COMMUTING SOLUTION FOR THE FUTURE: STAY AT HOME HIGH-TECH GIZMOS MAY EASE GRIDLOCK.

Byline: Steve Carney Staff Writer

The futurists' view of traffic in the 21st century used to include jet cars whizzing about the city, free of gridlock and the constraints of a two-dimensional freeway system.

Well, don't hold your breath, George Jetson.

``Three-D gridlock is not here yet. We have that to look forward to,'' joked Tim Lomax, research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute.

Rubber tires and traffic tie-ups are going to be with us well past the year 2000, but some nifty technological advances could make the commute a bit easier. High-tech will have to come to the rescue, many experts say, because there isn't enough room or money to build ourselves out of traffic jams.

The proliferation of home computers will let workers telecommute more and either stay off the freeways a few days a week, or change the times of day when they do drive to the office - spreading out the rush hour until it vanishes, ostensibly.

``You can log in at your house at 8 o'clock and work for two hours'' before heading in, Lomax said, or duck out of the office before the evening rush and finish the workday at home.

Unlike science fiction solutions, such as sensors that will keep all cars on the freeway 6 feet apart and moving at 70 mph, the most likely answers will simply build on existing technology.

``We're on the edge of technology that will really help us make a dent in congestion,'' said Rich Margiotta of Cambridge Systematics, a research firm that prepared a study in November on freeway bottlenecks for the American Highway Users Alliance. That report showed the junction of the 10 and 405 freeways is the most congested in the nation, while the 101-405 intersection ranks seventh.

Among the technological advances already in place are Caltrans' pavement sensors and freeway cameras, to show when crashes occur or where lanes of cars are moving slowly. Traffic engineers use that information to route Highway Patrol officers or tow trucks, or to display warning messages on overhead signs for drivers who haven't yet reached the trouble spot.

But one day those same systems will be able to transmit that warning information directly to people in their cars, into onboard computers that may even know the destination and offer alternative routes. Such bells and whistles are a natural extension of the navigation systems now available on many vehicles, and one day could be as common as the car radio, said Randy Hall, director of the National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research at the University of Southern California.

``It's a little bit of a challenge because we don't have real high-quality data on actual travel speeds,'' as current freeway sensors are somewhat primitive, Hall said. ``But the technology certainly is present to make that work.''

Caltrans already has a Web site (www.dot.ca.gov/hq/roadinfo/sitemap.htm) showing a map with freeway traffic speeds throughout the region, based on information from the pavement sensors. Motorists can log on before making a trip to see congestion on their route.

But if that route looks too grim, Lomax said commuters should someday be able to log on to other sites to view options - such as detailed information about which form of mass transit will get them to the same destination, where to catch it and what the fare will be. Or another that will list potential car-pool partners, even going as far as listing whether the person smokes or likes listening to ``Morning Edition'' on National Public Radio.

If that's a match, it takes at least one car off the road and puts another in a car-pool lane, zooming to its destination.

``It's these kinds of technological advances that are not only possible but are kind of built in with the way the transportation system is set up,'' Lomax said. ``If you make people aware of the choices, more of them will choose to do something different.''

Other helpful advances include things as seemingly mundane as more efficient computerized dispatching of CHP officers and tow trucks to crashed or stalled vehicles. Getting them to the scene and clearing the roadblocks quickly are basic but important ways to help relieve the nation's worst traffic.

``A few minutes of incident can create an enormous backup behind it. It can probably translate into hundreds of hours of delay,'' Hall said.

Ramp meters and synchronized traffic signals on arterials can also help regulate the flow of traffic - theoretically preventing or easing gridlock - and those devices make the most of the freeway system already in place.

That's vital, because researchers say the future won't include more or wider freeways. Advances to ease gridlock will focus either on making the ride easier for people in their cars, or giving them more palatable options.

``We have the infrastructure and land-use system that's going to be in place for a long time,'' Lomax said. ``You're not going to see a lot of rapid changes in people walking to work or people using transit - unless for some reason oil becomes expensive.''

Or, unless Angelenos get sick of having the worst traffic congestion in the country. L.A. has earned that dubious honor 16 years running in the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Study, but people still drive alone and largely eschew mass transit.

``People like the ability to go where they want, when they want,'' Lomax said. ``And as long as they don't make it too expensive, the private automobile is the thing that gets them closest to that.''