![]() ![]() In 2016, Angelenos - perhaps exasperated with traffic - voted overwhelmingly (opens in a new tab) to jack up the city’s sales tax to raise money for enormous transportation projects. And there will be pools of cash to make that happen. “Rail can be the backbone for the public transit,” said Daniel Sperling, the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. (But, perhaps, with trains that aren’t fraught with unconscionable delays (opens in a new tab).) That’s because Garcetti wants Angelenos to travel more like New Yorkers - on rapid transit trains. ![]() They’ll be speeding either under it, above it, or beside it. For starters, many LA denizens won’t be on the freeway at all in 2035, he said. Garcetti plots to end the tradition of rush hour on the 405 (as well as the 110, 10, 101, and beyond). ![]() “We have a belief that once people have a car they should be able to drive anywhere they want, any time they want,” said Taylor, noting that this creed is simply at odds with places like LA that are overrun with cars. Driving on the freeway is an unwritten freedom, valued like the First Amendment. In Los Angeles, where the first freeways were born amid a booming post-war economy, this is a revolutionary idea. “Very few people will drive themselves over the 405,” the mayor said. I asked Garcetti what he, realistically, envisioned the 405 looking like in 2035, the year LA’s Green New Deal anticipates that eight of every 10 cars will be running on electricity, or some clean energy. The far-reaching vision intends not just to electrify Los Angeles’ polluting vehicles, but to dramatically ramp up public transit across the West’s largest metropolis, a sprawl blanketed in asphalt and peppered with palm trees. Garcetti revealed “ L.A.’s Green New Deal (opens in a new tab)” in April - an aggressive plan to confront the planet’s accelerating climate change (opens in a new tab) by slashing the city’s carbon emissions. Or, at least, there’s cautious hope for the long-beleaguered, 72-mile highway. Yet, after decades of deadlock, the 405 may be able to shed its infamous reputation. “I don’t know if I’ve been on it and there wasn’t traffic - it can be pretty dreadful,” added David Brodsly, who wrote a philosophical take on the 405 and its concrete siblings in 1981, titled L.A. “It’s the most congested artery in America,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told me, as he fittingly rolled slowly through traffic on another infamous LA freeway, the 110. It takes extraordinary circumstances to relieve this notorious concrete behemoth of overcrowding. In any given year, the 405 is either one of the worst or literally the worst trafficked highway in the U.S. Helicopters buzzed overhead, Angelenos peered down from fenced overpasses, and the rest of the world watched the slow-motion chase on television.Īmid the evening rush hour, great lengths of the highway were free of gridlock as officers cleared the lanes. The Bronco, driven by Simpson’s friend while the football star hunkered down in back, traveled almost leisurely down the emptied lanes, as if it were cruising along a residential boulevard. It proved to be an especially bizarre pursuit, set in motion after the Los Angeles Police Department told Simpson to surrender in connection with the murder of two stabbing victims, one of whom was his ex-wife. Simpson’s white Ford Bronco down Los Angeles’ 405 freeway. To stay on the safe side of the traffic toll in this photo finish, we’ll have to put a special effort at Thanksgiving.On June 17, 1994, some 20 police cars chased O.J. The story quoted a traffic judge as saying: “So far we are running neck and neck with 1949 traffic death figures. Pauses Today for Thanksgiving: Prayers Will Mingle with the Roar of Traffic,” read one headline. And there was more griping about gridlock.īy the 1950s, turkey and traffic were getting equal billing. The list, which, on the basis of past records, the County Coroner may regretfully have to tabulate, will include elderly men and women, those in the prime of life,” The Times wrote in a 1946 editorial.Īs Southern California’s suburbs spread and the freeway system was built out, people were driving more during the holiday week. “Over the Thanksgiving holiday some dozen human beings in this area will be killed in traffic accidents unless the statistical rate of slaughter is abated. The Times urged motorists to not drink and drive, to slow down and to make sure their cars were in running order. Generations ago, newspapers and public officials crusaded against the increased number of traffic fatalities around the holiday weekend.
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