LOS ANGELES — Stuck in traffic — again — Robert L. Rosebrock got to dreaming about how to fix L.A.’s gridlocked freeways, when he spotted a big-rig hauling a double-deck trailer loaded with new cars, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
Rosebrock was inspired.
Rather than constantly nagging Angelenos to get out of their autos, why not put the cars — dozens of them — on a maglev train and whoosh them down the Ventura Freeway, he thought. Build a system to crisscross the region — shoot trains loaded with cars up to San Francisco and out to Vegas?
“I said, ‘Now that’s a car pool,”‘ said Rosebrock, a Brentwood entrepreneur seeking investors for his project. “Instead of modifying the car, we have to modify the freeway. It’s big thinking.
“Nobody is looking at future generations. You have to put in motion now that kind of planning for future generations.”
Rosebrock is not the only motorist stuck in traffic who has gotten to thinking big.
From behind their steering wheels, armchair experts muse over theories grand and simple for fixing Los Angeles’ freeways.
John Martin, a retired liquor distributor from Van Nuys, wonders why Caltrans can’t just build a new freeway high over the L.A. River to relieve some of the congestion on the Ventura and Golden State freeways.
Retired Skunkworks engineer Paul Spink has worked 10 years on blueprints for a transit trench that could dip under freeways and around obstacles, moving traffic faster and more efficiently than today’s highways.
“There are a number of people — some nuts, some brilliant — who are proposing alternatives,” said Catherine Burke, an associate professor in the school of policy, planning and development at the University of Southern California and president of the Advanced Transit Association, a nonprofit group promoting alternatives.
“The present system is a disaster. The (mass) transit that is being proposed won’t do it. What we need is something new and different … something that provides the services of the automobile but doesn’t have the down side.”
But bringing Tomorrowland-style ideas to today’s roads is no simple task. What motorists get instead are less-noticeable improvements that experts say help move traffic along one step at a time.
“Everybody drives every day. Everybody thinks that makes them an expert. The problems are difficult, because if they were easy someone would have solved them already,” said Steven Shladover, senior deputy director of the Partners for Advanced Transportation and Highways, a research institute run jointly by Caltrans and the University of California.
Most promising among traffic planners are the “intelligent transportation systems” that mix the offerings of the Information Age with the roads, cars and mass transit already in place.
For example, they’re working on a cruise-control-like device that would allow cars to follow at a close distance without danger of collisions, allowing for nearly twice as many vehicles in each freeway lane.
In Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is using so-called intelligent technology to keep stoplights green as the new Metro Rapid buses come through, and to track its bus fleet with a global positioning satellite system.
But some of the more “Jetsons”-era ideas that would require vast new systems — like Rosebrock’s proposals — are slower to make their way into mainstream planning.
Burke has promoted personal rapid-transit devices since the 1970s, but those ideas and others fall victim to the costly new infrastructure they would require and the reluctance to literally reinvent the wheel.
“The problem is, they don’t pencil out,” said state Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, vice chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “They all sound great, but the costs are astronomical … compared to the freeway.” Although California is considered the leader in intelligent transit research, the state Department of Transportation spends just $30 million of its $9 billion annual budget on that type of work, a spokesman said.
Instead, what drivers hear about is Caltrans’ latest proposal to fix the congested 101 Freeway by widening it or double-decking it through the San Fernando Valley, and adding car-pool or public transit lanes.
And that just motivates those like Rosebrock, who hear about the expected 2.7 million new residents to Los Angeles County over the next two decades.
“That is not a solution,” said Rosebrock, whose design partner, Roger Gong, who drew up the proposals, is a former Southern Californian who moved north to get away from traffic. “It’s sad.”
Experts group Rosebrock’s idea with what they call “the pallet theories” — ideas that put vehicles on a device that would move them more efficiently than they can move themselves.
It’s similar to Amtrak’s Auto Train that carries travelers — and their vehicles — between Washington, D.C., and Orlando, Fla., an expert said.
“People have proposed those for decades,” said Shladover. “I’m not sure there are many ups of it, but there are some very challenging downs.”
The main problem is the size and scope of the operation, which would need to be big enough to carry a car and provide on and off ramps. However, Rosebrock’s idea also includes individual magnetic-levitation pods to zip single vehicles along the high-speed tracks, all starting with the 101 through the San Fernando Valley.
“As soon as you start doing any of the analysis to figure out how much space you need to do that, it becomes very very large,” Shladover said. “There is not really a good way anybody has found to handle the terminals for a pallet system.”
Burke’s PRT system would use pod-like cars on new tracks that would be constantly moving day and night, allowing riders to hop aboard and punch in their destination — say, down Ventura Boulevard a bit, or all the way to downtown.
And think tanks are looking at “dual-mode vehicles” that could ride like both a car and a train, experts said.
UCLA’s Brian Taylor said that, when you stand back and take in the big picture, much has happened to the cars and freeways we see today.
The Metro Rapid buses along Ventura Boulevard may look like coaches that have been around for decades, but they’re outfitted with technology that make them more efficient — MTA says commutes have been trimmed by 25 percent.
With half of all freeway congestion caused by nonrecurring incidents, devices that can reduce or more quickly fix the number of crashes, stalled cars and other mishaps can do much to reduce congestion, said Caltrans spokesman Dennis Trujillo.
Without the scorned ramp meters that force drivers to sit at a red light before they merge into lanes, for example, Caltans says congestion on freeways could climb by 20 percent, according to one study from another state.
Taylor compares traffic changes to other technological advances in recent decades — steps that didn’t seem so grand individually but together can make a world of difference.
“We still have an internal combustion engine, but it’s not even remotely related to what we had before,” said Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The freeway still looks the same, but it’s really not.”
But for those like Rosebrock, a bolder vision is needed to fix the freeways.
“This is the chance to make a difference. This is what America’s all about. When John Kennedy said, ‘We’re going to the moon … you figure it out’ … I think we can get somebody to work on time.”