Streetsblog Los Angeles

Traffic trying to get to Dodger Stadium. Photo:=Manny=/Flickr

Here comes one positive side benefit of the L.A. budget crisis: Gridlock. Our tight budget means the city can no longer afford to pick up the tab to make driving easier — by providing free traffic officers for events at the Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Bowl, and other major venues.

So now, most of these venues plan to pick up the tab — but also to reduce the number of traffic officers working — which according to the L.A. Times, “could lead to congestion.”

The change doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll have more congestion. Perhaps more people will simply take public transportation to these events, as L.A.’s Principal Transportation Engineer Alan Willis is apparently encouraging people to do — though it’s unclear from the L.A. Times article what concrete steps, if any, Willis plans to take to actually get people on buses and rail. But even if we do get more congestion, this is good news for both the environment and alternative transit advocates, according to David Owen, a staff writer at The New Yorker whose latest Wall Street Journal article expounds on “How Traffic Jams Help the Environment.” (via Idea)

“Traffic jams can actually be environmentally beneficial if they turn subways, buses, car pools, bicycles and walking into more-attractive options,” Owen points out. That may be a rather obvious observation, but Owen’s arguments that both ramp metering and congestion pricing aren’t necessarily good for the environment will be surprising at first for many alternative transit advocates:

Advocates of congestion-fighting strategies usually argue that traffic jams waste gasoline. That’s true, but the energy waste and carbon output attributable to idling cars is smaller than that attributable to the overall transportation network. There’s nothing green about fighting congestion if, by distributing traffic more efficiently, it results in an overall increase in traffic volume and extra miles driven by vehicles avoiding the fee areas.

That said, Owen isn’t against congestion pricing — He’s simply pointing out that such programs must be part of a “truly effective traffic program” that “would impose high fees for all automobile access and public parking while also gradually eliminating automobile lanes (thereby reducing total car traffic volume without eliminating the environmentally beneficial burden of driver frustration and inefficiency) and increasing the capacity and efficiency of public transit.”

Owen’s entire article’s a great read — which also gave me an idea: Perhaps simply raising the parking prices in these L.A. venues alone will get rid of the potential congestion problem altogether while encouraging more people to take alternative modes of transportation.

Parking pricing, in fact, is what the City of Santa Monica’s targeting now to tackle its own gridlock issues. Reduce this “ill-advised subsidy for public parking,” reports the L.A. Times, and more people might walk, bike, or take public transit to enjoy a day or night out on the Third Street Promenade: “If it works, the city would benefit from smoother traffic flow, reduced pollution as fewer people cruise for spaces and a better return on land developed for public parking.”

Those plans are still in the works; the city staff first needs to recommend a plan (”perhaps by late this year,” according to the L.A. Times) that the City Council can take up. But reading about how L.A. drivers can expect not only more gridlock but also higher parking prices really made my day today!

Of course, in addition to making driving and parking less pleasant and more costly, we need to make it easier for people to get to all of these venues without getting in a car. I love the convenience of taking the bus to the Hollywood Bowl, but I hear getting to the Dodger Stadium via public transit isn’t as easy…