A SPECIAL REPORT ON TRANSPORTATION : Life in the Slow Lane

Look at it this way: If misery loves company, then at least Orange County freeway commuters have plenty of shoulders to cry on.

The specter of traffic paralysis has gripped us all. We hate it. We moan, we complain and we swear.

And after we get that out of our systems, we start the cycle all over again--sliding behind the steering wheel, alone and harried, our feet to the floorboard and our minds primed for battle.

That, at least, is how The Times Orange County Poll gauges our feelings about what is Southern California’s most talked-about urban annoyance: traffic.

“My best friend from childhood moved here from Florida about 15 months ago,” said Carrie DeCriscio, 25, of Cypress. But the county’s heavy traffic came between DeCriscio and her friends in El Toro, “so we’ve only seen them maybe six or seven times.”

And now, in part because of the traffic, “they’re moving back to Florida,” DeCriscio said. “I really feel robbed.”

Said Robert Sapiro of Huntington Beach, who abandoned highway commuting for a house closer to work: “Life is too short to be sitting on a freeway.”

Such sentiments were found among the 600 Orange County adults surveyed for The Times by the Irvine-based firm of Mark Baldassare & Associates in an Aug. 25-27 poll that set out to discover just how concerned Orange County residents are about transportation issues.

We’re concerned, all right.

The poll findings show, for example, that three out of four Orange County residents rate freeway conditions as poor or very poor, and that a majority (60%) give a resounding vote of no confidence to the government’s ability to prevent hopeless congestion.

A typical glum comment came from Costa Mesa commuter Glee Ann Jeffries, who said: “They (government) haven’t solved it yet. I don’t know what it’s going to take.”

Commuter DeCriscio chimed in with this: “It seems like they (government) have been trying to do things, but they keep taking tax dollars and nothing seems to get done.”

As a measure of how bothered commuters really are about congested freeways, it is worth noting that 53% of those surveyed said they would support a half-cent sales tax as a means of financing transportation improvements. Orange County is the state’s only remaining urban area without such a tax.

And most county residents weren’t content to stop there. A majority, 52%, said they would be willing to separate themselves from even more cash, this time by throwing it at a highway toll booth, if it meant spending less time on the road.

“Quite honestly, I have the aversion of most people to paying to travel on a public road, but if it’s necessary, I guess it’s necessary,” said Clifford Vails, who commutes from Cypress to Los Angeles.

But Don McGarry--whose 84-mile round-trip commute between San Clemente and Anaheim has him yelling “Uncle!”--said he had no qualms.

“I’d pay for it,” he said without hesitation. “And I’d sure use it, if it could get me there faster.”

In the opinion of 44% of those surveyed, freeway congestion has become so bad that they could envision themselves leaving Orange County for the sole purpose of escaping traffic.

Shelli Burreson of Newport Beach, a self-employed makeup artist, said she would be willing to bid farewell to the Orange County crawl once and for all, but, for the time being at least, a happy turn of events has made it unnecessary. “It used to take at least an hour, sometimes an hour and 20 minutes, to see my boyfriend” in Manhattan Beach, she said. “But he changed jobs and moved to Dana Point, so now it only takes 30 minutes.”

And as an added bonus, Burreson reports that spending less time on the freeway has given the couple more time for romance.

“Yes, it’s worked out quite well,” Burreson said. “We’re going to get married soon.”

Arianna Overturf, whose 18-mile commute from El Toro to Irvine is taking longer as the years pass, said she can see herself moving away from the area if things get much worse.

“It has a lot to do with quality of life,” Overturf said. “Getting to recreational things is a hassle, and it’s not something I want to live with forever. . . . That’s not the kind of life style I want.

“Orange County is becoming nicer--more cultural and more diverse--but traffic is one of the bad points about it. Even though it seems to be getting nicer here in other areas, traffic is a real drawback.”

One key finding of The Times Orange County Poll, which has a margin of error of 4% either way, is that drivers talk a better game than they are willing to play.

Here are some examples:

Although 36% of those surveyed said they are willing to try flexible work schedules as an alternative to rush-hour driving, only 11% said they had done so.

Forty-four percent said they would try a four-day week, but only 15% have done so.

Thirty-nine percent said they think that increasing the number of people who car-pool and use mass transit is the single best solution for reducing traffic congestion in Orange County, but only 10% said they car-pool or van-pool.

A piddling 2% of Orange County residents said they take a bus, and an overwhelming 83% said they drive alone. Thirty-four percent said they had tried ride-sharing but gave it up.

In addition, only 38% of those polled said they would like to live closer to work, bad news for the many urban planners who have been trying to relieve traffic congestion by developing projects that integrate residential units, offices and shops on single sites.

Pollster Baldassare said these findings mirror previous results.

“In looking at some of the other results from past surveys, we’ve had relatively high levels of support for the concepts of car-pooling and mass transit,” he said. “I think this reflects the public’s perception that these are inexpensive methods.”

But poll respondents “don’t necessarily see themselves as being part of the solution. They expect other people to do it.”

This was just one of the inconsistencies unearthed in the poll results. Although most people said they would support the half-cent sales tax increase, for example, Baldassare said the thin margin of support would make such an election too close to call today.

He noted that 60% of those surveyed said they have little or no confidence that local government can prevent overwhelming congestion. And earlier polls have shown that voters rejected a proposed 1-cent sales tax measure in June, 1984, largely because they distrusted government’s ability to wisely spend the money it already had.

Still, not everyone is so pessimistic.

Oliver Cagle, a developer who spends much of his day on the road, believes government and industry working together will come up with solutions.

“With the magnitude of vehicles coming, we’re going to run out of space,” he said. “But then we’ll get into creative stuff.”

“Mass transit is the answer,” offered commuter Sapiro of Huntington Beach. “I don’t think you will change people’s attitudes about car pools. . . . I lived in San Francisco and used the BART. It’s a great system.”

Although Sapiro said he has no need for mass transit himself, living just 3 miles from his work, he surmised that “others would use it, like in south Orange County. I’ll bet if you asked people who are sitting on the freeway a couple of hours a day, if you asked them to trade that in for a rapid train, I’ll bet I know what they’d say.”

But for every commuter willing to venture a proposed solution, there are scores of other Orange County residents who simply throw up their hands at what they see as a problem mushrooming before their eyes.

“I hate traffic,” said Curt Mann, who drives from Costa Mesa to construction sites in Los Angeles and Riverside.

“I wish I could go from Point A to Point B without traffic. I know that’s unrealistic, but it would be nice. There’s just so much time wasted on road.”

Transportation officials say the best we can hope for--if there’s a moderate amount of new highway construction, more car-pooling and staggered work shifts--are levels of congestion about the same as those in 1984. A more likely scenario, they say, is that congestion will get worse.

People often lower their expectations, learning to put up with a level of congestion that simply isn’t acceptable in 1988, said Frank Hotchkiss, resident futurist and senior planning strategist for the Southern California Assn. of Governments. And, he added, the number of drivers will continue to grow even as traffic slows:

“Southern California, including Orange County, will always look better to some people than the places they’re coming from.”

Times staff writer Marcida Dodson contributed to this article.