This past Monday's visit by President Obama to Los Angeles only served to highlight the need for our elected officials to finally take some action to address the problem of traffic in Los Angeles and surrounding cities. This one event, which resulted in a various street closures between Beverly Hills and Hancock Park, caused an already impossible traffic situation to result in near total gridlock on the Westside of Los Angeles.
Having lived in this city for more than twenty years, I can remember when it used to take the proverbial "twenty minutes" to get just about anywhere. Traffic was bad even back then, but at this point I find myself reminiscing about the times when gridlock was only sporadic or at certain predictable times of the day. At this point, it has become completely unbearable. It is not uncommon to sit in one place and crawl inch-by-inch for extended periods of time. Just try getting East of Sepulveda Boulevard most afternoons or evenings coming from West Los Angeles or Brentwood. The existing traffic situation impacts the quality of life of all of us in Los Angeles and it doesn't seem that anyone at any level of government is really determined any longer to do anything about it.
We no longer hear about the proposal advocated by Mayor Villaraigosa to turn Olympic and Pico Boulevards into one-way streets traveling in opposite directions. It seems that complaints by merchants on those streets that such a change would affect customers patronizing their businesses in our already depressed economy was enough to cause the Mayor to drop the proposal altogether. This is short-sighted. While it may true that there would be a period of adjustment necessary before people got accustomed to the new directional pattern, the fact that traffic could flow fairly consistently would actually result in increased business patronage on those thoroughfares. Let's face it, given the choice of sitting in a standstill while trying to get to a particular location, or circling around a block to get there in moving traffic with less stress, it isn't hard to see which option most people would choose.
And of course, there is also the issue of timing traffic signals correctly. If the signals on main boulevards were timed to stay green long enough to let the traffic flow through, it would certainly help matters. Just look at Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills as an example. It is impossible to move East or West most times of the day because the lights aren't green long enough to allow you to move more than a few blocks at a time. The same problem continues East of Doheny.
Trying leaving downtown Los Angeles in the late afternoon or early evening. You cannot move on any of the main thoroughfares heading in any direction at more than 5 miles an hour.
While there are traffic problems in other major cities in the United States, studies consistently show that we in Los Angeles have the worst such delays, and with the most regularity. The problem is more than simply a quality-of-life issue. It creates a situation where we burn more fossil fuels sitting in traffic, we suffer from more stress, and delays in getting business done or events to start on time is commonplace. There is clearly a significant economic impact. Adding more traffic lanes to the 405 Freeway is not going to solve the problem. It seems that whenever additional lanes are added to our freeways, the amount of traffic on them increases so quickly, there is virtually no relief from the gridlock despite the millions of dollars spent on these types of projects. We would be better served to install a network of light rail lines along freeway medians that could travel without interruption, rather than more freeway lanes. If we actually had a cohesive system of public transportation that enabled people to move around other than on buses stuck in the existing gridlock, we'd likely see a change in traffic patterns and less automobile use.
The City of Los Angeles, in concert with the adjoining municipalities that share its main thoroughfares should reconsider the one-way street option as a start. In any other city, a visit by the President such as occurred on Monday would have caused some traffic delays, no doubt, but it would not have thrown an entire portion of the city into unmovable gridlock. The street and freeway system in our town is so fragile and overburdened, that it does not take much to create a traffic nightmare. Its time for our elected officials to stop ignoring the problem. Living in this town has become quite unpleasant as a result of it. An improvement in the traffic situation would not only improve everyone's quality of life and save environmental resources, but it would also serve to bolster the economy and make it easier to conduct business here.