Posted on 09/12/2004 8:38:09 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
The "Inland Empire" region of Southern California - Riverside and San Bernardino counties - achieved a dubious distinction the other day.
The Texas Transportation Institute elevated, if that's the word, the region into the list of the nation's five most traffic-congested areas - and it found itself in familiar company. The adjacent Los Angeles region (including portions of Orange and Ventura counties) retained its long-standing title as the nation's most congested, and the San Francisco Bay Area continued in its No. 2 ranking.
Understanding California's dominance of the traffic jam sweepstakes doesn't take a degree in astrophysics. Simple arithmetic will suffice.
A decade ago, Californians were operating just over 26 million registered vehicles. Today more than 31 million vehicles (including 20.6 million cars and 7.3 million trucks) call California home.
That 5 million-vehicle increase works out to more than 1,300 every 24 hours and roughly approximates the state's population growth during the period - a one-person-one-car factor that is puzzling unto itself. California has several million more cars and trucks than licensed drivers, in fact.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
This is where all those so-called enviornmentalists live. Will it ever occur to them that they must change their ways? Or will they keep demanding that someone else magically change the way things work--ie government or Detroit?
The environmentalists should focus on immigration reform and overpopulation in the state. Call me an eco-freak, but I have lived here all my life and there are just too many people here. I don't care how much "room" there is. I want some space.
It doesn't help the congestion if the only thing they are spending the money on is putting traffic calming hazards in the road.
In Santa Cruz county the roads department will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars putting chicanes, speed bumps, extra wide medians with high curbs, repainting the lanes so that they are so narrow an average car cannot stay in them at the posted limit, and even plant trees in the middle of the road or in front of road signs, and never fix one pothole or repave one broken beat up piece of pavement.
They trick people by telling then traffic calming is an "improvement" the truth is that traffic calming is the deliberate placement of hazards in the road bed that can hurt or kill you. Just talk to any fire department that has to negotiate these mazes to try to get to an emergency.
Extra money won't do a thing when you have fantatical socialists running the state who want hurt you for driving a car.
It was bad enough when Kaliforians were merely dependent on losing money to OPEC.
They really need to alter their transportation infrastructure to take advantage of modern, efficient, electriclly-powered mass transportation systems like Maglev and high-speed rail. These systems will help alleviate traffic congestion while shifting energy demand to more sustainable sources, like nuclear power. Nuclear power plants will also help them resolve their water crisis by fueling desalination plants. And as an added benefit, they don't produce any harmful greenhouse pollutants to cause global warming or damage the ozone layer.
There is no water crisis in California. We have plenty of water. All we have to do is keep some of it from running into the ocean. In Santa Cruz County, the mountains get an average of 70 inches of rain a year. Why would you tell people who clearly have a natural abundance that they have to build a desalination plant? The expense doesn't make sense.
Besides that Julie Packard would never allow a desalination plant to pollute her "sanctuary".
In my town, they've talked about traffic calming measures. I think the problem is too many people driving too many cars crammed into a square foot of space. California is a wonderful place to live until the last 20 years. The traffic engineer went to a fire sale for left turn signals. Now the traffic is so backed up, I've had to take smaller residential streets, and I've talked to cab drivers to find their secret ways of bypassing this congestion problem. Only one person can fit in a certain square foot of space. It is too congested. We have a large planet here guys, find your own place to call home.
The purpose of traffic calming is to make driving so difficult that people won't do it anymore. The crazy county supervisor where I live actually let trees and shrubs overgrow traffic signs because you have to slow down to see them. In a healthier time in California traffic engineers kept obstructions away from signs up to 100 feet so that people didn't get hurt.
Taking smaller residential streets adds fuel to the fire. When one person complains the county will block the street off so you can't use it as a throughway.
You're right there are too many cars on the streets, but instead of increasing capacity the einsteing traffic calming engineers narrow lanes and put hazards in the way.
Here's an article about the constitutionality of traffic calming, if you're interested:
http://www.freedom21santacruz.net/advance/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=125&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
I'll check it out. They've put traffic chockers in parts of town. It is impossible to make turns into residential areas without almost hitting the car sitting at the stop sign or red light opposing you. You are right. In our town, by the studios, they are putting dividers, chockers, painted traffic lanes, and closed entrances to neighborhoods which force traffic on to other streets without these blockades. I don't forsee a solution. Outside of some terrible earthquake forcing everyone to start over. It truly is insanity.
The people who put traffic calming hazards in our roads have absolutely no concern for public safety. Traffic calming keeps emergency vehicles from getting to an emergency, it causes taxpayer money to be wasted on trucks whose frames get damaged from going over the speed humps, and firemen get knocked out of their trucks too. Fire departments actually reroute their vehicles to avoid traffic calmed areas, which has caused needless deaths and destruction of private property.
Its not clear why people aren't more angry about this-- except some people think the trees that get planted in the middle of the road "look nice".
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