WORSE L.A. TRAFFIC AHEAD; REPORT URGES LOOK AT FREEWAY ALTERNATIVES.

Byline: Steve Carney Staff Writer

Having a Thanksgiving weekend 52 times a year probably isn't an option.

So Los Angeles will have to find other solutions to ease the traffic nightmare that has made its freeway interchanges among the worst in the nation, as ranked in a study released Tuesday by the American Highway Users Alliance.

The report called the junction of the 405 and 10 freeways the worst bottleneck in the country. And close behind was the 101-405 interchange, long the linchpin of the Valley's traffic congestion.

``L.A., it's in a class by itself as far as congestion goes,'' said Rich Margiotta, a senior associate with Cambridge Systematics, the transportation researchers who conducted the study for the Washington D.C.-based alliance.

The alliance is a 67-year-old nonprofit group that represents motorists, truckers, oil refiners and other highway interests.

Thanksgiving travelers are driving out of town or jamming routes to the airport, but their exodus is thinning the ranks of commuters this week.

That respite will be short-lived, however, and unless a broad spectrum of changes are made to ease congestion in the next 20 years, the resulting traffic will flood the air with pollutants and kill dozens of people in crashes, the alliance said.

To help ease problems at the 101-405, Caltrans is planning to add a lane to the northbound 405 at Mulholland Drive, and add a connector from the north 405 to the east 101 Freeway. Work is expected to finish by fall 2002.

But agency spokeswoman Margie Tiritilli said no improvements are planned for the 10-405 interchange, and she disputed its dubious ranking.

``It's basically not really considered a real bottleneck,'' she said. ``Traffic does move. It carries a lot of vehicles.''

She said the interchange carries about 320,000 vehicles a day. But the alliance report said it also has average rush-hour delays of 15 minutes per car, which will more than double by 2020 if no improvements are made.

Tiritilli said high-occupancy vehicle lanes are being built on the 405 from Orange County to Mission Hills. Work on HOV lanes through the Sepulveda Pass began recently and is expected to last two years, she said.

``We've pretty much built up our freeway system, except for HOV lanes,'' Tiritilli said. ``We need to do a re-thinking of how we commute. We need to spread out how we travel. Even if we could build new freeways, it would be very costly.''

Policy-makers, consultants, traffic experts and irate drivers have offered solutions to gridlock - ranging from wider freeways to car pooling to increased bus service. But none of them alone is the answer.

``There are a variety of approaches that need to be combined,'' Margiotta said. ``Any one of those strategies will only give you a small gain.''

Options also include increased transit service, on rail lines or on buses given their own lanes, or carrying sensors to change traffic lights and hasten their trips. And Margiotta said other forms of technology will bring huge improvements.

Communications advances will let people telecommute from home and stay off the freeways several days out of the week. And information about crashes and other obstacles that's more detailed and current than what's available now will help drivers avoid such problems, and help prevent now-inevitable backups.

Without any efforts to reduce traffic, gridlock at freeway interchanges will release millions of tons of pollutants from idling cars, delay drivers and causes injuries and deaths in crashes from motorists jockeying for position.

The study estimates 18 deaths and 2,240 injuries at the 10-405 junction, and 21 deaths and 2,570 injuries at the 101-405 over the next two decades if improvements aren't made to the interchanges.

``It's going to have to come as a natural outgrowth of people getting fed up with it and wanting to change their lifestyles,'' Margiotta said. ``We'll be playing catch-up for a number of years.''