FIXING FREEWAYS WON'T SOLVE TRAFFIC PROBLEM; ROAD IMPROVEMENTS WILL ONLY BRING MORE CARS, HASTEN VALLEY'S DECLINE.

Byline: Rick Cole and Katherine Perez / Local View

WHEN it comes to taxpayer dollars, the Daily News is usually a tightfisted opponent of throwing money at problems.

Except when it comes to traffic congestion. Then, money is no object. In demanding a quick fix for the 101-405 bottleneck, the Daily News editorial Sept. 29 says that ``cost isn't the first issue.''

``Congestion relief'' has been used to justify spending lavishly on freeway expansion for more than 40 years. There's no question that the 101-405 interchange is overburdened. Relieving congestion has been the justification for spending lavishly on freeway expansion for more than 40 years. But after the interchange is widened to 20 lanes (at a cost estimated by the designer at between $300 million and half a billion dollars), what will be the results?

It will perform marvelously at first - a welcome relief to years of traffic jams and the months of disruption caused by construction. The press will feature happy commuters. Politicians will take credit for spending other people's money.

But the joy will be short-lived. From the day the new interchange opens, traffic flow will mysteriously deteriorate.

It doesn't take long for people to change their behavior. With the interchange unclogged, it will become that much easier to drive to the superstores and shopping centers in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Santa Clarita. Or move to the new houses selling there, and take a job with their growing high-tech firms.

Given the option, many people will choose to shop, live or work farther away.

Over time, the landscape will also change. More and more shopping centers, homes and businesses will be developed farther out. In competition with these booming new competitors, the decline of older Valley neighborhoods and commercial areas will accelerate as they're bypassed by ``progress.''

The cumulative results are documented in a recent study titled ``Road Supply and Traffic in Urban California Areas,'' published in the scholarly journal Transportation Research. The findings? Within just five years, 60 percent to 90 percent of new freeway capacity is filled by - guess what? New traffic.

But it shouldn't take an academic study to expose the obvious fallacy in believing that the way to reduce traffic is to make it easier for people to drive. We've tried that for 40 years, and the result is we now tune into reports on traffic jams every six minutes.

Sprawl development, the result of poor planning and government subsidies, is what's behind the traffic clogging our highways.

The preliminary Regional Transportation Plan, released by the Southern California Association of Governments, envisions spending $81 billion in taxpayer dollars on transportation over the next 20 years. But pouring that money into highway improvements actually makes the problem worse, with a 330 percent increase in rush-hour congestion.

We can't solve traffic problems by throwing money at them. Spending the equivalent of $400 for every Valley taxpayer on a single freeway interchange will provide only temporary relief to frustrated commuters. The colossal cost certainly won't improve Valley schools, neighborhoods, parks or commercial areas. The biggest beneficiaries will not be Valley residents, but developers in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Santa Clarita.

It's not too late to try another route. Other West Coast cities like San Diego, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver are all moving away from trying to build their way out of gridlock. They're adopting sensible strategies for making their communities more livable and less car-dependent. They still have their problems, but they're increasingly the envy of dissatisfied Angelenos.

Let's learn from these cities to work together to improve our region - instead of making it easier to flee it in our cars.