GAO Report Says Federal Government Lacks Plan to Battle Traffic Congestion : Transportation: The problem is expected to grow fivefold by the year 2005. The findings are seen as particularly important to Southern Californians.

Although traffic congestion across the nation could increase as much as fivefold by the year 2005, the federal government has no comprehensive strategy to ease the problem without resorting to construction of expensive new roads, a new federal study concludes.

In addition, the government does not have consistently reliable techniques to gauge the effectiveness of the scattered programs already in place to reduce highway clogging, the study says.

A two-volume report issued by the General Accounting Office calls on the U.S. Transportation Department to develop a detailed, coordinated game plan to fight gridlock and to find better ways to assess its congestion-fighting programs.

The findings are especially significant for the exploding suburban regions of Southern California, said Thomas A. Horan, who worked on the study for the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

The Southland, Horan said, “exemplifies many aspects of today’s congestion problems nationwide. It is an example of the suburban boom, not only in terms of housing but in terms of jobs. There isn’t just one downtown . . . .

“Those kinds of characteristics are the kind that lead to the sort of automobile use that creates more congestion.”

The study notes that the Los Angeles metropolitan area is the most congested in the nation, with 17,945 vehicle miles of travel each day on each lane of freeway. An area is considered congested when daily vehicle miles per lane reach 13,000, the study says.

In second place is the San Francisco-Oakland area, followed by Houston, Atlanta and Phoenix.

The study notes that Transportation Department agencies devote considerable resources to encouraging improved traffic management through grants for car pooling, van pooling, installation of computer-regulated traffic signals, creation of accident management programs and construction of park-and-ride lots and high occupancy vehicle lanes on what had been freeway shoulders.

The department spent $188.3 million on those and other traffic management programs in 1988, the study says.

Longer range strategies under study call for the development of “smart cars” and “smart highways” that would use sensors and other sophisticated electronic devices to direct autos along routes that would create the least congestion. Two advanced technology studies funded jointly by Caltrans and the Transportation Department are under way in California.

Despite those programs, “the diffuse nature of the federal efforts does raise . . . concern regarding the extent to which the federal role is being efficiently and effectively executed,” the GAO concludes.

“The gaps in evaluation identified in our review point to areas where critical information on the merit of programs and, consequently, the usefulness of funds, is not being obtained,” the report says.

The GAO study was released within weeks of the expected unveiling of Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner’s long-awaited national transportation policy, which will address congestion, along with many other issues.

It also comes as Congress is preparing to design a massive new federal highway aid initiative that will replace the previous program, which financed construction of the nearly complete interstate highway system during the last 30 years.

The GAO report cited one federal study predicting that delays on urban freeways will increase 436% between 1985 and 2005. The study is based on a computer model that assumes no new major freeway construction or changes in driving habits.

Another study cited concludes that 58% of the increase in commuter traffic between 1960 and 1980 resulted from drivers traveling from one suburb to another, rather than from the suburbs to urban centers.

“We’ve succeeded in moving people from coast to coast. But we need to do a lot more to get people from uptown to downtown and from suburb to suburb,” said Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.). Lautenberg is chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee, which commissioned the GAO study.

It is especially important for the federal government to concentrate on congestion-reducing efforts that do not require massive highway construction because federal dollars for road building are likely to be in short supply in coming years, Horan said.

“The federal role historically has been to add capacity through construction,” Horan said. “However, the construction era is over, and the premium now is on managing the system better, and that would involve coordinating the various efforts.”

Southern California is “kind of a testing ground for how you’re going to solve the congestion problem without simply building more capacity,” said Monte R. Ward, manager of government and community relations for the Orange County Transportation Commission.

Because of high construction costs and environmental concerns, Ward said: “We can’t just keep building more roads, so we’re having to look at a lot of these different strategies.”

Among the alternate strategies already taking shape in Southern California are construction of high occupancy vehicle lanes on freeways, promotion of car pooling, construction of light rail or monorail systems and design of “transportation corridors” along surface streets to speed traffic flow with innovative signal and intersection improvements.

Even though the Federal Highway Administration and the Urban Mass Transit Administration-- both agencies of the Transportation Department--support such efforts, the GAO study concluded that their approaches have problems.

For example, the FHA is working on an urban congestion action plan, and the UMTA has in place a “Suburban Mobility Initiative.” However, the GAO found that both programs “depend on a variety of funding sources and, at the beginning of fiscal year 1989, had not received a firm commitment for the funds needed for the year.”

“Consequently, DOT might consider a more systematic and stable means of providing assistance in transportation systems management,” the GAO says.