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THE FACTS ABOUT "GRIDLOCK" IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

This paper describes the dominant facts that bear on transportation planning in the greater Los Angeles area (the five-county area of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura). It is shown that travel behavior in Los Angeles in very similar to that in the nation as a whole. Los Angeles' somewhat longer worktrip distances are somewhat compensated by above-average travel speeds. Nonworktrips have as high a share of total trips as in the other large cities, but more of these take place in peak travel hours than in other cities. Faster central city travel speeds in Los Angeles are a little misleading because they partly reflect the peculiar character of the officially defined central city, namely the inclusion of characteristically suburban areas (with fewer traffic problems) in the City of Los Angeles. The evidence suggests that commuting times in Los Angeles have remained more or less constant for a quarter of a century. It is argued that this relative constancy is the result of a coping mechanism in locational adjustments whereby households and firms progressively relocate to decentralized locations in order to maintain access to each other. The decentralization trends observed in Los Angeles are replicated to a similar degree everywhere else. Average vehicle occupancy has declined both in Los Angeles and across the nation, in part because of declining household size, but also because of the low attractiveness of commuting carpools. An unresolved question is whether the current high occupancy vehicle (HOV) expansion projects can reverse the carpooling trends. Further deregulation of the shuttle van industry could have more than negligible impacts on average vehicle occupancies. Although the picture remains unclear, working at home is increasing in Los Angeles but may be declining slightly in the nation as a whole. A noteworthy fact is that working at home in Los Angeles is rapidly catching up with the use of transit, an interesting observation given the magnitude of public investment in transit and the negligible public resources allocated to promoting working at home.

  • Record URL:
  • Corporate Authors:

    Reason Foundation

    3415 S Sepulveda Boulevard, Suite 400
    Los Angeles, CA  United States  90034
  • Authors:
    • Gordon, P
    • Richardson, H W
  • Publication Date: 1993-8

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 31 p.

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00664397
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: Policy Study No. 165
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Aug 26 1994 12:00AM