Traffic hell is coming

They're going to need a lot more roads in the Inland Empire if the state's new projections are true (a 75% boost in the population by 2050). The Times' Maria L. LaGanga, Jeff Rabin and Sara Lin report that traffic is a huge issue for the future:

John Husing, an economist who studies the Inland Empire, is betting that even in land-rich Riverside County, more vertical development is on the horizon. Part of the reason: a multi-species habitat conservation plan that went into effect in 2005, preserving 550,000 acres of green space that otherwise would have vanished. "The difficult thing will be for anybody who likes where they live in Riverside County because it's rural," Husing said. "In 2050, you might still find rural out by Blythe, but other than that, forget rural." Husing predicts that growth will be most dramatic beyond the city of Riverside as the patches of empty space around communities such as Palm Springs, Perris and Hemet begin to fill in with housing tracts. The Coachella Valley, for example, will become fully developed and seem like less of a distinct area outside of Riverside, he said. "It'll be desert urban, but it'll be urban. Think of Phoenix," he said. Expect a lot of the new development in Riverside County to go up along the 215 Freeway between Perris and Murrieta, according to Riverside County Planning Director Ron Goldman. Thousands of homes have popped up in that area in the last decade, and Goldman said applications for that area indicate condominiums are next. The department is so busy that he's hiring 10 people who'll start in the next month.

Comments

[Alan Fishel]

Let's get the container trucks off the freeways and roads and on the trains for their trip east. There is no need to use trucks to move the containers from the port to reloading centers in the Inland Empire clogging up our roads and freeways.

SANDBAG is doing the right thing by building new commenter rail lines around the Inland Empire. New lines to Redlands and Perris and other planned lines with increased MetroLink service is a good start. In the future Streetcars or LRT service can also be built as the population increases. Moving people instead of moving cars is far more efficient and convenient if the system is in place for easy use.

Alan Fishel

[Raul Garcia]

MTA bus drivers are the rudest meanest people in the world, they are notorious for not pulling over and waiting a measly 10-15 seconds for a rider to cross the intersection and board, leaving them stranded until next one arrives. Very mean and nasty people who take delight in inconveniencing riders. Saw it happen again yesterday 7/12/07, a south bound MTA bus at about 3:45 p.m., at the intersection of Mission Rd. and Broadway refused to pull over and allow the rider to board while she was running across the intersection. Does anyone believe in karma?

[Mary Ellen]

The problem here in Southern California is the MENTALITY - if you've lived in Northern California/San Francisco you immediately notice a very distinct difference in mentality as if the two areas are two separate states.
People here don't like to carpool so the majority of people here have chosen to drive their cars and endure this lifestyle so that is their choice and those who want can continue to suffer and those who don't will move to somewhere with a better quality of life. Most people here aren't interested in a better quality of life- otherwise things would have already began to change and they have not.

[anonymous]

Trucks now use 30% to 40% of freeway capacity, according to the Southern California Assn. of Governments., and 70% of what lands at the ports of LA and Long Beach leave California.

Why are we spending so much time, effort and dollars creating high occupancy lanes when the real problem are the trucks and movement of goods? Rather than talking about subways for people that need to go all over the city and create HUGE quality of life issues, why aren't we focusing on moving goods from the ports to the Inland Empire by light rail, truck only toll lanes etc.?

We are looking at 400% increase in goods movement through the ports over the next 30 years. We sure aren't looking at 400% percent of population growth in the same period.

Rather than deal directly with the obvious solution, LA County politicans are talking about moving goods 70 miles NORTH to the Antelope
Valley, so they can be sure to get their hands on more dollars, and THEN move these goods to distribution center in San Bernandino.

What am I missing? To me it is criminal to waste billions of dollars constructing solutions that have no hope of alleviating congestion
problem when the emphasis clearly needs to be taken off people and focused on efficient direct movement of goods to distribution points.

[D.Woodward Van Nuys.]

I agree one hundred percent,we should start building more public transit now,But like everything else,we will wait till southern calif is in total gridlock,and no one can move.

[RayS]

On the other hand, if NASA Astrobiologist Peter Ward's predictions about the consequences of global warming he espouses in this week's LA CITYBEAT are true ("The first big mass mortalities of humans will likely start around 2050") traffic may not be much of a problem after all.

[yours truly, johnny dollar]

Just so I have this straight: you take one lane away from me; end result...
I am now sitting in my car one lane over going even slower so that
39 Mexicans in a bus can get to their illegal jobs faster than I can
get to my legal job (a job that generates tax dollars so the local transit
authority can purchase more of those 39 passenger buses to rapidly
transport those 39.........) .do I have this straight?

[Tim]

here's a follow up to my last post. and by the way, shaun hit the nail on the head. so how do we fix this mess. if your a politician, you don't. however, the way to do it is to first cut funding for new roads. second, take away one lane on every highway, and most major thoroughfares (is that spelled right?) block them off and allow only buses to use them. much like the orange line in the valley. now, with one less lane everywhere traffic may get a little worse (ha), but you will have these people movers going quite a bit faster than the traffic and much more frequently. now with the extra funding that you've cut out of new roads, that goes into new fuel effiecient buses. with a bigger fleet, and the ability to move quickly about the city, anyone that wants to fume in stopped traffic will only have themselves to blame. for those of us that work a 9 to 5 job, at the same location, at the same time, no matter what the distance should be taking public transportation on a regular basis. socal does not need more room for personal transportation. we are not in the country side, or north dakota as one person stated where you live in a personal house away from most things. we are an enormous communtiy, and we need to travel like one.

[Tim]

why does everyone in socal want to build more roads. our population will not exceed 60 million for one simple reason. as the highways get wider to "ease congestion" they will gobble up more land, creating less housing until all of LA is simply a 600 lane highway, or two. but on a more serious side, obviously there is going to be a problem with the amount of available land for use for transportation. because cars are incredibly inefficient at moving people (speaking in a manner of how many people can be moved by what dimension of vehicle) that at some point those of us in socal need to realize cars just cannot be used as a major source of transportation. here is a quick example stricly by numbers. assuming on the long side that buses are an average of 45 ft, and they can carry an average of 39 people sitting, that gives us a ratio of .866 feet per person. as a reference, you take a prius that has a lenght of 14.5 feet, and say an average load of 4 people. that give you a ratio of 3.625 feet per person. what does this mean? it means it would take 141 ft, or nearly 9 priuses to move the same amount of people as a 45ft long bus. add 5 ft to space in between the cars, and suddenly you look at almost 200 ft of vehicles. and you wonder why there is congestion.

[yours truly, johnny dollar]

"California expects 60 million people by 2050"
That's fine because I ain't gonna be one of them.
North Dakota is looking better all the time. North Dakota has lost
population in the last decade; and, at the moment, I will trade some
good weather for some elbow room and people who speak English.

[d]

Amen, NO MORE ROADS and FREEWAYS! Mass transit damn it. how hard is this to understand? We need alternatives to traffic. we need a ban on suburban housing in the inland empire, Kern county, LA County, Everywhere. Only infill. Major avenues such as Wilshire should have a minimum height requirement of at least 15 stories and we should implement the GETLA MOVING plan ASAP. build more rail now!

[yours truly, johnny dollar]

"desert urban; but, urban. Think Phoenix."
I live in Palm Springs. I think Tijuana.

[cochon]

i love this blog.

one thing that i've noticed is that any posting relating to public transportation on this blog bring out all sorts of haters. but when there are posts describing traffic chaos, like the one about the 2 hour delay on the 10 the other day, there are fewer comments, if any.

i love when people describe their brief encounters with public transportation and how awful they were. it's funny. i remember my first trip on the san diego trolley. i was really scared. people in southern california are not used to being around other people not of their rank and status. they feel naked and vulnerable. i soon got over that b.s. and ditched my money pit of a car, never to return. in hindsight i can say that cars don't give freedom. they are a ball and chain, constantly draining the wallet.

it's one thing to be nonchalant about public transportation, but another thing to be a hater. if you don't want to use it, fine. you still have the right to drive your car, no-one is denying you that. but there are plenty of people who want subways and railroads and such, just as you want and *will get* more of your freeways, er i mean tollroads.

saying that la will always be a car town is incredibly naive. it's also incredibly relative. it means nothing. any town with cars can be considered a car town, even new york. look at the the streets there, they are covered in cars. but guess what's under those cars, even more people getting places faster and cheaper.

[Shaun]

WHY DO WE KEEP FOCUSING SOLELY ON MORE ROADS AND FREEWAYS!

It didn't work for LA and it hasn't worked for any other major metro area in the world. Buidling more roads is not going to make this an easier place to live. Yes we will need some new or improved roadways but how about we try something different since relying solely on auto travel didn't quite work out well. WE need MASS TRANSIT and DENSER HOUSING to support all this growth.

It just amazes me how nothing in SoCal ever seems to change. Orange County already scrapped their light rail and opted to build more freeways, so I give them about 10 years before their freeways are as bad as LA's. Suburban style housing tracts, stips malls, and freeways DO NOT WORK AND ARE NOT SUSTAINABALE.

CA and especially Southern CA needs some serious fundamental chages in land use and transportation planning and development. We can't continue to grow like we have for the past 1/2 century. We need rail transit and smart growth/TOD development b/c that's the only way we can handle all this additional growth w/o choking ourselves to death with traffic and smog.

START CHANGING NOW!! It seems every time instead of taking prevetative or proactive measures for future growth we wait till the problems becomes so unbearable (i.e. LA traffic) that we go and spend way more money to try to fix the problem (i.e. building a rail system now in LA) after the fact rather than before.

We need some leaders with vision b/c the status quo is not working and will make this place a worse place to live in the future.