PERSPECTIVES ON THE NORTHRIDGE EARTHQUAKE : One Way Is Better Than No Way at All : Beef up buses and fine-tune traffic flow on surface streets to offset the loss of critical freeways.

As if Los Angeles did not have enough problems, now it has a crippled freeway system to add to the region’s growing fragmentation. Particularly hard hit in Monday’s earthquake was the nation’s busiest freeway, the Santa Monica.

Now it seems the provincial comment of privileged Westsiders--that they try never to go east of La Cienega--will be tested with the collapse of the freeway at, of all places, the La Cienega overpass. To hundreds of thousands of commuters, the snide, strained humor of the adage should fade within the week.

Repairs are expected to take up to 18 months. First, there must be inspections, then reports, to be checked by staff and double-checked by consultants. (Please, not the same structural engineers working on the Red Line.) Then, no doubt there will be more reports, new structural standards and specifications, the drafting of actual plans, their review and approval, preparation of the bid documents, the bidding, the lobbying, the challenges to the low bids, and, finally, the actual reconstruction. Better make that at least two years before we see a new overpass, if Caltrans response to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake is any measure.

In the interim, expect Caltrans to reroute traffic on and off the freeway. And expect the traffic, transportation, planning and police departments of the westside cities of Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills to grapple with Los Angeles to grab the tail of the tiger that is the area’s commuting habits.

The challenge is to come up with an arterial strategy that draws upon the imagination of not the bean-counting bureaucrats but the survivalist instincts of the commuters themselves. There is no time for studies. All the plodding planners and traffic engineers have to do is follow the first few drivers trying to make their way between the Westside and downtown.

What they will find is traffic is like water coursing down a hill. It always finds the quickest and easiest path to flow into. When the path is blocked, as it will be all along the Santa Monica Freeway, it will search out another, as it wends it way to its destination. Expect Washington, Venice and Beverly boulevards and Third and Sixth streets to become--today, tomorrow and the forseeable future--ersatz freeways.

It won’t be a matter of whether the affected communities like it or not, or of speed limits, traffic signals and stop signs being ignored. Instead of fighting it, the cities along the makeshift routes should fine-tune the flow, banning left turns, timing lights where possible and making select streets one way east in the morning and west in the afternoon. And certainly a few select streets should be set aside for buses and carpooling.

What a marvelous opportunity the earthquake-damaged freeways present to the Metropolitan Transit Authority to provide more buses and better service. Bay Area Rapid Transit came to the rescue of the San Francisco area after the ’89 quake. Maybe the MTA can put aside its parochial politics and its embrace of the pricey Metro Rail system to devote energy and funds to the more flexible and cost-efficent bus system.

Who knows, maybe Monday’s earthquake may just be the act of God to wean us from building expensive, community-busting freeways and to make us use our surface routes more efficiently for a happy melding of public and private transportation. Something to think about when you’re stuck in traffic.