Mayor Villaraigosa's recent edict <a href=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8931102/>forbidding construction on Los Angeles streets during rush hour is long overdue, but it does not go far enough to reduce the city’s pervasive commute-time clutter ...
Any driver who travels LA’s major thoroughfares during rush hour can tell you that traffic lanes are clogged by far more impediments than mere road work or construction. The mayor should consider these Top Ten:
(1) There are the thousands of potholes on our pitted roadways that make entire lanes simply unusable, wrecking both vehicles and traffic flow.
(2) There are the cars that remain illegally parked well before 9 a.m., forcing drivers to take a tortuous series of lane changes to get around them.
(3) There are illegally parked FedEx, UPS and US Postal Service trucks -- whose drivers seem to consider the timely delivery of their packages more vital than our timely arrival at work.
(4) There are the drivers who pull over to drop off workers or students, but then who linger in the lane as if they are caught up in some Casablanca-style send-off.
(5) There are the buses that stop to drop off passengers and pick up new ones -- but which take so long to do it that they turn mass transit into mass delay.
(6) There are the cleaning crews who park their vehicles in the right-hand lane so they can spruce up bus stops, as if this could not be done at another time of day.
(7) There are even workers watering streetside plants from the roadway, as if water could not be sprayed just as easily from the sidewalk instead.
(8) There are the traffic accidents, for which police will close off all available lanes, even when they could easily – and mercifully -- allow us just a single one to slip through.
(9) There are the distracted pedestrians lingering at the curb's edge, ready to blunder into oncoming traffic, or to instantly invoke their own personal right of way.
(10) There are the pleasure-cruise bicyclists, pedaling along like Mary Poppins at 10 miles per hour, as if Monday morning were Sunday afternoon.
Admittedly, Villaraigosa can’t simply issue an executive order to banish many of these traffic trip-ups. But he can see to it that existing laws against some of them are much better enforced.
Otherwise, the mayor could use the power of his office to change the public's lackadaisical attitude about blocking lanes during rush hour. That is, if he can even get to his office.
Posted by: Marc_Salvatierra on Monday, August 15, 2005 - 11:47 AM
