THE PRICE OF TRAFFIC JAMS
                    (C)1993 Alan M. Schwartz

"Pravda" is Russian for "official truth."  Official truth may be 
as insipid as the government defining ketchup as a vegetable in 
school lunches.  Official truth may be as heinous as 125,000 
Washington bureaucrats constantly revising and expanding Federal 
regulations, which thirty days after publication in the Code of 
Federal Regulations take on the full force of law regarding 
invasion of privacy, impoundment and confiscation of property, 
arrest, prosecution, fines and imprisonment ("Science" 260 1859 
(1993)).  Where there is money to be squeezed from citizens' 
wallets there is pravda acting as lubricant or a 10,000 
horsepower hydraulic ram.  Pravda blossoms in Southern California 
under the guise of social engineering and freeways.

Measure M is a $0.005/dollar sales tax addition helping boost the 
Southern California sales tax rate to among the highest in the 
nation.  The Orange County Traffic District (OCTD) receives a 
paltry 15% of Measure M revenues.  How much money can a five 
parts per thousand sales tax raise?  Measure M is a $3.1 billion 
success - unless you are paying into it.

The OCTD has pioneered the commuter lane.  It is a rapid-commute 
freeway lane reserved for officials, motorcycles and multiple 
occupant vehicles - cruising CHP highwaymen, limousines, Mexican 
gardeners' trucks and the occasional car with two or more riders.  
A ten lane freeway upgrade is thus paid for in full and curiously 
maintained as the original eight lane parking lot each rush hour 
and lunch time.  What does it cost to do "what is proper?"  In 
fiscal 1992-1993 Measure M expenditures were $266,983,392 - in 
excess of one quarter billion dollars.  If they bought something 
both tangible and useful we the citizens have yet to discover it.

Using State of California pravda as its source, "Scientific 
American" 269(4) 32 1993 reports that average vehicle occupancy 
in the five year period 1987 to 1992 rose from a paltry 1.13 
people to a grandiose 1.24.  The commuter lane is everything a 
government program could be, and less.  One wonders how truly 
awful the real numbers are.  Given the official rate of increase, 
1.8752%/year, vehicles may reach an average occupancy of two 
people in the year 2018.  Extending this drivel to the number of 
Los Angeles' cars (2.5549%/year), we expect the current 10.6 
million vehicles to increase to 33.7 million vehicles in 2018, at 
which point the average freeway speed will be 0 mph.  Perhaps 
speeding tickets will give way to tailgating citations, in 
addition to the $241 commuter lane ticket.

The OCTD, ever vigilant for the opportunity to spend its budget 
while exacerbating a bad situation, now proposes TWO commuter 
lanes in each direction.  

A stationary car accelerating to 30 mph emits more pollution than 
when it travels a full half mile at 65 mph.  What would it cost 
to synchronize traffic lights?  I would guess thousands of times 
what it cost to anti-synchronize them.  It is no coincidence that 
Orange County traffic lights are perfectly anti-synchronous.  
There is money to be had in mandating pollution and prosecuting 
its sources.  In areas where drivers would drag along at 15 mph 
to hit a green light the OCTD evolved a brilliant solution.  By 
decoupling left turn signals between opposing traffic directions 
it created intersections which require more than three minutes to 
complete one traffic cycle.  NOBODY drives two blocks without 
hitting the brakes in Orange County.  

The 55 mph speed limit would get you across the entirety of Rhode 
Island in a fraction of an hour.  That same speed and time 
interval would not even get you across Orange County.  Raise the 
speed limit to 75 mph and every ten lane freeway gains four lanes 
without a pound of concrete being poured.  The constabulary would 
then be freed to bother muggers and drug pushers, but there is 
neither revenue nor public terror in that, is there?

Whose pockets are being filled?  The OCTD boasts 15 Board members 
alone, plus a Civilian Oversight Commission with another nine 
hardly working souls.  Where are the Environmentalists?  The 
Greens are hunched over their bowls of granola counting handfuls 
of folding green.  Lest a single mote of concrete be laid down or 
torn up an Environmental Impact Report must be bought and sold.  
The 5/55 freeway interconnects have been torn up and rebuilt with 
a religious fervor every five years since the first concrete was 
poured.  In the month or two between projects, traffic flows.  In 
the remaining interval, only money commutes.

California citizens are being flushed into the most massive and 
persistent economic depression in American history.  It is a 
small sacrifice demanded of the many to secure a large gain for 
the chosen few.