Las Urbanistas

Faced with the prospect of losing federal funding, the agency considers increased fines for unauthorized use, going after cheaters or even requiring more passengers in a car.

By Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 12, 2007

Caltrans must figure out how to reduce growing congestion in California’s carpool lanes or face a possible cut in federal funding. But as is so often the case with freeway planning, there are no easy solutions for getting traffic flowing better.
The stakes are high for all freeway drivers, including owners of hybrid cars who can now use carpool lanes solo, and even for those who never carpool but might end up seeing more traffic in their lanes.

For starters, officials want to raise the $341 minimum fine for carpool lane violators and step up patrols to catch cheaters. About 5% of motorists riding in the carpool lanes are believed to be cheaters, and cutting that violation rate even slightly could help reduce congestion, officials and experts said.

“Even if we could . . . cut in half that violation rate, we would see some significant improvement,” said Caltrans Director Will Kempton.

But the California Highway Patrol is still trying to figure out how to fund additional officers for special patrols tasked with catching speeders and responding to accidents.

“We are obviously stretched thin as far as our officers are concerned,” said Tom Marshall, a spokesman for the CHP. “If we’re going to do specifically targeted patrols, yes, we’re going to have to find a way to fund either overtime or extra officers.”

Moreover, several transportation experts are skeptical that higher fines alone would solve the problem.

The push comes three months after the Federal Highway Administration declared California’s carpool lanes out of compliance with federal regulations, which require the lanes to flow at speeds of 45 mph or faster at rush hour.

The speeds are far lower in the diamond lanes on some major Southern California routes, including portions of the 405 freeway from the South Bay through Orange County, as well as parts of the 5 and 210 freeways.

Carpool lanes have slowed down so much in some areas that even bus operators are complaining.

According to Caltrans, nearly half of the state’s 1,350-mile carpool lane system is operating below acceptable speeds.

In a conference call with reporters last week, Kempton made other promises, including completing gaps in the state’s carpool lane system and clearing accidents from freeways more quickly.

Those two ideas are not new. Building costly new carpool lanes throughout the region has long been a Caltrans priority, and in April Kempton committed to clearing all accidents within 90 minutes; last year, it took an average of three hours to clear accident scenes.

Kempton said more ideas will come in October, after his agency completes a freeway-by-freeway analysis of the slowest carpool lanes, which are primarily in Southern California.

Transportation experts say there are several obvious solutions that would speed up the lanes.

But none are politically popular:

* Prohibit single-occupant hybrid vehicles in carpool lanes. From 2005 to February 2007, California issued permits to allow solo drivers in the most fuel-efficient cars to use the lanes. The program was so popular state lawmakers increased the program cap from 75,000 to 85,000 even though Caltrans recommended against it.

Ending the privilege, from a practical standpoint, “would be a no-brainer,” said Genevieve Giuliano, director of the National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research at USC. Hybrid vehicles, she said, “are actually more fuel-efficient if they are going slow.”

Kempton said Caltrans would bar hybrids from using the most congested carpool lanes only as a last resort. The program is set to end in 2011.

* Increase the number of people needed to form a carpool from two occupants to three . Virtually all freeways in Southern California require only two, except for the El Monte Busway on the 10 freeway, which requires three during peak hours.

“That would allow for a higher speed on the HOV lanes, but it would again result in a large constituency of drivers” upset — namely, two-person carpools, said Martin Wachs, director of transportation and technology at the Rand Corp.

Diverting two-person carpools into regular lanes could also worsen congestion for regular commuters, according to some Caltrans officials.

* Convert regular freeway lanes into carpool lanes. Caltrans tried that on the Santa Monica Freeway in the 1970s, prompting a motorist revolt, and since then it pledged to introduce carpool lanes only by adding more road space. As a result, this scenario is highly unlikely.

* Charge to use the carpool lane. This is done on the 91 Express Lanes connecting Orange County and Riverside County. Carpools with three or more occupants are charged when traveling eastbound from 4 to 6 p.m ., although they receive a 50% discount off the regular toll.

That would probably prompt immediate objections from carpoolers who currently use the lanes elsewhere in the region for free.

“There’s no obvious solution that would satisfy everybody,” Wachs said, adding that he is not advocating any particular approach.

Kempton said the best long-term solution would be to increase capacity — by expanding the system to other freeways, and constructing a second carpool lane next to an existing one.

Such expansions could be financed by allowing solo drivers to use carpool lanes if they pay a toll, he said.

But widening roads takes time and money, and experts said it is critical that officials ensure that carpool lanes move faster than regular traffic.

“Unless that time savings is consistent and reliable, the motivation to form a carpool is lost,” said Brian Taylor, head of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA.

ron.lin@latimes.com

A $70-million mall is another indication that L.A.’s Pico-San Vicente area, once mired in economic decay, is resurgent.

By Ari B. Bloomekatz, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 12, 2007

Back in the days when Los Angeles had streetcars, the crossing of Pico and San Vicente boulevards in Mid-City was a hub of activity.

The streets were lined with shops, restaurants and movie theaters. A hilltop Sears department store drew customers from far and wide, some taking the Pico line of the Los Angeles Railway Co. trolley car system.

Then came the Watts riots in 1965, followed by years of economic decay and the 1992 riots. Crime rose, storefronts shuttered and the landmark Sears closed its doors.

But Mid-City is now in the midst of a revival, part of a wave of gentrification that has swept over many of L.A.’s once-neglected neighborhoods. The boarded-up Sears, for years a symbol of decay, is being replaced by a 500,000-square-foot mall, anchored by a Lowe’s home improvement store.

The area, a mix of ethnic groups and neighborhoods that range from mansion-lined streets to rows of low-rent apartments, is benefiting from economic forces on its borders. People who can no longer afford the high prices of neighboring communities have moved in. It helps that Mid-City, as its name implies, is not far from downtown, Hollywood and the Westside. And development is following.

“This is one of the great untapped neighborhoods,” said Samuel Garrison, director of public policy at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

The gentrification has been embraced by some — but not all — Mid-City residents.

Barbara Julian, who has lived in a house one block south of Washington Boulevard on Dunsmuir Avenue for more than four decades, said she has to drive miles for shopping — to Beverly Center or Culver City.

“The area has been a blighted area for quite a while,” she said.

Julian, 71, said she hoped the new mall would bring a new sense of vitality to the area.

But Carlos E. Rodriguez, owner of El Salvadoran pupuseria Con Sabor that opened nearby 10 years ago, said new brand-name stores, such as Panda Express, will hurt small businesses like his. Developers “never come in with small, local businesses; they come in with brand franchises,” Rodriguez said.

Experts say Mid-City’s history and demographic shifts are emblematic of many low- and middle-income neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles. The rise in home values in neighborhoods such as Hancock Park, the Fairfax district and Miracle Mile have young professionals and first-time homeowners giving Mid-City a new look.

A single-family home in the area sells for an average of $559,000 — nearly four times more than in 2000, but about $300,000 less than in Olympic Park, according to John Karevoll of the real estate research firm DataQuick Information Systems.

Despite the influx of new homeowners, Mid-City remains a largely working-class area.

Nearly a quarter of its residents were living in poverty, according to the 2000 Census, a bit more than twice the nationwide rate of 12.4%. And according to the same census, slightly more than half of Mid-City residents 16 and older had jobs — more than 5% less than the rest of Los Angeles and about 9% less than the national average.

The developers of Midtown Crossing, set on 10 acres, are not looking to attract exclusively upscale clientele. CIM Group Inc., the company funding the project, has a history of targeting emerging areas that the developers say don’t have enough retail establishments.

The mission “is to be a catalyst for change in communities that have been underserved,” said Philip Friedl, a CIM vice president. “This area, this community, this project, and this site really presented the opportunity to do that.”

Detailed drawings of Midtown Crossing show a style similar to the much larger and more upscale Grove, a popular outdoor shopping mall a few miles away on 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue. Midtown Crossing would have tree-lined sidewalks, brand-name but not super high-end retailers surrounding a parking area. The developers won’t confirm tenants because negotiations are not final, but stores that might open include Best Buy.

In the 1920s and ’30s, Mid-City was a suburb of downtown Los Angeles — “very dynamic, it was changing all the time,” said Matthew Roth, a historian with the Automobile Club of Southern California. Some developers at the time tried new architectural plans in the neighborhood, including an innovative rooftop parking lot at the Sears store, Roth said.

It helped that at Pico and Rimpau boulevards, a key Los Angeles Railway line had its western terminus, with a depot next to the Sears that is now a transit center for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Big Blue Bus line.

Until the August 1965 riots, Mid-City and the neighboring Crenshaw district thrived, said Christopher West, history curator at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. But Mid-City struggled for the last 40 years, taking a second hard hit when riots again rocked the city in 1992.

After the dust settled from the riots, City Councilman Herb Wesson said, retailers were wary of moving into the area. Wesson said he has set up booths at development and retail conventions around Southern California, asking retailers to come to an area he described as “barren” and “starved.”

“We’ve got enough liquor stores and auto body shops for one neighborhood,” Wesson said about Mid-City, which is in his district.

Midtown Crossing is the first major development to bring in masses of new stores to the area. But residents said they began noticing changes in 2000.

More retail has crept in as community activists and local politicians pursued business-friendly community planning.

“I’ve seen the improvements, the different businesses that have moved in, the interest from big developers looking at properties,” said Steven Vasquez, president of the Mid-City Neighborhood Council. “The street maintenance has increased. We’re getting more medians, better street lighting. It’s going to help more businesses come in, and of course, you have the people moving in that have more income.”

Two years ago, when Franco Gambino opened Gambino’s Grill and Pizza on Venice Boulevard near San Vicente, he was struggling to get customers. Now, he said, he sees customers coming from Hancock Park for “The Killer,” a monster pizza.

Gambino said he hopes the development will bring more foot traffic. A bank and a few shops have opened at the new mall, just east of La Brea Avenue. To come over the next 16 months are the home improvement store, scores of other retailers and a three-story parking garage, all at a cost of $60 million to $70 million, said architect Brad Williams, the project’s director at Studio One Eleven in Long Beach.

Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, called the development “momentous” because retailers have been wary of building in areas touched by the 1992 riots.

But Hunt pointed to an Inglewood neighborhood where residents argued bitterly over plans by Wal-Mart to open a mega store and said that developers are often not in tune with a particular community’s needs, such as prevailing living wages and opportunities for local entrepreneurs.

Julian, the longtime Mid-City resident, said she believes the community would love the kind of shopping and pedestrian interaction her neighborhood enjoyed during its heyday.

“I hope the mall will bring in business and actually make it look much better.”

ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com