Broadcasters Will Report Street Traffic

For years, radio station traffic reporters have devoted nearly all their rush-hour air time to freeway events--whether jackknifed tractor-trailers on the Santa Monica or spill-loads of kumquats blocking three lanes on the Cahuenga Pass.

On Monday, one television and 19 radio stations helped launch a citywide effort to report surface street conditions, too--whether broken fire hydrants on Figueroa or hazardous spills on Hill Street.

As part of Mayor Tom Bradley’s nine-point traffic plan unveiled last summer, about 500 city traffic officers have begun relaying information about potential surface-street trouble spots to a central command post staffed around the clock by city workers. The information will then be sent by wire to the various traffic reporters for broadcast to their listeners.

Bradley said the new effort should help ease peak congestion periods because 60% of the rush-hour commuter traffic is, at some point, on the city’s surface streets.

Dubbed “Los Angeles Street-Alerts,” the new program will also enlist the aid of about 1,000 drivers from Federal Express--the package delivery firm--who will radio in trouble areas they encounter during the day.

City parking administrator Robert Yates said traffic officers, including those on duty at major downtown intersections, will alert the command center of any major emergency that could tie up normal commuter flow during peak hours. Fire and Police Department personnel will also cooperate in the program, Yates said.

At a news conference in which Bradley--flanked by several radio traffic reporters--unveiled the program, Yates said the new effort will not involve any additional cost. He explained that the 32 command center employees had already been relaying the surface-street information to traffic officers and would now also relay it to traffic reporters through a Teletype system operated by the California Highway Patrol and Caltrans.

Information passed on to the radio reporters will include scheduled street closures during the construction of Metro Rail, for example, or during special events such as Cinco de Mayo or the Los Angeles Marathon. But commuters will also be alerted to unanticipated situations, such as multiple car crashes, structure fires and power outages affecting traffic signals. The information will include estimated times when clogged streets will clear, Yates said.

‘Two-Way Street’

David Vint, a Federal Express official, said that peak-hour traffic congestion has become so bad that packages and letters bound from Los Angeles to the East Coast sometimes miss their flights at LAX. The company’s cooperation in the citywide effort, therefore, is a “two-way street” because it may eventually help deliveries, particularly in the late-afternoon hours, Vint said.

Chuck Street, who does twice-hourly reports for KIIS-AM and FM from a helicopter, said the new system should mean more useful information for commuters. But, he added, he does not know whether the surface-street information will now compete with the freeway reports for air time. He is now allotted about 60 seconds for each report.

In addition to KIIS, the other radio stations that have agreed to broadcast the surface street information are: KFWB-AM, KKGO-FM, KROQ-FM, KDAY-AM, KRLA-AM, KKLA-FM, KNX-AM, KABC-AM, KLAC-AM, KZLA-FM, KJOI-FM, KGIL-AM and FM, KPWR-FM, KFI-AM, KOST-FM and KMPC-AM. Meanwhile, KNBC is the only television station that will be using the traffic information.