Billion and Five Years Later, the 4. Congestion Relief Project Is a Fail. Illustration by Jimmy Giegerich. This past May the project known as the I- 4. Sepulveda Pass Improvement Project came to official completion, with resulting new on- ramps and off- ramps, bridges and a northbound 4.
Freeways. The four- turned–five- year, $1. Metro and made all the worse by baffling detours that led drivers into the unfamiliar Bel Air Hills and Sherman Oaks hills, dead ends and unlit canyons. As Metro's closures and delays reached their height in 2. L. A. Weekly encountered stranded motorists merely by following Metro's official detours — which in many cases were roads to nowhere. And it isn't over in the Valley or on the Westside. Sudden ramp and lane closures are still hitting motorists at Getty Center, Valley Vista, Skirball Center and elsewhere as work on the officially completed project grinds on.
- Within FHWA's Congestion Reduction Toolbox, information on the various methods for relieving congestion on existing roadways thereby improving service. Congestion Reduction Toolbox: Improve Service on Existing Roads Traffic Incident Management Traffic.
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- Background As the Congestion Management Agency for Los Angeles County, Metro is responsible for implementing the Congestion Management Program (CMP). State statute requires that a congestion management program be developed, adopted and updated.
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- Federal Highway Administration's focus on congestion. Demand for highway travel by Americans continues to grow as population increases, particularly in metropolitan areas. Construction of new highway capacity to accommodate this growth in travel has not.
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There is one crystal- clear improvement: With barricades gone and ramp closures less frequent, commuters are at least getting relief from problems Metro itself created — particularly its widely mocked detours, which proved indecipherable on its website and could not be explained by road crews. Now, says Brian Taylor, director of UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies, commuters who had to leave home "at 5: 1. But the $1. 1 billion question hangs in the air: Is the 4. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Congressman Brad Sherman and County Supervisor Gloria Molina demanded in 2. L. A.'s "fair share" of state bond money be used to add carpool lanes to the 4.
The answer is no. A traffic study by Seattle- based traffic analytics firm Inrix has shown that auto speeds during the afternoon crawl on the northbound 4. More worrisome is the morning southbound logjam. It's so bad, post- improvements, that when Caltrans issues its "worst bottleneck" rankings in August, unofficial data suggest that the 1.
Valley and the Westside could be the worst freeway segment in California. Urged in 2. 00. 6 to act in the name of "congestion relief" by Villaraigosa, Sherman, Molina and labor leaders, then–Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 1. Proposition 1. B transportation bond money.
WSDOT is recognized for its commitment to accurate and quality reporting on congestion. Since 1988, the department has been collecting, analyzing, and reporting on congestion to help the public and officials better understand how congestion is evolving and what. Discover best home remedies for sinus infection. Regular physical activity and a fit body are important for easing the symptoms of arthritis. If weight bearing exercises are problematic for you, try water aerobics. Their claims of 'congestion relief' weren't based on prevailing research, and the Metro board knew that. One of the most detailed studies of work-bound carpoolers, by Nancy McGuckin and Nandu Srinivasan, showed that in 2001, 83 percent of such carpools. Feeling congested but looking for natural relief? Try this natural decongestant and home remedy for congestion. You'll be feeling better without a trip to the drugstore! Whether it's allergies or a nasty cold, being congested sucks. It's hard to breathe, the sinus.
Villaraigosa was particularly ardent, repeatedly making statements such as, "Make no mistake, this is going to be an important contribution for reducing congestion on the 4. Those who endured five years of disruption were assumed to be sacrificing in large part to give L. A.'s workforce a needed carpool lane. Metro and Caltrans cut away a vast tonnage of rock in Sepulveda Pass to make room for the storied carpoolers. But longtime statistics had already shown that not many people would form carpools."Conceptually, there's little reason to think that just adding another lane, even a carpool [lane], is going to noticeably reduce traffic," says Michael Manville, assistant professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University. This is a project that has very high and very certain costs.
But the benefits are much less certain."On a purely personal level, losses to residents were high. The Texas Transportation Institute says that every hour a person sits in traffic tie- ups costs an average of $1. What unfolded during five years of 4. Bob Poole, director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation.
A number of studies have shown that carpooling is declining even as carpool lanes are added, often to the exclusion of other major transportation projects. Metro's board, made up of 1. Los Angeles County but is dominated by the city of Los Angeles and its mayor. Powerful L. A. leaders wanted a 4.
Their claims of "congestion relief" weren't based on prevailing research, and the Metro board knew that. One of the most detailed studies of work- bound carpoolers, by Nancy Mc. Guckin and Nandu Srinivasan, showed that in 2.
Carpooling has been dying off in Los Angeles since 1. A longtime critic of carpool lanes, Poole suggests that the only path to congestion reduction is to convert some 4. Fas. Trak lanes, such as those on the 1. He says Metro also would "actually generate some revenue to offset the huge cost.
In Miami it's been a huge success."“Make no mistake, this is going to be an important contribution for reducing congestion on the 4. Antonio Villaraigosa, 2. According to Cornell's Manville, a Fas.
Trak is not likely to happen. Most of the time, when you meet the enemy, it is us," Manville says. The powers that be deal with political constraints and they're not going to get permission to put tolls on the 4.
Another reason the 4. Faced with a badly congested freeway, commuters will start to seek alternatives on different roadways, by choosing earlier or later travel times or a change in mode of transportation. Eventually, the area's transport grid reaches an equilibrium. But after a project improves the roadway, drivers come back from the side streets. Off- peak commuters return to peak times. Public transportation riders switch back to driving.
The transportation term is "triple convergence," and it helps explain how beneficial effects from the 4. Whatever else is true, despite its billing the 4. Sepulveda Pass Corridor, which according to Metro historically has been the most congested highway segment in the United States.
Daily, tens of thousands of motorists pour out of the San Fernando Valley and down through the pass, bound for jobs to the south. Drivers have very few routes by which to cross the Santa Monica Mountains. On the city side, the 4.
Sepulveda Pass to return home but also by a tremendous afternoon flow of eastbound cars leaving coastal L. A. The interrelated backups have complex causes, among them the key job centers in Santa Monica, Playa Vista, El Segundo and environs; the inability of the eastbound 1. Westside's east- west surface roads, with Santa Monica Airport acting as a permanent obstacle. And, of course, the few routes to the Valley over the mountains. UCLA's Taylor says that beyond its widening to allow carpool lanes, the 4. If the standard of this reconstruction is clear streets during rush hour, that was not going to happen," says Taylor, who adds, "There's a concept called 'latent demand' by which you have a congested roadway, you add some lanes, it opens up running more smoothly, and then it gets back to where it was before."Today, Metro points out that it has at least increased the 4.
Wilshire and Sunset boulevards and much- improved new bridges at Sunset, Skirball Center and Mulholland Drive. Metro gets some support in this view from Rod Liber, of the Brentwood Homeowners Association, who says, "Exiting the 4. Wilshire is more civil now. The overpasses eliminate the mixing of on- traffic with off- traffic. However, with Sunset there's no way to synchronize the lights to keep the traffic moving."But Sunset Boulevard has seen "mild, not substantial, improvement," says Liber, its prodigious backup still snaking west as far as the Brentwood business district and east past UCLA as cars try to access the still- stoppered 4. A Metro spokesman suggests that the 4. Metro spokesman Dave Sotero says there was simply less traffic "in the pit of the Great Recession," and the project can't expect to offset the increased traffic that has materialized thanks to L.
A.'s employment rebound and lower gas prices. Will the next economic downturn or the current spike in gas prices provide any of the congestion relief Los Angeles leaders promised? Sotero predicts at least some congestion relief from the new northbound 4. He points to the Valley- Westside Express, a new nonstop bus using the carpool lane between Westwood and the Valley's popular Orange Line, a dedicated busway. Jay Beeber, a film producer who ran this month for L.
A. City Council District 4, which sprawls from Sherman Oaks over the Hollywood Hills to Miracle Mile, asks, "If they're doing all this work, why didn't they put in a dedicated transit line, like the Orange Line? With two additional paved lanes, we could have solved a lot of our traffic problems commuting in the morning."Austin Beutner, now CEO of the Los Angeles Times but previously a Los Angeles deputy mayor, has said that Metro didn't proceed intelligently, spending the state 1. B bond money and federal funds on inefficient carpool lanes instead of using the widening of the 4. Beeber suggests the 4. L. A.'s political class can't think outside the box."They say that a train running through the Sepulveda Pass, for instance, [will not happen for] 2. I don't know why it takes so long, and yet we all kind of accept that it does." He cites another idea long used in cities such as Seattle, but still not a serious plan in L. A.: reversible lanes on Sepulveda Boulevard, the snarled 4.
With traffic jams as bad as ever, Metro may have a hard time selling other projects to residents expected to sacrifice for the greater good. Many still dish on Metro's bizarre detours and incomprehensible closure notices. One unusual car "trap" that gained a certain infamy was at the Santa Monica Boulevard northbound entrance to the 4.
There, Metro encouraged motorists to enter what appeared to be the under- construction northbound freeway ramp. In fact, it was really a cordoned- off, 5. People who had a family emergency or needed to use the bathroom were simply out of luck. Marc Danziger, a technology strategist from Torrance, who got caught in the trap one Friday night, explained at the time, "They had created a little channel with concrete barriers and have us locked in this one lane along the road's shoulder. All that traffic going north from Santa Monica Boulevard, both directions from Wilshire, and more, are channeled into this one- lane 'canal' they've built."It took him 5. Montana Avenue. Just close the on ramp, Danziger said.
Don't trick people into a one- hour delay. At the time, Sotero explained of Metro's controversial planning that the city of Los Angeles also reviewed its detours. But what was considered "logical for a motorist, we wouldn't necessarily recommend, because we don't want to send masses of humanity down local streets.