we think that there's nothing that can be done about traffic. ... Congestion is something that can be triumphed over. And I think it's about time we did that."

Of course "mobility matters" and "mobility is good." No one is denying that. What you have is a population in denial over whether everybody who owns a car should be on the road at the same time every day. Freedom of mobility should entail some responsibility. If you don't have to drive, why drive? If you need to get some milk at the convenience store two blocks away and you can walk, why not walk it? Why not ride your bike? After all, it's good for you! Perhaps a study should be done on the relationship between heart disease and obesity and driving in America. The French and the Italians are thinner and live longer and healthier perhaps because they walk more.

What Mr. Balaker is, in fact, saying is that mobility equals driving. That's not true at all. The only way to attain mobility is not necessarily by driving. The problem of traffic and congestion in American cities such as L.A. will never be solved until people in L.A. are given as many options as possible OTHER THAN DRIVING to attain the mobility they need and desire (How about, for instance, creating more walkable "downtowns" like Santa Monica's that can be easily accessible by clean and reliable transportation like the Big Blue Bus? That's the kind of mobility L.A. needs).

As to point No. 2 --"Congestion... can be triumphed over"-- of course it can! But it won't be easy and it will take a concerted effort by policy-makers and drivers working together to make it happen. There's no magic formula. Neither "tolling" nor "increasing capacity" alone will do it. As we have documented on this blog, the L.A. area has a lot of fixing to do. They can do all the "tolling" they want, they can add all the road capacity they want, but it won't make that much of a difference in the long run if all the other problems we have outlined on this blog are not fixed as well. People will continue to pour into Southern California and the additional flow created by "tolling" and extra capacity will go up in smog!

Tomorrow we will view and respond to Volume II of the Panel Discussion.

Hope you enjoyed it and learned something new. I did. Don't leave it up to the politicians, the experts, the pundits, the academics, the beauraucrats, the self-serving journalists (hawking you wares, huh? What's this? Oprah? ;-). They created the mess in the first place. As this panel discussion will show, they know the least about how to solve it.

L.A. Traffic.. you hearddd [From: ashleeee]
[a girl telling visiting friend(s) that "this is normal."]



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