L.A.'s trapped in a monster traffic jam, and there's no exit in sight

The Daily Breeze

Originally published Thursday, January 12, 2006

L.A.'s trapped in a monster traffic jam, and there's no exit in sight

Infatuation with the automobile means no one is wiling to make the effort to make region's transit system work.
By John Bogert

I was shocked to hear that area traffic got a fat F from the Southern California Association of Governments.

I was shocked that it wasn't lower, like Z for Zreadful. What's even more amazing is that the regional planning agency didn't come to this conclusion seven years ago when it started issuing letter grades to a public too stupid to understand anything else. I say stupid not as an insult to stupid people, like the ones who gave us "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo." I mean stupidly normal, like us. And by "us" I mean you and me and almost everyone except those people who are too smart or too poor to squander hours and fortunes in traffic that will never improve.

Face it, we're a big terminal case. But we keep on doing what we do because the transit system isn't easy or convenient. If you don't believe me, take the Pasadena Gold Line, to the Red, Blue and Green lines to Redondo Beach. Then try going from the Marine Avenue terminus to anywhere in under two city-bus hours. Our transit system has some wonderful, broad brush strokes, but it just doesn't work without an effort we are not willing to make, even with ruinous gas prices and the certain knowledge that the current way can't be sustained.

(snip)

Traffic light timing stinks. Parking stinks. What's worse, we stink because we can't figure a way out of this mess. In fact, all we can do is grow. In 2004, our six-county region added 284,000 people. That's 10 percent of the nation's total population growth, 53 percent of the state's total growth.

USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate estimates that the Southern California population will increase by 6 million people over the next 20 to 25 years "due to a natural increase in births over deaths." Six million! Meanwhile, and this is strange considering how slow traffic moves, SCAG reports that regional highway fatalities increased by 8 percent from 2000 to 2004 while decreasing everywhere else in the nation.

(snip)

Of course, many more cargo containers could move through the massively expensive Alameda Corridor. Only they don't. In fact, the 20-mile, $2.5 billion rail line designed to take seagoing containers off the roads operates at less-than-half capacity. Why? Well, it's because other distribution systems were put in place during the 18 years it took to build the passage. That, and trucking companies don't want to pay a $15 corridor fee.

(snip)


Find this article at:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/columnists/bogert/articles/2187557.html

..i've lived in, is the idiocy of traffic control.

One way to tell is if you're at a traffic light (red) and you see several blocks ahead
with almost no vehicles on the road, you know the lights are programed by idiots.
Even here in St.Petersburg, during rush hour, I'll see lights turn red...at a small side-street,
causing blocks of traffic to stop so ONE car can turn right.
Also..I see right turn arrows on for such a short time that only 3-4 cars can get through,
while 25 cars are in the right-hand turn lane.

Absolutely Ridiculous...

thank god the Mills Corp scrapped their plans to lower Carson St. to build more retail above it!


it takes planning to navigate in the LA area! and LUCK!

LA handles traffic far better than most major cities. That's why more people drive--it's more convenient.

They bought and close down the light rail system LA had in the fifties. Still now we have the LA Metro subway which is pretty cool for us San Fernando folk. I can actually leave my house and ride my bike on the bike trail (reclaimed rail lines) and ride to the Metro line which can take me into Hollywood and downtown LA. Pretty cool.

However the mega virus like bedroom communities beyond Metro's reach are screwed. We need more rail systems and less freeways and urban sprawl.

just a few miles short of LAX.

They brought it to a bedroom community of aerospace workers... except that the aerospace industry shrank considerably by the time that line - don't remember the color - was completed.

is the story of the privately-operated transportation system in this country. It's astounding how much time and resources are wasted individually and collectively by auto-based commuting and shopping activities, but most Americans wouldn't trade it and indeed can't imagine a lifestyle of cooperative transportation and living.

It's too many cars. The more freeways and the wider the roads, the harder it is to walk or ride a bike so people are forced into their cars. It's called induced traffic. If you narrow the streets so that it's easier to cross the street on foot, traffic disappears. It sounds counterintuitive but it's true.

We need a carrot and stick approach to getting people out of their cars, instead of the constant standby of everwidening roads.

The Torrance Daily Quease. :puke:

Sorry, I can't read that rag.

is what I call it. x(

Yeah let's all bash the free press, the ones that tell us what the LOCAL politicians are doing but that don't matter to people like you even though this is where all the national politicians come from.

You must write for the Daily Breeze. Welcome to DU, old friend. I'm glad you finally posted.

:toast:

I subscribe to the paper and in this area that's a well known and used nickname for it among us residents. Welcome to DU, you will probably have a short stay. x(

People there are blessed with perfect weather almost year-round! I'be be walking/biking a lot if I lived there.

Everything is so far apart.

to keep track of my friends on the Torrance City Council ( sarcasm ). It's not the ONly source of local news, however.

and John Bogert does write a very good column and is responsive to his readers in a very courteous way.

this blog, which originates in the South Bay, is one of my favorites.

http://theaesthetic.com/

(btw, i am planning to fly my flag on MLK Day, as opposed to ALL of the people on my street who seem to 'forget' MLK Day but fly their flags on every other holiday, as well as 12/7 )