Blog week of July 17th
10 Mile Weekend Shutdown of Busiest Freeway in the U.S.
When one thinks of Los Angeles, warm weather, beautiful beaches, and Hollywood come to mind. As attractive as these features of LA are, the city’s reputation is often overshadowed by how frustrating it can be to travel even short distances. Drivers are notoriously known for being heavily reliant on freeways, and with a lack of comprehensive and efficient alternatives, traffic relief is not promising for the near future.
It is no wonder that a weekend closure of a 10 mile stretch of Interstate 405, the nation’s busiest freeway, was cause for concern. With a long stretch of freeway closed during the weekend of July 16, a freeway segment that over half a million drivers depend on every day, there should have been a nightmare traffic gridlock in the surrounding area, right? In the city known as the “freeway Mecca,” the general expectation was that we would witness an event dubbed as “Carmageddon.”
However, as the LA Times staff points out, there were similar traffic concerns back when Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Summer Olympics…and traffic was “a breeze.” History does indeed repeat itself and once again Los Angeles drivers have proven that when given proper incentive, they can manage to utilize other means of transportation en masse (or at least decide to leave their cars at home).
If told to stay off the roads for a reason like Carmageddon, or anything else, what would you do? Many people stayed home and had family time or block parties. Some went to parks or nearby attractions to enjoy themselves, and found a new way to have fun. These guys even had a candle-lit dinner on the deserted highway.
There was also a noted increase in the use of mass transit, some estimate a 10-15% jump in ridership during the shutdown. While an area as large as Los Angeles requires an extensive mass transit system, the bulk of its operations are road based buses, which in the event of a shutdown of a road, such as the 405, would hamper its operations as well, or the buses would be subject to the same traffic headaches as other cars given open roads. A more comprehensive and efficient mass transit system would help matters, however in a sprawling city like Los Angeles, distances can be too hard to tame.
Now imagine if drivers in the Los Angeles metro area found incentive to drive less daily. Carbon emissions in the area would greatly reduce, gas prices would relax, less road maintenance would be necessary, and travel would be less stressful. I’m sure that you can come up with other ensuing benefits from a decreased dependence on freeways. However, the fact remains that until drivers are offered extensive and reliable alternatives, the status quo will remain intact.
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