Traffic Management

The city's Traffic Management System, which controls how vehicles move through congested streets and freeways, has been named a finalist in a national competition that honors local government programs. The 1991 Innovations in State and Local Government Awards Program singled out Anaheim's system for its ability to usher traffic through the busy Santa Ana Freeway and around the area near Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center.

Almost 60 years after the Pacific Electric Railway stopped running trains to Santa Monica, the resurrection of passenger rail service to the Westside will begin with the grand opening of the $930-million Expo light rail line. Saturday's start of service marks the first step in an effort to bring rail service back to one of the region's most traffic-clogged areas, something transportation experts have long said is crucial to developing a workable rail network for Los Angeles County.

The City Council this week adopted a transportation management plan that Orange County needs to collect its share of the new 9-cents-a-gallon state gasoline tax approved by voters last year. If the county complies with the state requirements of Proposition 111, it will receive an estimated $1.7 billion over the next 10 years. Of that money, La Habra can expect to receive about $6.6 million to use toward traffic and air-quality improvements.

The nation's top manager of airplane traffic resigned after several incidents in which air traffic controllers fell asleep at their posts, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Thursday morning. The agency, which oversees the nation's civilian aviation system, announced in a posting on its website that FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt had accepted the resignation of Hank Krakowski, head of the agency's Air Traffic Organization. In recent weeks, several incidents of air traffic controllers being asleep at the job have been reported around the nation.

An all-out push to control congestion during the 1984 Olympic Games reduced the number of cars on the freeways by nearly 3%--a feat that probably cannot be duplicated under normal conditions but can serve as a guide for easing rush-hour traffic, a new study concludes.

Every time Qantas lands one of its giant Airbus A380s at LAX, parts of the nation's fourth-busiest airport come to a halt. Service roads, taxiways and runways must be closed to airfield trucks, cars and other commercial aircraft as the world's largest passenger plane -- with wings almost as long as a football field -- arrives, departs and taxis with an official escort of operations vehicles.

The Libertarian Party of San Diego is adamantly opposed to the recently passed traffic management ordinance. This ordinance does nothing but create another bureaucratic boondoggle. It will cost employers and employees millions of dollars and not solve any traffic problems. Even Councilman Bob Filner realizes the absurdity of this ordinance. In a recent article, he was quoted as saying, "It's the ultimate dream of the bureaucrats. You're fined if you don't produce the paper work to keep the bureaucrats employed."

Workers will install a 90-inch television monitor at City Hall that will display traffic from cameras set up along the Garden Grove Freeway as part of a $57,810 traffic management operation center recently approved by the City Council. City officials hope the new system will improve traffic flow along the freeway. Minnesota Western Corp. was awarded the contract. The project will be funded by a state grant.

The city of Santa Ana and its Police Department have received four grants totaling $272,600 from the California Office of Traffic Safety for an extensive ad campaign on pedestrian safety. The money also will be used to install new traffic management systems and improve existing ones. Santa Ana has had a high incidence of traffic-related injuries and deaths among pedestrians in recent years.

For most motorists, a commute on a weekday afternoon from Signal Hill in Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles means a 45-minute crawl through stalled traffic and relentless heat. But for motorcyclists Shear'Ree, 57, and Mark Russell, 17, the trip is a breezy 25-minute jaunt on the 405 and 110 freeways. The reason? Shear'Ree and Russell, who ride Kawasaki Ninja motorcycles, are lane-splitters -- bikers who prefer to drive between lanes.

With the state's fiscal woes making many major freeway improvements unlikely, and with severe geographic restraints limiting options, Caltrans was looking for an inexpensive way to reduce congestion and accidents on the notorious interchange of the 5 and 110 freeways near Dodger Stadium. The agency came up with fluorescent bluish-white lights and electronic warning signs. Until recently, motorists crawling out of downtown Los Angeles on the 110 north queued up in the far left lane to transition to the 5 north.

Baldwin Park Mayor Manuel Lozano has a catchphrase for how you know you're in his city. "If you want to know where Baldwin Park is, if you're traveling either east or west on the 10 Freeway and you come to a complete stop, you know you're in Baldwin Park," he says. The area bottlenecks at rush hour, Lozano said, with commuters traveling between Los Angeles and San Bernardino County. Sometimes, he said, it's so bad that commuters pull over and stop at In-N-Out Burger to pass the time, hoping the congestion eases.

The budget crisis in Los Angeles may have unpleasant consequences for concert- goers, Lakers fans and even Dodgers fans on the day of the first game of the National League Championship Series: gridlock. For more than a decade, the city has covered the full cost of providing traffic officers for events at the Greek Theatre, Hollywood Bowl, Coliseum, Sports Arena and former Olympic Auditorium. Similarly, it absorbed part of the cost for traffic officers who keep cars moving around Dodger Stadium and Staples Center.

If there is a ground zero in the war to make New York more pedestrian-friendly, it is Times Square. And if there is a weapon of choice, it is a collection of chairs plunked in the middle of what used to be the city's most traffic-choked intersection. David Letterman has scorned them, taxi drivers have cursed them and some of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's critics have called them just plain silly. "It's so patently stupid," City Councilman Tony Avella, who is challenging Bloomberg in the November mayoral election, said of the idea of setting up a pedestrian mall on Broadway.

A little bit of the future is coming to Los Angeles freeways later this year in the form of "smart" road studs that gauge road conditions and traffic flow and open and close a freeway lane accordingly. Caltrans has contracted with a New Zealand company to pilot the "dynamic-lane" system on the 110 Freeway where traffic backs up in a tunnel at the single-lane connector to northbound Interstate 5.

Construction began Friday on the last leg of a carpool lane for the northbound San Diego Freeway through western Los Angeles, a $1-billion project designed to ease congestion on one of the busiest traffic corridors in the nation.

At 4:25 on a recent weekday afternoon, the traffic on Highland Avenue at Sunset Boulevard stretches north and south as far as the weary eye can see. Some of the motorists, being human and therefore given to hopefulness, are intending to turn left onto Sunset. Because no left-turn arrows exist for them, they could be facing a long, long wait as only two of their number complete turns each time the light changes to red.

In response to complaints about drivers speeding on narrow streets, the City Council on Tuesday approved a traffic management program designed to make residential roads safer. The program includes such measures as creating traffic circles, blocking off streets or even monitoring traffic with cameras. Each street will be studied on a case-by-case basis. Interested residents may submit a written request to the Public Works Department.

Five o'clock on a workday and you're about to pull into traffic: Let's hope you're not in a hurry, especially if you're on the Westside of Los Angeles. Times editors asked the six candidates in the Los Angeles City Council's 5th District race about their ideas for easing traffic problems in that part of town. Here are excerpts from their answers to this question: What concrete proposals will you pursue to reduce traffic congestion in the 5th Council District? Adeena N.

Every time Qantas lands one of its giant Airbus A380s at LAX, parts of the nation's fourth-busiest airport come to a halt. Service roads, taxiways and runways must be closed to airfield trucks, cars and other commercial aircraft as the world's largest passenger plane -- with wings almost as long as a football field -- arrives, departs and taxis with an official escort of operations vehicles.