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# Grrrridlock! City has itself to blame
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/grrrridlock-city-has-itself-to-blame/
- Published: 2005-09-28T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T07:49:55.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Pico, #archive-import

*By GUEST COMMENTARY BY ROGER SWANSON*

The commuter gridlock into Santa Monica in the morning and the repeat gridlock exiting in the afternoon is ample proof of flawed urban planning. Excessive commercial development without traffic mitigation is clearly a root cause.

And who is responsible for this mess? Santa Monica City Council members need only look into a mirror every morning to find the responsible parties.

Each incremental commercial development project by itself is insufficient to add enough demand to create gridlock. But when we aggregate demand of all projects, instant gridlock. Any surprise here? While the Lincoln Boulevard corridor has significant commercial development from LAX to the I-10, the grid-lock in the Santa Monica portion appears to be self-inflicted.

While I agree that something must be done, adding a “bus only” lane in Santa Monica — Pico Boulevard to Rose Avenue — without a complete re-evaluation of the entire transportation system is a band-aid solution. Yes, “Shape the Future 2025/Motion by the Ocean” will help to define specific guidelines, but much can be done immediately to solve the Lincoln Boulevard gridlock.

When I attended the community meeting hosted by Big Blue Bus personnel on July 18 to discuss the proposed parking restrictions on Lincoln, I was somewhat amazed at their lack of understanding of Santa Monica’s Transportation Management Ordinance #1604 (1990), its subsequent revisions, and more importantly, its enforcement. Guess they had their “bus blinders” on. Besides, the gridlock is proof that the Traffic Management Plan (TMP) is not working.

If the “bus only” lane was a condition for getting federal funding for the Rapid 3, then this should be clearly stated. In the absence of such a statement, the bus lane is just another band-aid. The Lincoln Boulevard problem stretches from the I-10 to LAX, so “fixing” the Pico to Rose portion is likely to produce more business ill will than an actual solution to commuter gridlock.

On the bright side, the “bus only” lane will let the Big Blue Bus pat itself on the back for having the Rapid 3 move rapidly through Santa Monica, while it crawls along south of Rose Avenue. Perhaps it can be re-named the “Rapid 3/Not So Rapid 3.” The Lincoln Boulevard gridlock solution has two parts: Driver demand and roadway supply.

On the demand side, a tougher TMP and some decent incentives for commuters to carpool and/or use public transportation would help. To this point, maybe the “bus only” lane could be buses and all high occupancy vehicles (HOV). With only one bus every 7 1/2 minutes, the “bus only” lane will be vacant most of the time. So, add shuttle vans and fare carrying cabs (I believe this is part of the plan) as well as car-pools. Yes, carpools. Isn’t that what the TMP is supposed to promote?

Further, park-and-ride facilities at Playa Vista and LAX, for example, might even increase riders on both the No. 3 bus and Rapid 3\. Commuters driving from the LAX area need a place to park and airport parking will likely be too expensive. Hence there is no incentive to switch from car to bus.

On the supply side think of Lincoln Boulevard as a pipe: It has limited capacity and the only way to improve that is to make it bigger (i.e., wider) or increase the velocity (i.e., higher speed). It can only move so much volume at a time. Like a pipe, obstructions, such as intersections, create bottlenecks. The first step in improving a system is to eliminate the bottlenecks. So, adding a third lane improves the flow up to a bottleneck. With a “bus only” lane and one bus every 7 1/2 minutes, this is not much of an improvement.

Further, traffic lights along Lincoln are not set to accommodate the relative levels of traffic of the east-west cross streets versus Lincoln, which has significantly higher demand, nor are they set to allow a constant flow of traffic. They are often out of sync with each other.

Additionally, the “bus only” lanes (if they are added in the city of Los Angeles) will not solve the two-lane problem on southbound Lincoln at Venice nor the two-lane underpass at Culver Boulevard. These bottlenecks also need to be addressed.

So, the real solution requires the involvement of the city of Los Angeles, Caltrans, the Santa Monica TMP, and some creative problem solving. Besides what is proposed, the City Council needs to tell us all about the things they are doing with the city of Los Angeles to prevent the “Not So Rapid 3.” And, when the city of Los Angeles cooperates and the state approves the plan, then and only then, implement the parking restrictions from Pico to at least LAX. To do otherwise penalizes Santa Monica businesses without solving the gridlock problem. (Roger Swanson is a management consultant living in Ocean Park.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 28, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/092805.pdf?ref=smdp.com)