Forget the collapse of Amercia’s banking industry and the horrible train collision in Chatsworth, forget everything and suffer amnesia with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who is descending into the bowels of City Hall East today to show off for the TV cameras and the assembled members of media his latest achievement.
Dailynews.com reports today “‘Operation Bottleneck Relief Phase IV” will use variable green
light intervals and other traffic signal tweaks to improve traffic flow
at an additional 60 of L.A.’s most-congested intersections, according
to a spokesman for the mayor.’”
What the mayor is actually showing off
is the latest upgrade to the Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System developed by city traffic engineers 24 years ago — the last time the city Department of Transportation did anything right — to regulate the duration of traffic signals depending on traffic congestion.
The city’s own website explains: “Based on the
successful performance of the Coliseum Area ATSAC System during the
1984 Olympic Games, the ATSAC System is being implemented citywide. To
date, ATSAC has been implemented at 3,100 of 4,300 City of Los Angeles
signalized intersections.”
ATSAC has gotten so much publicity over the years that even something called “Swindle” magazine published a lengthy story praising the system.
“L.A. traffic is the worst in the country. Rush hour can stretch for
over eight hours a day. According to the Texas Transportation
Institute’s (TTI) 2005 Urban Mobility Study, the average peaktime
traveler spent 93 excess hours sitting in congestion in 2003, and
traffic jams cost each commuter about $1,600 per year in extra fuel and
time lost. Yet, as costly and time consuming as L.A. traffic is, it
could be worse. Much worse.”
ATSAC’s operations center is four stories below ground in a windowless room where traffic flow data pours in from sensors at intersections and seven large video screens show what’s happening at various locations around the city.
It’s not the least bit clear what if anything the mayor has to do with ATSAC or why he would claim credit for it — unless, of course, his standing in the polls is at an all-time low, he’s running for re-election and his campaign for a $40 billion sales tax hike for transportation projects is in deep trouble.
But then adding 60 more intersections — barely 1 percent of the city’s total intersections — getting the latest upgrade to ATSAC is pretty exciting if you look at it as the mayor and political consultants.
What they see is a 60 percent increase in the 103 intersections already upgraded and can boast the mayor achieved something great to make your life better.
“According to a statement issued Sunday…(ATSAC) resulted in a reduction of 900,000 delay
hours each year while reducing the average driver’s time spent at red
lights by 8 seconds per signal,” dailynews.com reports.
Reminds me of the Mayor in some Third World city whose name I don’t want to remember. There was a highway with two lanes in each direction that was horribly congested. So the Mayor ordered it re-striped to three lanes in each direction, and advertised a 50% increase in capacity.
When the number of traffic fatalities soared, the same Mayor ordered it restriped from three lanes back to two, for a decrease of 33% in capacity.
At reelection time, the Mayor’s campaign claimed he had provided a net capacity increase of 17%.
Do you mean 24 years, if the framework was laid in 84?
Not to support the Mayor, but Wendy Greuel as head of Transportation Committee has been going around unveiling their new DOT plans, and it sounds like some things are different. But then again, your avid supporters include those who fight every single MTA plan or surface fix on the westside and scream about traffic. For decades, they’ve thought that by doing that, there will be no new development — instead, as westside NC activist/ no blind supporter of City Hall, Barbara Broide keeps telling her HOA and other groups, development has come anyway, and the traffic has only gotten worse.
I’ve never heard a single positive solution suggested by readers here, except cockamamey suggestions that roads be widened (in areas where they can’t widen sidewalks or add a lane as it is) to allow for more cars. Meanwhile other countries all have good mass transit, some we’d consider “futuristic,” from China to Singapore, and tourists from Europe and Oz are calling us “the nicest Third World Country” due to the impossibility of tourists getting around by clean, extensive subways, and congested, run-down roads.
Yes, all the illegals who’ve come here in the last 2 decades have greatly contributed to this, the poor schools and burdens on public healthcare — but they’re here. So I challenge readers to offer their solutions to what to do about LA traffic and other problems NOW. Besides fight the Expo/subway/MTA plans as “for the rich on the westside” nonsense and the notion of widening roads where there’s no space (and which would fill as fast as a larger lady’s purse). If you say zero development, do you think any candidate for Council can realistically deliver that? Specifics, please: “What I would do if I were Mayor?” (Walter Moore need not reply, we’ve heard enough out of him — he’s got no solutions except deport the illegals.)
As the ol’ saying goes, “Timing is everything…” and, when it comes to signals, it applies. I can only speak from experience – Ventura Boulevard. There, signals are timed only in the east/west directions. As a result, all of us are sitting longer at lights at the north/south directions which is rather frustrating especially when it is a Sunday and there isn’t as much traffic! Also, what the city needs to implement is changing out of the current signals and replace with as many directional signals as possible. Actually, this is my short list….
Doggone it…I must have missed this ‘breaking news’ story! I always enjoy watching the erudite mayor stammering, stuttering, mumbling and bumbling in front of the swarms of reporters and kleig lights! The thunderous roar and applause of his adoring fans is music to his ears!
BTW, I know he probably isn’t aware of the unemployment figures of over 8% in L.A., but this could be another factor in reducing traffic! No jobs…no traffic! Is he going to take credit for this, also???
Ellen, a lot of us are our own worst enemies. Today I drove from Valley Circle Blvd to Van Nuys Blvd on Vanowen. I have learned from my driving book to pull up to the white line and when there is nothing occupying it (like a cyclist or pedestran) to pull past it a few inches in order to trigger the lights I sat
at far too many intersections waiting for the drivers in front of me to catch on that there was no longer any traffic in the intersction. Now i try and right after I move fwd safely, the light turns green. How much gas we could save if we did not depend on some machine to tell us when it is safe to move fwd. Y’all try it. An inch might mean you get the GO signal.
2:12- mass transit in other countries is fine for them and will never work here.
Everybody is too spread out. Concentrations of population in small geographic areas are usually what the picture is for other cities and countries.
We are a bunch of cities now and lots of people in various locations with different destinations for working and everything else. The suggestions might not be positive because there is no answer to it all, only to aspects of it.
The city council wants to intensify density by the building plans its making, using “transit corridors” to justify reductions in parking spaces required for residential units, saying that the proximity to such routes is why they can do that. Are they insane? Let me see THEM try to work that out without a car to move them to somewhere the “transit route” does not reach in less than some time frame of a 3x or higher value for travel time compared to a car trip.
Even if people COULD use a mass transit route to get to work, where does the car go if less than 2 parking spaces are provided, since most units have 2 adults and 2 cars or more? The presumption used to reduce required parking spaces is just a trick, a pretext, to get by without what SHOULD be provided and to get around the idea that all this design is making a bad situation intolerable by the minute.
L.A. is a sprawled out place. It’s like a lot of urban areas linked together except you have to drive in various combinations of origination and destination points. “Mass transit” in the past was “freeways”- do a Google search for L.A. freeway map plans and you will see the original plan for freeways in the 50′s or so, to be evenly built, east to west, north to south. But due to political clout, the area around Beverly Hills and other such places resisted and so the present maps show the result. I doubt if even locating the freeways as intended would have warded off the current problem.
There are too many people and not enough room for more without having an apartment culture. Yet they -the Council- want to accommodate more? And isn’t Universal City going to be the new home of the NBC organization? What demand is that going to put on everything? There is tax revenue collected, but how much on the downside is there? It’s not a good “cost-benefit” outcome for the population. The Council only looks to the dollars it can get a hold of, not the FULL cost that is the true measure.
They did that with the Convention Center signage rights initially with locking in one entity and recently by going ahead with prostituting our open space. Such fools are they, but they justify it all by saying “we” need to “generate revenue” and so we go around in a circle on that again concerning the reasons for the deficit.
Subways are a statement, but only a narrow part of the problem is addressed, with many people still not getting anything practical from the transit system.
Interesting take on this, like a sailor I’m usually keen to learn more about boating.
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