Dear Street Smart:I moved here from the...

Dear Street Smart:

I moved here from the Midwest, outside of Chicago, and was wondering why there are very few left-turn signals aA.-area intersections.

I think that installing left-turn signals would help cut down on accidents where cars turning left must wait for a yellow or red light before turning and are hit by opposing traffic. I find it very nerve-racking to be hung out in the middle of the intersection, making a left turn, when the light is red and opposing traffic is revving its engines like the start of the Indy 500.

Marc Jacobs, Burbank

Dear Reader:

To explain why L. A. seems to lack left-turn signals, we might start with a paraphrase from “The Wizard of Oz”: Toto, we’re not in Chicago anymore.

Here in the City of Angels, city traffic engineer Brian Gallagher says, we must deal with myriad traffic and street conditions, especially congestion, that aren’t necessarily the case elsewhere.

“We have a lot more traffic than they have in the Midwest, so we have to pay more attention to the efficiency of the whole intersection. Every little second matters. We can’t afford to give up 10 seconds for a couple drivers to turn left, because that 10 seconds we could use for three lanes of through traffic” from the other direction, Gallagher says.

The synchronization of signals makes such considerations all the more important to keep traffic flowing.

This isn’t to say there are no left-turn signals at all in Los Angeles. Selected intersections have them, but had to undergo engineering studies before they were installed. Engineers examine whether there is a high accident rate at a particular intersection, what the average speed of traffic is in the area and the number of left turns made, among other criteria.

“We have guidelines here to figure out where left-turn signals are actually needed instead of arbitrarily putting them in,” says Gallagher.

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Dear Street Smart:

What’s happening to Valley freeways? It seems everywhere either the center dividers or the shoulders are being worked on--specifically, on the 405, 118 and 170 freeways.

Are we going to be getting some badly needed extra lanes?

Kevin Frandson, Valencia

Dear Reader:

Those of you who have followed this column will already know that lanes are indeed being added on those freeways, but because Street Smart still receives a number of inquiries on this issue, let this be the definitive announcement.

Where you see roadwork going on in the median, Caltrans is constructing extra lanes, but only for the ecologically minded. The new lanes are for car pools of two or more people (no inflatable dummies allowed).

On the 170 Freeway, car-pool lanes--called “high-occupancy vehicle lanes” in Caltrans-speak--will run between Interstate 5 and the 101-134 Freeway split. The lanes should be available by April of next year.

On the 405 Freeway, the car-pool lanes will stretch from I-5 on the north to the 101 Freeway on the south. Work is expected to be finished by June, 1996.

And on the 118 Freeway, recently renamed in honor of former President Ronald Reagan, car-poolers will be able to zoom in their own designated lane from the I-5 out to the Ventura-Los Angeles County line, starting sometime in 1996.

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Dear Readers:

For your “In Case You Were Wondering” files, there is a reason why Los Angeles insists on being different when it comes to the color of its street signs.

The national color for street markers is green. But in L. A., and in some other cities that may or may not be trying to emulate us, street signs are a royal blue.

The reason, for once, actually boils down to one of practicality rather than an attempt to stand out from the crowd.

After World War II, the city began fabricating signs out of porcelain. As it turned out, blue was one of the few colors manufacturers could make with porcelain, says David Royer of the city Department of Transportation.

Fortunately, that didn’t conflict with the national standard, which, though establishing green as the preferred color, allowed cities to use blue or brown if they wanted.

Ergo our blue signs.

Interestingly, for many years, the city’s sign makers stopped using porcelain in favor of metal. But the old markers proved more graffiti-resistant and so durable (many in East Los Angeles date back to the 1940s) that 10 years ago the city reverted to using porcelain.

So now they do make ‘em like they used to. And the original reason for adopting blue as our official street-sign color is back.