Booming population crowds L.A. commute

  Trisha Kirk Kirk is a fourth-year
political science student who can form an opinion about anything,
but she always gives the other side a fighting chance. She looks
forward to hearing your comments and opinions at [email protected].

Click Here for more articles by Trisha Kirk

You’re inching along the asphalt. The guy next to you is
screaming and flipping the bird. And flashing lights ahead mean
another hour behind a colossal SUV while everyone stares at the
mangled heap on the right shoulder.

This is not New York City. It’s not a developing country
without traffic laws.It’s the 405. And you just want to get
to school already. Is that too much to ask?

Whatever plans might be in the works for better driving
conditions in Los Angeles aren’t getting drivers anywhere,
and neither are the freeways. With more people moving into the area
to take advantage of the booming economy, the daily drudgery will
get worse as the population gets larger.

A recent study by the Southern California Association of
Governments reported that the average commute to work in 1999 took
34 minutes, two minutes longer than in 1998. The drive home takes
41 minutes of your valuable time, up four minutes from the 1998
study.

Do these findings strike anyone else as ridiculously obvious? Of
course the commute is getting worse, even if the average only goes
up by a few minutes.

  Illustration by ZACH LOPEZ/Daily Bruin It is amazing that
they do a study on this “phenomenon.” It is painfully
clear that no one is going anywhere between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.,
whether it’s on the freeways or city streets.

It hardly seems like this annual study will accomplish anything,
like pushing better public transportation or convincing big shots
on the West Side to give up their shiny Jag for the bus. What it
does do is highlight the loathsome driving experience commuters
face every day.

Due to a thriving economy and job market, Los Angeles is
expected to add 6.7 million people in the next 20 years ““ the
equivalent of two Chicagos. But more than 78 percent of drivers
commuted alone last year. That means more cars on the road and more
unavoidable congestion.

A better economy also means that more people can afford to pay
high gasoline prices, so expensive gas is not a deterrent to
driving. If people can afford the gas, they will be out there
clogging the roads.

In Los Angeles, most people own a car and drive it every day,
unlike other large cities like New York and Washington, D.C., where
they share taxis and rely on Metros.

Angelenos are very car-oriented because there are few other
methods of transportation. If you have to be somewhere, you usually
have to drive there no matter what tidal wave of cars awaits you.
Just pack a lunch and a handful of No-Doz.

Los Angeles does not have an efficient public transit system.
The Metro system does not offer service to most of the city and
does not come anywhere near the coastal half of the county. The bus
system is slow (because traffic is congested!) and if there happens
to be a never-ending bus drivers’ strike, it may as well not
exist.

There is also a lack of carpools. Less than 14 percent of
commuters carpooled to work last year. Why doesn’t anyone
want to share the empty passenger seat on the way to work?

Perhaps they want their precious, $80,000 ride all to
themselves. The status symbol that a vehicle represents in L.A.
poses a real problem when it comes to carpooling. Everyone wants to
be seen in their sexy cars ““ no one wants to speed up the
commute by sharing the drive and getting more cars off the
freeways.

Coming from a significantly less populated area, I was aghast at
the hours I spent on the freeway after moving south. In suburban
Ventura County, you can make a 15-mile commute in (gasp!) 15
minutes. I could sleep in, leave for class late and still get a
parking space in time for lecture. Not so in Los Angeles.

The freeways in both counties are comparable in width, coverage
and maintenance, but the considerably higher population in L.A.
means drivers could conceivably spend years of their lives sitting
in traffic on the blistering, four-lane freeway asphalt.

In addition to a slower commute, there are also factors making
driving more dangerous in Los Angeles, exacerbated by an increase
in vehicles. For example, drivers with cell phones glued to their
ears and the tip of a pinkie on the wheel. Not exactly
cautious.

Let’s not forget road rage. Hard-working Americans take
their stress with them on the drive home. They cut each other off
and floor it, all in the name of getting there a few minutes
faster.

Accidents and lanes blocked for construction also create more
traffic. And if it happens to rain, not only will everyone drive
five miles per hour, maniacs with their middle fingers up will
weave through them like a collie through cattle.

Add all these negative factors to the increasing number of cars
on the road. Multiply that by how many of them sport Firestone
tires, and L.A. driving is like dashing through a minefield.

One would expect more traffic to lead to more collisions. The
increased number of cars, however, has not resulted in more fatal
traffic accidents, according to a California Highway Patrol study.
The number of fatal accidents in Los Angeles County fell almost 50
percent from 1988 to 1998. In the same decade, the decrease in
injury collisions was more than 30 percent.

But the surprisingly low number of collisions does not mean that
traffic is flowing any smoother. Accidents might be down because
everyone is forced to drive slower than a funeral procession,
behind hundreds of other Angelenos, in some of the worst traffic in
the world.

Maybe relief lies in double-decker freeways like those in San
Francisco. Oh wait a minute ““ that’s what crushed those
drivers during the 1989 earthquake. OK, so inventive freeway
solutions might not be in L.A.’s future. The potential delays
for construction would get any such ideas vetoed anyway. But
something has to change.

The public transportation system must be more efficient. The
lack of a Metro system that covers the entire county is crippling
driving conditions. We also need more trains and buses.

Maybe the answer lies in pushing awareness about worsening
traffic and promoting carpools. Regular freeway lanes on congested
freeways can be changed to High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes so
drivers have more incentive to carpool.

If all else fails, it may take even higher gas prices or a much
higher volume of traffic to force Angelenos to leave their vehicles
at home and find other modes of transportation. Whatever the answer
is, it obviously hasn’t taken effect yet.

If you drive in L.A., expect that wave of cars ahead to get
larger.