Surface Streets

About the first thing I heard 20 years ago, when I moved to Los Angeles, was this: "Take surface streets. " "Surface streets" is a uniquely L.A. phrase meaning, roughly, take Beverly Glen. It can mean other streets, depending on what side of town you live on, but the underlying philosophy is clear: Do not take the freeway. The freeway will swallow you up. The freeway will take your day and twist it, irrationally, into a stressed-out ordeal in which you're always running 20 minutes late.

The smiles should be wide and plentiful. The Dodgers' new owners should take over this week, meeting the media and greeting fans and officially liberating the team from its dysfunctional era. What could possibly wipe the smiles off the faces of Magic Johnson, Stan Kasten and Mark Walter? How about the Angels moving into a new ballpark in downtown Los Angeles, three miles from Dodger Stadium? As the Dodgers emerge from bankruptcy, the most compelling baseball story in town might well involve how the Dodgers and Angels handle their aging ballparks.

With traffic gridlock part of the daily commute on the Westside, Gov. George Deukmejian has proposed spending $4.5 million to launch a high-tech system to relieve congestion along the Santa Monica Freeway corridor. In his proposed state budget released last week, Deukmejian said that the so-called Smart Corridor Demonstration Project would feature ramp meters, message signs and monitored coordination of traffic signals along parallel routes.

With patience, frustration and a lot of help from their GPS devices, L.A. commuters faced down a true "carmageddon" as a spectacular tanker truck explosion kept a key freeway closed and turned the already tough Christmastime traffic into an endurance contest. Commutes between eastern suburbs and Los Angeles that once took half an hour doubled and tripled as other freeways and surface streets clogged for miles. When the 60 Freeway - which normally carries about 225,000 cars daily - closed Wednesday afternoon, it took Patty Ortega three hours to get home to North Whittier after she made the fateful choice to take Beverly Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard.

As commuters have digested the fact that they have no choice but to come down from the trestles that for decades have carried them over the urban grid, many for the first time will glimpse an unfamiliar L.A. During the past two weeks, people waiting for elevators, over dinner tables or in line at the supermarket have begun to trade routes and guarded shortcuts. They compare them like top-of-the-line consumer items, speculating over which will provide the best performance.

Debbie Rodgers-Teasley does not need a traffic study to tell her that the number of cars and trucks running through Moorpark has surged in the last year. She just has to look out her office window. "It's constant," said Rodgers-Teasley, a real estate agent and president of the Moorpark Chamber of Commerce. "On any given day at any given time, you'll find a line of trucks heading down (California) 118 through Moorpark. If you don't see them, you feel them roaring by."

As if Los Angeles did not have enough problems, now it has a crippled freeway system to add to the region's growing fragmentation. Particularly hard hit in Monday's earthquake was the nation's busiest freeway, the Santa Monica. Now it seems the provincial comment of privileged Westsiders--that they try never to go east of La Cienega--will be tested with the collapse of the freeway at, of all places, the La Cienega overpass.

I have a friend who can't drive on freeways. Actually, I have several friends who can't drive on freeways, who suffer from driving phobias of varying types and intensities. But this particular friend, a local journalist whom I will call Johnny, suffers from a freeway phobia so severe it has caused him to black out, and so he hasn't driven on a freeway in almost 11 years. And it doesn't bother him one bit.

Orange County's plan to widen a traffic-clogged stretch of the 405 Freeway is facing unexpected opposition from some residents along the route and has generated new debate over the divergent transportation priorities of L.A. and Orange counties. The plan targets one of the region's biggest traffic trouble spots, where 300,000 cars travel each day between Irvine and the L.A. County border. Without the improvement, Orange County transportation officials said maximum commute times during peak hours will continue to increase.

All the letters I've seen so far regarding the hazards of using a cell phone while driving have referred to driving regular cars. How would you like to be cruising down the freeway on an express MTA bus while the driver is yakking away with a member of his/her family? That's what I experienced a few weeks ago on the 550 line when the driver was engaged in a spirited call for at least 10 minutes. It started while we were on the Harbor Freeway and continued until we were well onto surface streets.

About the first thing I heard 20 years ago, when I moved to Los Angeles, was this: "Take surface streets. " "Surface streets" is a uniquely L.A. phrase meaning, roughly, take Beverly Glen. It can mean other streets, depending on what side of town you live on, but the underlying philosophy is clear: Do not take the freeway. The freeway will swallow you up. The freeway will take your day and twist it, irrationally, into a stressed-out ordeal in which you're always running 20 minutes late.

Orange County's plan to widen a traffic-clogged stretch of the 405 Freeway is facing unexpected opposition from some residents along the route and has generated new debate over the divergent transportation priorities of L.A. and Orange counties. The plan targets one of the region's biggest traffic trouble spots, where 300,000 cars travel each day between Irvine and the L.A. County border. Without the improvement, Orange County transportation officials said maximum commute times during peak hours will continue to increase.

Change is at the root of the word "commute." Thinking ahead and being ready to change will help us live up to our role as commuters. If you know you have to exit the freeway, don't stay in the left lane until the last second. This causes accidents. Lookey-loos add thousands of commuter hours to our roadways yearly. Stop gawking at accidents. Ditch the car one day a week for Metrolink, carpools, buses, subways, bicycles or walking. Finally, prepare for your commute as you would for an evacuation.

A planning session Saturday with residents and merchants near Los Angeles International Airport underscored many of the challenges officials face as they try to modernize the 77-year-old facility. The purpose was to gauge community reaction to eight ideas for easing traffic congestion, such as double-decking Century Boulevard, providing direct access from the 405 and 105 freeways and adding two tunnels under the south runways to accommodate Sepulveda Boulevard traffic.

Notes from the 405: Were you one of the lucky ones -- traveling the San Diego Freeway on Thursday afternoon, heading into or out of Orange County and just being grateful to live in the splendor of Southern California? Me too. Then, of course, came our discovery on that fateful afternoon: A big rig had gone crazy on the freeway in Long Beach, resulting in lane closures in both directions. As best I can recall, here's how my trek from Costa Mesa to Long Beach went. 5:45 p.m.

Re "Driver Shot on Century Freeway," June 10: Today I'm depressed. Driving to work on the 105, I passed the Crenshaw Boulevard offramp and was reminded of the latest freeway shooting. The 105, 110 and 405 are freeways that my friends and co-workers traverse daily to and from work, roads that my parents and children use to get to schools, shopping malls and movie theaters. Today our freeways are unsafe because a few individuals have decided they can shoot at people driving in cars next to them.

I wholeheartedly support the idea of a toll road in San Diego County ("San Diego Toll Road Plan Among 4 OKd by State," Sept. 15). As usual, opposition comes mainly from the politicians, who stand to lose votes from not being able to "give" their constituents another "free"way. They claim that motorists, given a choice between paying to use a toll road or traveling "free" on surface streets, would choose to clog up the surface streets. They are wrong in this assumption, as free-market economics continues to prove (i.e.

Pursued by a Los Angeles police helicopter, a motorcyclist hit a car and crashed in the east San Fernando Valley Sunday after racing at speeds up to 110 m.p.h. on a freeway and surface streets, authorities said. A police officer in a squad car spotted Jesus Cardenas, 23, running red lights on his motorcycle in the city's Lincoln Heights section and pursued Cardenas on the Golden State Freeway through Glendale and Burbank, said Los Angeles police Sgt. John Amott.

Re "A Signal Achievement in Fullerton and Pasadena," Feb. 25: Having a flashing yellow left-lane turn arrow is definitely a step in the right direction for relieving gridlock. However, the biggest problem facing all of L.A. is a lack of synchronized lights, which are nearly impossible to achieve with newer lights featuring left-lane turn arrows. These modern light cycles have four cycles instead of only two, essentially doubling to quadrupling the wait times. At a time when L.A. freeways are clogged, I find it sadly ironic that these newer left-lane turn signals have now clogged all of our surface streets with cars waiting endlessly for their turn to go. The result is gridlock citywide.

You're driving down the Santa Monica Freeway, heading east into downtown. In your rear-view mirror, the late-afternoon sun is setting. Your foot firmly down on the accelerator, you speed past the exit signs for Vermont Avenue. Only two other cars dot the lanes ahead of you. Smooth sailing. A commuter dream? Not exactly. You're playing True Crime Streets of L.A., a new game that's taken on the daunting task of trying to accurately re-create 240 square miles of our sprawling burg.