In a move that could be a preview of future traffic-busting efforts, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to announce a plan today that aides say would significantly reduce travel times on Pico and Olympic boulevards while keeping them two-way streets.
The plan, however, is to make them behave more like one-way streets, which are far more prevalent in other cities but have not been used much in Los Angeles outside downtown. In this case, the plan is to give a decided time advantage to those traveling east on Pico and west on Olympic.
The move comes as part of an attempt by the city to more efficiently get people to jobs on the congested Westside in the morning and help them get out in the afternoon. City officials say travel time could be cut by as much as 45%.
The first step in the mayor's plan would be to immediately begin to eliminate parking on both streets during rush hour. Then, beginning next year, traffic lights would be re-timed so that those traveling west on Olympic and east on Pico would be rewarded with longer green lights. Those driving in the other direction might see their rides take longer.
If those two steps speed up traffic, mayoral aides say the city might take an additional step and restripe both streets, so most lanes on Pico would be for eastbound motorists, while westbound lanes would predominate on Olympic.
"This is a new, smart approach," Villaraigosa said in a prepared statement. "We are going to prove it works along two of the most congested corridors in the city. And when it works on the Westside, we'll take it citywide."
Traffic engineers in Southern California have been dealing for decades with the vexing issue of trying to squeeze more capacity out of roads.
In Los Angeles, the old way of dealing with the problem was to call in the bulldozers and simply widen the street.
But such solutions no longer are feasible in many quarters because of lack of space. The problem is particularly acute on the Westside, where Beverly Hills, Century City and Santa Monica have become huge job centers that are served primarily by the Santa Monica Freeway and a few major surface streets, such as Olympic and Pico. As in much of the city, there is no rail service.
