
The time is right to re-examine the L.A. freeway - samclemens
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-new-et-cm-why-i-reviewed-the-new-405-20150805-column.html
======
randomaxes
Why is congestion pricing never brought up in any of these conversations about
traffic?

Simply charge people 10 or 20 dollars to drive at heavily impacted times of
the day. Take every last cent of that toll to subsidize buses and eventually
mass transit on the same route.

People in a hurry win because their time is valuable and they get to buy it
back relatively cheaply. People not in a hurry win because they get subsidized
mass transit. Everyone wins because traffic and pollution go down.

In a country where we allow people to live in misery just to uphold the "Free
Market", why do we allow our streets and freeways to become unusable twice a
day just so freeways remain "free"?

~~~
kafkaesque
Isn't this basically FasTrak?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTrak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTrak)

It seems to represent everything else in the state of California: you get what
you pay for. It creates a classist, elitist society.

~~~
will_work4tears
Wow, are those transponders still that big or is that an older model? We have
Good2Go here in the Seattle area, and the little RFID cards are about as big
as a credit card (though a bit thinner I think).

~~~
kafkaesque
I've lived in Los Angeles/the US for 4 years now.

They just started implementing them on some freeways, like I-10 (maybe 2 years
ago?). They eliminated the (free) carpool lane and put this in place.

I know city workers who brag about getting their transponders subsidised and
get to ride in the cool fast lane.

EDIT: The FasTrak lanes/"ExpressLanes" are actually combined with the free
carpool lanes. Sorry for the confusion.

EDIT 2: This is how it works:
[https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml](https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml)

The transponder and opening an accuont (both required) still costs money.

Further info:
[http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/...](http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/ExpressLanes_FAQ.pdf)

~~~
ParadigmBlender
I have lived here for about same number of years. I just happened to finally
sign up and try it. It was an interesting value proposition. Pay 5+ dollars
but remove the stress of possibly being late. The $5 is high enough to make
this not worth it as every day default but I am glad to have it as an option
in a pinch. Seems to be working well.

------
tzs
> Three decades ago, according to Fortune, about 70% of American 17-year-olds
> had a driver’s license; the figure today is 46%. More U.S. teenagers now
> have a smartphone than a license.

I'd guess that the rise in cell phones, text messaging, and now smartphones
was a big contributor to the decline in early licenses and also in the urgency
of teens to get their own car.

Before such easy communications, you generally were not in contact with your
friends except when you were actually physically with them at school or at
pre-arranged times outside of school. You could call then on the phone, of
course, but that only worked if they were home to take the call, and you had
to compete with the rest of your family for the phone in your house.

This made spontaneous arranging of rides from friends a rather uncertain
endeavor. Unless your parents were very generous in the policies for sharing
the family car(s) with you, getting a car of your own meant a tremendous leap
in your freedom.

Nowadays, a large fraction of teens have cell phones, largely smartphones.
They make heavy use of them for messaging services and social networks (and,
I've been told, they sometimes even actually use them to talk!). They update
their statuses several times a day, and send on average something like 100
messages a day.

Because of this, today's teens (and younger) are much better informed as to
where their friends are and what they are doing when those friends are not
physically present. They know which of their friends with cars are not busy,
and it is trivial to propose a joint trip to the place they wish to go.

Accordingly, having your own car is not as important as it once was. Your
social group is now more efficient at sharing cars than social groups were
back before widespread mobile communications.

------
sandworm101
The OP talks of fewer kids having licenses. That has little to do with
smartphones and technology. Beyond the increased costs, operating a car today
is more emotionally expensive than ever. Driving is now a rationally
terrifying experience for kids.

1) Traffic fines are no longer trivial. Beyond the money, if a teen is part of
any graduated licensing program ANY ticket may delay them getting their full
license many months.

2) Parking is dangerous. Wrong place or wrong time doesn't mean a simple
ticket. Your car may be disappeared to some distant impound lot. The ransom
demanded will likely be more than the vehicle's worth (at least given the
junkers I had as a teenager).

3) Police encounters. The most likely place for a teen to interact negatively
with an officer is during a "routine" traffic stop. Turn on the news. A minor
incident can quickly spiral into days or weeks in jail.

4) Teenagers now fear failure above all else. A test failed is far worse than
a test not taken. Teenagers are adverse to any test that isn't absolutely
necessary. (See many threads here). So they avoid the DMV.

5) Cars increase mobility, but have you seen the streets in most cities?
Gridlock makes people feel trapped. For a child in today's world of apparently
constant violence, being stuck on a city street is scary. Whereas you or I
might see a simple frustration, kids today see physical danger.

Teenagers have plenty of reasons to avoid driving. It isn't because they once
needed to physically move in order to communicate. It's because they have good
reason to fear the road.

~~~
superuser2
>A test failed is far worse than a test not taken. Teenagers are adverse to
any test that isn't absolutely necessary

The driving test is stupidly easy. Whereas very smart kids have well-founded
anxiety about SAT and AP testing (genuinely difficult, can make or break your
life ambitions), only the most incompetent of the fuckups ever came within a
thousand miles of failing a driving test. These were the kind of poeple where
everyone else wondered how they managed to stay alive, how they would ever be
adults. For those above the 5th percentile of general ability level, passing
the driving test on the first try was pretty much guaranteed.

I think this is wrong. I'd much prefer a world where some normal people can't
get drivers licenses and moat people on the road are professionals or robots,
but if the state says, "No, you're not a good enough driver" then you can't
really carry on a suburban life. So it has to say yes to all but the most
egregiously incompetent, or lose its tax base.

~~~
douche
I've known people that failed their driver's tests, but they were also people
that deserved to fail... Otherwise, it's really just a question of experience.
If you've been driving lawn mowers, ATVs, or farm equipment since you were old
enough to reach the pedals, the way many rural children do, then passing the
driving test is a piece of cake.

Driving is really fucking easy to do, as long as you have a bare minimum of
situational awareness. It's not like most people are even driving stick and so
have to keep track of what gear they are in and avoid stalling. Just keep it
between the lanes, keep your hands on the wheel, put the damn cellphone down,
and keep your eyes open.

~~~
djcapelis
> If you've been driving lawn mowers, ATVs, or farm equipment since you were
> old enough to reach the pedals, the way many rural children do, then passing
> the driving test is a piece of cake.

Not necessarily! When you go into the city for the driving test and encounter
a bunch of crazy shit that doesn't exist on the dirt roads you drive, like
stop lights and crosswalks and congestions, it's totally easy to fail a
driving test just because you aren't familiar with the mechanics of how
traffic works in areas with higher levels of development.

------
chishaku
Many streets in LA are wider than even the widest highways in certain
countries (UK comes to mind). You can't broaden the 405 much more, nor would
such a scheme work for the 10.

The obvious answer is more mass transit and please, pretty please, protected
bike lanes on major throughways.

If Amsterdam can squeeze a dedicated bike lane, cars and trams on roads that
haven't changed in hundreds of years, surely LA can figure it out.

~~~
mattmanser
I don't know if you've been to Holland, but it's flat. It's flat _everywhere_.
Their steepest hill is a joke, it was less steep than the hill I lived on as a
kid in the UK, which in UK terms was a pretty standard hill.

That's why everyone cycles. And that's why Amsterdam squeezed it in because
they knew they were going to be used.

I cannot stress how much of a difference it makes everywhere being flat.

~~~
nathancahill
In LA, it's not the flatness, it's the distance that makes having a car
necessary. Everywhere is _miles_ away from everywhere else. I haven't been to
Amsterdam so I can't comment on that, but the first two sections of this
excellent article[0] touch on that.

[0] [https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/city-by-city/los-
angeles...](https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/city-by-city/los-angeles-
plays-itself/)

~~~
mattmanser
To be honest, miles on a bike is not much difference from miles in a car.
Average speed is like 10 mph, without any of the traffic jams.

~~~
tommoor
2 miles maybe, not 10 or 20 though... plus the searing heat ;)

------
titzer
I lived in LA for quite some time. The 10/405 interchange cannot under any
normal circumstances be declared a work of art, unless in an ironic, soul-
destroying sense of immense fuck-upery.

LA would have all the space it needs if freeways were one way. Yeah, I'm
serious. Separate the two directions of traffic by a city block or two and
suddenly four lanes will fit in more places, the interchanges become less
complex, and there's no spillover delays from rubbernecking the other side of
the freeway.

Also, they only recently realized that freeways need to obey the pressure
principle: lots of exits, few entrances with meters and long acceleration
lanes. That discourages short-distance trips and gives many outlets for
relieving congestion in the case of accidents. Long acceleration lanes reduce
merge pressure and help reduce the jamming caused by fast traffic hitting
slower traffic.

~~~
lovemenot
>> The 10/405 interchange cannot under any normal circumstances be declared a
work of art

While I agree with you now and have always done so, the point made in the
article was that cultural norms have changed so greatly these decades. Our
antagonistic view was once exceptional, but it has become mainstream.

As a parallel, I still see immense beauty in the internet's form and function,
but many of those of a younger generation who grew up with it might already be
seeing the internet as a ubiquitous, soul-destroying, immense fuck-up.

------
burritofanatic
I went to go have lunch with a friend on a Westside, coming from Burbank (20
miles), and the roundtrip took me close to 3 hours. LA is a strange place in
that way.

The other day, I overheard someone, who is 'non-minority', tell someone else
that they took public transit (bus) to work. The other person was slightly
dumbfounded, wondering why anyone would subject themselves to that.

I really do want to see a more bikeable Los Angeles (see link below), and I do
want to see the freeways as not part of the problem in this city.

[http://www.williamha.com/bike-commuting-to-work-in-los-
angel...](http://www.williamha.com/bike-commuting-to-work-in-los-angeles/)

~~~
wcummings
If you press people about why they don't like taking the bus, you get some
_interesting_ answers, usually containing some riff on the phrase " _those_
people". It's pretty shitty.

~~~
xraystyle
I'm not sure who you're talking to, but generally when I ask people why they
don't like taking the bus the response is usually much more likely to have
something to do with the fact that getting anywhere by bus in LA takes easily
double the time one would spend in the car.

The crowds and the lack of cleanliness on the busses are usually mentioned as
well.

Dirty, crowded, loud, and slow? No thanks. I've taken the bus numerous times
in LA out of necessity, usually when my bike unexpectedly broke or I was just
too tired to ride home, and it always sucks. I avoid it at all costs.

The subways are better, but not by much. They're still insanely crowded during
peak hours and not really any faster than driving when you factor in the time
and effort it takes to get to and from the stations themselves. However, I'd
take the subway downtown more often if it just ran later.

------
ltrump
I asked my teenaged nephew the other day, while he was playing a car racing
game, what he thinks would be a reasonable good first car for him. He is two,
maybe three years from driving age. He grew up in the suburbs and both his
parents have cars. Dad has a classic car for weekend pleasure driving. You get
the picture. My nephew hadn't really considered getting a car. I can see the
first car thing being a whole lot less of a thing for his generation than it
was for his parents'. He would rather spend time tinkering on his computer
than under the hood or behind the wheel like his father did.

~~~
bennyg
Give him 2-3 years and he'll tell you. Especially once his friends start
driving and owning their own cars.

~~~
superuser2
I'm having a hard time imagining what world you live in where teenagers have
~$3000 + gas money in disposable income from their $7.25/hour jobs and no
pressure to save it for college. My suburb was probably in the top 1% of
property values in the state and only a few (~10 out of 250) kids "owned"
cars, which their finance-industry parents bought them.

Most garages were 2-car, and you don't want a car outside of a garage in snow.
I was actually offered my grandmother's car for free when she died, but my
parents refused it because they didn't want to deal with 3 cars in a 2-car
driveway and garage.

No one else had any say in what car they would drive; 99% of the time it was
Mom's minivan or Prius, with constant tension over when the keys would be
brought back home. 95% of my graduating class went to college, and all but a
few of them lived in dorms (at least for the first year) where car ownership
was neither necessary nor permitted.

None of us will be thinking about buying cars until we graduate. And even
then, those who will have money to buy cars they want, instead of the cheapest
thing that starts, will be the San Francisco software engineers and the
Manhattan investment bankers, i.e. the people who don't need them. I know a
few people who got cars out of necessity for internships in remote places, and
on all accounts it was a ~10-year-old, boring, practical castoff of a middle-
aged relative who wanted an upgrade, to be sold when no longer necessary.

Personally, I'd love a Jetta but I can't imagine what I'd use it for, and for
the same amount of money I can get a fully-loaded rMBP, an iPhone, and less
student debt.

~~~
ocb
I agree with you... However, where do you (or your parents, I guess) live
where you have a 2-car garage but not enough space to park a car on the street
in front of your house? (snow isn't a real excuse, plenty of people in snowy
places don't park their cars in garages)

~~~
superuser2
Municipal ordinance - parking between midnight and 5am by permit only, only
_n_ nights per year per resident. Not sure how common this is for suburbia,
but I gather it's not hugely unusual.

~~~
Frondo
Where is that? I've lived a lot of different places in the US and I've never
seen anything like that outside the downtown areas of really big cities.

------
Disruptive_Dave
Not directly on topic here, but anyone else feel this was a monstrous jump to
make?

>Younger drivers see cars less as tickets to freedom and connection and more
as obstacles to those things, in part because the one time that they can’t tap
out texts or post pictures to Instagram is while they’re behind the wheel.

------
mjevans
Why I drive to work and don't take the bus:

* The bus still takes longer (2-3 times as long)

This might change, but only if normal traffic gets worse.

* Loss of freedom

I have the option of visiting friends/family in other locations if I drive.

Loss of freedom is also related to the very poor intra-networking; the entire
transit system in the area is designed as a star pattern for getting workers
to the city.

* Commuting in a carpool is hard when you aren't a shift worker: your hours and those of other workers aren't the same, you might not even have multiple workers from the same area at a small company.

* Commuting in a carpool is hard when you aren't a full time worker: (I don't have this problem, but friends do) if your hours aren't consistent or you might be called in at a moment's notice.

I think the answer to all of this is flexible pooled transit. Probably an
extension of what we know of today as taxi/ubur; but much more Johnny Cab
(80's Total Recall).

------
rwhitman
I would love to see a future where on-demand car services and / or self-
driving cars shrink the traffic volume of Los Angeles back down to the scale
it was originally designed for.

As you could imagine, native Angelenos are culturally disposed towards car-as-
identity thinking. But the value shift away from that is definitely visible
amongst younger people, and trends and values in LA have a tendency to spread
at an accelerated pace. So it's possible after a certain tipping point, this
could become reality much sooner than we think.

But I'm doubtful we'll be turning the 10 into a park anytime soon. Much more
likely that it will just shave off some of the stress of trying to get to a
meeting in Santa Monica from Downtown on time

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Jevons Paradox: if the convenience and cost of taking the automobile goes
down, the usage will go up. It just might suck less because you can go
anywhere, from anywhere, and drunk.

~~~
maxxxxx
That's what scares me about self driving cars. right now a three hour commute
each way is not really feasible but if you could sleep in your car it would be
very possible.

We may end up with even more sprawl and more cars on the roads.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Or worse: Mini RVs that let people live permanently on the road, taking up
even more space.

I'm reminded of the guy in Snow Crash who hooked himself up into a repurposed
fire truck that smashed through the LA freeways like a tank.

------
melling
If only there was some way to move a large number of people a mile a minute...

Of course, it wouldn't be built in the US.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR)

------
jensen123
I think it's great that people are questioning car use in big cities like Los
Angeles. I've visited a fair number of cities in my life, and those without
many cars are much more pleasant to hang out in. Much healthier, too. Subways,
bicycle paths and walking streets work very well in large cities.

However, I hope people won't make the mistake of trying to get rid of cars in
rural areas and small towns. Public transportation does not work well here.

Many left-wing politicians don't want cars anywhere, whereas many right-wing
politicians want cars everywhere. Some people seem to have difficulties seeing
that different solutions work well in different situations.

~~~
rayiner
I don't think any left wing politicians give a shit about public transit in
rural areas. The battleground is the dense suburbs.

~~~
jensen123
Maybe that's the case these days in the US. However, where I live (Norway,
Europe), left-wing politicians want high taxes on new cars, gasoline etc. in
order to discourage car use everywhere. Hopefully, the US won't end up like
this.

------
mmorett
The L.A. freeway system is not about L.A. It's about Southern California.
Comments that suggest public transportation don't take into account the unique
layout of SoCal. Here are just a few of the things to take into account,
coming from a guy that grew up in NYC and now lives in SoCal.

\--SoCal is not like NYC or SF where you can walk a few blocks and take a bus
or a subway. SoCal blocks are incredibly large. I get in my car to go 2 blocks
away, because those blocks are huge. Two of those SoCal blocks are like 6 of
my old NYC blocks.

\--SoCal is made up of many, many cities over a large, large area. There is no
way to get from one corner of Fountain Valley, in a subdivision, to a job in
Irvine (relatively close) where the office in an office park is no where near
a bus stop. And that's just Fountain Valley to Irvine. This is definitely not
an easy situation like covering Manhattan (a single, centralized destination
where many of the jobs are.)

\--There is no way to setup a workable network of busses/trains to mesh all
the cities involved. What's the solution for Costa Mesa to El Segundo?
Torrance to Burbank? West Covina to Anaheim? Newport Beach to Norwalk? And so
on.

\--The bus system we have usually covers a single city and maybe an adjacent
city. Going to work for most folks involves going thru 7-10 cities. A simple
commute from Costa Mesa to Manhattan Beach could involve going thru (winging
it here from memory): Costa Mesa to Fountain Valley, to Huntington Beach, to
Westminster, to Bellflower, to Long Beach...(catches breath since I'm not even
half way there on the 405 Fwy) to Wilmington, to Carson, to Torrance, to
Redondo Beach, to Lawndale, to Manhattan Beach. And you're only at the freeway
exit -- now you need to get to the exact office location which means driving
thru Manhattan Beach. Take a series of buses, if even possible at all, and
you're looking at a 3 hours commute one way.

I would _love_ to take public transportation. It's just not possible. I can't
even walk to get lunch. In centrally planned Irvine, they put the housing in
one area, the commercial offices in another and the retail commercial spots in
another. Even when they are semi-adjacent, the blocks are huge. It would take
30 minutes to walk to the nearest strip mall to get a burger. It's 5 minutes
by car.

It sucks, but it's not just an issue of freeways. It's how SoCal is designed.

\----------

Edit: adding my solution ---> tax breaks for businesses that allow
telecommuting. Keep us off the road and the problem goes away.

+higher quality of life

+less wear and tear on the cars

+less pollution

+less expenses on gas, eating out for lunch

+less maintenance on the roads

+less need for new buses/trains/employees to run them

+less congestion for those that need to be on the road

------
buckbova
Mostly nonsense article with no answers.

Get rid of carpool lanes and add some dang lanes in the meantime.

~~~
chadgeidel
It's pretty well known that adding lanes actually increases congestion. Here
are two cited articles that came up in a quick search:

* [http://transportationist.org/2015/03/02/elements-of-access-i...](http://transportationist.org/2015/03/02/elements-of-access-induced-demand/)

* [http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.ht...](http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.html)

~~~
tomohawk
In Northern VA they have the #1 or #2 worst traffic in the country. They knew
there was going to be growth, but no roads were built to handle it and no
rights of way were purchased when they were easy to purchase. I know someone
who worked in the Federal Highway Admin at the time (late 60's early 70's) and
recalls how they tried to do rational planning for the expected growth but
were shot down. They were told that building roads would just cause growth.
Now they have had the growth and don't have the roads. That's definitely worse
than having both. Contrast this with the other side of DC where MD put in the
roads and set aside rights of way. They are way better off. Not perfect by any
stretch, but better.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
NoVA's traffic is bad because of suburban sprawl. Car travel simply doesn't
scale to that level, no matter how many roads you build. The only part that
did anything correctly is Arlington, which focused it's development in areas
that are walkable and can be serviced by mass transit, resulting in decreased
traffic volumes on most roads in spite of a large increase in population.

