Efficient and safe roadways reduce commute times, support goods movement, and increase public health and safety. Some of our initiatives include:
- Synchronizing all the traffic signals in the city
- Implementing short-term operational improvements that address traffic congestion hot spots
- Managing demand to reduce trips
- Building major capital and capacity enhancing projects such as the I-405 San Diego freeway carpool lane
- Facilitating goods movement
- Improving the City’s strategic transportation planning
Synchronizing Traffic Lights
Left Turn Signal Program
Fast Corridors Program
Gridlock Tiger Teams
Olympic West Pico East
Operation Bottleneck Relief
Filled More than Half a Million Potholes
Parking Meter Technology
Synchronizing traffic lights increases travel speed by up to without road widening. This initiative is a key tool in the City's efforts to reduce traffic congestion and harmful air emissions and cut commute times. Since initiating its signal synchronization programs, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) has synchronized more than 3,200 (or 75 percent) of the 4,385 traffic signals citywide - and the City will synchronize or have under construction 100% of the city’s traffic signals by 2009.
Prior to Mayor Villaraigosa taking office, the City’s signal synchronization program was under-funded. The Mayor successfully secured $150 million in state funds through Proposition 1B to complete the City’s entire program.
All new signal synchronization projects are using second generation “Adaptive Traffic Control System” (ATCS) technology developed by LADOT staff. ATCS automatically adjusts signal timing dynamically during different times of the day based on traffic volumes and directions. In addition, LADOT staff can manually adjust traffic signals remotely from the department’s command center to respond to accidents, weather, special events, and other emergencies.
The city will also upgrade previously synchronized parts of the city from first generation “Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control” (ATSAC) system to ATCS. First generation ATSAC enables LADOT staff to program traffic signals to optimize traffic flow and – like ATCS – manually adjust traffic controls signals remotely.
Through signal synchronization, commuters enjoy an average of 12-15% faster travel times and more than 30% reduction in traffic congestion (delay), when these projects are completed. Freer-flowing traffic will also reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 912,000 metric tons of carbon emissions per year.
To find out more about the signal synchronization plan go to: http://trafficinfo.lacity.org/html/ATSAC_1.html
http://trafficinfo.lacity.org/index.html
Left-turn signals are an easy, low-cost and effective way to reduce congestion, improve traffic flow and decrease the chance of traffic collisions. Following an extensive study, LADOT engineers estimate that left-turn arrows reduce traffic collisions by up to 66 percent and cut excessive wait times at left-turn pockets.
Through the Mayor's ongoing left-turn initiatives, the City is helping commuters avoid traffic accidents and reach their destinations on time. New left turn signals are being installed as part of the City’s signal synchronization program and added to other parts of the city where the traffic lights are already synchronized.
Mayor Villaraigosa has challenged LADOT staff to implement the left turn signals faster, including:
- 30-30 Left Turn Arrow Initiative – LADOT crews successfully installed and activated 30 left turn signals in 30 days between December 2007 and January 2008.
- Right to Turn Left Initiative – LADOT crews will install and activate 100 left turn signals between January 2, 2008 and June 20, 2008.
While travel delay is up in very large urban areas across the U.S., Los Angeles has been able to reduce delay through investments in public transportation and innovative operational improvements.
The Fast Corridors Program is a four-year city program started in fiscal year 2005-2006 that is looking at how to improve travel times and reduce travel speeds in 19 priority arterial streets in the City of Los Angeles. The program involves a comprehensive analysis of each corridor, followed by signal timing improvements and minor lane re-striping.
To date, the city sped up traffic on seven of 19 corridors, with travel time improvements ranging from 11% to 28% in the morning peak and 9% to 21% in the evening peak. Average travel speeds are also up as much as 33%.
Every day, illegally parked vehicles where peak hour parking is prohibited create major congestion and bottlenecks during the morning and afternoon rush hours. In addition, these illegally parked vehicles create safety hazards to unsuspecting motorists who have to suddenly slam on their brakes or swerve into the adjacent lane.
Mayor Villaraigosa created the Gridlock Tiger Team and it is a special partnership between LADOT parking enforcement officers and official police garage tow trucks. A comprehensive analysis of parking violations using geographic information systems illustrated parking enforcement hot spots and was used to determine officer deployment and strategy.
The tiger team enforces peak hour parking restrictions on the city’s busiest streets, ticketing and towing scofflaws immediately to keep our city streets clear. As part of the program, new “anti-gridlock zones” were identified, signage installed, and higher fines adopted for violators.
The use of new License Plate Recognition (LPR) technology helps LADOT identify repeat scofflaws and unregistered and stolen vehicles.
The program was launched on Wilshire Boulevard on May 30, 2006 and expanded to additional corridors.
Currently, travel speeds on Olympic Boulevard and Pico Boulevard are as slow as nine miles per hour during rush hour, causing motorist delay and additional mobile source emissions. In November 2007, Mayor Villaraigosa rolled out the "Olympic West Pico East" initiative - a smart, safe and innovative way to improve travel speeds within posted limits on two of LA's busiest cross-town boulevards.
"Olympic-West Pico-East" consists of operational changes on a seven-mile stretch of both streets between Centinela Avenue and La Brea Boulevard.
The program consists of two phases plus supplemental support from traffic control and parking enforcement officers.
Phase 1 makes rush hour parking restrictions consistent along Olympic and Pico between La Brea Boulevard and Centinela Avenue. By doing this, city can add lane markings to add a continuous third lane at the curb to help speed up traffic flow. Gridlock Tiger Team officer will enforce the parking restrictions and ticket-and-tow violators to ensure safety and smooth traffic flow.
Phase 2 alters signal timing to increase green time for westbound motorists on Olympic and eastbound motorists on Pico (so-called “preferential flow”). In addition, new left turn signals will be installed to improve safety while the metering rates will deter traffic from cutting through residential neighborhoods. Traffic control officers will help motorists adjust to the new signal timing and turn signals.
In a study conducted by LADOT, signal re-timing increased travel speeds on Olympic by up to 44% for westbound traffic in the evening (from 18 to 26 mph) and on Pico by up to 82% for eastbound traffic in the evening (from 11 to 20 mph).
Operation Bottleneck Relief identifies the most congested intersections in the city and seeks to reduce delay though signal timing improvements. The pilot program — launched in FY 2005-2006 — looked at 35 busy intersections in the city during morning (7:00-9:00 a.m.) and evening (4:00-6:00 p.m.) rush hour.
After a thorough analysis by LADOT traffic engineers, traffic signal timing and optimized signal timing to relieve traffic congestion. The average improvement through Operation Bottleneck Relief was a 32% reduction in delay and 244,000 hours of annual eliminated. The range of delay reduction was between 10% and 72%.
Other intersections studied that could not be improved were added to the capital program or will require additional analysis. Each year LADOT will review at least 60 new intersections and optimize traffic signal timing to further reduce delay for motorists and transit buses.
Filled More than Half a Million Potholes
Over the past two and a half years, Mayor Villaraigosa has made filling potholes and repaving streets a top priority. Fixing potholes and improving the quality of City streets help reduce maintenance costs for local motorists and ensure a smoother daily commute for LA residents. Through "Operation Pothole" and the hard work of the Bureau of Street Services, the City filled more than 540,000 potholes between July 2005 and July 2007 - far exceeding expectations and surpassing the goals set at the beginning of the Mayor's term. At the beginning of Fiscal Year 2007-08, Mayor Villaraigosa pledged to build on this success by filling a total of 350,000 potholes by June 30, 2008.
Under the Parking Management Program, Mayor Villaraigosa pledged to more effectively manage public parking in the City through a series of initiatives designed to improve customer service, enhance enforcement efforts and ensure greater reliability of parking meters. At the center of this effort rests new, state-of-the-art "Park & Pay" meters, which feature step-by-step payment instructions and allow drivers to use a wide range of parking payment options, including debit cards, credit cards or cell phones.
In the first step toward modernizing the City's 40,000 existing parking meters, the Mayor and LADOT will upgrade 6,000 metered parking spaces in Los Angeles. LADOT will replace 4,000 on-street meters with advanced technology single-space meters throughout the City. Another 2,000 metered spaces will be converted to multi-space "Park & Pay" stations. This initiative was formally launched with the Mayor's announcement in December 2007 that LADOT would install the new parking meters in 30 off-street metered lots throughout the City.