A Changing Cycle in Traffic Patterns

The Orange County Transportation Authority is studying the transportation future of Orange County. Isn’t that a depressing subject? Even more so than the transportation present, which is depressing enough.

Anyway, it’s good that somebody’s thinking about it. I’m on OCTA’s so-called “Corridor Working Group.” “Corridor” is getting to be a popular word these days, maybe because it doesn’t evoke an image of gridlocked cars. OCTA has defined a “corridor” as a strip roughly 5 miles wide and 30 miles long, bent at the Costa Mesa Freeway so it looks like a ski boot, with the toe pointing east. The top of the boot is at Fullerton, the heel is on the Back Bay and the toe is at El Toro. It contains a lot of highways: Routes 5, 22, 55, 57, 73, 91 and 405.

At its meeting on July 30, the Working Group decided not to recommend any alternatives, but to stick with what’s already funded and add buses and carpool lanes to freeways and surface streets--this in the face of the OCTA handout, which showed trips and population increasing by a third, by 2015.

I brought up a prediction I’d seen of gas prices going way up in five years, as China goes from a net producer to a net consumer of petroleum. This was somewhat discounted--I guess there have been lots of such predictions. [One person] spoke in favor of rail and was more or less howled down, though politely.

I’m somewhat appalled by this head-in-the-sand attitude. At the same time, I don’t know but what it might be the best thing for my own special interest, which is bicycling: If all traffic stops, only bicyclists and pedestrians will get around.

In any case, it looks to me as if the traffic’s going to get much worse before it gets better. And be nice to the bicyclists and pedestrians out there--you may find yourself among them.

DON HARVEY

Executive director

Orange County Bicycle Coalition

Orange