OPEN DISCUSSION #10: "...mum's the word! Don't give away the secrets."/Thinking BEYOND the GRID

Studio City Nerd has left a new comment on your post "DRIVING TIPS: SMART FOXES vs. HERDS OF SHEEP.":

The reason that routes like the Palms bypass aren't clogged with traffic is that most people don't know about them.

If you talk about such routes too much, they will become clogged with traffic.

Or the residents of the (usually residential) areas they run through will get tired of all the "smart fox" traffic, and install speed bumps, No-Turn-During-Rush-Hour signs, or otherwise block off and muck up your favorite bypass.

A while back, some fool actually published a whole book full of these rush-hour bypasses, and the resulting boom in traffic led to a number of them implementing exactly the sort of restrictions described above. Ruined some of the best bypasses in the city.

So, mum's the word! Don't give away the secrets.

Posted by Studio City Nerd to L.A. traffic sucks: Let's fix it! at 5/16/2006 01:55:52 PM

italianesco replies:

Thanks for reading the blog and for your new comments!

I thought about it, and at first I myself was reluctant to post the "Palms secret." But at this rate, how to bypass traffic and get there on time is bound to become the "Holy Grail" of L.A. traffic and we, holders of the secrets, are going to become a Priory of Sion exclusive secret society!! (As long as that sex ritual in the book is part of it and I am appointed "Grand Master," I'm cool with it! :-)

I agree with you that "the reason that routes like the Palms bypass aren't clogged with traffic is that most people don't know about them." But here's the thing. Under this blog's title I wonder whether we should add L.A. traffic to those other two things in life that have NO solution: DEATH and THE MIDDLE EAST. Those in the residential areas are like the Israelis: "We won't give up an inch!" And the rest of us are like the Palestinians: "We need some land!" At some point, it'll turn "Salomonic": should we threaten to cut the "baby" in half for the REAL mother to come forth and give it up rather than see it die? Because that's where L.A. is headed: add 100,00 or 500,000 or 1 million more cars to the roads, and where is all that traffic going to go? (See " WHY L.A. traffic sucks: OPEN DISCUSSION #1: SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE"). Will it spill over into these lovely, quiet neighborhoods right off the main roads? With speed dips and stop signs and everything else designed to discourage me from driving through, I would plow right through those roads parellel to Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Even with dips and stop signs and all, it was FASTER than Santa Monica Blvd.!

Yes, I know. I was a bit amazed to discover all these quiet, lovely neighborhoods RIGHT OFF the bustling, wild city roads and boulevards. It's like a whole different world one block away! And L.A. needs those quiet, lovely neighborhoods for their residents to keep their sanity. But drivers are going insane with frustration out there, too (I know I was!).

SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE.

THINKING BEYOND THE GRID

I think this whole thing is the fault of urban planners. I think that by now, SOMEBODY should have come up with an urban layout for a city OTHER THAN the GRID. The GRID leads to GRIDLOCK. And the cities of the future CANNOT afford this problem. There must be some other design, layout, blueprint for cities other than GRIDS. Perhaps circular or semi-circular designs that allow traffic to flow in different directions without getting jammed somehow. I am sure that a group of mathematicians (topologists: see image above), computer scientists, architects and urban planners can come up with such a design. And perhaps existing GRID layout cities can be slightly modified to make traffic flow without disturbing and upsetting ANYBODY.

Whatever happened to American ingenuity? Did they leave it up there somewhere on the surface of the moon 37 years ago? Or does it take a Sputnik to bring it out? Perhaps America is like France. DeGaulle said that "France is not herself unless she's engaged in a great enterprise." Perhaps for Americans traffic and urban planning are not a great enterprise, but a space race with the Soviet Union was.

We have to start thinking beyond the GRID, or traffic in all the cities of the world is indeed bound to become the third thing that has NO solution after DEATH and the MIDDLE EAST.
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Photo collage by italianesco: Moebius strip over aerial view of city grid

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DRIVING TIPS: SMART FOXES vs. HERDS OF SHEEP.

DRIVING TIPS: SMART FOXES vs. HERDS OF SHEEP.

How do you get from A to Z? Driving tips to bypass heavy traffic and get there on time. SMART FOXES vs. HERDS OF SHEEP.

The powers-that-be in L.A. need to start finding ways to redirect traffic to UNCLOG freeways and main roads (see my post "WHY L.A. traffic sucks: that "monster," the 405 freeway..."). And angelenos need to stop being herds of sheep clogging the freeways and main roads and start thinking of CREATIVE ways to bypass traffic. There are OTHER WAYS of getting there. Believe me. Forget your high school geometry. In L.A., the shortest distance between two points is NOT a straight line.

Suppose you are in Marina del Rey (Washington at Pacific) and you need to get to West Hollywood by 6:00 and it's 5:00pm. How do you make it?

Take I-10 East, exit La Cienega North and voila`?!? That'll take you two hours, if you're lucky! That's the herds of sheep way. That's WHY is is CLOGGED. What's the SMART FOX way of getting there?

Some people swear by Venice, others swear by Olympic. The truth is, neither is a good alternative unless they implement my idea of turning them into "virtual freeways" by keeping the lights GREEN for a longer period of time (5 to 10 minutes).

Here's what you do.

You are on Pacific and Washington Blvd. right by the ocean. And you're starting to despair (I'll never make it!!"). Take it easy. Have no fear, italianesco is here, and will tell you how to get there in no time at all.

Go East on Washington Blvd. Make a left on Lincoln. Go past Venice Blvd. And then--careful! don't miss it!--make a right on PALMS. Yes, PALMS!! Go east on Palms. At Penmar, Palms jogs. So make a right on Penmar and then an immediate left right back onto Palms. But STAY ON PALMS! After Walgrove, Palms widens a bit and starts getting wonderful. And the most important thing: up to now, NO traffic! NO traffic at all!!

And here's the truly, really WONDERFUL THING ABOUT PALMS: unlike a lot of other small streets, Palms has an OVERPASS over the 405!!! Can you believe it? An overpass!!! Go right over it, and once you are on the other side of the 405, you're half way there!

Stay with us. It gets interesting...

Once you get to I-10, guesswhat? Palms has an UNDERPASS under I-10!!! An underpass! Can you believe it? Whoever did Palms was a GENIUS! Palms is L.A. DONE RIGHT. If ALL the streets that cross the 405 and I-10 were like Palms, there'd be hardly any traffic problem on the Westside. (see my post "WHY L.A. traffic sucks #2: bad (or not exactly forward-looking) design")

After I-10, you wonder, "Where in the world did lovely Palms go?!? It was great!!" Well, guesswhat? It turned into National. And National is a heavy-duty traffic street. Stay away from it! Make a left onto Castle Heights Avenue. Then make a right on Cattaraugus Avenue. Then make a left on S. Robertson Blvd. A bit of traffic here, but don't panic! As soon as you get to Olympic, MAKE A RIGHT! Here--way, way, way East of the 405--three-lane Olympic ROCKS!! Go East on Olympic and then make a left on Crescent Heights, and you've made it!! We got you there!!! And right on time! (ahem... Give or take a minute, of course... In L.A. you NEVER know...)

So that's the SMART FOX WAY OF GETTING THERE! You get on the roads that rock, not on the roads that suck! If you'd rather be stuck for two hours on I-10 East or Venice or Olympic like a herd of sheep, be our guest!! Hope you have plenty of good music with you or a good audio book, or, since you're not really going to be driving but going bumper to bumper, then, yes, why not? go ahead and talk on your cell phone all you want for two hours. At least, it'll keep you sane... That's what sheep do when they are in a herd, anyway, go "beehhhhhhhhh!!" The SMART FOX will get there quicker than you and win the prize... No "sense of entitlement," no rudeness, just smartness. That's all it takes...


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WHY L.A. traffic sucks: that "monster," the 405 freeway...

WHY L.A. traffic sucks: that "monster," the 405 freeway...

Setting aside for a moment L.A. drivers addicted to driving and addicted to driving while talking on their cell phones, let's turn our attention for a moment to that "monster," the 405 freeway. Let's focus first on traffic going south--from the Valley to points south. On this stretch of the 405 from, say, the Ventura/101 exit in the Valley to the Century Blvd/LAX exit, the 405 is ALWAYS clogged. Perhaps not 24/7 but certainly from, say, 6:00am to 9:00pm MON-SAT (let's give Sunday MORNING a respite. But dare venture onto the 405 anytime Sunday afternoon or evening, and see what you're in for!).

WHY?

Simple. The 405 has at least 4 to 6 lanes (in some stretches) in each direction--plenty of lanes to carry quite a bit of traffic. BUT, as it approaches the I-10 junction, those 4 or 6 lanes narrow down to a TINY bottleneck of TWO measly lanes as the far right lane becomes the "Exit Only" ramp to enter I-10 West and the second right lane turns into the "Exit Only" ramp to enter I-10 East. The designers of this freeway probably assumed that most of the traffic from the north was going to go into one of these three directions--South, I-10 West, I-10 East--in equal proportions. Well, guesswhat? They guessed wrong. DEAD WRONG. MOST of the traffic is actually going south (LAX, for one!). And not only that. RIGHT BEFORE the 405/I-10 junction, FIVE (5) of the major East-West boulevards--Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic and Pico--feed into the 405 hundreds of cars, thousands of cars, from the East and from the West. And ALL OF THIS almost RIGHT BEFORE THE 405/I-10 junction where the freeway narrows to a bottleneck of a mere TWO lanes and so many cars have to negotiate where they are going: South on the 405? East on I-10? Or West on I-10?

Right after this two-lane bottleneck, the freeway widens again into more lanes. BUT guesswhat? the ramps from I-10 East and West feed even MORE cars into the 405. So you have a jam before the bottleneck and a jam after the bottleneck. And this jam is not disolved until you reach the Century Blvd/LAX exit.

This is TERRIBLE DESIGN. I don't care WHO did it, I don't care WHEN they did it, I don't care WHY they did it, it is TERRIBLE, ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE DESIGN. Whoever created the 405 created most of the traffic problems on the Westside. (See my April 26, 2006 post: "WHY L.A. traffic sucks #2: bad (or not exactly forward-looking) design"). And this jumbled junction, right before FIVE (5) of the major East-West boulevards--Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic and Pico--feeding into it, causes a major backed-up bottleneck traffic jam GRIDLOCK all the way to the Ventura Blvd. exit in the Valley. It is ridiculous. It is ABSURD. It is one of the reasons -- perhaps not the only reason, but certainly one of the MAIN reasons, if not THE MAIN REASON-- the 405 is ALWAYS jammed. You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a civil engineer to figure this one out. Anybody with a modicum of intelligence can figure out what the problem is by driving through this juction. Now that the problem has been created--who knows how long ago--the hard part is, HOW to solve it.

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO FIX IT? SOLUTION: REDIRECTING TRAFFIC

There is construction work on the 405 from Wilshire all the way to Century Blvd. It looks like they are trying to widen the freeway and improve some entrances/exits (and/or put in those ridiculous ineffective HOV lanes. Does anyone know?). Depending on WHAT they are trying to do and HOW LONG it will take them to complete it (anyone's guess!), anyone expecting the 405 to get any better anytime soon is dreaming.

The solution, again, must be to redirect some of that north-south traffic ELSEWHERE, and that "elsewhere" can only be either onto Sepulveda or onto Sawtelle. That in turn cannot be done without creating an unbelievable jam at the five or six major roads--Sunset, Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico, Venice--that intersect Sepulveda and Sawtelle. The 405 needs a break! But it can't be given a break at the expense of all those other major roads. What to do?

OVERPASSES OVER WILSHIRE, SANTA MONICE, OLYMPIC, PICO AND VENICE ON SEPULVEDA AND/OR SAWTELLE

My idea of turning roads into virtual "freeways" by keeping the lights GREEN for a longer period of time would not work here. Those major roads--Wilshire, Santa Monica, Olympic, Pico, Venice--need to be turned into virtual "freeways" themselves or East-West traffic will continue to be jammed as it is. Overpasses might be one possible solution, if not the only viable solution. Redirecting traffic has to become one of the KEY SOLUTIONS to traffic problems in L.A. The major freeways and major roads cannot handle the current volume of cars hoisted onto them. Enlarging all the freeways, or even building new ones (major ones), is, if not politically, certainly financially impossible. Building a comprehensive subway system or a monorail in earthquake-prone California is, if not politically, certainly financially a long way off (it ain't happening tomorrow! I can tell you that much!). It is time for CREATIVE solutions to intractable problems that work NOW--RIGHT NOW. It might not be pretty (overpasses tend to uglify intersections) but gridlock is even uglier--and unhealthier. SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE.

THE 90 MARINA DEL REY FREEWAY

The 90 Marina del Rey freeway is a great example of what could be done to redirect traffic. If you are coming North on the 405 and heading towards Marina del Rey, Venice or downtown Santa Monica, The 90 Marina del Rey freeway is a very wise, if not the very best, alternative. TAKE IT. You'd have to be crazy to stay on the 405 when you can take the 90.

Driving Tip #1:

Once you get to Lincoln, make a right and go as far as Washington Blvd. Make a left on Washington and you'll get anywhere in Marina del Rey you need to go. You're going to Venice? Make a left on Washington and then make a right on Abbot Kinney and you'll get anywhere in Venice you need to go. You're going to downtown Santa Monica? Make a left on Washington and then make a right on Aboot Kinney. Stay on Abbot Kinney until it "tees" with Main. Make a right on Main. Make a left on Rose (DO NOT GO THROUGH THE REST OF MAIN!! Too many lights and too much pedestrian traffic! Nielssen rocks!). Make a right on Nielssen Way and stay on Nielssen until it turns into Ocean Blvd. and you'll get anywhere in downtown Santa Monica (Third Street Promenade) you need to go. This way you will have bypassed all the traffic and gotten to your destination a lot more quickly than by staying on the 405 (I did this ALL THE TIME!).

This is the kind of CREATIVE redirection of traffic that needs to be done all over L.A. to unclog the freeways and major roads and get traffic flowing.

This is the other possible solution based on the same premise of redirecting traffic: build more SHORT freeways like the 90 Marina del Rey freeway.

Whoever had the idea of building the 90 Marina del Rey freeway had an excellent idea. L.A. needs a lot more such excellent ideas!

With this "get there quick" tip, we're going to start a series of helpful "how to get there quick" tips all over L.A. (you're welcome to contribute!!). Finding creative ways of "getting there" by redirecting traffic is the only way to get freeways and major roads UNCLOGGED and find some "breathing room" in L.A.--at least for the time being, until the city faces what it has to do to seek more permanent solutions...
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Photo: FOCUSING ON THE SOLUTION, NOT ON THE PROBLEM!
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