Case study: 55 Freeway

The Times' Dan Weikel and Dave Reyes have a very smart piece about why freeways continues to be clogged ever after Caltrans spend a fortune on improves. Case in point: The Costa Mesa Freeway:

Despite $240 million in improvements to the Costa Mesa Freeway since 1998, traffic is as bad as ever on Orange County's central corridor, and a persistent bottleneck remains a vexing problem for drivers and transportation officials. Congestion on the 55 Freeway between the San Diego and the Garden Grove freeways has steadily increased since the 1990s. Traffic has become especially clogged at the Edinger Avenue on- and offramps, where the number of vehicles has grown to 279,000 a day, an 11% increase in a decade. The volume rivals the notorious Riverside Freeway's.

60/91/215 confusion

The PE had a good piece about a Caltrans snafu that is costing IE motorists:

Every day, thousands of commuters driving west on Highway 60 suffer through one of the worst Inland bottlenecks where the freeway narrows from three lanes to one in Moreno Valley. Caltrans created the traffic snarl two years ago to protect workers widening a nearby freeway bridge over a railroad as part of the 60/91/215 interchange project. But when the agency deleted the bridgework from the project last year to save time and money, Caltrans did nothing to ease the traffic headache it created. Documents show that after months of late-stage design changes, disputes between Caltrans and the contractor, and construction problems on the bridge over the railroad, Caltrans decided in October to halt the work.

Cell phone static

The Times Myron Levin reviewed the studies and found many who believe California's "hands free" cellphone law won't make the roads any safer:

As California joins five other states in requiring drivers to use hands-free devices when talking on cellphones, an increasing body of research suggests the legislation will accomplish little. The risk doesn't stem from whether one or both hands are on the wheel, the research suggests. It's whether the driver's mind is somewhere else. The biggest danger is "cognitive capture" -- or being blind to driving cues because one is absorbed in conversations, especially emotional ones. "There's a common misperception that hands-free phones are safer when the research clearly suggests that they they're both equally risky," said Arthur Goodwin, a researcher at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. California motorists will be required to use a hands-free device to talk on a cellphone starting July 1 under a new traffic safety law. Such laws are already in effect in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Utah, Washington state and the District of Columbia.