Gridlock Poppycock

From LA City Photo Gallery

The Texas Transportation Institute annual congestion report again lists L.A. as number one street clogger in the nation, scorching by an extra 12 hours of delay second place metro areas San Francisco, Atlanta, DC. But according to local planning officials, the study significantly underestimates snarl by assuming cars move at 35 mph during rush hours when freeway sensors show speeds closer to 20 mph.

In August of last year, digital cameras clicking, Councilwoman and Mayor unveiled the new needlepointing approach to L.A. street slogging: bright signs in "anti-gridlock zones" prohibit parking weekdays 7-9 am and 4-7 pm, creating more lanes for stealhead cased creepy crawlies during crushy crunchy.

Has the Mayor's "small things" traffic solution helped? Drive down Sepulveda near Ventura 'round 8 am--bumpity-bumpity-bumpity--I'll beatchya on feet.

Reversing the escalator over the hill world of mudsludging requires closing not opening car lanes: Auto-authoritarianism must confront its assassination by frustration.

At least one person in our planning department is in the fight. Emily Gabel-Luddy, head of the department's Urban Design Studio, says in a September 18 LA Times Magazine interview, "What we're trying to do is reverse-engineer decades of thinking about the city." This requires making major boulevards "dramatically less efficient as automobile arteries."

To boost walking, bust on driving--including of feelgoody hybrids and electrics.

Free--to ravage you and me--thinkers of the Pacific Legal Foundation object, "So long as people ardently desire to live and raise children in detached homes with a bit of lawn, there is virtually nothing that government bureaucrats can do that will thwart that."

Portland, the bête noir of these auto-pitying libertarians, proves them wrong. While traffic congestion is worse, commuters spend less time in traffic than in other cities. Why? Because they live close to work and can actually walk or take the bus.

A study by the Urban Land Institute further supports the Portland model. Popping California politicos environmental egos overpumped by proposals for CO2 downing--higher fuel economy, cleaner fuels, greener building--ULI calls for the kooky idea of living closer to work. "Shifting 60 percent of new growth to compact patterns would save 85 million metric tons of CO2 annually [equal] to a 28 percent increase in federal vehicle efficiency standards."

But density alone is not enough. We need fast, frequent, inexpensive transit: bus-exclusive lanes as found in Jakarta, Bogota, Ottawa and many others following the Curitiba trail. The first important step towards this goal takes place on Wilshire Blvd, so write councilwoman Wendy Gruel and ask her to secure funding for Wilshire Bus-Only lanes.

Address:
Councilmember Wendy Greuel
Transportation Committee Chair
City of Los Angeles
200 North Spring Street, Room 475
Los Angeles, CA 90012
email: councilmember.greuel@lacity.org

Dogon A.D.

Stone Arch Bridge, Minneapolis

Growing up in The Cities, Mississippi cliffs drew us to dark threats of joy--landscape of wind sent condom wrappers caught in chokeberry shrub, beer cans--Schmidt's, Hamm's, Grain Belt--beaten into stone bends, pockmarked by graffiti carved caves. Nothing to do on a summer night? Find an overlook with a pint of peach schnapps and gaze at barges twisting through birch crunched gorge.

One Saturday in the summer of '85, after a week of stocking detergents to dust-mops at Target mornings and phone-hawking the St. Paul paper evenings, I saw Julius Hemphill beneath cirrus striped sunset concussing free the structure of sandy silver floating from a bandstand on Nicollett Island.

A half-mile down river rough gray lines distinguished the undistinguished bridge--as Mom said, "It's hard for me to get in my mind--not like the Lake Street or Hennepin Avenue bridges, y'know, you can picture those"--which six weeks ago became loathsomely vivid mangled steel and concrete topsy turvy like Matchbox cars rolling off Tuna Helper boxes masking taped to tin foil fabricated cities.

After repeat dialings ending in overloaded circuit signals, I reach family, friends and learn of the almosts: my stepmother's book-club member drove over an hour before, my brother E. biked under that morning...

"But everyone's ok," I sigh.
"Well, not everyone," Mom's wry wise reply.

Walk on, walk on

Juan Genoves, "Cuatro fases en torno a una prohibicion" (1966)

East of Laurel Canyon on Magnolia the one lane of traffic at rush hour can feed irritation as sugar to ants crawling from the palm up the arm depicted in the creepy surrealism of Un Chien Andalou to the point where that itch must be scratched--ants squashed.

Somewhere near three in the afternoon on a Friday walking through a plywood tunnel, avoiding rusty nails that might punch through flip-flops, breathing orange dust from the demolition of another 1940s era courtyard complex to be replaced by multistory luxury "apartment homes" with underground parking and fitness center, a nasaled horn blasts from the boulevard and as if in homage to Pavarotti's pipes holds on at a steady pitch.

"AAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN."

Must be a mechanical malfunction causing the electric buzz to freeze. But as the cry gets closer I see its source: in a silver Xterra a man with a growling face pushes forearms mightily into steering wheel plastic. He follows a shocked to tremble woman glancing frequently in the rear view mirror of her 1990s era white Sentra.

A half-block down the sidewalk a police officer chats with some locals gathered at the steps of an apartment building. Suddenly, the officer dashes to his car and flies away, lights flashing.

As I reach the building I nod "Hello" to a man still standing at the steps.
"Did you see that?" he replies.
"Hmmm?"
"Road Rager."
"Oh yeah. I was wondering..."
"This guy was just laying on his horn. The cop was pissed," he laughs.
"That's crazy. So what was he doing here?"
"Huh?"
"What was the cop doing here?"
"Oh, he was just finishing up an accident."
"Crazy."

Walking on an ant crawls up my left toe, but I let it ride.

le fromage le monte au nez de l'Américain

Epoisses image from Le Guide des Fromages

In the August 17 LA Times, Jay Handal, chairman of the Greater West Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, comments on the Wilshire bus only lanes approved by the City Council: "You can't take a third of the drivable lanes from people who are already stuck in traffic for 45 minutes. Take a guy who earns a half-million dollars a year. He's going to drive to a parking lot and get on a bus? I don't think so."

2 Days in Paris reveals this banality of Botox Hill Gucci Gangsters as the ugly American's universal revulsion. Julie Delpy's film, plastered with clichés, intended as farce, becomes wretched realism through Adam Goldberg's Jack, a New Yorker who refuses to take the subway.

Yes, they do exist: Upper East Side descendants of Tom Wolfe's Sherman McCoy but also Hell's Kitchen gentrifying professional hipsters who brandish Bush bashing but gushed over Giuliani when he "scrubbed the city" of its poor--and now, with chief scrubber Bratton in L.A., the battle line moves.

Our hero, Delpy's father, the American vision of French rudeness, discreetly scrapes a key into the sides of Citroëns, Peugots, Renaults parked on the sidewalk as he grins in broken English.

Paris has become l'enfer pour la voiture: former one-way high-speed corridors converted to two-way streets, bikes for rent with lanes partout, and concrete barriers allowing buses to race by traffic on schedule.

The political impossibility and necessity of sending L.A. automobilistes to hell begins on Wilshire Boulevard.