Traffic Congestion

* San Francisco’s experience (“Bumper Stumper,” Sept. 22)--its failure to develop traffic gridlock by closing major stretches of freeway--is absolutely not a mystery. Instead, it demonstrates badly needed guidance for Los Angeles, the MTA and Caltrans.

For more than 50 years, traffic congestion, to those who support highways, has been the single justification signaling that more capacity must be built to accommodate “demonstrated” motorist demand. Heavy congestion is commonplace. Traffic slows to the point of extreme frustration, but gridlock never occurs unless a wrecked 18-wheeler blocks all lanes.

Something else happens. We have known for years that building more highways simply generates more traffic. The phenomenon is known as “latent demand.”

Our highway-prone transportation policy must be reexamined by those who have no stake in its continuation. MTA plans to spend $6.3 billion on HOV lanes, an absurd project for widening freeways. The destructive, detrimental $1.6-billion Route 710 project is still on the books. Both programs are red meat thrown to contractors, Caltrans, the highway lions, land speculators, the Auto Club and the auto and oil industries. The rest of us are expected to pay and to sit in the inevitable traffic jams.

STANLEY HART, Chairman

Transportation Committee

Angeles Chapter, Sierra Club

* I am in favor of a mass transit system that would alleviate the overcrowding of L.A. freeways. While many feel compelled to complain about decreasing funds for the MTA project, there seems to be no acknowledgment of one major problem Los Angeles has that other major cities, such as Washington and New York, do not have. Perhaps Congress (residing in D.C.) understands that Los Angeles does not have a center of business or tourism. The Los Angeles freeway system symbolizes this fact.

I suggest a central system for the downtown area stretching perhaps to Santa Monica and north to Van Nuys supplemented by a bus system with cleaner, safer, more plentiful buses. Adding more buses to run on roads that already exist is more cost-effective than building a complex metro system under, on, and/or above the ground, requiring construction of new lines and reconstruction of existing roads.

MARNI L. BERGER

Sherman Oaks