A few ideas to deconstipate Westside traffic

I had breakfast last week with David Grannis, an urban planner recently hired by the California Community Foundation for a not-so-simple job: get Westside traffic moving again.

(correction: an earlier version of this post said the money came from the California Endowment.)

As anyone knows who has set tire onto the Westside the last few years, that's kind of like telling someone to put all the sand back into the ocean. It's kind of hard.

Nonetheless, Grannis is optimistic that a few simple steps could work. Like others who have been around Los Angeles a while, he recalls how a regional effort kept traffic flowing during the 1984 Olympics -- an effort that could work again if enough people tried.

"If you think about it, we haven't done anything different in 40 years," said Grannis, the president and CEO of Planning Company Associates. "We're organizing ourselves on a 1950s model" -- in other words, all getting up and going to work each day.

Grannis is still putting the finishing touches on his report, but he has begun to go public with some of his findings. He's looking mostly at the area north of the Santa Monica Freeway, east of the 405 and west of either Robertson or La Cienega, the idea being to find a few short-term fixes.

Here are three that I think are the most interesting:

1. Get employers to offer shuttle bus service for employees. Grannis says that his study reveals that a very high number of employees on the Westside actually live within five miles of their job. To help do this, Grannis proposes the parking tax be raised in Los Angeles with the increment -- the difference between the old tax and new one -- used to help employers get their buses rolling.

"The pitch I'm going to make is that government is not going to solve this all by themselves," Grannis said, adding that employer-operated bus services are common in the Bay Area. "These guys don't wait. They do something about it."

I mentioned to him that Century City is a little different -- there is no Google (which runs buses). Grannis said that's no big deal. Different employers could band together to offer bus service.

He also had another interesting idea: Use the old Exposition rail right-of-way to run electric shuttle buses for employers. He chafed at my description of that plan as a busway -- as I called it two weeks ago -- and said it's an interim step intended to help employers move employees through the Westside's high-tech corridor.

2. "All those cars flooding onto the Santa Monica Freeway between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. is not real smart," Grannis said. "It's lemming-like!"

Hard to argue with that. In his view, Grannis said that the problem is largely with the ramp meters -- they're allowing vehicles to enter the road at set intervals, but not adjusting to real-time conditions.

"You know what number of cars kills the freeway?" he asked. "It's 300 cars getting on at various points."

In other words, if those 300 cars could be kept from entering the freeway, main traffic could flow better. But Grannis wouldn't stop there -- he would also lower the speed limit to 40 to 45 miles per hour during the rush hour.  Although counterintuitive, he said that is the speed when you can move the most cars through the freeway per hour. (The reason is that higher speeds require more spacing between vehicles).

3. Grannis said he also thinks that reversable lanes should be installed on major corridors in the Westside. "We don't have a capacity problem on the Westside," he said. "We have tons of capacity."

Since I know you're asking the question, the answer is that Grannis lives in Pasadena, where his office is also located.

His point is that, in fact, there is already plenty of street space, but that it's being managed poorly. There's no reason to run the same number of lanes in both directions when there's clearly more demand for one than the other, he says.

He would do this for both north and south streets and, going a step farther, would convert some space on streets such as Westwood and Pico into bus lanes.

There are similarities here to the plan by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to convert Olympic and Pico boulevards into one-way-like streets. The mayor's plan -- based on an earlier plan by County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky) -- wouldn't have made the streets entirely one way, but would have given more lanes to westbound traffic on Olympic and eastbound on Pico.

Councilman Jack Weiss also supported the mayor's plan. But residents and businesses sued, forcing the city to perform an environmental study on the plan, which is now being done.

Grannis thought the plan had some good elements. "You gotta try stuff," he said. "I give Villaraigosa, Weiss and Zev some credit for saying we've got to try Pico-Olympic. Maybe I'm naive, but I believe if you give people the chance to see if it works, it might."

Whether any of this ever gets implemented remains to be seen. It will basically depend on whether politicians in the future think this stuff may work and whether they're willing to spend some money and endure some controversy. Grannis hopes some middle ground can be plowed.

"Let's do a test and let's come back and talk about it," he said. "That's what they do everywhere else."

--Steve Hymon

Photo: Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times
 

Comments

[Irwin]

Grannis is right about one thing: a big chunk of Westside commuters actually live within 5 miles of work. But the solution is not employer-based shuttle... that is rather inefficient use of resources. The answer is public transportation (Duh!)

I work for a large employer in Century City and was involved in a employee census. It turns out that about 40% of our employees live within 1/2 mile of either Santa Monica, Wilshire, Olympic, or Pico Blvd on the Westside. In another word, 40% of our employees live within walking distances to a bus stop that would take them to work in Century City via BBB7, BBB5, or MTA704. How many of those 40% employee take the bus? About 1%... The reason? There is free parking at work, free parking at lunch places, free parking everywhere on the West side, and bus is not faster than driving, so why take the bus?

The solution we proposed was simple: The company pays $600 a month for a parking space in Century City. Instead of paying the landlord and provide free parking for every employee, the company would pay each employee $300 (so company saves money too). Employees are free to either take the bus (which the company already help to pay so it has no additional out of pocket cost), or use the $300 to pay parking themselves. I believe this would have significantly solved the traffic and parking problem we had. But instead, the higher ups at my place of employment veto the idea and decided to construct a very large parking garage in order to eliminate the need to rent parking space from near by building (which had spare parking capacity). Opportunity lost to change behavior. I won't name my employer but you can guess which one... it's the one that owns land and building a giant parking garage...

[cph]

I remember back in the mid-1990's, there was a shuttle system called RUSH. (I forget exactly what it stood for, something-"Urban Shuttle", I think). It was run by the Century City Transportation Management Association.

This was a three-route shuttle system that connected Century City with the neighborhoods around it. One line went to Westwood, another went to West Hollywood/Beverly Hills, another one served Beverwil Dr (I'm working from memory). These buses were public transportation, anyone could ride.

Unfortunately, iit didn't last all that long. I don't think ridership was high enough.

This might be an idea worth dusting off, if it could be promoted properly.

[Kymberleigh Richards]

I heard Grannis give an overview of this at the Los Angeles Business Council's breakfast meeting on the 7th.

He is a dreamer. Century City employers will band together to do Google-like shuttles just because he suggests it? The Expo right-of-way is going to be abandoned for an extension of the presently under construction light rail line (which Santa Monica WANTS to have go all the way to their city) for shuttle buses not available to regular public transit users? No capacity problems on the Westside?

Grannis is apparently as naive as he jokingly suggests. And I doubt he'll find many on the Westside attaching any credibility to his Pasadena-based "solutions".

[Samantha]

Did he have any comments about the enormous jobs to housing imbalance in Santa Monica and the need to lay off all of the commercial development? Ride sharing plans are great, but it seems a big part of our problem is that too many people have to either change their jobs or drive their cars through the mayhem that is the westbound 10 in the morning and the eastbound 10 in the evening.

[KateNonymous]

"There are similarities here to the plan by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to convert Olympic and Pico boulevards into one-way-like streets. The mayor's plan -- based on an earlier plan by County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky) -- wouldn't have made the streets entirely one way, but would have given more lanes to westbound traffic on Olympic and eastbound on Pico. "

That wasn't the impression I had when the plan was proposed. Too bad it wasn't more clear, because it always sounded like Pico and Olympic would each have been one-way only for a significant portion of their distance.

[Oscar]

Hey Steve,

Do you know if Mr. Grannis has a dates on where, when and how his report will be released?

Also do you know if his report calls for any bike lanes on the westside?