Q & A with L.A. traffic guru

Chances are you’ve never heard his name. But if you live in L.A., Benjamin Chan controls your day. He can make your commute a nightmare or a walk in the park.

The engineer oversees the city’s Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control system four floors below City Hall East. In this futuristic hideaway, computers spit out information about 3,300 intersections while huge monitors display traffic snarls beamed instantaneously from overhead cameras and underground sensors. It’s up to Chan, 49, to make sure traffic flows 365 days a year. It’s no easy job:

Can you give us an idiot’s guide to Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control?

We receive signal information from the field. We filter it. We analyze it. And if we need to, we make the changes. It’s the control center.

How does it feel to control the movements of 4 million people?

Great. I love it. There are not many engineers in the country who have the power that not only I have but the people around here have. You can actually make changes instantaneously.

What are the fastest-moving east-west streets in the city?

Adams Boulevard. Or Venice Boulevard. If you drive around 25 to 30 miles an hour, you should hit a lot of the signals.

What’s the worst intersection in L.A.?

I would say Wilshire-Sepulveda, Wilshire-Veteran — the Westwood area.

When a traffic jam pops up on your screen, what do you do?

We determine the cause and swing into action. We change signal timing or deploy traffic officers to stop people from clogging up intersections.

Even with this ATSAC system, as sophisticated as it is, can you solve traffic problems?

We’re getting to a point of diminishing returns. Maybe by 2050 or 2060, we’ll have to automate the vehicle itself. Each lane would have more and more cars. Cars would follow each other much, much closer.