Jeffrey L. Rabin and Dan Weikel of the Los Angeles Times report on study that confirms for greater Los Angeles residents what they already suspected: We’re #1 in traffic delays!


Uh, that bogus.  It’s much worse than that.  That’s why roads are jammed by 6am in the morning and by 3pm in the afternoon.  It’s very common for people to spend an extra hour in traffic each day.


There are times when traffic flows freely?  Ah yes, I recall that it tends to flow freely between about 2am and 4am.  As long as there aren’t closures for construction or maintenance, that is.


It’s really, really bad.


We wouldn’t need so many bonds if the state would stop spending money on social programs.

Anyone who lives in the greater Los Angeles area knows we have a horrid mess of traffic congestion.  It’s bad even on the weekends.  Most commutes are slow even without an accident or a stall.  Throw in an accident, stall, car-to-car shooting, or an object on the roadway, and the traffic becomes excruciatingly slow.  One reason is that the area is spread out over a wide area.  Downtown Los Angeles actually has few skyscrapers in comparison to a place like, say, Manhattan.  There are many people who will live 40-60 miles away in what’s known as the “Inland Empire” (San Bernardino and Riverside counties) because that’s where they can afford an actual house with a yard and a fence, and they will commute to those skyscrapers.  The legendary Red Car system of mass transit was dumped and the area threw its lot in with automobiles, and a network of freeways - 3+ lanes in each direction uninterrupted by cross traffic - was built by Caltrans.

Well, kind of.  Caltrans had big plans, but only ever got around to building about half or so of those freeways.  As neighborhoods were built up, more property owners and residents were around to oppose projects that would need their property.  NIMBYs got more and more organized.  Construction costs, requirements, and restrictions soared.  Taxpayers revolted and passed Proposition 13 to keep from being taxed out of their homes.  Existing freeways started to age and needed time, money, and labor to maintain.  Yet people kept coming to the area, including millions of illegal aliens.

The result?  Regularly jammed traffic on the freeways and the surface streets.

There has been an effort over the last couple of decades towards “retroactive planning” by mostly shoehorning mass transit systems into the area.  There are the Metrolink railways that stretch into the outlying areas.  These are the more heavy-duty commuter trains.  There are also the more localized (entirely within Los Angeles County) Metro Rail lines – currently a single subway line, three surface lines, an extension under construction, and an additional line under construction.  There’s also a dedicated “rapid bus” route.

The problem with this situation is that these lines are convenient for very few automobile owners.  If your daily origin or destination is any distance from the stations, you might as well drive the whole way.  Expanding the system is difficult – subways are extreme expensive here in earthquake country, and right-of-way is also hard to come by.

There’s also constant opposition from the Bus Riders Union.  Yes, you read that right.  There’s a Bus Riders Union – an activist organization for people who voluntarily use subsidized public transit.  They want as much of the transit funding to subsidize buses as possible, and want to keep bus fares down.

I support libertarian solutions to the problem, including allowing for privately run mass transit, toll roads, toll lanes, etc.

However, as long as we’re going to be master planners and as long as we’re going to meddle in business and personal lives via government programs, there are some things that I think can help the situation:

--Encourage working at home or close to home and telecommuting.  Modern technology is such that many office jobs can be done mostly at home.  Government agencies could set an example, and that would be a great start.  Government policies could encourage other employers to do this, too.  Of course, that might conjure up plans or fears of plans to hire even more people in India instead, but isn’t there an advantage in many office jobs to really know the local culture and scene?  Otherwise, there’s nothing stopping them from using India already.

--Encourage the construction and occupation of major office buildings (skyscrapers) in the Inland Empire, and staffing them with people who live nearby.  Why couldn’t an business that has offices in downtown Los Angeles also open some offices in such a building for their employees who live out there?

There are more residential units being built in downtown Los Angeles, which is great as long as the people living there also work there.  But the area also needs more amenities so that residents could live, work, and play there without a need to drive out of the area.

Anyway, I think libertarian solutions are going to be the best way out of this mess, rather than increased government control.