Gridlock Under Fire

Gridlock too often grinds Los Angeles to a halt, particularly downtown. A light rain can trigger the traffic lockjaw, but more often it takes only one motorist trapped in an intersection just as the light changes to clog up the flow so that nobody can go. Or someone stays parked in a lane needed during rush hour.

This city needs more officers directing traffic at rush hour, and more towing of illegally parked cars. A new parking-enforcement program aims to do both with the same force but new strategies.

At least 30 more officers will patrol when the 360 traffic officers who work for the Los Angles Police Department are transferred to the new program. They are being transferred in waves. Those who have been assigned administrative work or the investigation of stolen cars and dismantling shops will switch to traffic duties. That accounts for the increase. New beats are being designed for specific areas. A rainy-day plan, in the works, would put more officers where they are most needed during a downtown downpour.

Downtown has the worst traffic and parking problems because of the volume, but every area has problems--like the abandoned cars in the northern sections of the San Fernando Valley, the parking hassles near the beaches, the tie-ups in Century City, the congestion on San Vicente. The problems will be addressed from six area offices. The first opened Thursday in West Los Angeles. Two are scheduled to open next month in the Mid-Wilshire area and the San Fernando Valley.

Towing sweeps are being planned to remove cars from the parking lanes of heavily traveled streets before rush hour. The sweeps would also be directed against cars parked longer than a meter allows. Feeding a parking meter does not sound like a sinister crime, but business owners complain that parking spaces are hogged for hours and that their customers can’t get to the stores.

A substantial increase in parking citations is expected by planners--more than the 1.7 million citations issued last year. Scofflaws who ignore those tickets could find their cars impounded or immobilized by a “Denver boot”--a metal device that locks one wheel.

The traffic officers can write plenty of parking tickets, but cannot write moving-violation tickets; they need the authority to do so.

The officers will get help, within a year, from the computer that helped manage traffic-flow problems in the Coliseum area during the Olympics.

The city’s new program, a part of the Department of Transportation, was approved by Mayor Tom Bradley and the Los Angeles City Council last spring. Similar programs have worked in Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C.

Will it work in Los Angeles? There are no guarantees. But at least those in charge of Los Angeles traffic aren’t gridlocked in their thinking, and are willing to try to duplicate the traffic successes of other cities.