LAist: "19 minutes to drive just one mile of Wilshire..."

guest

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:37:40 -0800

Ride a bike...

guest

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:20:14 -0800

Jay Handal deserves to inhal a lot of exhaust and be stuck in traffic. What an arrogant thing to say! When I was living in NYC I saw many celebs on the suway as every one takes it. Jodie Foster pulls down a lot more than half-million dollars a year and I saw her on the train with us regular folks. "Half-million dollars a year" types don't keep a city running. We need mass transit that works, we need trains, either a surface or subway system and we need it 5 years ago. Bill Rosendahl is the only one who seems to get it.

guest

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:09:26 -0800

Stop listening to the NIMBYs and widening freeways (how pointless is that?) and think trains.TRAINS! And hey, maybe put some of the trolleys back. I wouldn't even mind elevated trains, even with earthquakes. I mean, we have elevated freeways for goodness sake, why not trains? They just need to start already. Do it!

guest

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:30:42 -0800

there is only one real solution. subway. every single major metro center has a subway and/or lite rail. buses will not work. ever. they ride the same roads and take just as long if not LONGER because of all the stops. it HAS to be a subway!!!! lets get on it. under Wilshire all the way to Santa Monica. and add another subway under Ventura from Universal all the way to Pasadena. and hows about a monorail between the lanes of the 405?? or jet packs dammit.. give us jetpacks

LA MapNerd

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:30:29 -0800

The 1 mile/19 minute stretch of Wilshire Blvd where it crosses the San Diego Freeway (I-405) is a major failure of infrastructure design, and, in my opinion, the source of a large fraction of the "Westside traffic problem." To begin with, the I-405/Wilshire Blvd. interchange is basically a classic "cloverleaf" interchange. While cloverleaf designs minimize the need for building overpasses in non-stop interchanges, they are terribly inefficient at handling traffic. First, the tight loops of the "leaves" inevitably force traffic flow to slow, acting as bottlenecks that lead unavoidably to traffic backups when traffic flow is anywhere near capacity. Second, the cloverleaf design forces outbound traffic seeking an entrance loop to compete with incoming traffic from the opposite exit loop. Both streams fight for the same lanes in a all-too-short "weaving" area, which leads to further slowing and backups. In the case of the I-405/Wilshire interchange, each of these problems is further exacerbated by two additional design flaws. First, because the interchange was built in an already-crowded urban area, the loops have been squashed into hairpins to minimize land use. The tight turning radius of the hairpins increases the already-troublesome tendency to bottleneck the flow. Second, the "weaving" area of Wilshire - already overloaded by the mixing of entering and exiting freeway traffic - also hosts a signal-controlled intersection with a major Primary-Highway surface artery, Sepulveda Blvd. That's simply disastrous: the cloverleaf's only real virtue - its potential for nonstop flow - is utterly ruined by the presence of a stop-and-go signalized intersection right in the middle of the most overcrowded portion of the interchange. To top it all off, this horridly inefficient interchange is one of only two real* crossings in a nearly 4-mile stretch of the San Diego Freeway. The other crossing (Sunset Blvd.) is, like Wilshire, a Primary Highway artery complete with freeway on/off ramps. There are no Secondary Highways in that stretch that cross the freeway without interchanges, to provide through traffic (with no interest in getting on or off the freeway) an alternative to the crowded freeway-interchange streets. Anyone who's simply trying to get across the freeway is forced to compete with all the traffic getting on and off the freeway. (Compare this to other less troublesome areas, where Primary Highways with ramps tend to alternate with Secondary Highways without ramps, at approximately half-mile intervals.) This is a major structural problem, a bottleneck with no easy fixes. It is, I believe, the major source of the Westside's increasingly horrific traffic problem. Bus lanes won't solve it (and may well make it worse), and the "Subway To The Sea" will be doing well to accommodate the additional growth that will occur in the time it will take for it to be built. (About the only thing I can think of that might relieve this problem would be to build a set of "flyover" ramps that would take Wishire Blvd. through traffic over the entire interchange. That probably wouldn't solve the entire problem, but it might greatly improve the east/west commute.) ------------ *I use the qualifier "real" here in order to exclude the Ohio Ave. bridge between Wilshire and Santa Monica. It's not even a Secondary Highway - it's a Local Collector street only about a mile long, with only one lane in each direction - essentially useless as a through-traffic bypass.

guest

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:12:46 -0800

The guy who makes a half a million bucks will just have to crawil along wilshirer at 1 mile per 19 minutes. And obviously he is NOT the majority of people or commuters the bus and/or rail is intended for. Its about time we shifted out attitudes toward public transportation. Until that changes sit in traffic,create change or shut up.

guest

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:32:04 -0800

It would also be nice to get some demographics of who does take the bus, how long, socio-economic status, working or retired, students, etc. Maybe half-mil guy won't take it, but if office workers do in addition to maids, might be enough to get cars off the streets. Council voted for the bus lanes so we'll see if it helps.

Zach Behrens

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 09:50:40 -0800

How about just e-mail them a simple question and see how long it takes from to respond. Infinity.

LA Bus Girl

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 09:17:57 -0800

Are you shocked that DOT doesn't have a long and a short term strategic plan? They don't even do basic traffic counts for the city. Call them some time and try and get traffic counts for some of the busiest intersections and see what happens...