A Way Around the Roadblock

Over the past two years, Los Angeles has enacted 12 different ordinances representing incremental steps in Mayor Tom Bradley’s plan to reduce the traffic that is strangling this city and its surrounding region. The necessity of such a program is self-evident: Unchecked congestion will cripple Southern California’s commerce and further poison its air. It already has made commuters’ lives nasty, brutish--and long.

Most of the ordinances enacted thus far have regulated passenger cars and delivery vehicles. Now, the mayor has proposed a sensible plan he believes will cut the number of heavy-duty trucks on the city’s streets by 70% during peak traffic by shifting most shipping- and -receiving operations into night and early morning hours.

Bradley’s proposal is equitable and flexible. Were it not for the opposition of a powerful special interest lobby--the California Trucking Assn.--and two of its legislative allies--Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden and Republican state Sen. William Campbell of Hacienda Heights--the mayor’s plan already would have been voted on by the full council.

The truckers, however, are out to kill the plan; Campbell and Holden intend to help them. The Republican senator has introduced legislation, SB 286, that would forbid cities and counties to license or collect fees on trucks, thereby making progressive local regulatory efforts of the sort Bradley proposes impossible. The bill will be heard by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee Wednesday. Lawmakers should vote it the defeat it deserves.

Holden, meanwhile, is using his position as chairman of the council’s Traffic and Transportation Committee to force a wasteful and unnecessary reconsideration of the proposal, which already has received unanimous approval from both his panel and the Finance Committee. There is no justification for such delay. The mayor’s proposal should be brought before the full council and approved as soon as possible.

Bradley’s plan is limited to trucks with three or more axles and a gross weight exceeding 26,000 pounds. However, the California Department of Transportation believes the proposed ordinance will cut rush-hour traffic on city streets by an average of 5% to 10%. Because trucks are so much larger than cars, such a cut would reduce overall congestion from 20% to 30%, especially since accidents involving trucks account for half of all nonrecurring traffic tie-ups.

The benefits suggested by such statistics are obvious. The legislative roadblocks standing in this proposal’s path ought to be cleared now.