In Motorcades, Rules of the Road Take a Back Seat

It is an Angeleno’s dream: cruising down the Harbor Freeway during rush hour, all seven lanes of traffic completely cleared in your direction, jealous commuters on the other side of the divider barely inching forward.

That was the reality when the president visited Los Angeles in March.

The regular rules of the road also are suspended for presidential candidates, the vice president and foreign heads of state. Last week, evening rush-hour traffic was parted for Sen. John Kerry as he headed up the San Diego Freeway.

During President Bush’s visit March 2, hundreds of motorists wedged in traffic marveled as his caravan streamed down freeways at an average clip of 50 mph.

The president had left the Biltmore Hotel about 5 p.m. for a fundraiser at the Shrine Auditorium. A phalanx of California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers led the column, which included the president’s two black Cadillac limousines outfitted with small American flags and flags bearing the presidential seal.

The cars had been flown across the country in military cargo jets.

Also in the motorcade were an SUV sporting blinking lights and vertical black rods, a black communications van, an ambulance and several vans carrying reporters, White House staffers and men in starched shirts with wires curled behind their ears.

A CHP cruiser zigzagged behind the convoy, keeping all other vehicles about 100 feet away.

The motorcade glided through a red light on its way to the Harbor Freeway. It sailed south in the left lane of the freeway, as commuters stuck on the ramps to the right turned to see the procession.

Some stood on their running boards or flipped open cellphones.

Though traffic at that time of day usually moves as fast as blackstrap molasses, the motorcade made it to the Shrine in about 10 minutes.

It made equally good time the next morning down the Harbor and Century freeways to Los Angeles International Airport. Leaving the Biltmore about 8 a.m., the president reached Air Force One 29 minutes later.

“This is not a parade, this is not a funeral,” said Tony Chapa, a Los Angeles spokesman for the Secret Service. “This is a law enforcement operation, whether it’s the president or the vice president or any other person we’re working with.... We have to move as quickly as possible.”

It is important not to stop because the dignitary becomes a sitting target, he said. With the help of Highway Patrol officers and police, the motorcade can coast through stop signs and toll booths and drive the opposite direction on one-way streets.

This has caused only a handful of traffic scrapes, Secret Service officials said, most notably in 1975 in Hartford, Conn., when a man collided with President Ford’s limousine as it cruised through an intersection where police hadn’t been posted.

But security concerns dictate that the motorcade keep moving, even if a person jumps in front of the cars, Chapa said.

The Secret Service first began trailing the head of state during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, when his horse-drawn carriage was followed by agents on bicycles or in carriages of their own.

Motorcades became standard during President Harding’s administration, said Tim Blessing, a presidential historian at Penn State University. Agents began clearing streets ahead of the caravan because “people would turn out in droves to see him, and it literally became dangerous,” he said.

Blessing said motorcade security was tightened after President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

But in 1970, an antiwar mob in San Jose used rocks to break the windows of buses in a presidential motorcade, prompting the Secret Service to put more space between the caravans and the public.

Today, routes are kept secret. The president’s driver receives special training, but the White House advance team recruits volunteers to drive some of the other vehicles in the motorcade, such as the vans carrying members of the media.

Many of these volunteers are party supporters; some are from local police forces.

Torrance Police Officer Dave Crespin, who drove a minivan carrying five local reporters in the March caravan, said he didn’t have time to marvel at the experience of cruising a deserted freeway. He was too busy watching overpasses, closely tailing the car in front of him and memorizing faces in case he had to describe suspects later.

But, he said, “It was unique.... When we drive, for example, with the lights and sirens on a Code 3 run, people pull to the side. But this was to the point where nobody was on the streets.”

The Secret Service now drives about 15 motorcades a year in Los Angeles, officials said. As the country heads into election season, that number probably will climb.

Chapa said he hoped drivers would bear with the inconvenience.

“We don’t ever forget motorists, especially those of us who live in L.A.,” he said.

“It’s kind of like a ballet we do as we try to bring this person through a protective bubble ... with the least inconvenience possible.”