We Need to Get Moving on Traffic Alternatives

Anyone who travels Orange County’s roads and freeways can conjure up an image of a freeway at least 20 lanes wide. Or envision traffic on a daily basis crawling along at an average of 10 m.p.h. In either case, drivers can easily come to the conclusion that, as much as they love their auto, there must be a better way.

It’s not that there aren’t options. There are. Car and van pools are alternatives. So is the bus--especially when the transit-ways now on the drawing board will soon put those buses, vans and car pools in their own special freeway lane, with their own on- and off-ramps and safely separated from the other lanes. Such a transit-way could carry as many people during peak hours as four other freeway lanes combined.

Another option is staggering work hours so that everyone isn’t trying to cram into the already jammed traffic lanes at the same time. And toll roads will be tried.

On Monday, Harriett Wieder, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, introduced another option to county residents: a pollution-free, people-mover system that floats transit passenger cars along a magnetic field on elevated tracks.

That may sound futuristic and far away, but it isn’t. It’s only as far as Las Vegas, where a $60-million, 1.3-mile pilot project is under construction and scheduled to link some downtown areas together by 1991. By 1995, the Las Vegas people mover is scheduled to expand to a 10-mile system and connect the airport with major hotels. The city is providing the right of way, but the system is being built and will be operated with private money.

Such a system could be used on freeways, where the public already has right of way, or within cities to link major areas of business and recreational activity. A people mover would be ideal for a community such as Anaheim, with its convention center, stadium and Disneyland. While Anaheim has been talking about something like that for years, Las Vegas is doing it.

Orange County must dare to be different. Its freeways and surface streets are choked with traffic. And it’s still growing. There are an estimated 1.7 million motor vehicles registered in the county that travel 10 billion miles a year on freeways and state highways. And that doesn’t include local street traffic and non-resident vehicles passing through. Some other acceptable alternatives must be found.

People movers won’t replace the passenger car. But they are another method of transit that new technology is providing. New options deserve serious consideration, at least as much as the traditional, costly and environmentally damaging approach of widening the freeways always gets.