L.A. gridlock still worst in nation

[question everything]

Los Angeles Daily News

L.A. gridlock still worst in nation
By Lisa Mascaro
Staff Writer

Monday, May 09, 2005 - Southern California's traffic jams again rank worst in the nation, and commuters waste nearly four full days a year just sitting in gridlock, according to a new study being released today. The region has held the No. 1 spot for nearly 20 years, since the study started at the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.

But as bad as traffic congestion is, the experts said it's actually dipped slightly as residents live farther out and freeway improvements keep gridlock from mounting.


(snip).

The region of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Orange County took the top spot with rush-hour commuters spending 93 hours each year in stalled traffic, followed by San Francisco-Oakland with 72 hours; the region of Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland with 69 hours; and the Atlanta region with 67 hours.

(snip)

Nationwide, the country's motorists and businesses lost $63 billion in time, productivity and fuel _ 2.3 billion gallons _ because of traffic. Each individual rush-hour commuter in Southern California wastes $1,598 a year and 61 gallons of gas in idle traffic.

more..

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~24652~2859929,00.html#

Lisa Mascaro, [phone] [e-mail]

[paula777]

1. Hope they didn't pay too much to do the study. I could have told them

this information for free!

[xxqqqzme]

5. have U noticed the

suface streets, which were once an escape from the parking lot freeways, R now just as congested?

[paula777]

7. Yes I have noticed the surface streets are now just as unbearable

as the freeway. It has always been bad - it is now getting intolerable.

[UCLA Dem]

17. Yea. In the last 10 years or its gotten exponentially worse.

[calimary]

13. Sure have. You could get there faster by walking, considering "there"

to be virtually ANYWHERE around town anymore.

It's just astounding. So many times when I'm driving one or both of my kids somewhere, I find myself sighing - "there's no way to win." It's just AWFUL. Some of the big streets turn into actual parking lots starting about 2pm. And "rush hour" never seems to end (until maybe 3 the following morning). It CERTAINLY is no mere "hour" anymore. When I retired from my job downtown and realized how much more time I had during the day simply because I didn't have that long, agonizing commute twice a day anymore, I was amazed at how much of my life I'd been flushing down the toilet, just sitting in traffic. While I was still working, I wound up returning all my phone calls while on the road. It was the only time I was guaranteed being able to sit still for awhile, unlike in the newsroom.

[UCLA Dem]

18. Yeah, its more like "permanent rush hours."

[yorkiemommie1]

21. we have several 'F' intersections in this city already

...as CALTRANS has graded them. Wait until the mall owners lower Carson St. so that they can build even more stores at that level. Our surface streets will become parking lots.

[DrDebug]

2. Build more roads

[lebkuchen]

3. A long time ago, LA had a lot of streetcar tracks

They were ripped out though, so that Los Angelenos would depend on the automobile, and the gasoline to run it.

[TahitiNut]

6. Over 65% of the land in LA County is dedicated to automobiles.

That's streets, highways, parking, gas stations, driveways, etc. 65%.

And public transportaion serves how many? :eyes:

The average family devotes a fifth of total spending to cars. Local and federal authorities must build and maintain roads that cost more and more ($32m a mile on average) and, far from reducing congestion, make it worse. More roads generate more traffic. In all, half the total area of US towns is occupied by roads, garages and car parks (and 65% of Los Angeles) and cars take up more space than dwellings.

http://mondediplo.com/2000/07/18stewart
Google cache - http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Xr09RODFlw0J:mondediplo.com/2000/07/18stewart+land+use+area+automobile+angeles&hl=en&start=46&lr=lang_en

[DrDebug]

8. There is some...

Metro Bus - The bus system services 1433 miles of road (2306 km) with 18,500 stops on 183 bus lines

(But then again the bus gets stuck in traffic as well, so that's no use)

And there is the Metro Rail

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority runs 4 rail lines throughout Los Angeles county.

The Red Line is a heavy rail line running between Downtown Los Angeles and either the Miracle Mile or North Hollywood. An extension is planned to Santa Monica or Westwood by 2012.

The Blue Line is a light rail line connecting Downtown L.A. and Long Beach.

The Green Line is a light rail line running between Redondo Beach and Norwalk via the Century Freeway (Interstate 105).

The Gold Line is a light rail line that runs between Downtown L.A and Pasadena. An extension is under construction to East Los Angeles.

The Expo Line is a planned Light Rail line from Downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County_MetroRail



But it isn't exactly the London Underground

[question everything]

12. And who was the genius that stopped one of the line

just a few miles short of LAX?

All over the world one finds train stations inside the terminals, but not in L.A.

[UCLA Dem]

16. Because we need our cars damn it!!! No commie trains for us!!

We all must drive by ourselves with behemoth, gas guzzling suv's!!

[UCLA Dem]

15. Yes, but not nearly enough!! The Westside isn't even connected!!!!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

33. Or the Tokyo subway system whose map I can't post directly here because

it would overload DU's servers. (It takes up more than a full screen.)

Here's the link:

http://www.bento.com/subtop5.html

By the way, the skinny black lines are the surface commuter trains. :-)

Now that's what I call a transit system.

[KansDem]

10. Electric public trasportation met a slow death in LA after WWII

It was the sale of LARy by the Huntington estate to National City Lines that brought the trolley coach to Los Angeles. NCL purchased LARy in 1945 and renamed it the Los Angeles Transit Lines. NCL under the leadership of one time railroad man E. Roy Fitzgerald had bought up dozens of small and medium sized transit companies in the late 1930s and almost without exception, quickly motorized them. General Motors, Mack Truck, oil and tire companies were among NCL's <National City Lines> stockholders.

http://www.erha.org/latl.htm

and...
On March 3, 1958, LATL and the lines formerly operated by PE (there had been a period of operation by Metropolitan Coach Lines after SP sold off all PE passenger operations) were unified under a public authority, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. Los Angeles city rail operations had been scaled down to just five lines, all served by PCC cars.

LAMTA left matters in the status quo for some five years. Although the former PE interurban rail lines suffered from neglect and were eliminated, LAMTA did maintain the PCC cars and trolley coaches in reasonably good order. It was with some sadness therefore when the agency announced the end of all electric operations in early 1963.

The five rail lines and the two trolley coach routes were motorized on March 31, 1963. In view of the vast size of the Los Angeles urban transit network and its once preeminent position in the field of electric traction, the trolley coach network never amounted to more than a footnote in the history of the area's transportation. The coaches themselves after sitting idle for several years, were eventually sold to Mexico City for further service.

[Journeyman]

4. Yeah, baby! We're #1 . . .

Don't need no mass transit. Don't need no community plan. Don't need no clean air, baby, 'cause we're #1!

All the rest of you can just (ack! *cough. . .cough* wheeeeze!) . . . you can just (ack! ack! ack!) . . . can just eat our air, cause it's what's we do, baby, and we're #1!

[nolabels]

9. We are number #1 in smog too !

It's just great living inland where we get the worst of it. It's just lovely when all that crap in blown this way with that slow push by the coastal onshore breeze.

Study Finds Smog Raises Death Rate

Wed Nov 17, 7:55 AM ET

By Marla Cone Times Staff Writer

On smoggy days, deaths from heart and respiratory ailments and other diseases rise, causing several thousand more people throughout the United States to die each year, according to a study published Tuesday that links air pollution and mortality in 95 urban areas.


Scientists have long known that ozone, the main ingredient of smog, aggravates asthma and other respiratory illnesses and causes hospital visits to surge, particularly in severely polluted areas such as Southern California. But the study in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. is the first major nationwide endeavor that links day-to-day ozone levels with an increased number of deaths.


About 40% of the U.S. population lives in the areas analyzed — including Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which have some of the nation's worst smog — according to the authors, from Yale and Johns Hopkins universities.
(snip)
http://www.ecolivingcenter.com/board/politics/messages/34.html


Guess I shouldn't complain, Iraq and other places are probably much worse

[joefree1]

11. Yeah, LA sucks

The smog, the traffic, the lack of culture. Too many fuzzy headed liberals too. Don't come here. You'll hate it. Stay away for your own health and sanityyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

(Crap! I got sand in my keyboad again.)


Seating now available in the Smoking Section:
Politics, humor, death and the Devil - http://www.eDiablo.com

[0007]

29. No boby does it like us, we're number #1

[UCLA Dem]

14. Yup!! Thats good old LA!!!

[unhappycamper]

19. Boston, MA has a pretty cool public transit system.

[tinrobot]

20. I'm one of the few who actually "walks" in LA

I'm fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood with plenty of shops and restaurants (Silverlake) and also have the luxury of working out of my home office most of the time.

When gas prices started going up, I decided to stop being part of the problem. My car is in the garage most days of the week, the only time I use it is for those things that I need a car, picking up my kids, business on the west side, etc.

The rest of the time, I walk or ride my bike. Everything I need is within a mile or two of the house. Walking or riding is great exercise, plus I'm getting much more in touch with my neighborhood than I've ever been. Parts of LA are actually very urban and very walkable.

[Tektonik]

23. The problems with LA public transit are

-LA is too large surface area wise. People generally do not live in apartments here; rather they look for homes. Since a decent house will cost a person 600,000+ the person will not live in LA, rather they will live in the Inland Empire or Ventura county or even the high desert. Hell the OC was a suburban spillover from LA, and that county is getting packed.
Living in far away suburbs (that are not serviced by the sparse Metrolink lines) mean people HAVE to take their cars. Some of the freeways that run between were meant to be small 4-6 lane highways, but now connect areas of 300K people, such as the Antelope Valley which is 60 miles north of LA, in the southern part of the Mojave Desert) to LA. Freeways need to be widened, but this is very costly when freeways run through valleys or mountain areas or even in the middle of an urban area where buildings may have to be demolished to widen some freeways. We have too little freeway space for the number of cars that people use.

-The terrain of LA prohibits a spoke and wheel freeway system that could be more beneficial.

-Poorly planned bus lines mean that you may have to take 3 different lines to get somewhere you need to go, which could take 3 hours when you can drive the distance in 45 minutes. Also there is no good fucking way to go from the middle of the SF Valley (which has one and a half million people) to West LA or Downtown by public transportation, which is why the 101 and the 405 between Ventura and Sunset are death traps.
The red line that goes from the Valley to downtown only services the NE part of the valley, whereas the rest is screwed.

-The buses run too infrequently in most places. In the Valley some lines (like the one on De Soto going from Chatsworth to Woodland Hills doesn't even run on Sunday, and it only recently began running on Saturday).

-People are not aware of the decent bus lines/shuttles. One are able get to Downtown for 3 bucks from the West Valley in a Greyhound style bus during working hours.

-In LA, taking a bus means you are ghetto. There some actual decent lines that can take me from Chatsworth to some other places, and if I would tell people I take the bus, they would almost look condescendingly towards me.

-Car culture=lazy people who refuse to walk a mile to go shopping. Which crowds surface streets. I believe there should be a walking course given to kids in school. I have a friend who won't walk a quarter of a mile to go to a store, she'd rather take her car... :wtf:

-GM GM GM

-Gas prices need to become more expensive for anything to change.

-Lots of crashes from crazy Socal drivers lead to clogged freeways.

Anyways it should be getting better. There will be a new light rail line servicing the East part of the Valley (going from the Warner Center to Downtown), and the MTA last year recognized there were major problems and started to consider different bus line plans.

IMO anyone who uses a car to go around Downtown LA should be shot for using a car. The shuttles are great there and cheap (25 cents), plus there are two rail lines as well.

[klebean]

27. village lifestyle in LA?

Who'd have thunk it?
Not I - until I was forced to go w/out an automobile for two years.
I lived in Los Feliz near the shops - everything we needed, myself or my children
could walk a block or two to meet our needs - everything but the hardward store.

Schools and job were either a longer walk or a short bus ride.

Shopkeepers knew us; when my then "little tyke" son began to venture out to run
an errand for a quart of milk, I would call the shop and tell the proprietor my
son was on his way and would he please call me if he didn't show up in five
minutes? It was a great experience living in LA w/out a car, living w/out
the hassles of finding parking, parking tickets and traffic congestion; getting
more in touch w/the neighborhood and depending on my neighbors as a
fall back (I was a single mother)...which gives rise to another point to be made.

"Little tyke" is about to graduate high school. I recently socialized w/parents
of my son's friends whom I've known for years thru him, school activities and
the local Parks and Rec (Silverlake). When I say years, I mean almost my son's
entire life - we parents are amazed and full of self-satisfaction that in this
megalopolis we call LA, we've been able to create a sense of continuity and
community for us and our children.

I love LA and will toot its horn at every opportunity, but yes - the traffic sucks
and yes - it has gotten much worse in the past decade. Everyone now seems
to know all the shortcuts that in 1985, were actually effective.

Someone answer me this: What is up w/carpool lanes that feed right into chronic traffic snarls??

[Initech]

22. Well duh!

This should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever driven on I-405 or CA-91.

I live out near the CA-91 / CA-241 intersection, and just drive on that thing at 6:00 at night. It's literally hell on wheels.

[lovuian]

24. We need Mass transportation

Its gotta happen!!!

[calimary]

25. You're correct, of course, but while everyone SAYS that, no one's

willing to pay for it.

Everybody just bellyaches about taxes.

Unfortunately, the solutions are RAWTHER undesirable. Nobody wants to touch 'em.

1) REEEEEEEEALLLY high gas prices (prices some people off the road).

2) Toll roads. Charge for the privilege. Again, prices some people off the road.

3) Limit the population. Limit the number of people allowed to drive, to have access to cars and the roads and the areas. I don't know how. And it would be a very prickly issue, and it would be discriminatory. It would wind up screwing the poor. The solutions would be MOST politically untenable. Nobody wants to pay for it. Nobody wants to be penalized for it. No politician wants to stick his/her neck out. He or she stands an excellent chance of being run out of office for considering or trying to implement this.

[question everything]

34. I thought that there was a plan to have public transportation to West LA

but then it was canceled. Read something about it when we visited there last December.

[Daphne08]

26. It's actually just as fast to go somewhere on sidestreets here

during rush hour traffic times.

I'm not out in it, but my poor husband is.

[noshenanigans]

28. Ah, the 405..

How much of my life has been spend at the Skirball/Getty Ctr hill, wasting away just wanting to make it 2 more miles in less than an hour.

I really wish there was a subway system here that actually worked. As it is, it's only been handy for me when going to the Staples Center, and even then I had to drive all the way to North Hollywood just to catch it.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

30. LA may have the worst traffic but

it's not the only city with traffic problems.

"Nationwide, the country's motorists and businesses lost $63 billion in time, productivity and fuel."

For $63 billion we could rescue Amtrak and build one hell of a public transit system nationwide.

We could also tell OPEC to fuck themselves and bring our soldiers back from Iraq.

[ovidsen]

31. One way to ease traffic: HOV + sluglines

It works for people who commute from DC's Northern Va. suburbs to Arlington, Va (The Pentagon, Crystal City) and DC itself. I-66 and I-395 both have High Occupancy Vehicle lanes inside the Beltway (I-495). If you're a solo commuter, you stop by a designated "slug" assembly point, and pick up a couple of strangers going your way (giving your car enough passengers to legally use HOVs). Works like a charm.

http://www.slug-lines.com/

I know. You're thinking, "what if Jeffrey Dahmer or Richard Speck ends up in my car?" It doesn't happen. In fact, the social codes are rather strict for slugs. No food or drink, no talking... and certainly no knife or gunplay!

Sluglines weren't started by any government, and aren't really endorsed by any, either. They just appeared.

The DC areas spending a shitload on its highway and metro, but with the 3rd worst rush hour traffic in the US, people are resorting to just about anything to find shorter commutes.

[osaMABUSh]

32. telecommute anyone? interesting fact about DC traffic since '01

I don't the numbers but seems like with advent on broadband and VPNs a hell of a lot more people should working from home at least a day or two a week.

A colleague of mine who leaves outside of Washington DC in Va says that when Bush took office the number of federal employees allowed to telecommute dropped sharply. I guess BushCo wants Americans to be burning all the gasoline we possibly can.