Has the traffic mess come to this?...

Has the traffic mess come to this? The L.A. County Transportation Commission, which administers Metro Rail, recently voted to create an L.A. County Congestion Management Agency.

Congestion management, not congestion elimination or even congestion minimization?

Someone, pass the antihistamine.

L.A. isn’t famous for the Mediterranean influence in its public buildings--Inglewood’s Forum, for instance, somewhat resembles a standing rib roast.

But the Civic Center figures to be enhanced with the completion later this year of the Bunker Hill Steps, which were inspired by Rome’s famous Spanish Steps.

The arched, winding staircase, rising from 5th Street to Hope Street alongside the Library Tower, will feature a series of fountains and other embellishments not usually found downtown.

The Steps no doubt will take their place with such famous L.A. staircases as:

* The Laurel and Hardy Steps at 932-935 Vendome Street in Silver Lake, which the comedy duo tried to ascend while pushing a piano in “The Music Box,” the Academy-Award-winning film of 1932.

* The Thelma Todd Steps, which led to the actress’s house above her one-time restaurant at 17575 Pacific Coast Highway. She is believed to have walked them just before her still-unsolved death in 1935. Later, Raymond Chandler alluded to the stairway in “Farewell My Lovely” (“It was a nice walk if you liked grunting. There were 280 steps. . . .”)

* The City Hall Steps, site of championship celebrations as well as the unforgettable debut of Sam the Eagle, the 1984 Olympics mascot. No sooner was Sam introduced than he took a spectacular fall, prompting a radio reporter to proclaim: “The eagle has landed!”

Remember that other crisis--the drought? From time to time, we’ve published off-beat suggestions for saving water, such as Al Hix’s recommendation to introduce dirt-wrestling in place of the mud variety in Hollywood clubs and Gary Nordell’s suggestion that brewers make “thicker beer.”

Perhaps the most revolutionary idea comes from Al Greenwood, the self-styled Bedspread King of Long Beach, who includes a column with each newspaper ad.

“In some cultures of the world,” Greenwood wrote the other day, “people rarely bathe--and there is a mutual sexual attraction between men and women with strong body odors. . . . I’m suggesting that we start an ad campaign to promote ‘the natural man’ and ‘the natural woman’ of California--the people who never bathe.”

Thanks, Al, but we’d rather do our part by being the one “who never orders water in a restaurant.”

The Persian Gulf is on everyone’s mind, of course. Comic Johnny Carson suggested that we send over our secret weapon--Roseanne Barr singing the Iraqi national anthem. Reservists are being called to active duty. Meanwhile, Bob Wallace of Van Nuys is trying to recruit some older servicemen. For a coming reunion, he asks anyone who was assigned to the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga during World War II to phone (818) 988-2989.

Who’d have guessed that an L.A. hotel owner would become the world’s richest man? He’s worth $25 billion, according to Fortune Magazine. So, congratulations are in order for the proprietor of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the host with the most--the Sultan of Brunei.

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Arvind Pandya, who evidently couldn’t bear to take his eyes off L.A., is in the Guinness Book of World Records for accomplishing the world’s longest backwards run--L.A. to New York in 107 days in 1984.