SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINE, L.A.'S PLANS FOR SWIFT TRANSPORTATION TOOK A WRONG TURN; CRASH COURSE; IT'S A CONCRETE JUNGLE OUT THERE.

Byline: Jane Robison

L.A.'s a tough town.

Tough to get a make on. Tough to wrap your brain around. Tough to find a squeegee at a gas station.

And when it comes to finding your spot on the freeway, forget about it.

It's 6 a.m. on a sultry Monday. The sun's been up 2 minutes, the temperature's up 20 degrees.

I've been awake all of one second, and already, I want to pop somebody. Nothing personal. Just thinking about hitting the road puts me in a Mount St. Helens frame of mind. But it's early. Plenty of time before I actually blow.

The morning has an ugly feel to it. Not gritty. Not quite soap scum on the shower door. Just ugly.

I have to leave the Valley. I have to get in my car, crawl along the 101, inch toward the 405, and play a bumper-to-bumper game of chicken and ``may I please, sir'' with half a million people vying for the privilege of going to the Westside.

Did I say I was dreading the drive? No, that's not right. Not dreading the drive. Loathing the drive.

But, hey, this is L.A. Put the top down. Grab the cell phone. Make the most of it. Check out the spare change that passes for humanity. The starlets with stiletto heels for hearts. The manly men who think their cars pass for brains.

In case you hadn't heard, this town was nothing before the automobile. Someone invented L.A., just so people would have a place to park their cars.

And with the cars came the jobs, the people, cheap housing, a million players and the San Fernando Valley. The makings of a good life.

Oh, yeah, and a fresh set of freeways - Route 66, the 101, the Hollywood, the Harbor and more - all ribbons around the dream machine that is L.A.

But there's trouble in paradise.

The commuters are getting restless, edgy, hot. They're stuck on the freeways, stuck in traffic, stuck going nowhere in a town where everybody's going somewhere.

They've been opening up their wallets to Uncle Sam and Aunt Loosey Goosey MTA, and they're wondering why $1 billion only gets you a hole in the ground.

How come $1 billion doesn't get you a shiny new subway?

How come $1 billion doesn't get the Valley a new 101-405 interchange?

How come Ted Turner donated $1 billion to the United Nations instead of L.A.? Hey, Ms. Fonda, don't you like us anymore?

What those tourist maps don't tell you, what the chamber people fail to mention is that anyplace you want to go in L.A., you can't get there from here.

OK. That's a slight exaggeration. You can get there, but it's going to take you the better part of your life. And it will sap all your energy and leave you lifeless. But yeah, you can get there.

In the 1950s, when orange groves still outnumbered tract homes in the U.S. Census Bureau, the big boys downtown and in Sacramento mapped out a 1,379-mile grid of interlocking, intertwining highways and byways. That was their idea of public transportation, make room for everyone on the freeway. A little slice of concrete to call your own.

The problem is that only about 615 miles were built.

When the 405-101 interchange opened April Fools' Day, 90,000 commuters drove their Chevys over the hill and back. Now, over half a million cars slog through the major entrance to the Valley.

And it's only going to get worse as the economy rebounds and millions more join our happy home.

Some traffic analysts say traditional rush hours will be replaced by daytimelong traffic delays. East-west trips are expected to rise by 30 percent, forcing rush-hour drivers to hit the brakes at 21 mph and set their cruise controls at 10 mph and less.

All the while, the meter's ticking. The estimated cost to business from these traffic delays in Los Angeles is $9 billion per year. People are spending more to sit in their hot cars than is being spent to build a public transportation system and expand freeways.

In the city that invented drive-ins, drive-throughs and drive-bys, you'd think drive time would be a breeze.

I wonder who's pulling the strings? I wonder who's paying the politicians to look the other way? I wonder whose interests are being served to keep 500,000 people tied up in traffic for hours at a time?

Mostly, I wonder who's going to solve this devilish nightmare. It's going to take a politician with moxie and muscle to blast the City Hall moles out of their foxholes.

It's going to take a city tired of being pushed around, shunted to the back, made to sit and watch as L.A. rots and decays to stop this madness in its tracks.

It's going to require someone to catch the dilettante politicos in a thousand and one compromising positions and splash 'em on the front pages.

Time to hit the road. Get the real story. Get the . . . paper that knows which side its bread is buttered on, the Valley side, not the downtown jam-and-crumpets-crowd side.

But, hey, I don't make the headlines. This highway robbery is all background, hush-hush stuff.

On the Q.T.

Strictly, L.A. confidential.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Mean and ugly roadway holds city HOSTAGE

(2--Color) FREEWAY FRENZY!