LA Transportation: Part 3 - Freeways

We’ve been running a quiz about stereotypical views of transportation and urbanization in Los Angeles. Consider a headline that ran in The New York Times in 2006: “In Land of Freeways, Mass Transit Makes Nary a Dent.” I’ll soon address the issue of Los Angeles transit. In the meantime, did you, like The Times’s headline writer, guess that Los Angeles is dominated by an overbuilt freeway system?

Answer: a half-truth.

In a couple of respects, it is entirely justified to identify Los Angeles with the freeway; the city was a pioneer in freeway development. The Arroyo Seco Parkway (today’s Pasadena Freeway), which opened in 1940, is considered by many to be the first true urban freeway. (Sadly, the builders didn’t quite get it right. A jaunt down the road will remind you of a trip to Space Mountain; it twists like a snake, lacks acceleration and deceleration lanes, has inadequate shoulders, and features hair-raising exit ramps with tight turns and 5 m.p.h. speed limits.)

It is also correct that Los Angeles boasts an extensive freeway system. Counting Interstates and other expressways, the area ranks second in the nation in lane mileage, after New York.

But taking into account the area’s vast size, the network is one of the most underdeveloped in the U.S. According to the Federal Highway Administration, of the 36 largest metro areas, Los Angeles ranks dead last in terms of freeway lane miles per resident. (Chicago is second to last, and New York is near the bottom as well. The most freeway-heavy big city by this measure is Kansas City.)

Read the rest of the NYT article here....