L.A.’s Traffic Mess

I enjoyed very much John F. Lawrence’s April 5 column, “Solutions for Olympic-Size L.A. Problem,” with its sensible analysis of our worsening traffic mess, and I offer you two suggestions:

First, businesses whenever possible should shift to 50-hour work schedules, with employees working four 10-hour days. That alone would lessen the intensity of rush-hour traffic by reducing up to 20% (optimistically!) the number of employees on the freeways.

Workers could juggle that third day off, taking it sometimes as part of a weekend, sometimes in midweek. Imagination and flexibility are required, and one bonus is that many businesses could increase, at minimal additional cost, the hours they are open.

Second, Los Angeles already has in place a staggering railroad network. Use your Thomas Bros. map guide, and with Union Station as a hypothetical starting point, pick out the areas in Los Angeles that are accessible by rail that are almost never used.

This would only be a temporary solution, of course, but an amazingly economical one in costs per mile. It could ease our terrible congestion, while a permanent answer--preferably other than the impractical, dangerous and doomed Metro Rail--could be worked out at leisure.

FRED A. GLIENNA

South Pasadena