Recipe for Congestion Has Many Ingredients

Just try driving through downtown Los Angeles these days and this is what you’ll find:

Streets being ripped up to lay a network of fiber optic cable. Road crews busy rebuilding old Broadway and beautifying Figueroa Street. Construction everywhere.

Add film crews and the occasional bomb threats, demonstrations and parades, and what do you have?

Traffic that approaches gridlock.

John Fisher, assistant general manager for the city Department of Transportation, acknowledges that the city is working on overload.

“There are utility projects and road improvement projects being rushed to [completion] by the summer, because we don’t want construction to be occurring during the Democratic National Convention,” Fisher said. “The public may have to endure more delays now.”

Try explaining that to John Watson of Pasadena, who was fuming behind the wheel of his Toyota 4-Runner on Wednesday as midmorning traffic was stopped at Spring and 4th streets.

“This is ridiculous,” he said as the southbound traffic slowed because of the closure of two lanes for the fiber optics roadwork. “I was told about this by a friend, but he didn’t tell me it would be this bad. I’ve been stopped here for what--10 minutes? I ought to cuss out somebody.”

And it’s not just streets being built. There’s the construction of Walt Disney Concert Hall and Our Lady Queen of Angels Cathedral, plus the rebuilding of City Hall, activities that all spill into surrounding streets.

Councilman Nick Pacheco, whose district includes parts of downtown, said the public needs to be patient.

“You have to consider the growing pains of joining the information age,” he said. “I know it’s difficult to maneuver around downtown. It’s frustrating. But we have to bite the bullet, because it is in the best interest of the city.”

The fiber optic work--laying an underground conduit from Wilshire Boulevard and Olive Street downtown to Union Station--has been going on for five weeks. It has tied up traffic as it moved along Grand Avenue, 6th Street and now Spring Street.

The worst congestion seems to be from 7 to 10 a.m. and 5 to 7 p.m.

On Wednesday traffic slowed as four lanes of Spring narrowed to two, bringing the morning rush hour to a near-standstill. Horns blared. Motorists cussed. Buses tried to change lanes.

There were no traffic control officers to monitor the situation.

The traffic snarl on Spring is likely to get worse as the fiber optics work moves north toward City Hall. Eventually, the work will reach the train station, perhaps creating more traffic headaches in that area.

The problems on Spring are compounded by the continuing reconstruction of Broadway. Some nearby streets have restricted lanes to accommodate it. So 3rd Street, for instance, already clogged because of the fiber optics work, gets a double dose of trouble because of the Broadway work.

At present, the stretch of Broadway between 4th and Temple streets is torn up for resurfacing. Such work on other portions of Broadway, between 4th and 9th streets, is complete.

Adding to the traffic woes is the popularity of downtown for filming. On Wednesday, more than 20 locations were blocked off for shooting everything from a Temptations video to a feature film based on the “Charlie’s Angels” television series.

Morrie Goldman, a spokesman for the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., a nonprofit group that assists movie producers in obtaining permits to film, said downtown has long been an attractive location. Production companies like to use the sites because they can dress them up to look like New York, Chicago or San Francisco.

But even though the filming causes traffic headaches, Goldman said, complaints have been few.

“Certainly there is a little bit of inconvenience on occasion,” he said. “But that little bit of inconvenience . . . puts people to work.”

Besides, Goldman added, “I don’t know any place in Los Angeles that doesn’t have traffic.”

Last year, fewer than 1,000 complaints were generated throughout the city where production companies did the equivalent of more than 46,000 days of filming, he said.

“I think by and large most people recognize that filming is part of the daily life in Los Angeles,” Goldman said.

But not all are so understanding about having their lives disrupted.

Lita Morales and Ofelia Romo, two senior citizens from the Eastside who go downtown most days to shop, complained about the continuing traffic problems and street work on Broadway.

“It’s ugly,” Morales said. “Who wants to come downtown when it’s like this?”

Romo replied, “No one.”

The two complained that the Route 30 bus they ride is not traveling south on Broadway as it usually does, because of the street work. Instead, it turns south on Spring to avoid the hassles on Broadway.

But Wednesday morning, the bus ran into the traffic backup from the fiber optics work.

“I even got madder because of these babosos,” Romo complained, using the Spanish word for “idiots” to emphasize her displeasure.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Downtown Gridlock

A number of projects--as well as location filming that moves from day to day--are slowing traffic to a crawl across downtown Los Angeles. These were the trouble spots on Wednesday: