New Lanes Don’t Mean End of Traffic Crisis

What a difference a year and a few visible freeway projects seem to make in the perceptions and attitudes of Orange County residents.

For the previous 2 years, the Orange County Annual Survey, launched in 1982 to measure residents’ attitudes about living conditions and a variety of other issues, showed, among other things, a growing pessimism by an increasing number of residents.

The majority of those polled, 54%, believed that the county would become a worse place to live. One of the main reasons residents gave for their bleak outlook was traffic, which they overwhelmingly rated as the county’s worst problem.

But this year’s survey results, released Monday by UC Irvine professor Mark Baldassare and co-author Cheryl Katz, shows what the pollsters called a “dramatic” shift in the pattern. In a surprising note of optimism, the number of residents who think the county will become a worse place to live dropped 16% in the latest poll. Today only 38% of the people surveyed hold that negative view.

The main reason for the much rosier response is residents’ belief that Orange County’s deteriorating traffic conditions will get better.

They may be right, but for the wrong reasons.

Most residents still have a bleak outlook for the quality of life here in the future. But one explanation for the increase in optimism about traffic is the visibility of freeway widening projects now under way and reports of others soon to be started.

Motorists see new freeway lanes being built and they are sure that traffic will move better when those lanes are completed. But if that is all that they are counting on, the annual survey taken after the lanes open could well show another “dramatic” shift as public disillusionment is registered.

The danger is that many motorists may make the mistake of believing that the freeway widening projects alone will really solve crucial traffic problems. They won’t. The new lanes should help, but they are far from a cure-all, as Baldassare and Keith McKean, director of Caltrans District 12, have noted.

“No way we are going to build our way out of the problem,” McKean said. The veteran freeway builder is right. In addition to the widening of some older freeways and the building of new traffic corridors, there must also be changes in public attitudes and driving habits, and increased support for additional local taxes to pay for other traffic-reducing alternatives.

Staggering work times so that everyone is not on the same roads at the same times every day can help reduce traffic tie-ups. So can making more use of car pools, bus and rail transportation and supporting the proposed transit ways to speed buses and van pools through traffic.

The positive shift in attitudes uncovered in the survey is an important discovery. The community must not sit back in helpless despair--or mistakenly assume that a few new freeway lanes will solve everything. The increased optimism can provide a base for residents and public officials, with a growing faith in the future, to seek and support real traffic solutions.