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Q: What do you call a road with five to seven lanes of traffic in one direction, if the only way to exit this road is by going to the right?
Pose that question to most Angelenos and the answer would be "a freeway, stupid!" But they'd be wrong. The answer is the increasingly popular proposal by LA County Supervisor Zev Yarolslavsky to convert Olympic and Pico boulevards into one-way streets in order to ease Westside traffic. The proposal has been hailed as an easy quick fix in recent articles and on the news after a report by former LADOT planner Allyn Rifkin declared a reconfigured Olympic and Pico would cut traffic by 20 percent, as long as the one-way streets prohibited all left turns for their entire 14-mile span. With left-hand turns allowed, the traffic decrease could be a significantly lower 6 percent. Whoop-dee-damn-doo.
Another major problem with the plan is that Olympic and Pico, though sort of parallel streets, differ dramatically in distance from one another as they snake their way through the center of the city. Sometimes, the streets are almost a mile apart, meaning a missed turn would prompt a shooting gallery of cars through neighborhood cross-streets.
Despite these very obvious shortcomings, the plan has seen little public dissent, with a notable exception being Koreatown. Maybe it’s because, in light of recent gains, that neighborhood has so much to lose. Even attempts to ease business owners' concerns by emphasizing the plan's "contra-flow lanes" (one or two lanes for reverse traffic for buses and cars during off-peak hours) has fallen largely on deaf ears in K-Town. A one-way Olympic Boulevard would slice through the heart of that community, as opposed to skirting the southern borders of Beverly Hills and other affluent Westside neighborhoods.
Photo by SeraphimC via Flickr.
The most upsetting component of one-way proponents' arguments for the one-way configuration is that they believe the “Subway to the Sea” is a nice idea, but can’t be built fast enough to solve traffic problems now. Let’s see, Yaroslavsky (along with Rep. Henry Waxman) helped kill the subway extension back in the 90s (which is why the recently-renamed Purple Line stops so abruptly at Wilshire and Western) by banning use of sales tax revenues for subway construction. Then, years later, after traffic has spiraled out of control and the Westside is a giant overpriced parking lot, the same guys vote to repeal the ban.
But now, the construction time of the subway is waaay too long to wait and the cost is waaay too high. Hasn’t anyone stopped to think that if not for the very same NIMBYism that put the Westside into its traffic funk, it would be possible to hop onto a subway today and coast under Wilshire Blvd. all the way to Santa Monica, passing under Beverly Hills (getting its ass kicked by The Grove), Westwood (choking to death on traffic exhaust) and the 405 (no comment necessary)?
Even more comical is that the NIMBYism of the 80s and 90s doesn’t appear to have subsided in the least, as evidenced by the battle many Cheviot Hills residents are putting up to prevent the Expo Line, the first rail to the Westside, from utilizing the rail right of way that goes through their neighborhood. Their reason for wanting to divert the line? They don't need mass transit in their neighborhood.
I'm not a die-hard eastsider who never ventures to the Westside. On the contrary, I battle traffic heading that direction routinely, whether it be to pick up or drop off my son at pre-school, going to the beach, or trying (usually in vain) to get to The Hammer. I’ve sat in traffic on Pico heading east at 5:30pm, and watched as people walked by us just like in the opening credits of Office Space. I've stopped going to my favorite Lebanese joint, Sunnin, simply because I won't dare go near Westwood and Santa Monica. Traffic just plain sucks.
But do I pity Westsiders? Hell no! Because I was once one of you (living in Santa Monica), and it took a relocation east to realize that the city of Los Angeles has been doing a lot of growing up, and making strides in battling those car-addicted, traffic-clogged clichés. I learned we have a subway system and, believe it or not, it’s pretty damn handy as long as you don’t need to go to the Westside.
Traffic east of La Cienega is always a fraction of what it is to the west on most major streets, even though the eastern parts of town are much denser. This one-way plan is about helping merchants and residents on the Westside (particularly the neighborhoods near the 405, where surface roads are the worst) by screwing the merchants and residents in the increasingly more manageable communities to the east. I have to call bullshit on that.
The proposal, if approved, would also send the city down a very slippery slope. Don't buy the "temporary fix" argument of proponents for a second. Look no futher than a passage in one of the very Times articles lauding the plan for a hint at the future, when it mentions that "if the Olympic-Pico street conversion worked it could become a prototype for other major thoroughfares."
Nice. Wonder how well received this plan would be if they tried to convert Hollywood, Sunset, Melrose, Beverly or 3rd into one-way streets?
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Why can't we just have commuter trains like every other major city in the US/world? You could even just put them back where they used to be - DUH!
DOT are idiots
bring that train through the westside i was down in austin texas in march they have 1 way street in their downtown east, west north, south it works
I live in Rancho Park (next to Cheviot Hills) and there are PLENTY of us here who want the Expo line coming through. Makes perfect sense to put a light rail on a right-of-way that already exists. I'm very fortunate to work at home so my commute involves cats in the hallway, but on the days that I have to be in Santa Monica in the afternoon (after 3) I know it will take FOREVER to get home no matter what route I take.
Why not build the subway and the light rail all at the same time and why not NOW?
Subways are nice, but that is in the whenever future and this is now. Going west on Colorado in Eagle Rock trying to get from the Eagle Rock Plaza to the 2 takes no less than four red lights, and it's four blocks. This is just ridiculous. LA traffic is so much go-stop-go that it makes me think the Bush administration has put Liberty University grads in charge of LA traffic - a particularly diabolical payback, no?
Look - one-way streets work everywhere they've been tried, from New York City on down to San Luis Obispo. Every major American city uses them. I don't get the no-left-turn stuff - what is the problem when you're turning in either direction from a one-way street? Where do people come up with these ideas? This left-turn thing is not an issue.
The miracle of one-way streets is to enable easy timing of traffic signals, though two-way streets can also be timed - you simply start the timing at either end of the street or wherever you want the timing to start. Sunset could be one-way with no problem, and Santa Monica or Melrose or Beverly could be the same. Still, even these streets can have timed signals. For westbound traffic the timing starts at the east end, and vice-versa for eastbound. I've seen this work in many big cities, and it's such a stress-reliever.
Left-turn lanes and signals at major intersections should be mandatory - why are so many left-turn signals not working?
Another no-brainer - pedestrians should all cross at the same time, and that includes diagonally, while all traffic sits at a red light. Pedestrians here are a major impediment to traffic flow - often only one car can make it through a left-turn because of pedestrians, who take their time and cross against the warning hand. I've seen only one intersection in the area using this, and I was agog, since it's done so many other places.
Y'know, LA is the place where cars first ruled. Well, we're stuck with it for the time being. But you'd think LA would also be in the forefront of traffic management using such simple tactics as one-way streets and others I've mentioned above. Instead, LA traffic seems to be managed by people who are either the dumbest of government bureaucrats or the least imaginative (well, maybe it's the same thing). The situations drivers face on city streets are otherwise just inexplicable. I live in Silver Lake, and the idiocies abound here as they do everywhere else in LA.