Traffic on Freeways Crawls Just a Bit Faster

For the most part, traffic did its typical rush-hour crawl Tuesday morning--but it crawled a bit faster than usual on at least five stretches of the Southern California freeway system.

Caltrans officials monitoring 10 freeway checkpoints on Tuesday--designated “Keep California Moving Day”--said traffic moved as much as 7 m.p.h. faster in five locations, compared to measurements from a similar survey conducted a month earlier.

The agency checkpoints were set up from 6 to 10 a.m. on the Golden State, San Bernardino, Pomona, San Diego and the Costa Mesa freeways in an effort to gauge the success of efforts to promote car-pooling.

Transportation officials said that nearly 175,000 Southern California commuters pledged not to drive alone Tuesday as part of the observance of Rideshare Week.

While the officials acknowledge that the results were not earth-shattering---considering that about 78% of Southern California drivers continue to drive solo--traffic experts say the increased speeds indicate that car-pooling and other alternatives have an effect on traffic.

The most significant increases were along the Pomona Freeway at Peck Road near El Monte, where the average speed increased from 30 m.p.h. to 37 m.p.h., and on the Costa Mesa Freeway at McFadden Street in Santa Ana, where speeds went from 48 m.p.h. to 55 m.p.h., according to the survey conducted by Caltrans and Commuter Transportation Services Inc.

The bad news is that at half of the checkpoints, traffic was the same or worse.

On the Ventura Freeway at Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Van Nuys, the checkpoint where traffic flow was slowest Tuesday, the survey showed that speeds decreased from 37 m.p.h. to about 30 m.p.h. despite ride-sharing.

Still, Jim Sims, president of the nonprofit group that operates the Commuter Computer ride-sharing services used by about 2,000 companies, said experts believe that freeway speeds overall are increasing gradually for the first time in many years.

Russell Snyder, a Caltrans spokesman, agreed. He said workers who monitor traffic have been noticing a slight increase in freeway speeds during the last few months. But he said Caltrans cannot confirm those observations until a new survey is completed early next year.

Tuesday’s commuter survey was one of dozens of events scheduled to promote the sixth annual Rideshare Week. About 900 entertainment industry figures turned out Monday for a ride-share fair at KCET television studios in Los Angeles.

Despite such efforts, life on the freeways seemed pretty much the same to some Tuesday. Jill Angel, a traffic reporter for KNX-AM radio, said traffic snarls caused by accidents were as common on local freeways as ever: “If you have three or four people in a car and you have three lanes closed because of an accident, you are not going to go anywhere.”