‘Demand Management’ Seen as Way to Ease Mess : Can’t Build Traffic Solution, Experts Say

After particularly bad traffic days, somebody always calls local talk shows and newspapers to suggest adding an upper deck to Southern California freeways.

They cite the two-level Embarcadero Freeway along the San Francisco waterfront. But the old, ugly Embarcadero gave birth to the first freeway revolt in the 1960s and was never finished. Consequently, the idea of erecting a new layer over existing freeways here is usually dismissed as the ravings of a mind driven to desperation by a long day on the Santa Ana.

The traffic picture is so bleak, however, that the crazy is becoming real on the Harbor Freeway.

The California Department of Transportation has plans for a five-mile transitway above the center of the freeway. Part of a 19-mile diamond lane project, it is the best strategy engineers can see to carry more buses and car pools in and out of downtown Los Angeles.

When the elevated transitway is ready to open, as early as 1993, engineers also hope to snip the ribbon on the ultramodern $1.7-billion Century Freeway across the belt of Los Angeles County. The Century will have a train down the middle for rapid transit, diamond lanes for buses and car pools, three lanes each way for regular traffic--and will probably be congested at rush hour the same month that it opens.

Despite the futuristic new projects, however, experts in and out of government are more convinced than ever that expensive new freeways and rail lines are not the answer to Southern California’s chaotic traffic.

“We’re simply not going to solve this problem by building our way out of it,” said David Roper, deputy Caltrans director in Los Angeles.

That is not to say there is any agreement on a solution to the massive traffic snarls predicted for the next decade or two, let alone any relief for the everyday congestion commuters face. Those who find today’s traffic unbearable might consider moving, because the experts say congestion can only get worse.

Caltrans and others say, however, that the future can be made a little less horrible with the inexpensive steps that helped keep traffic running smoothly during the 1984 Olympics.

Some are familiar if unpopular, such as car pools and rescheduled work hours. Others are less well-known, such as traffic management organizations and “smart” freeways.

And some--toll roads, stop lights on the freeways and truck bans--could be viewed as radical.

In the world of traffic engineers, the buzzword for these tactics is “demand management.” Cut the numbers of cars and trucks on the road at rush hour, the theory goes, and there is no need to spend billions on new freeways.

“It’s not really very dramatic, but it is effective,” said Martin Wachs, a UCLA professor of urban planning. “The Century Freeway may well be the last completely new freeway in the core (Los Angeles) area. The dollar cost of that kind of project is simply too high and the political opposition simply too great.”

The idea is simple--persuade drivers to leave their cars at home, either with enticements or by making them pay a price for the privilege of driving.

“If everyone shared a ride just once every two weeks, demand would be cut by 10%” and much of the freeway congestion would evaporate, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission recently estimated.

But the task is harder than it sounds. Success is measured by the average number of people traveling per car, a number that has been dropping in Southern California, which already lagged behind most Eastern cities.

The most powerful force keeping people in their cars may be Southern California’s wheel-borne life style. Young aerospace workers in El Segundo go surfing in Hermosa Beach on their way home to Long Beach, and downtown office workers might drive 10 miles to Santa Monica for dinner before driving another 10 miles home to Sherman Oaks.

Almost as strong, many experts say, is the free--or nearly free--parking that most workers enjoy, even in high-traffic areas like downtown Los Angeles and Irvine. Businesses have been reluctant to risk losing good employees by making them pay the true cost of parking. The City of Los Angeles has been unwilling to confront unions and raise the $5-a-month fee many city workers pay to park. “We’ve been trying since I was on the City Council,” said Mayor Tom Bradley, chief executive since 1973. “It was a good idea then; it’s a good idea now.”

If commuters were given, say, $70 a month and told they could spend it to park or pocket it and take a bus or a car pool to work, studies suggest that enough commuters would quit driving to ease freeway congestion and let large companies stop building expensive parking garages.

‘Time or Money’

“You either have to give a travel time advantage or a financial advantage--either time or money,” said Tad Widby, president of Commuter Computer, the government-funded company that promotes and coordinates car pooling in the region.

But, critics point out, these and other innovative techniques have not taken hold in the nearly three years since the Olympics ended. One-way streets in downtown Los Angeles, computerized traffic signals around the Coliseum and a new lane that was added to the San Diego Freeway are the most visible remnants of the Olympic effort.

One reason for the absence of progress may have to do with the tangle of traffic jurisdictions in the Los Angeles Basin. The freeways are built and managed by Caltrans, a state agency. The City of Los Angeles runs its vast street network, and smaller cities like Torrance and Pasadena also manage their own traffic affairs unless a street has been dedicated as a state highway. Officials in five counties also oversee roads.

Orange County officials are planning to build their own freeways. Meanwhile, the Metro Rail subway and a network of light-rail transit lines in Los Angeles County are being built by other agencies.

“One of the major obstacles . . . is that traffic does not recognize the political boundaries,” the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which is overseeing the new light-rail lines, said in a critique of traffic problems recently. The report recommends banning trucks from key freeways at rush hour, installing systemwide TV cameras so Caltrans can more quickly spot accidents and placing traffic information signs in major downtown parking garages.

The bureaucrats do not even agree on the use of helicopters. Radio stations use helicopters to get a quick overview of traffic problems, and the Los Angeles city Department of Transportation uses them to evaluate major snarls. But the California Highway Patrol does not use helicopters, nor does Caltrans.

Cooperation During Olympics

During the Olympics, the various agencies cooperated to make sure that traffic did not decay into a major embarrassment while the eyes of the world were on Los Angeles. But the sense of urgency died the day the athletes left town, critics say.

“That was in 1984,” said Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, a recent vocal critic of Caltrans and other traffic agencies. “We have not done anything.”

Some measures take a long time to put in place, to be sure. Last year the Southern California Rapid Transit District began digging the first four miles of the Metro Rail subway that may someday link downtown Los Angeles with the Beverly-Fairfax area and a corner of the San Fernando Valley.

Work also began on the first of several light-rail lines, from downtown to Long Beach, that will tie into the subway. RTD officials and politicians hailed the ground-breaking as the start of a new era, but it is an era that might take the rest of the decade to truly begin.

The $6-billion system of mass transit lines will certainly offer some commuters an alternative to the crowded freeways. But there is considerable skepticism among transportation experts that enough people will ride the system to remove many cars from the freeways. Metro Rail “will do for Los Angeles traffic congestion what Ben-Gay does for cancer,” a skeptical Claremont-McKenna College professor said in 1984.

Caltrans has not entirely given up on freeways. But the 20-year saga of the Century Freeway makes it unlikely that Caltrans will try to build any in areas, like most of Los Angeles County, whose residents have no intention of letting a freeway go through.

A class-action lawsuit and federal pressure scaled the Century down from five lanes each way to three and forced the light-rail line and commuter diamond lane to be added.

About 6,000 homes were demolished to clear the freeway’s path from Interstate 605 in Norwalk west to El Segundo, leaving a swath of blight while court battles froze all work for nine years. More than $300 million is being spent on housing programs to relocate the residents and $200 million is being spent on the state’s first five-level interchange, where the Century meets the San Diego Freeway near Los Angeles International Airport.

Besides the Century, Caltrans plans $3 billion to $4 billion worth of improvements in the region by the year 2000, when the population of the five-county area around Los Angeles is expected to be 3 million more than today. That is only about half of the $7 billion Caltrans officials think it will take to keep the freeways flowing at today’s pace.

‘A Little Bit Improved’

“Twenty years from now you are going to see about the same system as today--a little bit improved,” Zahi Faranesh of Caltrans said.

The scarcity of new highway money has led to calls for toll roads from the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich and Orange County officials. But they would be the first in California and, so far at least, are considered unlikely to win public approval.

Orange County officials plan to raise about half the $850 million needed to build three entirely new freeways there from fees on developers like the Irvine Co. But even those freeways will leave future traffic worse off than today.

Caltrans calculates that there is demand on some freeways for 10 to 20 new lanes, if an expansion of that size were physically possible. But adding new lanes can sometimes have unintended effects and lead to worse congestion a few months later.

This happens, engineers say, because there is a hidden demand for limited space on the freeways. With congestion as bad as it is, many commuters leave a little earlier or hang around the office longer before heading home to miss the worst of rush hour. That is a major reason that rush hours in Southern California have grown to three hours each in the morning and afternoon. “Traffic is, in the end, self-regulating,” UCLA professor Wachs said.

But as soon as a new lane is added and congestion eases, some drivers start sleeping later or quit the car pool and return to their old commuting habits. The number of cars and trucks swells, and congestion returns to normal.

To fight the effect, Caltrans is replacing about 800 old-fashioned ramp meters with a modern system. Existing meters have to be turned on manually, but the new high-tech meters work on a small computer wired to sensors in the pavement. The red stoplight flips on when freeway traffic starts to back up, even on weekends and at mid-day, when most current meters are dark.

“We’re going to meter every ramp,” Caltrans’ Roper said. “When (a driver) sees the meter on, he’ll drive extra miles on the street if he can save time.”

Touchy Issue

As traffic increases, the lights will stay red longer, creating more backup of cars onto city streets. This is a touchy issue with some local officials, but the tactic cheaply increases the freeway capacity by 5% to 7%, “which is not insignificant in this day and age,” Wachs said. “For a small capital investment, we get a substantial improvement.”

There is even some talk within Caltrans of experimenting with stoplights on the connector roads that link two freeways. That is done along Interstate 8 in San Diego.

Meters on the freeway connectors might be included in a test of the so-called “smart freeway” concept on the Santa Monica, the main freeway connecting the Westside with downtown Los Angeles.

To reduce congestion, the Santa Monica’s ramp meters would be linked with stoplights on main streets parallel to the freeway. When traffic backs up on the Santa Monica going into downtown Los Angeles, Caltrans would let fewer cars through the ramp meters and switch on message signs that warn drivers a mile back to get off the freeway and use the streets.

A City of Los Angeles computer would then trip the stoplights on Venice Boulevard and other parallel streets to favor the cars pouring off the freeway. They would speed along to work on the street, and the freeway’s backup would gradually ease.

Engineers have long wanted to find a way to persuade more drivers to leave the freeway rather than just line up behind a big snarl. “Our feeling is that people are afraid to get off because they don’t know where to go,” said Dale Ratzlaff, a Caltrans planner.

The Santa Monica makes a good laboratory for the “smart freeway” concept because several wide boulevards parallel it and because the freeway is mostly within the Los Angeles city limits, minimizing the bureaucratic wrangling needed to synchronize the stoplights.

Caltrans is hoping this works better than the last experiment tried on the Santa Monica--taking a lane from regular commuters and making it a diamond lane for car pools and buses in 1976.

Although it was well used, congestion worsened and accidents increased until public backlash forced the Administration of then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. to drop the test after five months. Preferential lanes are seldom popular at first with a large slice of the commuting public, which consider them unfair, and the 1976 fiasco left an extra taint on the reputation of diamond lanes among politicians and many drivers.

‘Mr. Diamond Lane’

“My friends all call me ‘Mr. Diamond Lane’ now with the same sneer they use for wife-beaters and child stealers,” said Roger Stanard, a Woodland Hills attorney who favors adding a diamond lane on the Ventura Freeway.

Caltrans engineers believe that soiled reputation is both undeserved and unfortunate. Facing daylong rush hours in the near future, Caltrans said new diamond lanes are essential to encourage more drivers to share rides. “We believe they are part of our tool chest that we have to have,” said Donald Watson, the district director of Caltrans in the Los Angeles area.

The El Monte Busway, a separate lane for buses and car pools built onto the San Bernardino Freeway, is considered successful by most analysts, and the special lanes have been well received in other parts of the country. Believing that the fatal mistake 10 years ago was to take a traffic lane away from other drivers, Caltrans now stripes in diamond lanes only where it is possible to add new lanes--and then only if local officials support the idea.

“They are highly effective where they can be politically implemented,” said Kenneth Orski, a Washington transportation consultant and former federal transit official. “But I am well aware of the political difficulty Los Angeles has had introducing them on existing freeways, so I don’t hold out much hope.”

So far this year the score card is mixed. Orange County officials decided in January to keep an 11-mile diamond lane on the Costa Mesa Freeway after a yearlong experiment, despite local opposition from drivers who said the lane is unsafe.

The Orange County Transportation Commission has also backed making a diamond lane out of a new lane to be added to the San Diego south of Long Beach and on the Orange Freeway. An eight-mile eastbound diamond lane on the center shoulder of the Artesia Freeway in Los Angeles County, open since 1985, has also received clearance to continue.

Opposition to Diamond Lanes

But Caltrans’ plans for a regional network of diamond lanes took a severe blow in February when lukewarm citizen support killed the proposed lane on the Ventura. Organized and vocal opposition from commuters in the West San Fernando Valley and Ventura County prompted many elected officials in both counties to oppose the lane, saying it would make the commute even worse than it is.

Unlike the San Bernardino Freeway bus lane, a separate roadway in the center of the freeway, the new diamond lanes simply use the left lane. Enough room is found to add the lane by reducing the regular lanes to 11 feet in width and using this space plus the median strip to squeeze in the diamond lane. The faster-moving car poolers are separated from the cars stopped in traffic by only a painted stripe.

The absence of a barrier means that the diamond lanes have a high rate of violation, which hurts their popularity. “Both users and non-users are angered by violators,” said Genevieve Giuliano, a professor at the University of California, Irvine. “If congestion is severe, the incentive for violating is great, but enforcement is almost impossible.”

And the experts argue that car pooling has to be made more attractive if it is ever to be successful in Southern California.

Even for those who want to, the sprawl of Southern California reduces the chances of finding a suitable car pool mate. Workers at a defense plant, for example, may commute from five counties.

In addition, said Widby of Commuter Computer, more women are working and commuting, and they have proven less likely to car-pool. Lower gas prices have reduced the cost of driving alone, thus encouraging some to leave car pools. Most new jobs have been created in small companies where there are fewer workers to cull a car-pool group from.

Effect of Tax Policy

Tax policy has also hurt the car-pool cause, Widby said. The number of van pools had doubled in recent years, but 25% of Commuter Computer van-pool firms dropped out when the federal government ended the investment tax credit for companies that buy vans. The Internal Revenue Service also ruled that any subsidies to employees for van use are taxable. Recently, Hughes Aircraft Co. in El Segundo discontinued a much-publicized private bus fleet for employees who live within 15 miles of the plant, citing costs.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to solve it with car pooling,” said Roper of Caltrans. “The private automobile with one person in it is a tough act to beat. It’s there when he wants it; it provides security. I think it is tied up with our egos. So anything you come up with has to compete with that because that is what we want to do.”

Staggered hours may work better to spread the demand by commuters for precious freeway space. Businesses that changed their office and plant hours--even as little as 30 minutes--deserve much of the credit for the smooth Olympic traffic, Caltrans officials said.

The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission recently called for a massive campaign to shift hours. But some believe that the Los Angeles Basin is too large for an effective program because the hours have to be synchronized to avoid causing new traffic jams. “In an area like Los Angeles, I see limited potential for staggered work hours,” said Washington transportation consultant Orski.

It works best in a contained setting like an office building or industrial park, where the hours can be juggled to ease traffic leaving the garage or using a nearby freeway ramp. Lately, businesses in areas choked by traffic at the start and end of shifts have begun to take their own steps.

The P. L. Porter Co. was one of the first companies to adopt traffic measures when it moved to the Warner Center complex in Woodland Hills in 1974. Employees who lived near the firm’s old West Los Angeles plant were faced with a new commute of 30 minutes or more. The owner and namesake, who invented the device that led to reclining airliner seats, set up van pools and switched the starting time to 6:30 a.m. so that workers would not waste time sitting on the San Diego and Ventura freeways.

Shifts’ Schedules

Shifts are scheduled to end 10 minutes before most other companies in Warner Center so employees can beat the rush of homeward-bound commuters. Employees who car-pool get the best parking spots, and enough pool that the firm uses only 140 parking spaces for 270 employees.

More recently, companies in Warner Center and other areas have also banded together in “traffic management organizations.” It is a creation of the 1980s in which companies in the same industrial park share car-pool and van-pool arrangements and synchronize their hours tactically to relieve the rush-hour burden on streets and freeways.

Most such associations are formed voluntarily, although the Irvine Co. has made membership a requirement for firms in the Irvine Spectrum development in south Orange County. The incentive for business is to keep the streets clear so that customers and workers can get there.

“For Universal City to grow, we have to get cars off the street,” said Jim Hescox of MCA Development Co., which wants to add to its 1.5 million square feet of office space that lures 10,000 employees a day to Universal City.

Three years ago, the city of Pleasanton in the East Bay area of Northern California became the first city in the state to require existing companies to take steps to reduce rush-hour traffic. “The jury is coming in, and it’s generally successful,” said UC Berkeley urban planner Robert Cervero.

All the traffic management tactics will be put to the test beginning this fall on the Ventura Freeway, the world’s most traveled freeway. For three years, workers and equipment will be on the freeway repairing the pavement, which is wearing out, and laying down new markings that will add a new lane in each direction.

Effect of Roadwork

To stave off traffic catastrophe, Caltrans and the City of Los Angeles are planning to mount an Olympic-like effort to keep commuters moving. Most work will be done at night, and the crews will be forbidden to close traffic lanes during the day.

But rush-hour traffic, already intense, is expected to slow considerably because the lanes will be narrower and a lot of equipment will be sitting on the edge of the roadbed, distracting drivers. The median strip and right shoulder will also be used for traffic, leaving no place of refuge for drivers whose cars break down.

To speed traffic, roving tow trucks will be assigned to quickly clear, free of charge, any cars that run out of gas or get flat tires. New message signs will be erected along the freeway to alert drivers to trouble spots, and radio transmitters will be parked next to the freeway to beam traffic information to commuters.

Caltrans is also paying to modernize the traffic signals on nearby streets, which will carry much of the traffic, and to pay for city traffic officers at key intersections next to the freeway. Caltrans is also putting up money to encourage drivers to start new van pools.

“We’re saying every little bit helps,” said Dave Kilmurray of Caltrans. “We need to pull people off the freeway. We hope to make things not any worse than they are today.”

But ultimately, things are going to get worse, not just on the Ventura but on all the other freeways that let Southern Californians live 50 miles from where they work and play. Billions will be spent on new roads, but people will still be driven nearly insane waiting in ever-longer traffic lines.

Some will give up their dreams of a house in suburbia and move back to the city, spending far more than they should on payments. Others will move away, but still the population is expected to grow by 5 million by the year 2010. Southern California is so attractive and its economy so diverse, the planners say, that a major recession that would scare off new growth is unlikely.

Said Mark Pisano, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments: “If you think we have congestion now, you ain’t seen nothing.”

PLANNED FREEWAY IMPROVEMENTS

These are freeway improvements that Caltrans says it wants to complete by the year 2000. Donald L. Watson, a Caltrans deputy director, said planners hope to build about $3 billion to $4 billion worth of new freeways and improvements by then, when the Southern California population could be 5 million higher than today. Some are under way; others are awaiting financing.

“I call these the gaps in the system,” Watson said.

The major projects:

Completion of the $1.7-billion Century Freeway, now scheduled to open in late 1993.

Construction of an elevated transitway on the Harbor Freeway near downtown Los Angeles for buses and car-pools. The project also includes 14 miles at freeway level from the Coliseum area down to the San Diego Freeway.

Widening of the Santa Ana Freeway throughout Orange County, including an expansion to as much as six lanes each way in the Irvine area.

Addition of a single lane each way to the Ventura Freeway, from Universal City west to Calabasas, and on the San Diego Freeway from the Ventura Freeway south into Orange County.

Extension of the El Monte Busway on the San Bernardino Freeway west into downtown Los Angeles, and east to the I-605 Freeway.

Addition of a lane to the Simi Valley Freeway, and extending it to connect with California 23 in Ventura County.

Construction of the Highway 30 Freeway along the base of the mountains in San Bernardino County.

In Orange County, officials plan an independent effort to raise $850 million in local, state and private funds to finance three new freeways. One would run through the San Joaquin Hills, paralleling the coast west of the San Diego Freeway. The other two would go through the hills east of Santa Ana and Irvine.

And although actual construction is unlikely by the year 2000, Caltrans hopes by then to have most of the money it needs to extend the Long Beach Freeway northward, through South Pasadena, and link it with the Foothill Freeway (I-210).