How to fix traffic

The first step is to end the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's virtual monopoly and allow private jitney and bus operators to enter the transportation market to compete with the MTA and with each other. Taxi cabs introduce only a small degree of competition because local authorities keep fleets small.

Transit entrepreneurs who get 100% of their revenues from fares (unlike the MTA, which is heavily subsidized by taxpayers) would quickly figure out what kinds of services would attract car drivers. Unfortunately, any entrepreneurs who dare to try right now would be prosecuted for defying the MTA's state-sanctioned monopoly.

That's ridiculous. It would cost nothing to end the monopoly and allow independent jitney services to freely enter the transit market. The result would be a burst of new travel options and fewer cars on the street with one occupant.


A surprising amount of traffic isn't caused by people on their way somewhere. Rather, it is caused by drivers who clog the streets while searching for parking spaces. For instance, about 8,000 cars a day park at the 470 meters in Westwood Village, so even a small amount of cruising time for each car adds up to a lot of traffic. Over a year, this cruising amounts to about 950,000 miles of travel -- the equivalent of 38 trips around the Earth.

And here's an inconvenient truth: Those 950,000 miles waste 47,000 gallons of gas and produces 730 tons of the carbon dioxide in one small business district.

What causes this astonishing waste? The fact that an hour at the meter costs 50 cents -- only 20% of the price for off-street parking, so drivers have a strong incentive to cruise.

Some cities adjust their meter rates to eliminate the incentive to cruise for parking. For instance, Redwood City, Calif., sets its downtown meter rates to achieve an 85% occupancy rate for curb parking. The price is 75 cents an hour at the center of downtown, and less elsewhere. Drivers can usually find a vacant space near their destinations because the vacancy rate is about 15% elsewhere, and the cruising time is near zero.

The added revenue totals $1 million a year, and Redwood City uses it to pay for more police and cleaner sidewalks in the metered downtown district.

If Los Angeles wants to reduce traffic congestion, -- as well as lower greenhouse-gas emissions -- and do it all quickly it should charge the right price for curb parking and spend the new revenue for public services in the metered neighborhoods.


We unwisely keep trying to connect self-sufficient parts of the city through long-distance corridors. The proposal to turning Olympic and Pico Boulevards into one-way streets is yet another example of this foolish policy. Such a conversion would basically kill retail in such affected areas as Pico-Union and Pico-Robertson and work against any attempt to capitalize on their densities by attracting mix-use developments. Just look at what happened when some downtown streets were made one-way: Retail development catering to pedestrians has been a hard sell.