By Seth Barnes Iconoclast Blast Seth Barnes
RIGHT AFTER ITS ROLE AS THE MECCA OF pop culture, Los Angeles is probably best known for its oppressive, snarling traffic. Americans’ fascination and dependence on the automobile was born here. Driving has been a way of life for citizens of Southern California for well over 40 years. Whenever I have guests from another part of the country, they almost always have a macabre curiosity about our freeways. Are the traffic jams really as bad as legend suggests? Does the CHP maintain roadside mental health clinics for commuters who’ve reached their breaking point? Why do we live like this?
And for whatever reason, there’s been a rising chorus from politicians, the media and the public-at-large that it’s time to finally “do something” about the traffic situation. L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez has fronted a campaign to tackle the traffic problem, putting public officials on the spot for their ineptitude and incompetence on the issue. The paper started a Bottleneck Blog (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/bottleneck/) chronicling traffic concerns in real time. On the Westside, community activists and political leaders have begun to suggest radical solutions such as making Pico and Olympic Boulevards one-way thoroughfares heading in opposite directions. I guess the rationale is that the freeway has become such an all-encompassing part of our lives that we might as well throw up our hands and just bring it down to the surface street level once and for all.
Other solutions include the encouragement of high-density urban living like the proposed rebirth of downtown Los Angeles. Again, I can only wildly stab at the underlying theory here, but I’m guessing that if we model our new development after the choking congestion of Manhattan proper, driving will become so suicidal that most will have no choice but to hoof it on foot. Cabbies are the only clear winners I can discern in this scenario.
The reality of the situation is that nothing will fix the mess we’re in. Do yourself a favor: Open a real-time traffic alert program on the Internet. Take a look at the Greater Los Angeles/Orange County area. Do you see the endless spider web of entanglements that make up our public roadways? Do you see the chorus-line of red dots representing stagnating vehicles at peak commute times? That’s our infrastructure. That’s us in the midst of a no-win situation. Short of changing the places we live and work, and the system we utilize to travel between the two, the pitiful conditions are here to stay.
There’s no magic bullet, nothing that can be done to ease the overbearing burden of traffic. It’s a simple equation: We have millions of people spread out across thousands of square miles. This is where sprawl got its start. The simple fact is we have too many people and too many cars.
Every place worth living in has its faults. There’s a reason for our hideous traffic and high real estate prices, it’s a matter of supply and demand. This is a great place to live and people have been making sacrifices to do so for decades. Incredible weather, booming industry in hot sectors of the economy, sandy and sunny beaches running up to the mountains. In many ways, Southern California can’t be beat.
But if you’re the type who likes to bellyache and can’t live with a relatively minor inconvenience or two, this might not be the place for you. In fact, you’ll probably have trouble living anywhere because living life means making compromises and dealing with hardship. And there’s a lot of hardship to go around.
If traffic is our greatest burden, then we have it easy.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 26, 2007. Read the original PDF.