MTA’s Unique Traffic Plan

Transportation officials are considering adding carpool lanes along surface streets through downtown Los Angeles and sections of skid row to close a three-mile gap between two crowded freeways.

Proponents of the plan say it is much cheaper to use city streets to connect the carpool lanes on the Harbor Freeway Transitway and the El Monte Busway on the San Bernardino Freeway than to close the gap by building new carpool lanes on the existing freeways.

To add carpool lanes on the two freeways would require widening or adding a second deck to the roadways, at a cost of nearly $1 billion. By comparison, linking the two sections along city streets would cost less than $6 million, planners say.

But the proposal by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has generated strong opposition from downtown residents, lawmakers and business owners who fear the carpool lanes would ruin efforts to transform downtown into a pedestrian-friendly shopping and residential district.

“It’s ridiculous to run that thing through downtown when it’s just starting to come to life,” said Douglas Wance, a lawyer who lives in a downtown loft on Spring Street.

The MTA has yet to decide on a route for the proposed lanes. Nearly a dozen streets are under consideration. For the north-south segment of the route, the possibilities include San Pedro, Alameda and Main streets and Central Avenue. For the east-west segment, proposed routes include 4th Street, Adams and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards.

MTA planners hope to narrow the alternatives to two or three before presenting the idea to the MTA board in February. A final decision is expected in April.

Planners say a connection between the El Monte Busway and the Harbor Freeway Transitway would ease the bottlenecks at the culmination of the two carpool-lane segments and improve traffic flow through downtown. The two carpool lane segments are heavily used, but transportation officials say the gridlock where they end significantly reduces the potential time savings and may discourage drivers from using the lanes.

The El Monte Busway carries 1,047 vehicles per hour per lane, with a minimum of three people per vehicle, according to a recent MTA study. The Harbor Freeway Transitway carries 1,336 vehicles per hour per lane, with a minimum of two people per car.

The MTA plan includes several alternatives for building carpool lanes along surface streets, but MTA officials say the most likely option would be to create two new lanes -- one in each direction -- by re-striping existing surface street lanes. To make room for the new lanes, parking on those streets probably would be eliminated or restricted. The cars and buses that use the lanes would have to abide by existing speed limits, but the traffic lights along the route might be adjusted to move carpool traffic more quickly through downtown.

The concept is not completely new. The Harbor Freeway Transitway now connects with a surface street carpool lane that runs north from Adams Boulevard along Figueroa Street for about two miles. But that lane abruptly ends at Figueroa and 5th Street, about a mile and a half from the El Monte Busway.

Other cities, including Seattle, New York and Alexandria, Va., also are testing carpool lanes on surface streets.

But when MTA officials unveiled the idea to downtown residents and business owners at a meeting last month, it was not well received.

Tom Burrow, a downtown resident and founder of the Historic Downtown Community Assn., said he came away from the meeting thinking that a set of carpool lanes is the last thing his downtown neighborhood needs.

“This seems to be a step backward in our efforts to make downtown a more pedestrian-friendly area,” he said.

Downtown business groups fear the carpool lane project would be a setback for a burgeoning effort to turn the area into a lively cultural, commercial and residential center.

The new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Staples Center and the soon to be completed Walt Disney Concert Hall are expected to help create that vision by attracting many more visitors downtown.

“We consider this a new downtown with a new set of priorities,” said Carol Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central City Assn.

Downtown Los Angeles has indeed changed, with new condominiums, apartments and lofts opening in Bunker Hill, South Park, Central City East and other neighborhoods.

Ten years ago, downtown Los Angeles had about 12,000 homes and apartments. Today, downtown has nearly 14,000 housing units, with nearly 7,000 more units under design or construction, according to the Central City Assn. That represents nearly 20,000 residents, outside the single-room hotel tenants in skid row.

To help create the pedestrian-friendly atmosphere, Schatz and downtown homeowner groups are pressing Los Angeles city transportation officials to reduce traffic speeds, convert one-way streets to two-way streets and add more street parking.

“Basically, we are trying to create an atmosphere that has a village feel,” said Nathan Johnston, a downtown resident who attended the MTA meeting and opposes the carpool lane plan.

While Johnston, Schatz and others campaign to slow downtown traffic, transportation engineers are struggling to come up with ways to improve traffic flow, particularly through downtown, where four of the state’s busiest freeways converge.

Downtown traffic has worsened, in part, because motorists trying to avoid freeway congestion have increasingly cut through large city streets, turning wide boulevards into mini-freeways.

The idea of connecting the carpool lanes on the El Monte Busway and the Harbor Freeway Transitway has been under study since even before the transitway was completed in 1996. The transitway runs for nearly 11 miles, from the Artesia Freeway (California 91) to Adams Boulevard, just south of the Santa Monica Freeway. For the final 2.6 miles, just before Adams Boulevard, the elevated lanes extend 50 feet above the freeway.

The El Monte Busway, stretching for 11 miles from the city of El Monte to Alameda Street near downtown’s Union Station, opened in 1973. Most carpool lanes require two or more passengers per vehicle but, because of the heavy demand along the San Bernardino Freeway, the El Monte Busway requires a minimum of three passengers per vehicle during peak hours.

A 2000 study commissioned by the MTA and the California Department of Transportation concluded that connecting the transitway and the busway would improve the access of buses and carpools to downtown.

But the study said that extending the transitway north along the Harbor Freeway to the four-level interchange and then east along the 101 Freeway to the El Monte Busway would cost about $932 million.

In contrast, the study said that connecting the two carpool lane segments along surface streets would cost less than $6 million.