It was a magic time. For 16 days in the summer of 1984, driving to work seemed almost a joy--and then the XXIII Olympiad came to an end, officially closed by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley with a prophetic quip: "The Games are over, let the traffic begin."
The next day the freeways were congested, the rutted surface streets bumpy and crowded as ever. Five years later, the congestion has only grown worse, and politicians, traffic experts and commuters can only look back longingly on the Olympic traffic-management plans and wonder why those same, relatively simple tactics cannot be resurrected.
There are many answers to that seemingly straightforward proposition and, together, they help to make clear the complex transportation equation that has brought the Los Angeles Basin to the brink of gridlock.
No Central Authority
Mainly, traffic experts point to the absence of a central authority with influence over a confusing number of governmental agencies that control the maze of freeways and streets. The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee seized the leadership role, bringing together for the first time the hodgepodge of agencies that collectively--though rarely in harmony--set the region's traffic policies.
The Olympic planners had the time and resources to attempt only a quick fix. Their strategy was to smooth out the flow so that overcrowded roadways would carry more people. To do this, they relied heavily on persuading drivers to change their habits, to delay trips, to car pool, even to ride the bus.
Like a shot of painkilling Novocain, this attempt at traffic management worked for a short time. However, most Southern California motorists over the long haul insist on traveling alone, making fuller implementation of the Olympic plan difficult, if not impossible.
Costly Projects
Some experts believe the only solutions lie not in attempting to manage or at least massage traffic flows, but in more tangible--and costly--projects, such as increased freeway construction.
Bradley and others have pushed to make portions of the Olympic traffic management plan permanent. Boxed in by jurisdictional borders, they have been able to do this only in a piecemeal fashion that, at best, will squeeze a relatively few more cars onto the roadways. These additions, by themselves, promise little hope for regionwide results, critics say.
The real trick in traffic management is to squeeze more people into fewer cars--or buses--a goal that has proven elusive despite dire forecasts of the traffic system's pending collapse. Simply by raising the average number of people riding in each vehicle to 1.7--up only half a tick from the normal average of 1.2 people--would free up the freeways, various transportation experts agreed in interviews. The proof, they said, was in the Olympic traffic management experience, which, unfortunately, few believe can be duplicated.
The "unqualified success" of the Olympic plan was a one-time happening that has "very limited transferability," said Genevieve Giuliano, a traffic specialist who investigated the Olympic management systems for the University of California's Institute of Transportation Studies. The successes, she noted in the most extensive report on the Olympic traffic plan, were both "unique and short-term."
Red Tape Cut
Giuliano, who teaches urban planning at USC, said the Olympic planners succeeded because they could cut red tape and make quick decisions.
"Everyday conflicts between local agencies were forgotten," she reported. "Cooperation and leadership made it possible to implement policies that under normal conditions would be unacceptable and . . . with the exception of the synchronized signal system in downtown Los Angeles . . . none of the strategies survived."
Said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee: "You need a dominant personality, like Peter Ueberroth, to make it work . . . (someone) who is willing to do what it takes to get the job done" but who doesn't have to worry about a constituency or getting reelected.
When the Olympic Transportation Advisory Group first met in 1981, it faced the unprecedented challenge of accommodating an expected 1.2 million visitors and 6 million spectators on already congested streets and freeways. The group--composed of top managers from private corporations and public agencies--was brought together by Harry Usher, general manager of the Olympic Organizing Committee, who told them to do whatever was necessary to make the traffic flow.
Significantly, many of those public transportation officials were meeting together for the first time.
"Some of these people had never even talked before," said Usher, a lawyer who now runs a downtown office of a national headhunting firm.
Fronts of Attack
