Cars Jam Road to Victory

With the city’s clogged streets and patchwork public transit system now horn-honking issues in the mayor’s race, there’s a new regular stop on the campaign circuit: the crowded intersection photo-op.

Sirens screaming and cars belching fumes nearby, former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg stood at the corner of Sepulveda and Wilshire boulevards during the morning commute one day last month and promised to ease congestion. A few days later, City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa held forth a few blocks away, promising to do the same.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks released his transportation plan at a busy intersection in South Los Angeles, and incumbent Mayor James K. Hahn has stood before reporters to discuss traffic at three intersections since last summer.

And no wonder. In a recent Los Angeles Times poll, 24% of registered voters surveyed named transportation-related issues as a top concern, more than any other issue except education, which also garnered 24% of responses.

The candidates are bandying about some dramatic-sounding plans: Villaraigosa says he’ll extend the Red Line subway down Wilshire Boulevard to the beach and above ground to Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley. State Sen. Richard Alarcon wants to charge motorists a toll when they cross the border from other counties. Hahn promises to improve 200 intersections.

But, experts say, easing L.A.’s transportation problems will be difficult, requiring attention to detail along with big-picture ideas and aggressive lobbying locally and in Sacramento and Washington.

The mayor has direct power over only the small fixes. The city’s chief executive can push for more funding for the Department of Transportation and lean on administrators to synchronize lights, widen intersections and fix potholes.

But the big jobs -- constructing truck highways to get big rigs off the freeway or extending the subway lines -- must be nursed through complicated processes to win backing and money from local, state and federal officials.

Hahn, as mayor, has concentrated on the basics.

During his tenure, the city has improved 91 intersections, mostly by adding left-turn arrows and lanes, smart crosswalks that require vehicles to stop only when a pedestrian is in the intersection or new traffic signals, according to his office. Hahn says that under his program to fix 25 intersections per year, 200 junctions will move more smoothly if he finishes a second term.

With money for major projects in short supply from Sacramento and Washington, Hahn said, “the question is, ‘How do you squeeze capacity from what we’ve got?’ ”

To that end, the mayor says, he has also expanded the city’s 20-year-old system of computerized signal lights, added white-gloved traffic officers to busy intersections and vowed to fix potholes within 24 hours of being reported.

The mayor’s opponents have scoffed at Hahn’s modest improvements.

“You can’t solve it by synchronizing traffic lights,” said Parks, former city police chief, who says he will appoint a traffic congestion relief cabinet and move transportation to the top of his agenda. “You can’t solve it by fixing 25 intersections a year.”

The mayor’s rivals say Hahn has not displayed big-picture leadership, failing to take advantage of the mayor’s powerful role on the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which hands out money for local road and rail projects and runs most local mass transit services.

Hahn declined the position of MTA chairman when the rotating job came his way, even though the chair has tremendous power in setting the organization’s agenda. The mayor said he turned down the one-year job because it came up in the midst of his 2002 campaign against secession movements.

As mayor, Hahn appoints three of the MTA’s 13 directors. But Hahn has not pressed his appointees to vote as a bloc, critics complain, and recently left a seat open for two months. Since taking office, the mayor has missed a quarter of the agency’s board meetings.

Perhaps because there are only so many ways to work on easing congestion, the mayor’s four major rivals say they, too, would impose incremental fixes like the ones Hahn has championed. But in a city with more than 60,000 intersections, all say they would move faster.

Hahn’s rivals also say they would better enforce a policy banning road construction and preventing private contractors from blocking major streets during rush hour. Hertzberg says he would also ban work by the Department of Water and Power and other agencies during peak times.

Hertzberg, Villaraigosa, Parks and Alarcon have called for reversible lanes on busy streets, so lanes could be rerouted in one direction or another.

Hertzberg has made such basic surface street solutions a centerpiece of his transportation plans. He said he would also seek ways to limit the hours that big-rig trucks could make deliveries and ask business leaders to allow employees to telecommute or work flexible schedules.

Over the last 25 years, the number of driving trips within the city has increased by 50%, but the road capacity has increased just 7%, according to the Southern California Assn. of Governments. And the problem will get worse as more people move to the region, said SCAG executive director Mark Pisano.

Already, the freeways slow to an average of 18 mph during peak travel times. Without massive increases in capacity, rush hour speeds will slow to 9.8 mph by 2030, he said.

It’s so bad that unless traffic gets unstuck soon, Southern California will no longer be able to serve as a national hub for shipping and freight movement, jeopardizing thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in regional commerce, Pisano said.

All of the candidates, including Hahn, say they would champion improvements to the freeway system and expansion of commuter rail lines. But they differ on the details.

An example is the way the rivals say they would handle an expansion of the Red Line subway along Wilshire Boulevard.

In 1986, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) sponsored a law that banned tunneling in the Mid-Wilshire area after an underground methane explosion destroyed a Ross Dress for Less store in the Fairfax district. A 1998 ballot initiative championed by county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky prohibited using funds from local sales taxes to build subways.

Villaraigosa says he would lobby hard to repeal both laws and push to extend the Red Line under Wilshire Boulevard to the beach at Santa Monica.

Of all the candidates, Villaraigosa has the most detailed plan for public transit improvements. Until recently a Hahn appointee to the MTA board, Villaraigosa was instrumental in ending a protracted strike by bus and train mechanics in 2003, and last year he helped free federal money for an extension of the Red Line to East Los Angeles.

“Every Angeleno should be able to walk out of their front door, get to public transit in five minutes and ride anywhere they want to go, whether it’s to work, to the beach or to Dodger Stadium,” Villaraigosa said.

Hahn said that he also supported extending the Red Line to Santa Monica, “either above ground or below.” He said he had already talked to Waxman about repealing the ban.

Parks does not support a Wilshire Boulevard route for the Red Line, saying that a subway through that area would be too expensive. Rather, the councilman, who represents a South Los Angeles district, said he would lobby hard to build the proposed Exposition Line, which would run above ground west on Exposition Boulevard before turning north and ending in Santa Monica. Alarcon also supports the Exposition line to Santa Monica but not extending the Red Line down Wilshire Boulevard.

Hertzberg said he thinks “it’s a good idea” to extend the Red Line under Wilshire Boulevard but has not made it a priority, citing the difficulty of repealing the Waxman law.

Freeway expansion presents another tug of war, with demands for better mobility conflicting with residents’ complaints that wider freeways mean more noisy cars and pollution near their homes.

Hahn has supported widening the 710 Freeway and in 2003 backed a $3.4-billion proposal, since shelved, to widen the 101 Freeway. Parks calls for improvements to both the 101 and 710 freeways. Alarcon cites the 101 corridor as being particularly in need of widening but says he would not undertake the work if it meant removing or acquiring nearby homes. Villaraigosa promises to work to expand freeway capacity and fight for the funding to do so, but he has not singled out a particular freeway as a priority.

Hertzberg has not proposed major improvements to either the 101 Freeway or the 710 Freeway. But he says his plan to encourage truckers to avoid peak hours will ease congestion. Hertzberg also supports improving rail lines east of the Alameda Corridor to San Bernardino County to encourage shippers to use trains instead of trucks.

One of the biggest difficulties is raising money for roads or transit. Over the last three years, the state has diverted more than $2 billion in funds statewide earmarked for transportation, and the federal government has been slow to authorize new spending.

Hahn has been outspoken in his opposition to those decisions and has concentrated on small projects that could be paid for mostly with money already in the city’s budget, along with some state money.

All five candidates have vowed to fight for federal and state money due the city, and Hahn’s challengers claim that he has not fought hard enough.

Parks has suggested paying for anti-congestion work with the city’s street furniture program, which he said would bring in about $2 million a year from advertising on kiosks. Perhaps the most unusual funding proposal comes from Alarcon, who says that as mayor he would investigate the possibility of charging a toll to motorists as they cross the L.A. County line from other counties.

No matter who wins, the mayor of Los Angeles must lead the way if the region is to free itself from gridlock, said Brian Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA.

“The mayor of L.A. is the de facto regional leader,” Taylor said. “It’s very much the bully pulpit.”