Jammed Traffic Drives Him to Letterman-Style ‘Tricks’

Forget the bridge to the 21st century; what about the bridge across the bay?

Bay Area traffic jams were 31% jammier last year than the year before, which translates into 90,000 more “stuck in traffic” hours a day.

To pressure Caltrans into coming up with a coherent traffic plan--or simply to relieve the pressure from steamed-up drivers--Oakland Democratic Assemblyman Don Perata is collecting “Stupid Caltrans Tricks.” Among the contenders for the “golden cone” award: signs directing drivers to Sacramento when they only want to find Oakland, and a pedestrian crosswalk at the bottom of a freeway offramp.

One motorist’s solution: a Caltrans complaint line for each project.

Something catchy and toll-free, like 1 (800) CONEHED.

Caltrans, however, is not the only offender.

Its spot checkers were shocked, shocked to find Northern California drivers cheating in the carpool lanes far more than their Southern counterparts.

In the LA/Orange/San Diego concrete tangle, Caltrans counted carpool cheaters at 1.5% to 7.4%. But in Contra Costa, Alameda and Santa Clara counties, the numbers consistently topped 10%, and in two places, 25%.

Maybe it’s because so much is under construction that even carpool lanes are confusing. Or maybe some drivers are counting past lives as passengers.

Shaken, not broke: It may turn out to be the most expensive part of the martini.

Lindsay, the town that grew with its olives, is trying to stave off bankruptcy threatened by a $4.5-million legal judgment levied because its sewage treatment did not adequately treat olive brine flowing from the longtime local cash crop.

That being about twice the town’s annual budget, the 1998 town ballot could very well ask voters to tax themselves for 10 years--about $280 a year should do it--to pay it off.

The jury’s original $2.5-million award has nearly doubled with interest and attorney fees after the town of 9,000 put up a fight, and the farmers’ cooperative that had a hand in creating all that salty water, Lindsay Olive Co., went belly up--or bottoms up--in 1992.

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Fireworks Injuries

Between June 17 and July 16 last year, fireworks incidents accounted for 221 emergency room patients with 304 individual injuries, mostly to hands and feet, according to the 43% of California’s hospitals reporting.

Data gathered by the State Fire Marshal show that illegal fireworks almost always account for more of the reported injuries than do legal ones. Here is a breakout of victims injured, and the type of fireworks they were injured by, during the fireworks season over the last 10 years.

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PEOPLE LEGAL ILLEGAL UNKNOWN YEAR INJURED FIREWORKS FIREWORKS TYPE 1987 324 120 127 1988 279 103 117 1989 302 143 112 1990 213 88 76 1991 166 57 75 1992 249 82 97 1993 222 55 114 1994 272 81 130 1995 329 100 150 1996 221 85 96

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* Hospital reporting of fireworks injuries is voluntary and varies from year to year. Acute-care and medical clinics are not included.

Source: California Fire Incident Reporting System, Sacramento.

Researched by TRACY THOMAS/Los Angeles Times

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Coals to Newcastle, dirt to Sacramento: For four years, the science students of Madera’s Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School have studied dirt, lived, dreamed, slept, eaten dirt--well, not eaten, at least.

And from that soil has sprung their lobbying campaign, which they carried to the Legislature, to give California an official state soil, specifically San Joaquin soil, uniquely Californian, museum-caliber dirt more than a quarter-million years old.

California already suffers a dirt gap: Michigan, Nebraska and Oklahoma all have official state soils. Modesto Republican state Sen. Dick Monteith, who shoveled the bill through the Senate, reassured enviro-skittish colleagues that “it is not making it a sacred soil.”

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One offs: A smoke-free party at a San Bernardino nightclub had to be canceled because the club’s liquor license was suspended. . . . The Las Vegas developer who dreamed up a New York City theme hotel-casino now wants to build such a place using the essence of San Francisco, but probably with more parking. . . . Arrow, the golden retriever who survived the 300-foot Big Sur car plunge that killed his owner and then lived alone on the remote beach for a month, has been rescued, lured to safety by a ham and cheese sandwich. . . . A press release describing “an emotional catch . . . audible” in Sacramento Republican Assemblywoman Barbara Alby’s voice when she spoke of her bill requiring a CD-ROM listing of sexual offenders was handed out before Alby had said, or quavered, a word. . . .

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EXIT LINE

“We know we’ve reached a crisis point when the glaciers are moving faster than the governments.”

--Adam Markham, director of World Wildlife Fund’s climate change campaign, on its study of the California coastline as it is being affected by global warming and not being affected by legislative action.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.