Traffic Columnist Hits the Road With LADOT Team

About a year ago, my editors gave me a little present--writing the Traffic Talk column that runs in the Valley Edition every Friday.

It seemed like an easy gig--sorting through the various traffic questions readers send and getting answers from the state and local traffic agencies. Not exactly Pulitzer Prize-quality journalism, but the kind of assignment a relatively new reporter can expect to get.

My first clue that the job might be a little tougher than it was billed came when I called a Caltrans spokesman for the answer to my inaugural question.

“My condolences on your getting Traffic Talk,” he said.

As it turns out, the job is often more time-consuming than it might seem. When a reader writes in to ask why they can’t get a left-turn arrow at a busy intersection, engineers typically don’t answer off the top of their heads. They actually go out on the street to do research.

So much for getting a quick answer over the phone--I often have to submit a question weeks or months before publication.

Still, the effort to which the city goes to find answers reflects just how seriously they take the issue. Engineers take pride in making sure traffic is efficient--especially as they try to make streets, intersections and freeways handle traffic far beyond their design capacity.

After a year of writing the column, I decided to get a firsthand look at how the questions are researched.

A reader had complained that a left-turn arrow from Topanga Canyon Boulevard onto Nordhoff Street was too brief. Los Angeles city transportation engineers Bill J. Shao [ and Steve Rostam [] rode out to Chatsworth to check it out.

The engineers came prepared for the traffic battle, wearing orange vests and clutching complicated maps and charts showing optimum times for each traffic movement..

After analyzing the data--vehicle volumes, crossing times for pedestrians, coordination with nearby signals--the verdict was in: Not enough vehicles were able to turn left during weekday morning rush hour. The reader was right.

Shao opened the controller box on the sidewalk containing the signal’s computerized timer and keyed in new information. It had taken Rostam a day and a half of work to investigate the signal, the equivalent of about two paragraphs of material for a future Traffic Talk column.

Mike Mark, who had penned the letter complaining about the signal, was pleased to learn the engineers had approved his suggestion. But he was still angry about the headaches that signal had caused him.

“I was aggravated making that left turn there,” said Mark, 86, who lives near the intersection.

I told Mark he should feel lucky because engineers routinely reject readers’ suggestions, a fact he said he knew well from regularly reading the column.

The episode reflected something else I’ve learned writing Traffic Talk: Motorists take their traffic seriously.

Traffic Talk letter-writers complain bitterly about ill-timed traffic signals, roads in need of repaving, dangerous intersections and freeway backups. They demand speed humps to slow down the racing SUVs cutting through their streets.

One Canoga Park writer painted a web of conspiring officials bent on dragging out commutes, possibly in a scheme to fill city coffers:

Dear Traffic Talk,

There was a time when one could go 35 mph on virtually any Valley street with that posted speed limit and hit all green lights. Over the years, I have seen this degenerate so that now signals in sync with the speed limit are a rarity. I could name streets like Roscoe Boulevard and Shoup and Winnetka avenues as examples, but all the streets in the Valley are out of sync. At the same time, traffic officers are out in force. Has the city found a clever way to increase revenue?

Shao, who heads signal timing systems at the city department of transportation and oversees the city’s 4,300 traffic lights, said he spends a lot time on the phone with citizens discussing their complaints. (He frets they’ll get his direct line. Don’t worry Bill, readers won’t get it from me.)

Like the Jack Webb of traffic, Shao asks emotional citizens to stick to the facts as he, in a sort of sympathetic yet detached way, sorts through their rants.

“We only look at facts and numbers,” he said. “It’s not a game on our side.”

But Shao, 31, said he understands the “human factor” at work.

“Everybody’s in a hurry to go somewhere,” he said. “At the end of a long day you’re tired and you want to go home and being caught in traffic is not something you want.”