Runners to Race Around Traffic : ‘Heart of the City’ Run Aims to Avoid Traffic Disruption

“Sig alerts” and “jams at the four-level” are familiar terms to Southern California drivers. But who has heard of a “rolling bottleneck?”

That catchy phrase describes the way organizers of Union Bank’s foot race in downtown Los Angeles hope to avoid a big traffic disruption on the evening of June 29.

The 5-kilometer “Heart of the City” run is in its fourth year, with proceeds earmarked for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Heart Assn. About 3,500 runners, many on teams sponsored by downtown businesses, are expected to compete.

The race is run along a 3.1-mile, rectangular course between Figueroa and Spring streets, beginning and ending near Union Bank at 445 S. Figueroa St. It is the only weekday race that takes place downtown, and several refinements have been made in an attempt to minimize the disruption of traffic.

The 7 p.m. starting time means that most workers will have left downtown, and the course has been designed to leave exit streets open as much as possible, according to Brad Malamud, whose Professional Roadrace Organizers helped the bank and Los Angeles police plan the race.

“The whole concept of a rectangular course is that we always have at least one open end that traffic can get out of,” Malamud said. “The idea is to never create a bottleneck. The runners form a rolling bottleneck that keeps the streets open as much as possible.”

Stragglers, of course, will not be part of the main pack, or rolling bottleneck. Police officers and traffic monitors from the city Department of Transportation at each intersection will allow traffic to pass during gaps between slow runners, Malamud said.

“We always get a few calls from angry people, but most are very understanding,” said Heidi von Kann, race director for the bank.

The race begins in front of Union Bank and goes north on Figueroa, east through the Second Street tunnel, north on Hill Street, east on First Street, south on Spring, west on Olympic Boulevard and north again on Figueroa to the bank.

Steve Ortiz, a former star runner at UCLA, won last year’s race with a time of 14 minutes and 6 seconds, but some runners will require about three times as long to get around the course.

The male and female winners and the top corporate team will win trips to New York to compete in the “Wall Street Run,” a sister event set in the financial district of Manhattan. The Los Angeles version was started in 1985 and has eclipsed the New York race in size. Last year, a record 3,100 runners registered and 2,900 competed.

Von Kann figures that the maximum number the course can handle is 5,000 runners. A larger field would make the rolling bottleneck too big to manage.

Sgt. John Fletcher of the Los Angeles Police Department said: “Any race of this type is going to affect the traffic downtown, but the impact should be less than a rainy day.”