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Bottleneck Blog contributors have sounded off about Steve Lopez's report on the L.A. parking enforcement officer who gave a ticket to an illegally parked car as a cancer patient attempted to exit. They sounded off on the rising prices of parking spaces around L.A. Now, the WSJ has a report about a new trend in city parking: Instead of making more cheap parking available, some cities are charging variable market (i.e. more expensive) rates: Since the parking meter was first introduced 70 years ago, in Oklahoma City, the field has been dominated by two simple maxims: Cities can never have too much parking, and it can never be cheap enough. Now a small but vocal band of economists, city planners and entrepreneurs is shaking that up, promoting ideas like free-market pricing at meters and letting developers, rather than the cities, dictate the supply of off-street parking. Seattle is doing away with free street parking in a neighborhood just north of downtown. London has meters that go as high as $10 an hour, while San Francisco has been trying out a system that monitors usage in real time, allowing the city to price spots to match demand.
Wonder how that would work on L.A.'s trendy West Third Street, where Times reporter Martha Groves writes about some "creative" ways merchants might be fulfilling their parking requirements?
The idea of building a new stadium for the San Diego Chargers just off Interstate 5 in Oceanside has raised concerns about worsening an already tough drive. But to the Chargers, moving north would have at least one advantage for non-San Diego fans, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune: This week, the Chargers released a statistical breakdown of its season ticket holders, showing those who listed addresses in the city of San Diego and South County bought 23,810 of the 62,226 seats sold per game last year. The city with the largest number of season ticket holders was San Diego, with 18,562 seats. Cities and communities in North County accounted for 8,498 seats. Outside the county, 3,693 seats were purchased by fans in Los Angeles County, 4,283 by fans in Orange County, 4,223 by fans in Riverside County and 1,532 by fans in San Bernardino County.
Opinion about an Oceanside stadium at a recent public meeting was mixed. One critic summed up the concerns of many: "You are bound to pave every bit of land in Oceanside," Laila Charlson said. "You can't fix traffic now, and with a stadium here will have the worst traffic jam ever."
Drivers know the L.A.-to-San Diego drive can take hours. But on the website Bad Subjects, one man describes the hell that is a regular commute between the cities.
The crane accident that closed the 405 Freeway in Sherman Oaks Friday occurred at the wrong place at the wrong time for commuters. The 1 p.m. closure of the northbound lane quickly brought traffic to a crawl across the Westside and Valley, with freeways like the 10 and 101 particularly hard hit. Some people stayed in their offices into the evening to avoid the gridlock. As Times reporter Mitchell Landsberg wrote: "Traffic on the 405 backed up through the Sepulveda Pass and as far south as Manchester Avenue, near Los Angeles International Airport — a span of 15 miles."
To one Bottlebeck Blog poster, it raises a more serious question: We got stuck for almost 3 hours before we finally were able to exit the Ventura Blvd. Offramp in a crush of vehicles. What I learned today. LA ,apparently, has no real plan for a disaster that strands so many motorists. I wondered during this.."what if this was a terrorist act with some form of 'bio chemical' released. Thousands of us would just be sitting in the open air with no place to go. All the while, I looked at the emptineess of the south bound 405 lanes and thought..gee; I wonder if there could be 'emergency crews' in place for an event as this.
The 101-405 interchange is already one of the world's busiest, according to the Daily News: "I'm going to leave at 3. There are two other people in the office who go that way, and I told them to leave early, too," said Sarah Warner, a banking executive from Valencia who commutes to Beverly Hills. "I want to beat everyone else to the canyon so I can get home before midnight. It's my son's 16th birthday and we're going to dinner." Traffic that is already heavily congested at what is one of the country's busiest interchanges - with more than half a million daily commuters - made the typically grueling Friday evening commute even worse. "It is a really bad spot for this to happen," said Officer Joe Barr of the Los Angeles Police Department's Valley Traffic Division, which helped deal with problems in and around the site.
The newly widened, beautified Garden Grove Freeway is a point of pride in Orange County (nice-looking sound walls!). But OC transportation officials are concerned about delays in completing the huge project. Times reporter David Reyes reports: While motorists are moving at a quicker pace on the largely renovated Garden Grove Freeway after a $500-million project, transportation planners and the contractor are now embroiled in a dispute over undone work. When first rolled out, the project was heralded as an innovative, 800-day overhaul to remake a 12-mile stretch of Orange County’s primary east-west corridor by Nov. 1, 2006. Bad weather and other delays pushed the deadline to Nov. 30. Yet, two months later, carpool lanes are unfinished, sound walls are still going up, and bridge work has dragged on, to the frustration of the Orange County Transportation Authority board which blamed authority officials last week for not providing specific deadlines for the work.
The northbound lanes of the 405 are closed in Sherman Oaks after a crane overturned on the freeway, trapping a crain operator. The closure occurred just after 1 p.m.
Update: Channel 9 says the operator has been rescued. The crane from a construction site off the freeway landed on two northbound lanes but didn't hit any cars. The freeway was reopened around 4:30.
One of Southern California's most difficult commutes must be the drive south from L.A. and O.C. to San Diego -- especially on weekends and holidays. Oceanside is already a bottleneck. But things could get worse if the San Diego Chargers build a stadium there, according to the AP:
The ability to manage traffic and accommodate parking will be key in determining if Oceanside is fit to be home to the San Diego Chargers, team and city officials agreed. "It clearly all comes back to traffic and the question of how you can manage traffic," said Mark Fabiani, the team’s lead negotiator. Fabiani discussed a possible NFL stadium for two hours Thursday with officials in this city 40 miles north of San Diego. The Chargers are looking at a 70-acre, city-owned golf course near the intersection of Interstate 5 and Oceanside Boulevard as a possible site. The team and city will study parking and transportation alternatives in coming weeks.
-A tiny bit of Westside traffic relief. Caltrans has canceled a planned weekend closure of the westbound Wilshire Boulevard offramp from the 405 Freeway. It's part of the $50 million carpool lane extension project.
-Who stole a Caltrans freeway sweeper from a Garden Grove corporate yard? The CHP is investigating: "Strange things have disappeared over the years," said officer Denise Quesada of the California Highway Patrol. "But the bigger question is, why?"
-Getting around the Valley: Changes coming to a commuter bus line link to Red Line/Orange Line station.
-A small step forward in the dream (to some) of tunneling a freeway under the Santa Ana Mountains. A small step.
The battle continues over Steve's column about Cheviot Hills and the Expo Line, with one writer questioning whether the old rail median along Venice Boulevard would really work. Meanwhile, writer David Rizzo sees a parallel between the vanished Red Cars and, uh, this newspaper.
Steve R. Odell of Huntington Beach believes now is the time to get serious about improving traffic: Maybe Steve Lopez and The Times can do something to keep what used to be a 20-minute commute, now a 50-minute commute, from becoming a 65-minute commute. If not, we will look back on the good old days of 2006 and remember how easy it was to travel across town.
Oh, and that Hummer continues to fly through the blogsphere .
Some contributors to the Bottleneck Blog have praised carpool lanes for offering an incentive for commuters to rideshare (fewer cars on the road, less pollution). But the Orange County Register's editorial page suggests the government open up carpool lanes to all drivers. A sample: We're no fans of car-pool lanes in general. We think the extra lanes ought to be open to all comers rather than used to try to coerce people into behaving in the "proper" ways – i.e., by getting to work in a car pool rather than driving alone. Those government officials responsible for designing and maintaining the public roads seem more interested in changing behavior than in meeting the demand for roads. Fortunately, the Orange County Transportation Authority is pushing the California Department of Transportation to allow some reasonable changes in car-pool lane restrictions that could enhance traffic flow and improve safety. OCTA Chairman Carolyn Cavecche "has requested that Caltrans consider allowing general traffic, including solo riders, to use car-pool lanes during nonpeak hours," according to an OCTA statement last week. "Additionally, she asks that Caltrans implement a policy to allow continuous access to car-pool lanes on all Orange County freeways."
The L.A. Times editorial pages has also offered its ideas for improving carpool lanes: A better solution would be to require that at least two occupants of vehicles using carpool lanes be licensed drivers. Though in some ways this would be harder to enforce — police wouldn't know by looking at a car that both occupants had driver's licenses — in other ways it would be simpler because it's easier for police to see two adults in a car than one adult and a small child. Best of all, it would free up carpool lanes for, well, actual carpoolers.
Much has been said on the Bottleneck Blog (and in Steve's columns) about how horrible traffic now prevents people from exploring L.A. -- including that game at Dodger Stadium or that play at the Music Center. But one writer at Pepperdine University's Graphic has made a passionate defense for exploring the city -- sometimes even at rush hour. He notes that even sitting on the freeway makes to close to one important institution: While the city may seem overwhelming to one who simply wants to go explore, this may be a blessing in disguise. An upside to the massive urban sprawl is its many enclaves and districts not seen from a freeway. While in Santa Monica, most go to the Mecca of commerce, the 3rd Street Promenade, but never check out the hipper, quieter Main St. When checking out a game at Staples Center, why not beat the traffic and check out the rapidly changing downtown? Head down to Venice to see what is sure to be the strangest grouping of people you have ever seen gathered in one place. When it comes down to it, there are really too many things to discover, places to dig and people to see in the city to possibly justify staying in Malibu all the time. And if you still think L.A. is a waste of time, remember it’s the closest place to get an In-N-Out burger.
Times reporter Jessica Garrison reports on a not-very-reassuring audit about problems with taxi cabs at LAX:
A non-profit agency managing taxi operations at Los Angeles International Airport handed out envelopes filled with cash to the managers of cab companies but could not document why. It made direct payments to employees who were allegedly injured on the job, but never reported injuries to the state, in violation of state law. It paid tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers and contractors with no evidence that it got sufficient services in return. Those are among the problems and irregularities at Authorized Taxicab Supervision, Inc. identified this month in an audit by City Controller Laura Chick. The controller's audit also faulted the city's airport department for abdicating its responsibility to monitor the agency's actions at LAX, noting for example that ATS was charging a catering truck $24,000 a year to park near Terminal One, but no one at the airport knew about it. ATS was also paying off-duty police officers to direct traffic and roam the airport in their own cars looking for bandit taxi cabs, without official permission from the airport, although airport officials knew about it.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown is asking the six largest U.S. and Japanese automakers to settle a lawsuit in which the state seeks millions of dollars in damages caused by vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases. According to the Associated Press:The L.A. Taxicab Commission meets today to discuss the problem of bandit taxis and a new enforcement effort. Brown scheduled a news conference Thursday in San Francisco to release details. On Wednesday, he sent a letter to attorneys representing the automakers, asking to meet personally with the chief executives of General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. "As I review the litigation and learn more about the disputes, I am struck by the need for California and the automakers to work together to address the profound environmental challenges posed by global warming," Brown said in letters to each of the automakers’ attorneys. Brown, a former governor who won the attorney general’s race in November, wants to meet with the executives "to discuss resolution of our pending litigation and (move) forward cooperatively." Former attorney general Bill Lockyer, now California’s treasurer, sued the companies in September in U.S. District Court in Oakland. Lockyer said he wanted to hold the auto industry accountable for what scientists say is their contribution to climate change. California is the world’s 12th largest producer of greenhouse gases, and more of those emissions come from vehicles than any other source.
Last week, The Times Thomas Maugh reported that a groundbreaking USC study "found that children living near busy highways have significant impairments in the development of their lungs that can lead to respiratory problems for the rest of their lives." It was based on data from around Southern California.
Now, some more disturbing news.
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine warns: "Women who live in areas of high air pollution, exposed to invisible particles from traffic fumes, coal-fired power stations and wood fires, are at increased risk of heart disease and death."
By the way, the USC researchers last year offered little encouragement for SoCal children: Even having a pet doesn't help: Researchers looked at the relationship between chronic cough, phlegm production or bronchitis and dog and cat ownership among 475 southern California children with asthma who participated in the Children's Health Study, a longitudinal study of air pollution and respiratory health. Children with dogs had significantly increased cough, phlegm production and bronchitis responses to the measured pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter and acid vapor.
Steve's column about the disabled person who got a parking ticket when getting out for a doctor's appointment is just the beginning, it seems.
Times reporter Roger Vincent reports that parking around Los Angeles is getting more expensive and harder to find. Consider: Cheap, convenient parking — as Southern Californians have long known and expected it — is getting harder to find, particularly in high-density places such as Hollywood, Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles. Two hours in an office building garage in Century City can set you back $28, more than twice what it cost in the early 1990s. Club hopping in Hollywood? It could cost $60 before you even you tip the valet. Commuters who paid as little as $80 a month in downtown Los Angeles in the early 1990s are being hit up for as much as $300 for unreserved spaces. Prefer a prime slot with your name on it? Be prepared to write a check for more than $500 a month. Basic economics — rising demand and declining supply — explain the parking price surge.
And that's not all. In his Monday City Hall column, The Times Steve Hymon found that 10% of the city's 42,000 parking meters are broken at any one time.
Parking getting as bad as the traffic? Comment below.
Amid the debate about more rail lines as a way of reducing traffic, transit officials have quietly changed the color palette. MTA officials didn't run out of red ink when they printed the new subway maps. They've changed the name of a portion of the Red Line. Passengers traveling west between Union Station and Wilshire Boulevard at Western Avenue will now board the Purple Line. That's also the line that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants to take to the sea. How will the new color resonate on the Westside? And why is the MTA having some much trouble picking color (the Expo Line still doesn't have an color designation because of politics squabbling)? Comment below.
-Jean Guccione (Jean covers the MTA for The Times)
In his column, Steve reports from Century City: "It's hard to imagine why a traffic officer would find himself incapable of allowing a disabled person two minutes to get out of the car."
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Do all these passionate comments about Cheviot Hills and the Expo Line leave you wanting more? The Exposition Metro Line Construction Authority's website has detailed rendering, station information and general plans. It includes details about public meetings at UCLA set for Feb. 7 to provide updates on the project.
(Expo Line Image from EMLCA)
The lively debate on the Bottleneck Blog is echoing elsewhere on the web. Here's some sample linkage:
Metroblogging Los Angeles weighs in ("Make Pico and Olympic one-way streets during peak hours").
Blogger Ken Reich praises Steve's work, while MetroRider LA seems more dubious.
Blogger SaigonBob has a bone to pick with one L.A. politico and his response to traffic problems.
Chasing Clean Air offers one solution, while Patterico believes one issue -- illegal immigration and traffic -- has gone largely undiscussed.
Not surprisingly, Autoblog Green takes issue with Jaime de la Vega's Hummer.
Steve's column on L.A. city transit chief Jaime de la Vega and his Hummer produced a lively discussion on the Letters to the Editor page:
Steve Lopez examines in Sunday's paper about why an abandoned stretch of rail track on the Westside isn't part of the solution to the region's traffic problems. Here's the link:
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