A Traffic Jam of Ideas Floods OCTC on How to Grease the Wheels

There’s at least one good thing about all the time we spend stuck in traffic. It gives us plenty of time to think, especially about ways to avoid getting stuck in traffic.

And we have been wearing our thinking caps, haven’t we? So many county drivers have thought up and sent in suggestions for the Orange County Transportation Commission’s “100 Traffic Solutions” project that the OCTC might have to change the name to “1,000 Traffic Solutions”--if the list can be pared down just to that.

As of Dec. 30, officially the last day for submissions, more than 750 people had written to the commission with an average of three suggestions each. One man sent in his own list of 100 ideas. The commission has more than 2,000 ideas to sift through.

All that volunteer brainstorming did give at least one OCTC staffer some time off, as I suggested last week, from her work on the commission’s 20-year plan for the county. But instead of going shopping or attending a matinee, Melanie Lane, an intern in the community and governmental section, spent that time in front of a computer, entering and categorizing the responses.

While she worked, I pulled up a chair and dug through the pile of letters, careful not to interfere with her system. At that point Lane had fed 789 suggestions--about a third--into the computer.

She made me a printout of her tabulations-in-progress, from which I did a few calculations to assess the early returns.

Now I confess I’m no Tom Brokaw, but on the basis of Lane’s work and my own sampling, I’m ready to project some winners.

The biggest winner: Rail, with 107 votes, or just under 14% of the running total. Various forms of monorails were the most popular proposals within this category, followed by suggestions for expansion of Amtrak’s existing service, a subway or a resurrection of the old Pacific Electric Red Cars.

One correspondent even suggested removing the wings from airplanes and loading them on flatbed rail cars to create makeshift passenger trains. Another suggested a train that could ferry cars above the freeways.

Not coincidentally, the commission has already asked for a comprehensive study of rail system possibilities, says Brea Councilwoman Clarice A. Blamer, a member of OCTC and chairwoman of the 100 Traffic Solutions committee.

“I was really pleased to see so many suggestions for things that we’re already doing,” Blamer says. “That makes us feel we’re on the right track.”

So to speak.

Freeways came in second, with 83 ideas, or more than 10% of the suggestions. Most of those entail more freeways, wider freeways, double-decker freeways, freeways with reversible lanes and better-maintained freeways. But a couple of correspondents said, “Don’t build any more.”

The third most popular topic--raising money to implement the ideas--proves this is not only a creative group but a responsible one--except, of course, for the handful who resorted to calling the commissioners nasty names (effete snobs? That one went out with Spiro Agnew), or the person who anonymously suggested that we eliminate congestion by “killing all the Republicans.” (Whaddaya want, a ghost town?)

Of the ideas tallied so far, 82--about 1 in 10--had to do with raising money through everything from new taxes to tolls to a transportation funds telethon.

In fourth place: Trucks, with 55 suggestions, or just less than 7% of the early tabulations. Most of those involved restricting the hours trucks are permitted on freeways or even surface streets.

Buses and working hours tied for fifth place, with 48 suggestions each.

Bus riders--or potential bus riders--want more direct routes, more express buses, more frequent buses and buses that link up with that rail system we mentioned earlier.

Staggered or flexible working hours were the most frequently mentioned in that category, although my personal favorites were suggestions to reduce the workday to 5 hours and give everybody an extra day off once a month.

Other categories included improvements to arterial streets, incentives for everything from car pools to working at home to 4-day workweeks, synchronizing traffic signals, either eliminating car-pool lanes or creating more of them, controlling growth, better driver education and “other.”

Lawrence H. Alderson of Tustin was the guy who came up with his own list of 100 ideas. The most interesting of those involved paving over the Santa Ana and other rivers to create fair-weather freeways. Alderson also suggested building “a freeway on floating platforms in the ocean” as an alternative to double-decking, although he called both ideas “expensive and outlandish.”

Although most of those who wrote liked the idea of soliciting public reaction, some didn’t.

“Why don’t you stop (expletive)ing around with surveys and build more roads?” wrote M. Wagner of San Clemente.

And an anonymous correspondent wrote, “Use your traffic engineers! Doctors don’t stop people on the street and ask them how to do brain surgery!”

Dissenters aside, Blamer says she’s thrilled at the overwhelming response: “People out there are saying that we’re part of the problem, so we’re going to be part of the solution.”

Once the suggestions have been tabulated, Blamer and the 100 Traffic Solutions committee will begin sorting through them. “The ones that we can implement immediately, we’re going to do,” she says. “If we can’t, if they’re going to take some study, then at least we can include these ideas in the study.”

Although a few ideas--eliminating Republicans or immigrants or people from back East, for example--can’t be taken seriously, Blamer says with those few exceptions, “I don’t think there’s any that are absolutely ridiculous, except for making people move out of the county. We’re not going to get into running people’s lives.”

In choosing the top 100, Blamer says, “We’re going to concentrate on getting the most results for the least money.”

And that means double-decking freeways probably won’t make the cut. “I can’t say for sure because I don’t have all the facts, but that’s probably the least likely suggestion.”

Although many ideas will need further study, “We don’t want to study it to death,” Blamer says.

As an agency that exists primarily to coordinate the work of other governmental agencies, the OCTC doesn’t have the power to implement many of the suggestions that have come in. “There are lots of things that we’re expected to do that we don’t have the authority to do,” Blamer says. “But maybe we should look into legislation that would give us that authority.”

In any case, Blamer says, the mailbox is still open. “I don’t want people to think that there was just a certain period when we were accepting suggestions. Anytime anybody has an idea for something that would make things better, we want to hear about it.”