Street-Wise Units Stay on the Alert for Traffic Jams

Everyone hates a parade, if it’s between them and a vital appointment.

Ditto overturned trucks, streets closed by construction, cops-and-robbers shoot-outs, fires, floods and marathon runs.

To save drivers from unexpected heartburn over the random events that block surface street traffic, the city of Los Angeles began a program three months ago to monitor the byways for broadcasters, in the same way that freeway obstructions have been reported for years.

The “Street Alert” program is functioning, but still finding its feet, according to users of the material it provides.

From a small room crammed with communications equipment in the C. Erwin Piper Technical Building behind the Union Station yards, city Department of Transportation operators gather information and send it by a computer-teletype link to the two agencies that broadcast traffic reports for radio and television stations.

“They give us good stuff. But I’m begging for more,” said Rhonda Kramer, president of L.A. Net, which supplies regular traffic updates to 19 area radio stations--including KFWB, KROQ and KBIG.

“There are a lot of people who drive city streets who didn’t listen to traffic reports,” but do so now, she said. “This is very helpful for them. And some streets, like Ventura Boulevard or Pacific Coast Highway, you might as well call them freeways.”

“There’s always room for improvement, but I think they’re doing an excellent job,” said Paul Johnson, operations director of Metro Traffic, which supplies traffic reports to 34 radio stations and KNBC-TV.

“It’s a big help during special events--St. Patrick’s Day parades, Memorial Day parades, street construction, broken water mains, gas leaks. It’s become very valuable, especially with the freeways as crowded as they are.”

Tom Capra, news director for KNBC-TV, which airs five traffic reports during its morning news shows, said it is difficult to gauge how viewers are responding to the new service.

“We haven’t gotten any feedback,” he said.

Johnson praised Mayor Tom Bradley’s office for beginning and encouraging the program, which is part of the mayor’s nine-point plan to reduce traffic congestion.

“It’s unusual for a political office to get involved so quickly and do such a good job,” he said.

Federal Express, the package delivery agency, is less enthusiastic.

“It’s not as far along as I’d hoped,” said David Vint, the express agency’s senior operations manager.

The original plan called for the express company’s drivers to contribute reports on street conditions as they covered the city. They were to profit in turn by receiving information that would allow them to bypass bottlenecks, especially on crucial runs to Los Angeles International Airport.

This was to be accomplished by radio-computer units in the company’s vehicles, similar to those in police patrol cars. Although the express company is ready to make the linkup, its reports are still going to the control center by telephone and the information coming back helps only in “a very, very small way,” Vint said.

“If they were ready for us, all we’d have to do is throw a switch.”

In order to complete that link, time is needed to complete two more steps in the plan, hiring an administrator and moving to much larger quarters in North Hollywood, explained Ted Mirkov, chief of Parking Enforcement Operations, which runs the program.

Mirkov said he hopes to have the administrator hired in three weeks and the move to a building at Saticoy Street and Whitsett Avenue completed by August.

“I think traffic is moving a little better for people who have their radios on and take alternate routes around congestion,” Mirkov said, but he added that there are no surveys or statistics to support his impression.

Just a Start

“This is just the initial stage, “ he said. “We’re going to expand the program and then I think it will be a notable improvement.”

Currently, the operators--11 during morning rush hours--work in a 14- by 31-foot room, which supervisor Betty McMaryion, a fan of the Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, refers to as “two Kareems wide by three and a half Kareems long.”

Each has a console with a computer link to the state Department of Motor Vehicles in Sacramento and radio contact with traffic control officers throughout the city.

Operators can listen to Police Department reports of events that may affect traffic--gunfights and barricaded suspects usually mean closed streets--and have direct phone lines to the Los Angeles Fire Department, police tow yards, the California Highway Patrol and the 911 emergency response center.

Caltrans shares the computer, which distributes reports to the broadcast agencies. When Caltrans reports freeway problems, traffic control officers are sent to determine whether motorists leaving the freeway are causing a surface street jam.

The office can dispatch traffic control officers to check citizen reports of traffic blockages, and has an airplane and a helicopter that check streets during morning rush hours.

In the next two months, Mirkov said, the system will probably tie in the Federal Express computer terminals, and he is holding discussions with United Parcel Service to add their drivers to the reporting network.

“In the future,” he added, “we want a better relationship with the street maintenance people for surfacing and construction reports. And we’ll be talking to the motion picture companies about their location shooting.”