It’s annoying, it’s hazardous and, for decades, it
has been a daily headache for thousands of Angelinos: rush-hour
traffic.
The five major candidates vying to become the next mayor of Los
Angeles are promising to make this city hallmark a thing of the
past, putting forth innovative strategies to get people where they
want to go quickly, safely and affordably.
“If the growth rate continues, the average highway speed
will be 15 mph,” said Nathan James, press secretary for
mayoral candidate and city councilman Antonio Villaraigosa.
“You really need a long-term vision for how people will get
around the city.”
Villaraigosa, currently neck and neck in the polls with
incumbent James Hahn, has proposed a project that would
significantly expand the city’s rail system.
“It’s obviously a long-term vision but it gets the
conversation started about how we can expand rail
transportation,” James said, adding that massive improvements
would have to be made to the city’s public transportation
system to cope with the rising population of Los Angeles.
But Villaraigosa’s opponents doubt the viability of such a
gargantuan project.
“Do you really think that after he’s run up the
biggest deficit in the history of the federal government, George
Bush is going to give $15 billion so that L.A. can set up a rapid
transit system?” said Kam Kuwata, a spokesman for the Hahn
campaign. “We’re a blue state, not a red
state.”
Councilman and former Los Angeles police chief Bernard Parks has
proposed a similar plan to extend rail transportation. Parks
proposes that rails be extended above or immediately below ground
level, a method that Parks says would be cheaper than extending the
rails subterraneously, as proposed by Villaraigosa.
“They’re spending $1 billion per mile and there may
be a better use of dollars to get more track in the system,”
Parks said. “You’ve got to give some long and hard
thought as to much how much money you have to spend.”
While the candidates diverge on their plans to improve the rail
system, their ideas on directly increasing traffic flow on the
roads are largely similar.
A popular strategy among the candidates is the creation of
reversible lanes on busy streets, an approach that entails
designating one lane on each road as dual-directional, flowing one
direction during the morning commute and the opposite direction for
the evening commute.
The congestion-reducing strategy is seen as a means of making
the greatest possible use of available road space.
The candidates have also proposed to create longer left-turn
lanes. The change, already implemented on 75 intersections during
Hahn’s first term, prevents congestion created when shorter
turn lanes fill up. When these lanes do fill, drivers intending to
turn left are forced to block the path of drivers intending to go
straight, which in turn halts the flow of traffic.
Other proposals made by the candidates to quell traffic include
synchronizing stoplights so as to minimize the time drivers spend
waiting behind red lights and banning road repair during rush hour,
a policy already implemented by Caltrans for freeway and highway
construction.
Hahn’s rivals have characterized his efforts to ease the
city’s traffic problem as insufficient.
“The mayor prides himself in saying “˜I’m going
to fix 25 intersections a year and it appears I’m doing
something, even though there are 40,000 intersections in
L.A.,” Parks said.
Hahn’s campaign, however, blames shortcomings on budget
mismanagement on the part of the state senate and assembly.
“L.A. has lost over a billion dollars that could’ve
been applied to fixing traffic problems, but that money has been
taken away by Sacramento politicians,” Kuwata said.
“They’ve diverted that money to fixing their budget
problems.”
The city’s traffic problem thrusts an especially strong
burden on the lives of UCLA commuters, a great number of whom hit
rush-hour traffic at least once a day.
“I want to kill myself sometimes. It adds on a lot more
stress than I should have,” said first-year pre-med student
Serena Vartazarian.
Vartazarian takes the 405 Freeway over the San Fernando hills,
out of Encino and into Westwood, a drive that should take 15
minutes but often takes three times as long due to the severity of
rush-hour traffic.
The city’s traffic problem becomes especially inconvenient
when students are forced to juggle jobs, classes and driving.
“When I have four hours of class and four hours working
and 70 minutes on the road, I definitely hate life after
that,” said Hunter Hayes, a second-year history student, who
lives in Northridge and often spends over an hour in the car on his
way to school.