Traffic Management

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.

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.

Rosalind Gonzales has lived in her Norwalk house 30 years, raising her two now-adult sons there. She told state officials Tuesday that she's not ready to move -- even though her home might have to be demolished to make room for an expanded Santa Ana Freeway. "I don't want to move," the 58-year-old nurse's aide said. "You just can't throw me somewhere else and tell me to start over again. Life is too short." Gonzales was among more than 250 people who attended a public hearing on the proposed $1.

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.

Everyone deals with slow-changing traffic lights in different ways. Some reach deep down to find inner peace, others grind teeth, and a few write haiku. Keith Sikora, a cameraman who lives in Burbank, is among the latter. His inspiration comes from the traffic lights in his city, where he has found himself sitting at red lights late at night for no discernible reason. Wait! Wait for the red at Angeleno and Third; no other cars for miles.

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.

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.

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.

In Sebastian Thrun's vision of the future, freeways will be blissful havens from the everyday stresses of life. We will unwind during swift, smooth commutes free of aggressive lane changes, defensive brake-tapping and road rage. The SigAlert will be a distant memory. What will make this utopian autobahn possible? Robots. Robots don't get mad; they don't flip you the bird; they don't cut you off out of spite; and they definitely don't crash into one another. At least they're not supposed to.

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.

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.

A $12.5-million road extension that will give South County motorists a way around the congested street and freeway traffic in Lake Forest will open today. After ribbon-cutting ceremonies about 10 a.m., the milelong Portola Parkway connection will open at El Toro Road and Santa Margarita Parkway. Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita residents will be given an additional route to avoid the infamous El Toro Y freeway bottleneck, where the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways merge.

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.