Sunday, March 12, 2006

More Southern California Traffic Hell

Pasadena Star-News - Interchange Weave Becomes Real Snarl
By Ben Baeder - Staff Writer

Quotes:
>>One engineer calls the traffic-weaving interchange between the San Gabriel River (605) and San Bernardino (10) freeways "The Autotopia" - after Disneyland's wacky car ride.

That nickname is as good as any for the delay-ridden interchange.

One thing that engineers do agree on: the crossing of two of the nation's busiest highways desperately needs an update.
[snip]
The Baldwin Park 10-605 interchange was designed in 1964 and was supposed to accommodate traffic until 1984, according to Caltrans spokesman Dave White. Even though it's about 22 years overdue for an update, no major changes have been undertaken there since it was built.

An average of 438,000 cars use the interchange each day, making the intersection the 19th busiest in the state, according to statistics from Caltrans.<<

I think, in general, the engineers at Caltrans do a great job and public service. It is just that the transportation systems of the area haven't kept up with the population, and that has to do with a lot of factors, including funding and NIMBY issues. Although I think it will be hard to every beat the personal automobile for customization of your trip and door-to-door delivery, I think some of the traffic could be reduced if a private company was allowed to build and operate a regional monorail system.

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