Lean Times Are Thinning Traffic : With Fewer Drivers on the Road, Accidents Are on the Decline
Looking for a welcome byproduct of a tougher economy? How about gentler traffic?
With fewer people shopping or dining out--fewer working, for that matter--fewer are clobbering one another on Southland roads.
Evidence comes from the big auto insurer 20th Century Industries in Woodland Hills, which reported a rise in recent profit, partly because of lagging growth in certain kinds of claims.
Specifically, claims filed against 20th Century for accidents that its customers caused have risen at a much slower rate than expected, spokesman Richard Dinon said.
Since there is every reason for drivers to press claims when the other guy’s company is paying--particularly in hard times--the trend was all the more surprising.
Consulting with insurance trade groups and poring over its own data led 20th Century to conclude that the key factor is lighter traffic brought on by the recession.
Such news, while tonic for drivers, reflects unhappy trends.
“Most of the time when you’re driving somewhere and you’re not going to or from work, you’re going someplace to spend money,” said Nick Jones, who tracks Los Angeles County traffic for the California Transportation Department. “It’s those discretionary trips that are being cut back.”
Last year, for the first time on record, there was a drop in vehicle miles traveled in Los Angeles County, Jones said. For more than a decade before that, increases had averaged about 4.5% a year.
If traffic really is thinning, why is my commute as slow as ever? Easy, said Jones: Rush-hour flow hasn’t changed much--freeways are still at capacity--but the decline has come in off-peak hours.
Trucker Chuck McVey, who is on the road up to 10 hours each workday for KKW Trucking in Pomona, said traffic looks pretty much the same to him, except for Friday mornings, when it seems to be lighter these days.
“But I have to admit the only time I think about it is when I’m stuck in it,” he said.
McVey himself may account for a tiny drop in congestion, he acknowledged, since when he’s not working he tries to save money by staying home.
That kind of economizing cuts into store sales. Through August, in fact, retail sales in the five-county Southland area this year were off 2.8% from the corresponding eight months of 1991. And 1991 was no prize: Full-year retail sales were down 2.7% from the year before.
Retailers are doing well just to hold their own.
Car traffic at Glendale Galleria, for example, is down slightly from last year, but sales have held steady, “so we feel pretty lucky about that,” a spokeswoman said.
USC economist Peter Gordon cautioned that factors other than recession are at work in traffic trends. Suburbanization and the flow of jobs away from downtown business districts actually reduced average commuting time nationally between 1983 and 1990, he said, citing a government survey.
In the year ended June 30, for the second year in a row, drivers license records showed a net migration of motorists from Los Angeles County to other states.
And continuing a seven-year trend, more drivers moved away from Los Angeles to other California counties last year than did the reverse. The net loss for the year ended June 30 was 104,884.
Economist Jack Kyser of the Economic Development Corporation of Los Angeles County noted that the county has lost 413,800 jobs since employment peaked in March, 1990.
“That’s many fewer people going to work by whatever means they have,” he said.
Parking lot operators see it. Even in prime downtown locations, they’ve had to cut rates.
The Parking Assn. of California reports volume declines of 25% to 30% from more robust days, President Stanley Long said. The trade group’s members account for about 500,000 parking spaces in greater Los Angeles alone.
The economy, Long said, is a far bigger factor in the declines than are efforts by the South Coast Air Quality Management District to spur car-pooling, mass transit and working at home.
“People are just not coming in,” he said.
Times staff writer Nancy Rivera Brooks contributed to this story.
Driving Less
Traffic decreased last year in Los Angeles County, albeit slightly, for the first time on record. Figures show vehicle miles traveled in Los Angeles County on the 510 miles of freeways and 386 miles of secondary highways that CalTrans monitors with its electronic counting machines.
