Is east-west divide real on Measure R?

In a region where traffic is an all-consuming complaint, a half-cent sales tax increase to improve traffic flow might seem like a sure thing.

But in the final weeks before Tuesday’s election, the Measure R campaign has devolved largely into a regional clash between politicians on the east and west sides of Los Angeles County, as squabbles have broken out over who gets the most projects.

Many elected officials from the San Gabriel Valley are lining up against the tax hike, fearing much tax money would go to the Westside’s “Subway to the Sea” and not enough to their own needs. Officials on the Westside are backing Measure R, saying it is the best shot at improving the region’s notorious traffic.

But among commuters, there appears much less of an east-west divide and a more nuanced view of Measure R. Traffic is miserable everywhere, they say, and everyone has a horror story. Although many are skeptical that Measure R will help their commutes -- maybe their children’s one day -- others say they will vote for anything that may reduce traffic congestion.

“I like the idea of a subway, but I probably won’t use it because I drive,” said Westside legal secretary Sandra Spiegel, who already voted for Measure R on her mail-in ballot.

And she’s dubious about things getting much better. On Wednesday, she left her home in the San Fernando Valley at 8:30 a.m. and arrived at her Wilshire Boulevard office at 9:30 a.m. She doesn’t even try to fight her way home during rush hour. “I work late because I don’t want to be in traffic,” Spiegel said.

Despite the widely held view that the Westside has the county’s worst gridlock, traffic statistics from the California Department of Transportation and the Freeway Performance Measurement System at UC Berkeley suggest that drivers on the east side of town aren’t doing much better.

Although parts of the 10 and 405 freeways carry more than 300,000 vehicles daily -- a very high load -- so does the 210 Freeway in Pasadena. And in the last two months, the two freeway bottlenecks where motorists experienced the worst delays during the morning commute were in the San Gabriel Valley, on the 10 and 210.

Ranked four and five on the list: the westbound 10 at Robertson and La Cienega boulevards, respectively.

Measure R has generated much excitement on the Westside because it is considered the first concrete funding step for a Wilshire Boulevard subway, which for decades has been the Holy Grail for those trying to reduce congestion.

The subway could get $4.1 billion from the ballot item. That makes the proposal the largest Measure R project, with the subway possibly accounting for 10% or more of the funds that the sales tax is expected to raise over its 30-year life span.

That has led critics to say that Measure R is a thinly disguised plan by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to secure subway funding at the expense of everyone else.

Some San Gabriel Valley officials are upset that an extension of the Gold Line from Pasadena was denied $80 million in seed money this summer by the Villaraigosa-led board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Measure R provides $735 million for the project, but backers say it is not enough for the line to reach Montclair -- their goal -- and they don’t believe they will get the money anyway.

“We’re like the bologna in the bread here,” said Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor, meaning her city is being squeezed between traffic from the Inland Empire and the Los Angeles Basin.

Echoing a familiar complaint from Westside residents, she said she rarely travels to downtown Los Angeles to go to the theater because of the congested roads.

The subway has become such a lightning rod that it has been almost completely absent from the campaign for Measure R. None of the five TV ads for the measure mentions the subway, although the largest donor to the Measure R campaign is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard, which has given $900,000 precisely because the subway extension would give patrons a way to get there by rail.

Still, the mayor and other officials on the Westside have argued that Measure R fairly spreads the money around and cite a long list of projects the item would fund outside the city of Los Angeles. But Measure R proponents also say it makes sense to build big transit projects where traffic is the worst and ridership will probably be the greatest.

“This is a comprehensive effort to address L.A. County’s traffic congestion,” Villaraigosa said in a recent interview, mentioning several projects. “There are a lot of reasons that people will support this.”

Barry Greenberg, a longtime Brentwood resident, knows a lot about traffic snarls on the Westside, learned from his 90-minute walk each afternoon. A couple of months ago, as his route on Wilshire Boulevard took him past Bundy Drive, Greenberg started to notice something. “The traffic was so slow I was walking faster than the traffic,” he said. And then he noticed another thing in a span of a few blocks: “I counted 14 buses and none of them were at all filled.”

And, yet, Greenberg is voting against Measure R. He doesn’t believe the subway will ever get built, nor is he convinced it is necessary. And his commute? He works at home, having grown weary of driving.

Those complaints resonate as far as San Dimas. Its two-block-long downtown is done up in Western motif, complete with wooden sidewalks lined with antique stores. About the only thing the San Dimas business district has in common with Brentwood is that both are on the same planet.

Paul Kirby, 71, owns the Train Stop, a model railroad store, and has lived in San Dimas for 30-plus years. He is undecided on Measure R, but has little kind to say about it, believing the money it raises will inevitably dance away from its intended use.

On the other hand, traffic stinks. A few weeks ago, Kirby hit the road to a birthday party in Marina del Rey on a Friday night. “We get on the San Bernardino Freeway and it was bumper-to-bumper,” Kirby said. “Then we get on the Santa Monica Freeway and it’s bumper-to-bumper. And we get on the 405 Freeway and it’s bumper-to-bumper. I told my friend when we finally got there that if you have another birthday party, don’t do it on a Friday night or start it later so I’ve got three hours to get there.”

San Dimas is about 49 miles from Marina del Rey.

Others are leaning toward Measure R simply because it might do something. David Aure, 24, drives 75 minutes each way from his home in Walnut to work at Universal Music in Burbank. Filling his gas tank Wednesday in Walnut, Aure said he didn’t quite understand some of the east-west political infighting. “You can’t look at the small picture,” he said.

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steve.hymon@latimes.com

carla.hall@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Congestion nightmares

The top five morning freeway bottlenecks over the last 60 days in Los Angeles County:

10 Freeway west at Marengo Avenue (Alhambra)

210 Freeway west at Santa Anita Avenue (Arcadia)

405 Freeway south at Royal Ridge Road (Sherman Oaks)

10 Freeway west at Robertson Boulevard (L.A. Westside)

10 Freeway west at La Cienega Boulevard (L.A. Westside)

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Source: Freeway Performance Measurement System