Readers Offer 64 Ways to Speed Traffic

That's right. Remember a couple of weeks ago when you started asking the public to suggest 100 solutions, large or small, general or specific, for the county's near-perpetual traffic jam?

Yes, we know you're not going to start sorting through that pile of letters you received until early in the new year. But we're going to give you a head start, because Life on Wheels readers have already come up with 64 solutions (not counting duplications). That means the job is nearly two-thirds done.

So go ahead. Take in a movie. Do some shopping. Or even if you go straight home, at least you'll be able to avoid the peak traffic hours. Hey, there's another one. Make that 65 solutions. . . .

Of course, we don't claim that every one of these ideas is feasible. That's your job--so maybe you should stick around for a few more minutes, after all. Some are complex, big-ticket answers, while others call for nothing more than a little common sense. Many of the suggestions are contradictory. And a few are, well, let's just call them unique.

The most frequent suggestion by far? Mass transportation, particularly a monorail or train system running down the center or alongside the county's major freeways.

Many readers also proposed synchronizing traffic signals on surface streets, an idea you folks at the Transportation Commission have already taken action on with the Beach Boulevard super-street project.

Christine M. Burton of Huntington Beach sent in the most solutions per capita, 18 in all. Some of them seem serious enough. Others, we pray, are not (see No. 16, for example).

We will start our countdown with Burton's list:

* 1. Severely limit the influx of population.

* 2. Limit truck traffic between 6 and 9 a.m. and 4 and 7 p.m. daily. (Also suggested by several other readers.)

* 3. Stagger the working hours to permit around-the-clock job access.

* 4. Go to the 4-day, 10-hour workday. Have one group work Monday through Thursday and another group work Tuesday through Friday.

* 5. Encourage those who can to work from home via computers and modems.

* 6. Encourage people to work closer to where they live or move closer to where they work.

* 7. Upgrade roads paralleling the major freeways.

* 8. Synchronize and computerize the entire traffic signal network (also suggested by several other readers).

* 9. Develop a "BART-type transportation system" to convey people to areas with high concentrations of businesses, such as the Irvine Industrial Complex.

* 10. Encourage business park developers to locate sites near residential areas with the majority of employees.

* 11. Major companies should consider moving to less-populated states.

* 12. Write to all your friends in the East and Midwest and tell them that the "Big One" will be hitting Southern California soon. It is hoped that this information will discourage new migration.

* 13. When you spot an "I NY" bumper sticker, stop the person and ask them to leave California at once and take someone with them.

* 14. DO NOT TELEVISE THE ROSE PARADE, especially to areas with 40 below zero temperature when it's 75 in Pasadena. "Televising of the Rose Parade has been responsible for more people moving to Southern California than any other single event," Burton says.

* 15. Enact a law that only \o7 x\f7 number of people can live in an \o7 x\f7 -square-mile area. Make this retroactive to 1978 . . . and send everyone who moved here since 1978 back to where they came from. (We assume you'll be taking over the column then, Christine, as your friendly local Life on Wheels columnist would be exiled under this proposal.)

* 16. (This is the one I warned you about.) Pray for the big earthquake to come quickly. This will \o7 guarantee \f7 that the state will be cleaned out of those extra people who are crowding out the rest of us.

* 17. Encourage people to go back to their original states by requiring a 9-month waiting period to obtain a job in California.

* 18. Encourage employers to provide vans for use by employees. (For van pools, we assume, and not to haul recent arrivals to the state line.)

"I realize that some of these suggestions are far-fetched, facetious and smack of sarcasm," Burton says. "But when you see your native state being ruined by overpopulation, you start to question the whole concept of dividing the country into states in the first place." (Somehow I could have guessed she was a native.)

The second-longest list, with 13 suggestions, comes from the employees in the Autonetics office at Rockwell International in Anaheim. They commute to work from as far away as Fontana, Corona, Perris and Pomona. Only one idea--banning trucks during rush hour--was a duplicate from Burton's list. Here are the others:

* 19. At traffic accidents, have some method to direct traffic and keep it moving.