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ChineseManeuvering the Madness
We’ve all heard it a hundred times. From friends to co-workers to the old lady that walks her dog in front of your building and smokes three packs of Virginia Slims a day. “Stay off the freeways.” This of course sounds disheartening to a freeway centric city yet it’s a mantra many LAites live by. When traveling to the West Side from Hollywood for one of my first jobs in LA I was told by a barista (I was trying to meet people and frequented coffee shops though I dislike the taste of the stuff) that the best way to get there was avoiding the 101 altogether, despite the fact the 101 was two blocks from where I lived.
So I listened to the aspiring actor/writer/director/model and took all surface streets. And after several tests against this theory I learned that he and all the rest that preached this were right. “Staying off the freeways” was in deed the fastest way for me to traverse this insane city. Therefore, no matter the distance I had to go I avoided the freeways entirely and couldn’t believe that anyone took them within the city limits at all.
It became an adventure trying to skip from street to street, from neighborhood to neighborhood. Memorizing which streets had lights that crossed main roads and which had the ever-unfortunate stop sign. Which streets had speed humps or bumps and which had street parking that nearly blocked the entire street so that only one direction could go at a time and if you weren’t going that direction you were effed for five to ten minutes because like all of LA, the cars never stop coming. (I’m talking about pretty much any street in the square of Fairfax, Third, La Brea and Fountain).
But as much as I tried to enjoy this zigzagging of the city it grew tiresome and commuting became the nightmare that everyone talked about. Sadly this occurred within the first two months and an unknown uncle didn’t die and leave me an estate so I had to continue on this fruitless journey twice a day everyday. That is until the day I decided to say, “Screw this nonsense, I’m taking the bus.”
However, seeing as this all occurred before my adoption of the public transit lifestyle (going on a year and a half now) I believed that all the old theories and practices were true. That driving between certain hours was best, this direction was best, these streets were best— “take fountain, you gotta take fountain”— was all nonsense. It was all just ways to feel enlightened as a driver, ways to form camaraderie, rather than what it really was— the ultimate state of denial. Millions of drivers, myself being equally guilty at the time, forming this absurd pact with each other based on absolutely nothing. Talking of traffic as a certain point of pride rather than the future demise to this great city. And what’s worse, it has hardly changed. I still hear people saying the same things I knew to be false at the time yet repeated it in truth so that the conversation wouldn’t end on what I had just ordered for lunch. So that we could all believe, and maniacally so, that it’s what made us truly from Los Angeles.
And now riding on the BBB 10 from downtown to Santa Monica I’ve realized that even the oldest mantra, even the most repeated insider info in LA’s illustrious history is false. That “stay off the freeways” was just as absurd as saying “stay on the freeways” and “build more freeways.” Because in all actuality none of the traffic myths based on the private auto are true anymore. That it’s all just that, myth.
Our prosperous future can’t rest on the building and widening of more freeways or one-way designations of our surface streets. Yellow lined pavement will have nothing to do with it at all, unless those yellow lines mark the designation on where the tunnel west is going. Where the track paralleling the 405 is going. And where the LAX and Westside alignment are going.
Last night I got a ride home from work with a friend. It was 8pm. Ahead of us was the BBB 7 and after some zigging to Olympic, the MTA 28, both of which we couldn’t catch. Traffic was supposed to be cleared, was supposed to be better; after all it was after rush hour. The night before I was on those busses we couldn’t catch and I watched the same cars I saw last night— the same cars from the night before that and the morning before that. And back here on the 10 heading west, at an all-new hour, I see them all again. Cars traveling bumper-to-bumper full of anger and annoyance wishing there was a better solution than just, “take fountain, you gotta take fountain.”
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Los Angeles is the LEAST freeway centric Metro in the nation with fewer centerline miles per population than any other.
It’s no surprise in LA to hear those words, “use surface streets”. Earlier this year I took a Flexcar to a client meeting, used the freeway, crawled along the grade-separated road at 10-12mph (what a great use of a 260hp engine) and arrived to my meeting late. I told my client, “I took the freeway” he looked at me incredulously and said, “I know you rarely drive, but you are an Angeleno so you should know this, but NEVER take the freeways“.
The freeways are a failure and they will continue to fail. Adding more lanes is expensive and more importantly won’t solve the problem - certainly not in the long term. Think about the 405 widening proposal - plans to destroy homes and churches that add extra lanes for 10-miles that will without a doubt slow back down to gridlock within years.
The whole POINT of freeways is that they are supposed to be faster than surface streets. They are not and thus they are failures. Freeways are like the subways of the road world - grade separated right of ways with limited “stops” (exits) and high capacity. How pathetic would it be if our subway was such a failure that people recommended you take a 96 bus to get to Universal City from Downtown instead of riding the Red Line - because it’s faster. You’re supposed to sacrifice access (intersections) for speed on freeways, but that just isn’t the case anymore. And it’s not about lanes. You could add thousands of lanes, but at what cost? How many homes are we going to destroy? And even then, the lanes will invariably fill up because it remains that there is no option other than owning car, so the influx of people will bring cars to fill the lanes. When will it stop? Will the city have to be destroyed completely to accommodate more lanes? How high do we want to stack our freeways? People get pissed off about tall buildings but support double-decker freeways?
i love driving!
wuts the first thing people think of when you say, nyc, chicago, san fran? is it their vast freeway system? it’s usually a laundry list of things, their freeways not being one of them, but perhaps its just the crowd i’m hanging with.
any other wonderful facts of the day bobbo?
Yeah, one more fact. You shouldn’t call people names on a blog that you wouldn’t be willing to call them to their face.
The myth of car centric Los Angeles has caused a great portion of out current transportation problems. The logic goes like this; we have lots of cars and lots of freeways and lots of sprawl and lots of congestion. Therefor cars and freeways are not the answer to congestion. What if the question were framed with facts instead? Los Angeles has few freeways and high density and congestion. Therefor we need more freeways and lower density development.
i was unaware that bobbo was a “name”, but i’ll keep that in mind for all future comments. sorry to offend.
however, if such an opinion (not fact) was phrased as you say,
i would disagree. hence the blog post.
“Los Angeles is the LEAST freeway centric Metro in the nation with fewer centerline miles per population than any other.”
Because traffic is so great in other cities.
Lane Miles Per Capita:
1. Kansas City
2. Forth Worth
3. Dallas
4. St. Louis
5. San Antonio
6. Atlanta
7. Columbus
8. Houston
9. Cincinnati
10. Indianapolis
11. Oklahoma City
12. Baltimore
13. San Jose
14. Cleveland
15. Pittsburgh
16. Minneapolis
17. San Diego
18. Seattle
19. Norfolk
20. Orlando
21. San Bernardino-Riverside
22. Buffalo-Niagra Falls
Traffic Congestion:
1. Los Angeles
2. San Francisco
3. Washington DC
4. Seattle
5. Houston
6. San Jose
7. Dallas-Ft. Worth
8. New York
9. Atlanta
10. Miami
11. Chicago
12. Boston
13. Denver
14. Orlando
15. San Bernardino-Riverside
16. Ft. Lauderdale
17. Austin
18. Phoenix
19. Detroit
20. Minneapolis
21. San Diego
22. Baltimore
Cities in BOLD are on both lists. What is the correlation between lanes per capita and traffic? How is it that Dallas-Ft. Worth, an area with .89 freeway miles per 1,000 has worse traffic congestion than Chicago Metro with its .329 freeway miles per 1,000. Let’s not forget that the Chicago Metro has over a million more people than Dallas - Ft. Worth. How does Houston, with .783 Freeway miles per 1,000 have worse traffic congestion than New York City - NJ with its .401 freeway miles per 1,000 and nearly 4 times the population.
“Los Angeles has few freeways and high density and congestion. Therefor we need more freeways and lower density development.”
Perhaps if we reduced the density of Los Angeles by 5,000 people per square mile (via mass killings I suppose), and nearly doubled the number of freeways we could hope to have congestion as good as Houston.
Or we could offer them alternatives so traffic congestion becomes irrelevant to the majority.
“Los Angeles has few freeways and high density and congestion. Therefor we need more freeways and lower density development.”
That doesn’t make logical sense. There is no automatic jump from the first statement to the second statement.
If we did that, LA would become larger, people would be driving even further, and probably end up with traffic just as bad anyways (plus more pollution, etc…). The Los Angeles area has large amount of sprawl as it is, and you want it to go dramatically farther? Might as well take over Camp Pendleton and San Diego and create an even larger metropolitan area…
“Los Angeles has few freeways and high density and congestion. Therefor we need more freeways and lower density development.”
That doesn’t make logical sense. There is no automatic jump from the first statement to the second statement.
Bingo. Just like the opposite circumstances and responses we’ve been pursing for decades. You get it. You’ve just told Metro that after a generation of screwing up that we need to turn from polices of more transit because they don’t work and are not supported by the facts.
Tyke, apology accepted. I just didn’t want this to degenerate.
Fred, you made an error. You used the TTI RCI as a measure of “congestion.” It is in fact a roadway utilization index. You also use “lane miles per capita” while I used centerline miles. Both are legitimate uses but the subject is congestion so the proper metric is centerline miles. Oh and for fun, correlate your lists for geographic latitude. Surprised? I’m not because I discovered that mistake a dozen years ago.
If the issue is what causes congestion and what fixes congestion the answers are clear. Not liking the answers is not refutation.
Who drives across town ? Most of us stay in our part of town most of the time. I live “East of the River” and haven’t been west of Fairfax in years.
The Interstate system (Freeways) were designed to connect cities. No wonder they are jammed if people are using them as surface streets !
I think that traffic is bad on the Westside partly because it is so full of newcomers (many from the Northeast) who are just learning to drive and don’t know their way around. They are used to subway maps so they stick to the freeways.
“If we did that, LA would become larger, people would be driving even further, and probably end up with traffic just as bad anyways (plus more pollution, etc…). The Los Angeles area has large amount of sprawl as it is, and you want it to go dramatically farther? Might as well take over Camp Pendleton and San Diego and create an even larger metropolitan area…”
So true. And what’s the point? Is the goal to reduce commuting time? How will sprawl help that, distance from workplace increases commute time, regardless of traffic. Say you moved to Simi Valley because it’s the last sane place in the region you can raise a family with a yard and traditional values and peace and country living and clean air and a garage etc PLUS you also got your way and they built a private freeway just for you directly to your job as a lawyer in Downtown Los Angeles. The 33 mile freeway that starts from your driveway and ends at your office has a strict speed limit of 55mph (speed kills, and you have to set an example for your children). Even with no traffic going 55mph the whole way, your commute would take 35 minutes. According to the 2000 Census, the average Journey to Work time in Los Angeles is 29 minutes. So even in this highly unrealistic example, you’d have a long commute just by living far away. But everyone knows it’s not just about the TIME, it’s about the QUALITY of that time. Sure a 35 minute commute without any traffic is great, but unless you can afford to build your own direct freeway from your driveway to your office, other cars are going to join you on the freeway. Suddenly your speedometer doesn’t read 55 anymore it reads 30 and you think to yourself, “Hey, isn’t the speed limit on that surface street down there 35?” And you get pissed at other people and say “why are all these people here, what fucking developer allowed this many people to live here, growth should have stopped after I moved here” ignoring the fact that the people in other cars are thinking the same thing about you.
“You also use “lane miles per capita” while I used centerline miles. Both are legitimate uses but the subject is congestion so the proper metric is centerline miles.”
How is centerline miles the right metric? So you reject the idea that adding more lanes to current freeways reduces congestion on those freeways? The only way to reduce congestion is to extend (in centerline miles) and/or build completely new freeways? Where do you build these new freeways? Do we destroy homes and business if they are in the way?
Could you please refer to a link or resource containing centerline miles per capita statistics as well as a congestion index rather than a “roadway untilization” index.
“If the issue is what causes congestion and what fixes congestion the answers are clear. Not liking the answers is not refutation.”
You are right. What causes traffic congestion is clearly automobile density on roadways. That is clear. What fixes congestion is reducing automobile density on roadways. You can do that by increase the amount/size of roadways or you can do it by offering alternatives to putting cars on the roadways in the first place. Given pre-existing density, and future growth conditions, encouraging alternatives is cleary the smartest choice. What happens in the future when the new freeways are at capacity? Our freeways were built 50 years ago and they already don’t work, how soon will new freeways move at the same speed or slower than surface streets? New York City’s subways system was built over 100 years ago (the majority of the system was built between 1900 and 1936), the city population has grown by almost 5 million since then, and yet it still manages to move people around as grade-separated transport should. It may be more crowded, but it still retains its intended functionality. The same cannot be said for our 50 year old freeway system which has clearly failed as a grade-separated transportation mode.
30mph if you’re lucky fred, i average about 10-15 on my commute to work on the 10 (bus and freeway) and go about the same speed on surface streets when i take those, both by bus and, if i get coerced into a ride, a car.
and to all debating rob dawg, i enjoy it a great deal, but no matter the amount of times you point out the many problems with his absurd position for more freeways and more sprawl as an answer, he’ll simply gloss it over with obscure minutiae about latitude and centerline congestion so you might for a second say to yourself wait, wut is he talking about. am i wrong?
fear not, for the answer is usually no.
Rob, I can’t follow your argument. Poor planning and autocentrism aren’t the same thing. Many on this blog would argue that they go hand in hand, but you seem to say they are opposite.
I’m open to the idea that cities can be car-oriented and well planned, though I have never seen an example of this.
There is no argument that the burden on our freeways is greater than they can handle (LA is poorly plannned). And by any measure I can think of, there are a lot of freeways (LA is car centric). Your statement that there aren’t a lot of freeways is really hard to buy. The lack of centerlines doesn’t mean that there are few freeways.
i never have any problems commuting on the freeways or surface streets. the whole thing is like a dream come true.
“i never have any problems commuting on the freeways or surface streets. the whole thing is like a dream come true.”
lol. maybe a steady regimen of hexodus’s drugs is just what los angeles needs. i’m sure it’d be cheaper and more effective than any of the other solutions discussed.
Hold on, Robert.
If we are talking congestion, centerline mileage is the absolute wrong measurement.
The reason: Centerline mileage measures a freeway with six lanes in each direction equally to one with three, four, five, or seven lanes in each direction.
Fred has it right when he quotes lane miles per capita.
In fact, the centerline measurement method is often cited as the reason for inequality in disbursement of state highway funds, because every rural two-lane road is measured the same as urban multi-lane freeways.
i never have any problems commuting on the freeways or surface streets. the whole thing is like a dream come true.
Does this guy commute at 2am? Is he on drugs like Fred said? Maybe both?
This statement reminds me a bit of the Bush Administration. “If you say something five times, it becomes true.”
Nope on both counts, friends. I commute at rush hour basically. I commute from Echo Park to UCLA to El Segundo and back to Echo Park daily. In any given day there is a good chance that you will find me either on Sunset Blvd., the 405, the 110, the 10 or the 105.
I just wrote a post on my blog about the issue, please take a look at feel free to share your thoughts.
http://tinyurl.com/2dp2m9
The Secret to Solving All Your Commuting Problems in Los Angeles…
I do a lot of commuting. I do it during rush hour, morning and night. My daily rounds will often take me from Echo Park, to UCLA, to El Segundo and back. Not necessarily in the order, but pretty damn close. You can find me on Sunset Blvd., the 405, the…
Hey Hex, I’m glad you’ve found a way to reach a calm state of mind in your daily car travels, it’s certainly recommended for anyone who has to deal with traffic in LA, but on the same token think the frustration felt when sitting in traffic is very real. This goes for both of us, whether you are in your car or I’m in a bus. For example, last night a buddy and I took a 2 bus from downtown to the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival. That’s going to be a long trip on a local bus by any measure (estimated 45 minutes), but for the first 40 minutes of the bus ride it was smooth sailing and no problem… even fun as we watched costumed riders board and relished in the surrounding conversations and even ENJOYED transit tv. But once we hit Santa Monica/La Brea traffic, as it tends to ALWAYS do in that area (and now increased due to the street closure at la cienega and the halloween traffic), our momentum slowed to nothing. Stop and go traffic SUCKS and can ruin even the best of moods/mind states. Taking 20 minutes to go .3 miles in a vehicle capable of much higher speeds could make even a buddhist monk go mad. So we did what any zen thinker would do, we got off the bus about .5 miles from fairfax, and walked the 1.5 miles to la cienega, beating the bus and the auto traffic by a large margin.
Bottom line, I agree that you have to learn to deal with suffering, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to look for a cure to the problem (that doesn’t involve creating more suffering). It’s like a lot of cancer patients find ways to come to terms and even continue to stay happy with terminal illness (and in no way saying suffering in traffic is the same as suffering from cancer, but you get the idea), but that doesn’t mean we should say that cancer is not a problem that needs a solution.
It appears Hexodus is high on life. And good for him. If everyone was like that things would be marginally better on the roads. I’ll admit that I do drive occasionally - my approach to getting around is somewhat akin to that of the Militant Angeleno. I have tried on occasion to adopt a zen-like state of mind during driving (a la Hex), but I find that eventually my foot just gets tired from hitting the gas and brake over and over and over. Oddly enough, this wears me out much faster than walking. Anyway, here’s hoping there will come a time when metro will finally suit Hex’s needs.
exactly.