Do we need more bridges?

Much of the state bond money allocated last week for transportation went to widening freeways with carpool lanes. But should we really be thinking about grade separations? California Transportation Commisson member Marion Bergeson (a former OC supervisor) tells the Register that the next big thing in the state is figuring out goods movement:

One of the major issues that's not just Orange County but throughout the state ... is what we call the goods movement. That is how we move the trucks and the trains from the ports to all the various areas where they're bound for. And that impacts Orange County. Grade crossings – in other words, ways of getting the trains going through some of our communities as conveniently as possible rather than holding up traffic and, obviously, (causing) safety problems.

The massive Alameda Corridor project is attempting to do some of that in the path between the ports of L.A. and Long Beach through the Inland Empire. But many communities feel they need a lot more money to fix the gridlock being caused by goods movement from the port inland.

Comments

[TrafficBulldog]

Ah, blame it on the trucks.

As I was sitting in Sacramento a few weeks ago at the California Small Business Board meeting, I was frankly blown away by the California Transportation Deputy Secretary.

He said "Goods Movement is tremendously important in our ability to compete globaly". Translation, it is tremendously important to make changes in order to unload the Long Beach Port (45% of US bound goods go to Long Beach) because Mexico is looking at creating a port and we better clean up our act to keep on top of the tax revenue.

Then he was asked about traffic. "Traffic does not matter in our ability to compete Globally", he said.

I almost puked right there.

I had to raise my hand and interrupt his presentation.

As a former highering manager, if the person I NEED to fill the job is over 25 miles away in SoCal, the person may not take the job becuase of traffic. Then our estemed Deputy Secretary of Transportation had to admit that the number one reason people turn down a job is because of traffic.

Look, our region is deteriorating because of traffic.

The politicians really only care about sales tax revenue, large construction projects and trains. Sure they talk about how great the busses are, but they had to be sued to even take their attention away from playing trains.

It is time to stop blaming the trucks and start blaming our politicians.

Roger Snoble has stated that at 1.3 persons per car, there would be no traffic. If that was true, why have we lost ground in carpooling in the last 20 years of the MTA? we used to be at 1.2 people per car....now we are down to 1.09

And all the while our politicians scratch their heads and ask "How can we help attract business to California?" Well from my standpoint, if you stop the conflict of interest and fund the rideshare matching services properly so that we can get to 1.3 people per car.....Well eliminating traffic congestion sure would go a long way to attract new business. It might even help the existing businesses out a little so that they could....oh I don't know.......grow and add jobs.

http://trafficbulldog.org is a commuter advocacy group working to get our freeways flowing again. Please join the cause!

[Silvio Nunez Jr.]

I think the state had it right when it named the 405 Freeeway because it takes 4 or 5 hours to go anywhere.