The Transportation Key

They’re getting ready in the Washington, D.C., area, which expects a 40% population increase over the next 21 years.

The National Capital Region Congestion and Mobility Summit was held there last summer, convened by Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater. Maryland and Virginia, adjoining states, helped sponsor the event. The goal: a regionwide solution for the area’s transportation needs. “The first step begins by putting aside the small differences that have too often stalled progress and focusing on the larger goals that unite us,” Slater said.

Why hasn’t that happened in Los Angeles?

The population of the 13-county metropolitan Chicago area will grow from 8.5 million to more than 10 million in the next 20 years, and the amount of developed land will more than double in the same period. Recent studies have shown that low-level sprawl locked in inefficient investments in highways, longer sewer and water lines and other infrastructure. There is a growing sense that a decades-old fragmentation of land use, transportation and environmental planning among too many entities must be changed and consolidated.

Why isn’t that kind of critical thinking going on here?

The Road Information Program (TRIP), a nonprofit research group based in the District of Columbia, reports that the key to minimizing regional traffic congestion is bringing local leaders together to clearly identify their problems, develop a strategic solution and then act to provide relief.

It must be well-publicized and involve “a balanced approach utilizing a variety of transportation strategies,” said TRIP’s executive director, William M. Wilkins.

That means exploring all options: additional traffic lanes and turn lanes; new roads and highway links; additional mass transit service; better traffic signals; better driver information and incident management; more ramp-metering and reverse-flow lanes; balancing of jobs, housing and transportation access in each subregion of a community and regional solutions to airport access and expansion.

Unfortunately, such a comprehensive approach is unlikely in Los Angeles. The reasons are fairly simple. For one thing, there has been a failure of coordinated leadership at the congressional, state and regional leadership levels in Southern California. This despite the prediction that a population equal to Chicago’s will settle here in the next 20 years. What greater urgency does one need?

Also, there is just one regional transportation system that deals regularly with the leadership of multiple counties. It’s the Southern California Rail Authority and its Metrolink rail network. But it does not speak with a big voice. How can it, when its daily ridership is so small that it couldn’t fill one-third of the seats at the Rose Bowl?

There is a regional voice in SCAG, the Southern California Assn. of Governments. But when it talks, unfortunately, folks don’t have to listen as they should; SCAG has no enforcement powers.

By virtue of its size, purse strings and massive projects, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority ought to have provided the leadership platform for the region to rally around. Instead the agency has been forced to turn inward on all fronts. Its board members have so many conflicts of interest that it is hard to get a seven-vote majority.

There’s more. Rather than face certain defeat in a federal lawsuit demanding significant bus system improvements for the transit-dependent, the MTA agreed to settle the case. But just how far apart are the bus rider union’s plans and the MTA’s most generous offer? Pretty far. You could almost fill the gap with what Congress allocated last year toward a national missile defense system--$600 million. There is no political momentum for a solution, so the outcome has been thrown to Donald Bliss, the special master in the case. Bliss will have to wing a solution without realistic guidance from either side.

State legislators have jumped into the power vacuum, but only to force the construction of a light rail line from Pasadena to downtown, not exactly the regional thinking that’s needed. Local congressional representatives dove in, too, but only for a mass transit alternative to a subway on the Eastside. L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan is hooked on buses and busways, just one part of the puzzle. Communities have gotten involved, but only to slam MTA construction or to fight the extension of the 710 freeway.

In the meantime, three Southern California metropolitan areas made the Texas Transportation Institute’s new list of the country’s 10 most congested areas: The Los Angeles area was by far the worst. San Diego was ninth and San Bernardino-Riverside ranked 10th. By contrast, the supposedly gridlocked New York City-northeastern New Jersey area was ranked 12th.

Southern California congressional members, state senators, Assembly members and local leaders need to form a regional leadership team having the power to overcome the myriad shortcomings of the MTA and others. The federal government would do well to join the effort. This is the only way that a forward-thinking approach to Southern California’s congestion problems will emerge. If other regions can accomplish this, so can ours.