Waiting for carmageddon

LOS ANGELES – By the time this column sees print, it should be all over. If I survive carmageddon, I should be on a plane flying back to Manila. It is the big scare sweeping the Los Angeles area these days. It is particularly scary for me because carmageddon is expected to happen at the weekend I am supposed to catch a flight back home.

Carmageddon or Carpocalypse is all about an expected massive traffic jam on the freeways and surface streets of Los Angeles for the weekend. For 53 hours starting Friday night, a 10 mile stretch of Interstate 405 or the Santa Monica freeway will be closed, cutting off the western side of Los Angeles. The closure will enable the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, to partially demolish a bridge to create a new car pool lane, part of a billion dollar widening project.

One would think that for a metropolis known for its massive traffic jams, Angelenos would not be freaking out over the prospect of another one over a weekend when most people have a choice of staying off the freeways. But Angelenos have reasons to be worried even for just a two-day closure. Their lives revolve around those freeways and this is a massive disruption. LA officials have been preparing for this weekend as if they are preparing for a massive flood or a tsunami.

Images of traffic jams of biblical proportions have forced people to make alternative plans, which is precisely the objective of the communication exercise. Many have told local media that they are planning to go out of town before the event to avoid the, well… “Carmageddon” or “Carpocalypse.”

Because the traffic gridlock is horrible enough on regular days on the 405, people have good reason to almost panic. It is just my luck to have to catch a flight home on the day itself. My daughter told me that even if 405 had been open, we would not use it to the airport from Orange County. But it could still be troublesome to get to LAX on carmageddon day. The hundreds of thousands of vehicles that normally use that part of the 405 may overwhelm other freeways and surface streets.

The closure will effectively cut off the San Fernando Valley in the north from shoreline communities like Santa Monica and Venice. “It will be an absolute nightmare,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a press conference last month. “Avoid the area, or stay home. Go on vacation that weekend.”

They have pulled no stops in the massive information campaign to warn motorists to plan their weekend to avoid non urgent travel on the alternative freeways for the weekend. Hospitals are lining up hotel and dormitory rooms for employees. The Los Angeles Emergency Operations Center, a high-tech command post built to manage during a natural disaster, will be in full operation. Celebrities are being harnessed to spread the word. Actor Ashton Kutcher told his seven million followers on Twitter: “LAPD asked me 2tweet: 405fwy btwn 10 & 101 will be closed July16-17.”

Some local merchants, like hotels and restaurants, worried about the impact of the weekend closure on their businesses are offering special deals.. A website and a Facebook page have been created. T-shirts are being sold for $20 that read “My gridlock is bigger than yours.”

“The idea of the 405 being closed for a critical weekend in the summer is unfortunate timing for us,” Jeff Klocke, marketing director for Pacific Park, the amusement park on the Santa Monica Pier told the Wall Street Journal. About 60,000 to 80,000 people visit the pier on a summer weekend day, Mr. Klocke said, most of them from outside Santa Monica.

In typical Southern California fashion, the WSJ reports the park is offering 53 hours of free rides to anyone with a San Fernando Valley zip code on their driver’s license. It also ordered special “traffic-cone orange” cotton candy for the weekend—free with a day pass. Hard pressed to find an orange variety, the park got a local novelty food vendor to whip up the shade on short notice, using a banana-flavored base and experimenting with color.

Actually, I have noticed quite a bit of construction activity in California’s freeways. When we drove up to San Francisco the other weekend, traffic was crawling on a long segment of Interstate 5 near the farm counties. Our GPS indicated we lost an hour of travel time. Road construction, or rather, reconstruction was on-going, forcing a twenty mile segment to go single lanej on a July 4th weekend.

Apparently, all these construction activities are happening courtesy of President Obama’s economic stimulus grants to state governments for highway repair. The state of the economy aside, these are construction activities that are badly needed anyway, stimulus or no stimulus. Having gone through Interstate 5 going to and coming from San Francisco and Orange County, it is obvious that the quality of the freeways now leave much to be desired from a first world superpower.

There is a portion near Los Angeles itself when I thought we had a flat tire but no, it wasn’t the car… it was the highway. Long segments of the California freeways I have used are now closer to Third World standards, patched up in blocks EDSA-style, bare concrete with no asphalt overlay. The battered budget of California must have been why they failed to keep up with the needed upkeep. In fairness to Orange County, it seems they have been able to maintain their freeways better than Los Angeles.

I suppose the closure of the portion of the 405 freeway is like tying a tourniquet on a vital artery of Los Angeles. This is a sprawling megapolis that survives on a car culture. Public transportation here is token, unlike in San Francisco or New York. A question had been raised on whether it would have been better economics to put their money on a commuter train system rather than marginally expanding the capacity of the 405. But car crazy Angelenos will not hear of it even if the numbers make sense for a mass transit train.

Hopefully, they are able to get the work they need to get done in the weekend because if something happens that will force them to keep 405 closed by Monday, that’s when an unthinkable carmageddon will happen. The remaining freeways will turn into massive parking lots and the ensuing crisis should be comparable to a strong earthquake. By that time, I should be safely back in Manila, battling the daily carmageddons in either EDSA or C5, which should both look like picnics compared to what Los Angeles must face.

Stolen cars

 I had dinner with a friend who is an officer at the LAPD. I mentioned that case involving a Filipino-American accused of smuggling stolen cars to Mindanao. Well, my friend was not surprised. In fact, he told me that’s an old story. The LAPD is aware of such a syndicate shipping stolen high end cars in containers destined for the Philippines. The cars are mostly BMWs, Benzes, Lexus and the top favorite, Suburbans. Favorite port: Cebu.

He told me he was assigned one such case some years ago and he was asked to get in touch with Philippine authorities. He was in contact with an NBI official on top of carjack cases. After several weeks, his NBI contact told him it was difficult to prosecute such cases in the Philippines. That was exactly my thought when I suggested last Friday that we arrange to extradite that Fil-Am dude and make him face American justice. The FBI has already started building a case on him.

I felt bad to learn that US police authorities are no longer surprised cars stolen in their jurisdictions end up in the Philippines. Now that we have a bad reputation as some kind of Ladrones Islands or Islands of Thieves, we have to do something drastic to redeem our national honor. If we do nothing, all Filipinos suffer the bad reputation… as if we are all in on the racket. It just isn’t fair for decent Filipinos constituting the majority of our people.

Husbands

Rosan Cruz sent this one.

Kung ang AZKALS, may Phil & James Younghusband...

Si Kris, merong Phil & James Ex-Husbands!

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. He is also on Twitter @boochanco