Traffic

Rush-hour commuters Monday returned to Bay Area bridges in near normal numbers, but authorities also cited a rise in ferry and subway passengers. Traffic fell slightly last week after Gov. Gray Davis went public with an FBI tip that four California bridges may have been targeted by terrorists. Golden Gate Bridge officials said 15,695 vehicles traveled the span during morning rush hour Monday. That was down 434 from the average of 16,129 for a normal Monday, said spokeswoman Mary Currie.

The Port of Los Angeles had its busiest June ever for cargo, surpassing the number of containers moved during the height of the global economic boom in 2006, and the neighboring Port of Long Beach also showed a strong increase in imports, port officials said Tuesday. Although the increased traffic at the two ports represented a big boost for the Southern California economy, experts cautioned that the improvement could weaken in the coming months. The effects were felt immediately at the nation's busiest seaport complex.

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.

I had to work almost every day during this holiday season, but I enjoyed a vacation of sorts, thanks to those of you who didn't. My 35-mile daily commute -- from Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley to the Times building in downtown Los Angeles -- went from a slog to a breeze. The traffic drop-off happens every December: Thousands of school buses are off the streets, hundreds of businesses scale back, and countless residents head out of town or stay close to home and off the freeways.

As society hurtles forward in an age of instant messaging and one-click shopping, motorists paradoxically find themselves moored between bumpers for hours a day, with a psychic toll that experts are still trying to tally. Dr. Laura Pinegar, a Long Beach psychologist who treats depression and panic disorders, hears a growing number of complaints about traffic anxiety in her practice. "If you're stuck in traffic, there's a feeling of being out of control," she said. "You can be at a dead standstill on the freeway, but amped up from the day, thinking, 'I gotta get home.

American Airlines and United Airlines led declines in April air traffic by four of the five largest U.S. carriers, a sign that the cooling economy and higher ticket prices are restraining air travel. AMR Corp.'s American and UAL Corp.'s United, the world's two biggest airlines, had declines of 6.6% and 6.3%, respectively. American's domestic traffic plunged 8.4% after it was ordered to ground its fleet of MD-80 jetliners for wiring inspections. The results marked the second monthly slide in traffic, measured in miles flown by paying passengers.

Re "In O.C., Traffic School No Laughing Matter" (July 20): Nowhere in the article about traffic school is the real point of the class addressed. Almost all violations are committed as a result of attitude, not ignorance. I spent eight of the most inconvenient and deadly boring hours in traffic class several years ago. It was particularly boring for me since I was a deputy district attorney at the time and already knew the rules. However, every time I've been tempted to violate since that time I've been stopped short by the dread of sitting through that class again.

A small truck towing a trailer full of gravel overturned on the Conejo Grade on Friday afternoon, backing up northbound rush-hour traffic on the Ventura Freeway about 10 miles and causing two minor accidents. Two of three lanes were closed by the 3:43 p.m. accident, causing traffic to back up from the accident site near Camarillo Springs Road to the Los Angeles County line while state highway workers cleared away the spilled load, according to a California Highway Patrol spokesman.

Re "Build Foothill South, Voters Say in Survey," July 12: So the recent survey that shows strong support for the Foothill South tollway is "PR gimmickry," according to Sierra Club representative Bill Corcoran. Corcoran seems befuddled by the support, since he says there "are no real traffic forecasts yet." I have a suggestion for Corcoran: Go sit on the parking lot we call Interstate 5 on the weekend. We don't need traffic engineers to conduct forecasts in order to tell us traffic will get bad, because it already is bad. And it's only going to get worse unless something is done.

A group of Westside businesses filed suit Wednesday to stop Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa from implementing his traffic relief plan for Olympic and Pico boulevards. The suit by the Greater West Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce alleges that Villaraigosa's plan would increase the number of vehicles on those streets. The result, they say, would be more traffic and smog. They say the proposal should be studied further under state environmental law. The mayor's project is set to begin March 8. Initially, it involves changing the way traffic signals are synchronized so that traffic on westbound Olympic and eastbound Pico is favored.