The City Council voted unanimously last week to further slow “snail’s pace” traffic on Lincoln Boulevard.
A proposed ordinance for rush hour “bus and bicycle only” traffic lanes on Lincoln Boulevard south of Pico Boulevard received councilmembers’ enthusiastic approval.
Our transportation planning geniuses proposed that the curb lane (parking lanes) be reserved exclusively for high occupancy vehicle travel during morning and evening rush hours. The proposed ordinance specified, “... that transit buses, city and county dial-a-ride vans, and CPUC registered passenger carriers would be the only vehicles authorized to use the lane.”
Kevin McKeown, who has done more to screw up Santa Monica traffic than any other councilperson, amended the ordinance to also permit bicycles.
According to staff, the average evening rush hour speed on Lincoln is now only six miles per hour. Restricting the curb lanes to buses and carriers forces everyone else into the two center lanes for the roughly 15 blocks from the city line to Pico Boulevard.
To make things worse, staff admits that there’s only one bus every seven and a half minutes on Lincoln Boulevard. That means the lanes will be empty 99 percent of the time, making it a grand bike path. In the meantime, everyone else sits stalled in traffic. Watch the average speed drop to two mph.
The smart thing to do would be to open up curb lanes on all major arteries to all traffic, thereby increasing traffic flow and reducing gridlock and time spent commuting for everyone. Heaven forbid this city do something smart like improve traffic flow. They’d rather watch the average speed drop.
Two years ago, the city of Los Angeles installed similar lanes on Wilshire Boulevard in West LA from Centinela Avenue to Federal Avenue — also about 15 blocks, or slightly more than one mile. Here, too, are mostly empty parking lanes that once carried thousands of cars during rush hour. Now, they carry the occasional bus — on average, one every five minutes — and the occasional bicycle.
In the meantime, traffic on Wilshire Boulevard backs up for blocks. A six-to seven-minute trip now takes 10 to 13 minutes. Tens of thousands of vehicles idle in traffic while busses speed by and actually gain a few minutes in time.
Because of our daily schedules and where our jobs and schools are located, buses are not an option for most of us.
So, would someone tell the social engineers that 15 blocks of bus lane is not enough to get people to ride buses or bicycles?
Is it worth the wasted time and gasoline and pollution generated by thousands of motorists for 10 buses and a couple of bicycles an hour on Lincoln? Only to those simple-minded traffic bureaucrats, pro-development smart-growthers and misguided “Greens.” To me it’s a mind-numbing misuse of a precious resource.
Our City Council approved bus-only lanes downtown on Broadway and Santa Monica Boulevard between Ocean Avenue and Fifth Street a few years ago. Vehicles back up for blocks. To this day, the Transit Mall is a never-ending source of ridicule and complaint, but City Hall never learns from repeated mistakes — or cares about complaints.
There’s more, folks. The push already is on for bus/bike lanes on Wilshire Boulevard from Centinela Avenue to Ocean Avenue. The only reason why McKeown and his cohorts haven’t done it yet is because of concerns about taking away parking for Wilshire Boulevard businesses. Aww. Go for it — then you can screw businesses and drivers at the same time.
When the incompetent traffic planners and the idealistic politicians finish with Wilshire Boulevard, can Santa Monica Boulevard and Pico Boulevard be further behind? Why not? They like citywide gridlock.
For more than 20 years, our politicians in concert with “smart growth” traffic engineers have come up with schemes to create more gridlock and impede traffic flow. Bicycles now take precedence over cars. Curb extensions, speed bumps, islands and other impedances promulgated by McKeown, councilmen Ken Genser and Richard Bloom, and MTA board member and mayor Pam O’Connor have spread like cancer from highway to byway. I’m disappointed that councilmen Katz, Holbrook and Shriver went along with this voodoo debacle.
The number of vehicles on our roads increases from 1.5 percent to more than 2 percent annually. In the same time, many traffic lanes have been restricted, narrowed, turned into obstacle courses or removed. Over two decades, there has been nearly a 50 percent increase in vehicles and less roadway to carry them. How stupid is that?
So when will all this stop? Maybe when we get smart enough to elect common-sense leaders who’ll make quicker, safer and efficient traffic management a priority. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 19, 2005. Read the original PDF.