Commuters at an Impasse Because of Freeway Transition Design

Holy SigAlert, Batman. You guys must have really been famished for the kind of valuable insight Street Smart is going to bring you. My introductory column, asking for questions on life in the heart of the car-commuting culture, brought an avalanche of faxes and phone calls. Or at least an avalanche for a guy whose hottest mail used to come from the Publishers Clearinghouse. OK, I’ll dive right in:

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I go home nightly on the San Diego Freeway from Sunset Boulevard north through the Sepulveda Impasse and over the hills into the Valley. A major cause of the sluggish climb over the top are slow, chugging semitrailer trucks in the fast lanes.

But multi-axled vehicles are supposed to stay in the slow lane or the next lane over when they are passing. Under no circumstances are these vehicles to be in any lanes other than those two.

So, what gives?

Barry Cook, Newhall

What we have here is basically a freeway design problem to which there is no real good solution. The two right lanes on the northbound San Diego Freeway as it descends into the Valley from Sepulveda Pass are set aside for traffic turning onto the Ventura Freeway. So drivers of big trucks who want to continue north on the San Diego Freeway have to avoid those lanes. That puts them right in your face. California Highway Patrol Officer Angela Brown said the CHP will not ticket those trucks for being in the fast lanes as long as they get back to the slow lane as soon as possible. For you commuters stuck behind these behemoths, Brown said there is not much you can do but “just chill.”

I can think of no quick alternate route, so I would suggest you buy a CB radio and join the convoy, good buddy.

Is there a phone number you can call to report cars or motorcycles that are excessively noisy?

Alan Clement, Studio City

Yes, it’s 1-800-TOO-LOUD. Wait, don’t dial that. I’m only kidding. In truth, there is no special number to report such an offense. You can jot down the license number of the offending vehicle and report it to your local police or Highway Patrol office. But the cops say the chances are very good that they will be too busy to track down the culprit. The only way they will ticket these varmints is if they catch them in the act. However, if that noisy car also happens to belch too much smoke, you can report it to 1-800-CUT-SMOG. This time, I’m not kidding. That is a real number operated by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The AQMD will then send the registered owner a letter, urging the owner to fix the problem.

On Strathern Street where I live there was good pavement, but about six years ago the city decided to rip the pavement out. Six to eight months later they resurfaced it. But the stretch of Burbank Boulevard from Laurel Canyon Boulevard to the city of Burbank is a disaster. Why do they choose to resurface some streets and not others?

Jack Howe, Reseda

You touch upon a mystery that has perplexed greater minds than mine. Nonetheless, I’ll take a crack at it. Each year, the city has only enough money to repave about 140 miles of the city’s 7,000 miles of street. (You can see why many streets look like the surface of the moon--and the expected city budget cutbacks may reduce even that level of maintenance.) To decide where the fresh pavement goes, street maintenance officials rank each street based on the number of potholes and cracks and the amount of erosion.

Now, logic would tell you that this system would give the most attention to the most beat-up streets. Right? Wrong.

According to Elton Lui, chief coordinator for the bureau of street maintenance, his department also likes to do “preventive maintenance” by putting a new layer of pavement on streets like yours that are not in terrible shape. Lui said they want to get to streets like yours before they fall into complete disrepair and require total reconstruction. As for Burbank Boulevard, there is a plan to repave that stretch of road but it is on hold while the city installs underground cables and such for a synchronized traffic signal project. (If you can make sense of all of this, you have a job waiting for you at the Bureau of Street Maintenance.)

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At a four-way signal, if there are five cars or so in a left turn lane, there is always someone at the front who doesn’t move out into the intersection to make a left turn. They know they are going to make a left turn, but they don’t care about who is behind them. Sometimes you can wait 15 minutes to make a left turn because of this selfishness. Maybe the DMV should instruct them to move out a little bit and let the next car through.

Jodi Desmond, Van Nuys

Ah, yes, I call these people the “Left Turn Creeps.” As punishment, they should be dragged from their cars and forced to sit through 10 hours of “Love Boat” reruns.

While the state vehicle code does not specifically address how far you can go into an intersection while waiting to make a left turn, Los Angeles Police Officer Bill Mulvihil, of the Valley’s traffic bureau, says you can pull all the way to the center of the intersection as long as the light is green. In fact, he said, if you are stuck in the middle of the intersection waiting to make a left turn and the light turns red before you make the turn, the LAPD won’t even ticket you. (If, however, you get such a ticket, please do not send it to me; send it to Officer Bill.)

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Here is my weirdest commuting experience: Driving across town to a meeting, I had only gotten two blocks from home when the engine died. Turned out to be a broken timing belt. Walked home, arranged for the car to be towed. Got into my “spare” car and drove off. Just as I passed my first car, the second developed two flat tires. I walked home and got back into bed.

Ophner Banarie, Reseda

Your problem is your strong work ethic; going directly to bed after the first car died would have allowed you to avoid much of the hassle.