Herding Traffic

These are the sorts of traffic cops you want to see in the rearview mirror.

In an unusual tactic, the California Highway Patrol has assigned 14 motorcycle officers and one patrol car the sole responsibility of keeping traffic moving on a 5 1/2-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley.

They are not there to write tickets or fill out accident reports.

Think of them, instead, as motorized traffic herders whose goal is to keep the flow moving and to prevent wayward drivers from straying from the pack.

Their job on the freeway--between Lankershim and Van Nuys boulevards, is to help disabled vehicles, move cars involved in fender-benders out of traffic lanes and clear away the annoying freeway flotsam that causes drivers to swerve around it.

The one-year CHP pilot program is part of Gov. Gray Davis’ $5.2-billion Traffic Congestion Relief Plan, which he unveiled last April.

Funded with $9.7 million, the CHP’s Focused Congestion Management Project assigned 96 officers to traffic hot spots around the state.

The Valley unit is the only one in Los Angeles County; Riverside County has 21 officers and Ventura County has two.

Because the CHP called the program “focused congestion management,” there’s a good chance that motorists will notice their presence. Fifteen officers cover the 11-mile circuit along lanes in both directions of the Ventura Freeway from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Cruising back and forth, they survey a stretch of the freeway that the California Department of Transportation has identified as one of the state’s 20 major congestion points, says CHP Sgt. Michael Poore.

The CHP’s Southern Division, which covers Greater Los Angeles, has the unenviable honor of being home to 14 of those clogged freeway arteries.

On one particular Friday morning, traffic was speeding along unusually smoothly, said CHP Officer Wendy Kozlowski.

Not more than five minutes after entering the freeway, Kozlowski stopped her patrol car to assist the driver of a silver Cadillac that was on the shoulder.

“He panicked because some lights came on on his dash,” she said after talking with the driver. After she instructed him to carefully get off the freeway, a few moments later the nervous man cautiously left the freeway, hazard lights blinking.

Easing back into traffic lanes, Kozlowski passed several colleagues on CHP-issued BMW motorcycles.

One stopped to talk with the driver of a dilapidated pickup truck who wanted to adjust the gardening equipment that was about to tumble out. On the other side of the freeway, an officer checked on a big rig parked near an offramp.

The CHP warns drivers not to park on shoulders unless it’s an emergency. When speeders drift over to the shoulder and plow into unsuspecting motorists, it can be a death zone.

But cars stopped on the side of the highway also draw the attention of other drivers--rubberneckers--who trigger a domino effect, slowing traffic.

Why do they park on the shoulders?

“I can give you a list a mile long,” said motorcycle Officer Robin Johnson. It includes impromptu cell phone chats and searches for things dropped in the car.

“It’s absolutely amazing if they realized how people can drift onto the shoulder and hit them,” she said as traffic whizzed by at a dizzying clip.

Just after 9 a.m. on the westbound Ventura Freeway near the Woodman Avenue offramp, a big rig was stopped on what the CHP calls a “gore point,” the V-shaped wedge between freeway lanes and an offramp.

“He actually pulled over because he’s lost and he’s checking his map,” Johnson said after telling the trucker to get back onto the highway.

Since the pilot program began in November, the CHP has slashed response times for calls in the target area. Before the program, response times averaged 21 minutes. But in November and December, officers cut that to four to five minutes, Poore said.

Of course, traffic-frazzled motorists don’t care so much about the other guy who is stuck on the shoulder. All they care about is will they travel faster on the freeway if the CHP is out in greater force.

Caltrans said it is monitoring the effectiveness of the added officers, but faster freeway speeds are not what they gauge.

The biggest benefit will be to deter those hot dog drivers who swerve across several lanes to make a last-minute exit, and to sweep the shoulders to rid them of nonemergency stragglers, said Tom Choe, who oversees this region’s Caltrans freeway operations.

If there is a minor accident or stalled car, the CHP has to be called out to fight the residual traffic backup from that problem and then clear the site, Choe noted.

An accident that blocks one lane for 15 minutes or less costs motorists about $2,000 in lost job time, productivity and other expenses, according to Caltrans estimates.

With 897 such incidents in November and an additional 1,029 in December on this stretch of the Ventura, the financial toll can be substantial, Choe said.

And for those who feel their heart rate jump when they see a CHP officer, the new program is a refreshing change.

“You OK?” said Kozlowski as she knocked on the passenger window of a brown Chevy truck stuck on the shoulder near Vineland Avenue.

“I think it overheated; my temperature gauge was jumping,” answered a surprised Kristen Gass of Valencia, who was in frantically dialing her cell phone.

A few minutes later, Kozlowski gently nudged the truck with her patrol car’s push bumper all the way down the shoulder to the next offramp and a safe spot where a tow truck could take over.

“I’ve never been on the side of the freeway before,” Gass sighed. “It was nice to have someone here.”