7 Ways in Search of a Will

Transportation officials have tested an idea on an eight-mile stretch of highway north of San Diego that they believe could greatly ease Southern California’s notorious gridlock. There’s just one flaw: Any politician who backs the idea could be labeled an elitist and accused of discriminating against the poor.

On this section of Interstate 15, the carpool lanes have been converted to High Occupancy/Toll, or HOT, lanes. Solo drivers can pay a toll that varies from 50 cents to $4 to cruise the underused carpool lanes, while carpoolers continue to use the lanes for free.

This promising and proven concept, however, probably will remain a limited experiment in Southern California because critics have labeled the HOT lanes “Lexus Lanes” and predicted that they would create a two-tier class system for drivers. What politician wants to take the lead and risk a reputation as the Marie Antoinette of the freeways? While the timid wring their hands, Southern California continues its long run as having the most congested freeway system in the nation. Transportation experts and urban planners say innovative ideas could help thaw the region’s freeway permafrost, but they lament the lack of will among officials who are reluctant to pay a political price for progress.

The result is safe and time-tested solutions such as carpool lanes and commuter buses that promise only marginal relief and are less likely to rile homeowners groups and business leaders. In 2000, the last year for which statistics were compiled, traffic in Southern California was responsible for 1.45 million hours of delay to motorists per day. That translated to $13.8 billion in lost productivity annually, according to the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

Is traffic simply the price of living in sunny Southern California, just as inclement weather is the price of living in Seattle? Is the problem simply too big to solve?

“Everybody is looking for the silver bullet answer,” says former Assemblyman Richard Katz, who chaired the Assembly Transportation Committee for 10 years. “Since that doesn’t exist, those smaller incremental ideas don’t get done.”

Maybe it’s time to ask: “Why not?”

What follows are seven small-scale traffic-busting ideas that think-tank analysts, academics and transportation experts believe could help solve the problem, but that remain on the drawing board because of overly cautious transportation policymakers.

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Squeeze the Herd

Require motorists who travel on heavily congested roads to pay a toll that increases during peak commuting periods.

The idea, known as “congestion charging,” has succeeded in other parts of the country and in Europe. The tolls create an economic incentive to shift car trips to off-peak hours, ride mass transit or organize carpools. The HOT lanes concept operates under the same philosophy because tolls increase as the lanes get more congested. With the use of electronic transponders mounted on a vehicle’s windshield, tolls can be electronically paid from a bank account or with a credit card, eliminating the need to stop traffic or staff toll booths.

When London Mayor Ken Livingstone imposed congestion pricing last year on motorists who entered the central section of the city, critics predicted his political career would die along with his traffic-easing idea. But the toll concept worked, cutting traffic congestion by 30% and raising much-needed funds for public transit. Livingstone was reelected in June and is considering expanding the tolls to other sections of the English capital.

So far, no leading political figure in Southern California has promoted the widespread use of congestion-charging tolls. Says Robert Poole, a supporter of the concept and director of transportation studies at the Reason Foundation, a public policy research organization in Los Angeles: “These things almost never succeed without a champion.”

Volunteers?

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Better Clock Management

Operate the terminals at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach 24 hours a day, allowing trucks to haul cargo after peak commuting hours.

More than 12 million containers come in and out of the two ports each year, generating about 35,000 truck trips per day. That number is expected to more than triple in the next two decades. Most of the terminals operate from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., dumping a stream of 18-wheelers onto the region’s freeways at the height of rush hour.

Several local lawmakers have advocated shifting the ports to a 24-hour schedule, but they’ve been unable to persuade terminal operators and retailers to go along. Truck drivers and longshoremen support the concept because it could lead to more work and higher salaries. “A lot of truck drivers would be willing to work at night,” says driver Carlos Ayala, preparing to haul a load from the Port of Los Angeles to a warehouse in Perris. “I think it would be a lot better because it would cut down on the time we spend on the road and in the terminal.”

But small retailers don’t want to pay for the extra staff needed to receive shipments at night, and terminal operators worry that nighttime operation won’t generate enough business to justify adding a second shift of longshoremen, who earn higher wages after 5 p.m.

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Organic Traffic Planning

Give regional transportation agencies more authority over local projects.

Local traffic problems sometimes require regional solutions. But too often transportation projects are built with only local roads or transit passengers in mind, resulting in a fragmented system. The city of Los Angeles’ Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System, for example, is a sophisticated computerized network that monitors road conditions with cameras and pavement sensors. Engineers watch monitors in a control center and adjust signals to improve traffic flow on city streets.

The system’s biggest weakness is that it cannot communicate with the two dozen or so traffic control systems operated by Los Angeles County or other cities such as Long Beach, Burbank or Pasadena. A motorist traveling through the city of Los Angeles along La Brea Avenue could hit a series of green traffic lights thanks to the control system. But when the driver reaches unincorporated L.A. County near Baldwin Hills, a new traffic monitoring system not in tune with the city system takes over.

A regional transportation agency could eliminate such conflicts. Strides have been made toward sharing information, but local managers are leery of giving up authority. Says Verej Janoyan, an L.A. city transportation engineer: “All agencies like to maintain their autonomy.”

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Get the Extended Warranty

To save money on freeway construction, require contractors to provide a warranty for all major freeway work.

A warranty increases the initial cost of freeway construction but saves money in the long run by shifting future maintenance work to the private construction firm that built it.

The New Mexico transportation department was the first in the nation to try the concept in 2001. The agency required a 20-year warranty on a 118-mile freeway-widening project on U.S. Highway 550, a primary trade and tourist route for northwestern New Mexico. State officials predict the warranty will save New Mexico $89 million in maintenance costs. Transportation officials in California are taking a wait-and-see approach, saying they worry that the extra cost of a warranty won’t pay off with big savings in the end.

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Pay for Not Parking

Offer commuters cash to give up their parking space at work.

A little-known state law requires business owners who lease spaces and do not charge their employees for parking to offer the workers cash in lieu of the space. The workers can pocket the cash and join a carpool or use it to buy bus or light-rail passes. The cash payout ranges from $35 to $165 per month. The intent of the law, AB 2109, is to give workers a cash incentive to turn away from solo driving on the freeways.

The law applies to companies with 50 or more employees. The state is home to about 50,000 such companies, but most of those firms cannot participate in the program because they own their own parking spaces. The state assigned the Air Resources Board to monitor and publicize the law, but then provided no funding to do so. Still, the program reduced solo driving 17% and increased carpooling by 64% among a focus group of eight businesses that implemented it. Urban planners say the program could greatly reduce traffic in areas such as downtown Los Angeles, where scores of large corporations lease parking spaces for their employees.

As a result, the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst has recommended dramatically expanding the law to all businesses and to widely promote the cash-out program. As yet, no lawmaker has introduced legislation to do that. Richard Katz, the former state assemblyman who wrote the original 1992 law, says the program is a victim of legislative complacency. “Everything in government today is reactionary. If it’s not the crisis du jour, no one is looking at it.”

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Pick Your Spots

Complete crucial gaps in the freeway system and upgrade the region’s worst bottlenecks.

In the 1970s, construction of Southern California’s freeway system faltered because of an economic downturn, new environmental protection laws and neighborhood activists. As a result, only about 61% of the freeway system envisioned by planners to serve the population by 1985 was built.

That explains why some freeways literally end a few miles short of connecting to another freeway, the prime example being the 6.2-mile gap in the Long Beach Freeway between Alhambra and Pasadena. Closing that gap could eliminate up to 6 million hours of traffic delays for motorists throughout the region and reduce vehicle emissions by half a ton annually. Freeway designers say about a half dozen more gaps and bottlenecks are to blame for making the freeway system as dysfunctional as a car with flat tires.

Transportation analysts have suggested deep-bore tunnels or elevated lanes that could be financed by charging tolls, but environmentalists and homeowner groups opposing freeway expansion programs argue that the answer isn’t to build a way out of congestion. Still, experts such as retired Caltrans Deputy District Director Chuck O’Connell say that several key upgrades could go a long way. For example, O’Connell proposes that the state extend the Glendale Freeway in Echo Park to connect with the Hollywood Freeway. Also, he suggests connecting the Antelope Valley Freeway from Palmdale to the Glendale Freeway in La Canada Flintridge with a tunnel that cuts under the Angeles National Forest. And extending the Ronald Reagan Freeway from where it ends in Moorpark all the way to the city of Ventura.

“It would provide a substantial reduction in the hours you experience in congestion,” O’Connell says.

When prioritizing such projects, policymakers balance the potential traffic improvements for an entire region with the likely impact on homeowners in the path of the new roads. Dan Beal, managing director of public policy for the Automobile Club of Southern California, says “the balance is tilted toward protecting the neighborhoods.” Some advocates of expanding the overburdened freeway system say there would be more political support if public agencies got feedback from motorists who would most benefit.

“One of the main problems in the discussion of transportation issues today is that so much attention is given to the consequences of building new projects, while so little attention is given to the consequences of not building needed projects,” says Mike Pratt, a senior advisor to Friends of Southern California’s Highways, a coalition of groups that supports upgrading the freeway system. Wouldn’t politicians be more likely to get behind a freeway expansion project if they could point to a group of frustrated motorists whose lives would be greatly improved by an extra few miles of pavement?

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Protect the Cookie Jar

Prohibit lawmakers from raiding state gas tax revenues that are dedicated to maintaining and improving the transportation system.

In March 2002, voters overwhelmingly supported a measure to protect gasoline tax revenues by requiring a two-thirds vote of the Legislature and an emergency proclamation from the governor before the state can divert gas taxes from transportation spending.

During the first year the measure was in place, the Legislature amassed the two-thirds majority and the governor declared the emergency, allowing the state to siphon $856 million from the gas tax fund. Over the last four years, the Legislature has taken a total of $2.2 billion in transportation funding. The repeated tapping of the fund to bail out the state budget has created a backlog of $587 million in pavement maintenance work. California has the fourth-highest gas taxes in the nation, but at the same time the state ranks 48th when it comes to road conditions.

Transportation experts say the declining conditions of the state’s roads cost taxpayers billions of dollars in lost time, wasted gasoline and expensive vehicle repairs. Lawmakers who dared propose legislation to make it harder to divert the gas taxes say their efforts have been thwarted by those who have benefited from the raids on the transportation cookie jar.