$12-Million Plan Seeks to Unsnag Downtown Traffic : Ambitious Project Would Widen Streets, Synchronize Signals, Enlist Employers

With a million square feet of new office space and more construction planned, Glendale is spending $12 million to untangle rush-hour snarls on downtown streets, city official say.

After more than six years of study, the city is proposing a comprehensive traffic-reduction plan that will include widening roads, computerizing traffic signals, encouraging employers to stagger work hours, offering enticements for more car-pooling and more use of public transportation and bicycles.

“Downtown traffic congestion is a major issue in our city,” said Duane deCroupet, a Glendale planning commissioner. “Something has to be done.”

City officials acknowledge that traffic congestion is at its worst and will continue that way until all street construction under way and proposed is completed.

About 270,000 cars travel daily through downtown, a 22% increase in just two years, city officials estimate. As many as 20,000 more automobiles are expected to enter the downtown area as soon as tenants move into unoccupied space, Kerry Morford, Glendale assistant public works director, said.

That increase will bring downtown traffic near its capacity of 300,000 cars, Morford said.

Even more construction is planned, including the city’s largest high-rise office development and the first major downtown hotel. The success of the redevelopment project has increased land values bordering the redevelopment zone, stimulating other projects in those areas too, even without developer incentives such as lower land costs offered in city-sponsored projects.

“We are facing a much stronger development market today than we ever anticipated,” Susan Shick, Glendale redevelopment director, told the city Planning Commission this week. The commission and Glendale City Council in October will consider setting strict height limits on peripheral development in the downtown area to prevent further congestion.

Improvement Projects

In the meantime, the city has undertaken a series of projects to reduce congestion. Already completed are street widening, roadway reconstruction and freeway access improvements on Glendale Avenue, Brand Boulevard and Pacific Avenue at the Ventura Freeway.

The city soon will open Orange Street, which now permits only northbound traffic between Broadway and Doran Street, to two-way traffic to improve circulation around the downtown. Within two years, the city plans to widen parts of Central, Pacific and Wilson avenues and Colorado Street, Morford said.

Stop signs along Orange and on Louise Street near the Ventura Freeway also will be replaced with electric signals. Left-turn signals recently were installed at heavily traveled intersections.

Access to the Ventura Freeway will be improved at San Fernando Road, Brand Boulevard and Harvey Drive, as well as the Colorado Street access to the Golden State Freeway, Morford said.

Late this year, the city expects to begin converting traffic signals throughout downtown to a sophisticated, $900,000, computerized system that can be adjusted to speed traffic flow, Morford said.

But, despite all of the engineering and reconstruction projects proposed, officials said even further changes are needed. “We can’t widen the streets any more, so we have to find out what else we can do,” Morford said.

What the city plans to do is to join hundreds of other cities throughout the country in adopting comprehensive traffic-reduction programs--an idea that evolved only three years ago.

Whereas ride-sharing programs have been around a long time, cities only recently have turned to citywide traffic management. “There is an evolution going on calling for the private sector to do more in terms of traffic management,” said Peter J. Valk, a Pasadena traffic consultant hired last month to develop and implement a plan for Glendale.

Valk, president of Transportation Management Services, said many cities, including Houston, Washington and New York, have developed broad-based plans to reduce downtown congestion and the need for inner-city parking. “Attention is focused on providing a range of incentives and services to get users to consider, and possibly change, how and when they travel,” Valk said.

Rider Incentives

Such incentives include providing pickup points at office complexes that make ride-sharing and public transportation convenient and economical, Valk said. Some businesses encourage employees to work at home or in offices near their homes by using computers and advanced telecommunications techniques, he said, rather than reporting daily to inner-city headquarters.

Cities can install car-pool lanes on streets leading to freeways or raise the cost of all-day parking in city lots--as is proposed in Glendale--to encourage ride-sharing among workers. The city is studying an increase for 10-hour meters from 5 cents to 20 cents an hour.

Employers can also get together to help workers form car and van pools and develop an “access guide” that explains transportation options, Valk said.

“It is all part of a very strong trend across the nation--a new way of addressing how to plan and to manage transportation activities,” Valk added.

But unlike most cities, which enforce their rules by imposing fines and other penalties on employers who fail to meet traffic-reduction goals, Glendale plans to make its program voluntary, David H. Ramsay, assistant city manager, said.

“We don’t want this to be viewed as another government-enforced program,” Ramsay said. “We want it to be seen as a positive program. We’ve seen in other cities where mandatory traffic reduction became very unpopular among employers. We don’t want to take that approach,” Ramsay added.

Setting Example

To set an example, the city this month began staggering the work hours of about 300 city employees at the Glendale Civic Center. Instead of the usual 8 a.m. starting time, about a third of the employees have volunteered to start at 15-minute intervals between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m.

Only partly implemented, the plan already has relieved morning and afternoon traffic at the Civic Center garage on Wilson Avenue near Glendale Boulevard, and at nearby intersections, city officials said.

In an effort to head off any city-mandated program, the Glendale Development Council, a private group of employers, last spring formed a subcommittee on transportation, traffic and parking to advise city officials on traffic-reduction measures.

Jerrett Anderson, a Glendale lawyer and subcommittee chairman, said the group was formed “to get the business community involved in solving these problems so that government doesn’t have to.” He said employers oppose any suggestion that the city adopt enforcement rules. He said the subcommittee instead will work to “convince the business community to be cooperative.”

Officials at several other cities, however, expressed skepticism toward totally voluntary programs. A spokeswoman for the San Francisco Bay city of Pleasanton, the first in the nation to adopt a traffic-reduction ordinance in 1984, said the threat of penalties is essential to the success of such programs.

“Some employers have implemented programs for their own benefit,” said Gail Gilpin, Pleasanton transportation coordinator, “but I believe the majority of employers would not.”

The Pleasanton ordinance, considered one of the most comprehensive in the nation, Gilpin said, applies to all businesses and imposes fines against employers who fail to meet goals. Gilpin said only seven employers have paid fines--ranging from $50 to $250 an infraction--since the program began.

Los Angeles Plan

Many other cities, such as Los Angeles, impose traffic-reduction rules only on major employers. Businesses in Los Angeles with at least 700 employees are required to institute ride-sharing plans or face fines of $100 a day. Mayor Tom Bradley has asked that the rule be applied to employers with 200 or more workers, but the business community has strongly resisted.

In Glendale, officials expect initially to identify the city’s largest employers and to ask them to voluntarily participate in reducing traffic.

Valk said the Pasadena consultants plan to develop a program in Glendale “that will give businesses and employers an opportunity to demonstrate what they can get done without government regulation.”

“There is no one big answer,” Valk added. “There are a bunch of things that we could all do to resolve problems,” such as arriving or leaving work earlier or later. “All of the little answers make a significant difference.”

GLENDALE STREET IMPROVEMENTS STREET WIDENING: Wilson Avenue, Concord Street to Sinclair Avenue Central Avenue, Lexington Drive to Ventura Freeway Pacific Avenue, Colorado Street to Broadway Colorado Street, Golden Gate Freeway to Columbus Avenue Glendale Avenue, Lexington Drive to Ventura Freeway FREEWAY ACCESS IMPROVEMENTS: Ventura Freeway at San Fernando Road, Brand Boulevard, Harvey Drive Colorado Street to Golden State Freeway ADD NEW TRAFFIC SIGNALS: On Orange Street at Milford Street, Doran Street Louise Street at Doran Street, Glenoaks Boulevard COMPUTERIZE TRAFFIC SIGNALS: Throughout downtown between Pacific Avenue, Glenoaks Boulevard, Glendale Avenue and Colorado Street