Carmaggedon
This weekend, one of the world's busiest freeways -- the 405, running through the western part of the Los Angeles sprawl, connecting the airport, the San Fernando Valley, and the Westside -- is going to be closed. Shut down for construction.
I wrote about it in the Los Angeles Times, and because no one reads the Los Angeles Times, I'm posting it here, among friends.
About the first thing I heard 20 years ago, when I moved to Los Angeles, was this: "Take surface streets."
"Surface streets" is a uniquely L.A. phrase meaning, roughly, take Beverly Glen. It can mean other streets, depending on what side of town you live on, but the underlying philosophy is clear: Do not take the freeway. The freeway will swallow you up. The freeway will take your day and twist it, irrationally, into a stressed-out ordeal in which you're always running 20 minutes late. The freeway will be jammed for no reason; it will suddenly come to a stop and then will ease inexplicably. If an elderly couple needed to change a tire on the side of the freeway six hours earlier, cars will still slow down near the spot.
So, take surface streets.
It's good advice. Los Angeles' freeways empty out for only two occasions: for the first couple of days after a steep increase in the price of gas, and for all Jewish holidays. The rest of the time, they're clotted with cars, cars driven by short-tempered people of all races and creeds who simply cannot understand why the car in front of them will not move faster.
Once, when I told a Los Angeles native that I was driving across the country, he asked me what route I was planning to take.
"Surface streets," I said.
And he nodded sagely, as if to say, "Good call, dude."
I have a friend who grew up in Brentwood in the 1950s. On early mornings, his dad would take him and his brother up to the western slope of the Sepulveda Pass to watch the 405 Freeway being built.
"This, boys, is progress," my friend's dad probably thought. It was the end of the surface street. American know-how and California big-thinking, all combined in a gigantic earthmoving project that would guarantee fast-moving, effortless transit for the Southland residents of the future.
Which, at 3 a.m. on a weekday, it often — though not always — does. At all other times, it's an iffy proposition. And it's about to get worse.
The 405 Freeway is going to be shut down for 53 hours next weekend — you've heard about that, right? — and local media and residents have started calling it "Carmageddon."
It's going to be one of those weekends during which the already threadbare strands of civilized behavior in Southern California finally snap, unleashing the kind of rage and frustration we've only seen, so far, in the streets of some Arab capitals. In their desperation to get to Van Nuys, or Carson, or Granada Hills, or on to La Tijera, people are going to freak out. Their beloved 405 closed; the complex web of surface streets, jammed; the fat artery that connects Encino to Brentwood, and that allows people in Encino to say to themselves, well, we're almost in Brentwood, will no longer be available for self-delusion.
(Self-delusion is one of our specialties here. "Twenty minutes, door to door," people will insist, is their average commute, from, say, Woodland Hills to Century City. "Seriously. Twenty minutes.")
So the morning line on Carmageddon is that it's going to be chaos.
I beg to differ.
Chaos on the 405 is anytime between 7 in the morning and 9 at night. Chaos on the 405 is weekday afternoons, summer evenings, rainy days and anytime a gallon of gas is slightly less than $4. Chaos on the 405 is a Type A guy in a BMW pounding furiously on his steering wheel as the traffic snakes slowly over the hill, a gigantic truck rumbling to his left and a Latino gardener in a rattling pickup truck on his right, with another guy in the back who stares at the raging BMW driver with expressionless eyes and an imperceptible smile.
Chaos, in other words, is situation normal for Los Angeles freeway traffic.
As anyone who has every sprayed for ants knows, the ants always figure out a way around the spray. When Carmageddon hits, we'll do the same. It'll be back to the Los Angeles of boulevards and canyon roads. For 53 hours, we'll creep along Beverly Glen, snake down Sepulveda, try to figure out where Roscomare really ends and challenge the authority of signs and locked gates that say "ROAD CLOSED. FIRE ROAD ONLY." We'll be ants in a glass farm, figuring it all out anew. It'll be a collective adventure. It'll be fun.
Of course, I'll be sticking around the house that weekend. Like most of my Venice neighbors, we're always looking for an excuse not to have to go to the Valley, and Carmageddon is a perfect out.
But we'll miss out on the discovery that without freeways — without the expectation of rapid and efficient transit — we all do fine, we get where we're going, we build in a little extra time, we don't waste our rage by pounding impotently on a steering wheel. We save it instead for the people we're driving to see.
The freeways — all of them, not just the 405 — are a lie that we tell ourselves every day: Twenty minutes door to door; it's just over the hill. Every day we approach the onramp with high expectations and hearts full of hope, and every day the 405 betrays us with unexplained delays and an unpredictable rush hour. Now, finally, we'll know the truth: Freeways lie. Only surface streets tell the truth.
And now they're making the 405 bigger. Show of hands: Who thinks this will make it easier to get to Century City?
Last weekend, my friend called up his dad and suggested that they climb back up to the old spot to watch the freeway stop.
"What are we going to see?" his father asked.
"Nothing," my friend said.
"I'm in," his father said. And so this coming weekend, the two Brentwood boys and their father will head to the western side of the Sepulveda Pass and stare at an empty ribbon of freeway asphalt and, probably, think about the intervening 50 years with a mixture of regret and joy and exhaustion.
That is, if they can get there. I hear the traffic is going to be miserable. They should take the fire road. Someone will have busted open the gate by then.
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Comments :
Jan '11
Re: Carmaggedon
You make driving on I-95 seem like a pleasant drive in the country.
May '10
Re: Carmaggedon
I seem to remember all the roads being broken in the Northridge earthquake. LA survived. Everybody loves a bit of dramadramadramadrama.
Re: Carmaggedon
Have you considered airlift?
Dec '10
Re: Carmaggedon
Everything is backward in California.
Around here, the freeways rule. Sometimes they're a bit rough or snow covered, but by and large, they're free flowing and awesome.
From my house to STL is about two hours if I take the interstate (what we call the freeway around here), which actually means an hour of twisty little two lane roads to cover the 35 miles from the house to the interstate, and then another hour to cover that last 85 miles to STL.
If I were to take "surface streets" (which here means a twisty two lane road with no shoulder and every old farmer and his dog out for a Sunday drive on their tractor), it would turn into a four hour odyssey, requiring the use of about three lifetimes worth of curse words.
Leave it to Californians to crap-up an idea as simple as the arterial highway.
I kid, I kid . . .
Aug '10
Re: Carmaggedon
Dave,
JetBlue sold out four flights (600 seats), Burbank to Long Beach, special Carmaggedon rate: $4.00 per seat.
We Pedro Boys avoid going north or east of the 405 (no ship work up there)- at all times and at all costs. So, unless a another riot breaks out, it's just another day.
The 405 is my secession line:
SW of the 405 to the 101, west to PCH up coast, then gerrymander our way in to VDH-landia, join Peter and them up in NoCal. I was suppose we could fatten it up down south- to get eastern Orange County in the mix, then follow the 5 down the the border.
Edited on Jul 14, 2011 at 6:43pmOct '10
Re: Carmaggedon
All of the Utopian Green folks should have this solved by now, Yes ?
Just where is your personal jetpack, there fella...
California is flyover country now...
Re: Carmaggedon
To be fair, Rob, there is a third set of circumstances in which the freeways empty out: days when public employees don't have to work.
Jul '10
Re: Carmaggedon
I suspect Y'all ain't going to wake up to a new and improved 405, but to have it replaced with Amtrak.
May '10
Re: Carmaggedon
I realize you were writing this for a Los Angeles audience, Rob, but you reminded me of something. (aside: why does the spell checker think "Los" and "Angeles" are both misspelled?)
Place-name dropping seems to be another uniquely southern California habit. Nothing against you guys, but I feel like many Socalites I talk to name off cities and roads in the LA area in casual conversation as if everyone else just knows the geography and will get the joke.
Am I just imagining this, or has anyone else noticed it too? Maybe the innocent explanation is that a large part of our public conversation in the US takes place between people who live in southern California.
May '10
Re: Carmaggedon
Last weekend I twice drove completely across the city of Nagoya [greater metro pop. 8 million] on the relatively new elevated highway. It was not crowded. It also was well-built and well-maintained, with 20-foot high noise abatement walls all the way.
American governments simply aren't good at city planning.
Aug '10
Re: Carmaggedon
Here's another spirited opinion on carmaggedon.
Oct '10
Re: Carmaggedon
We Del Martians try to avoid ever driving north of Camp Pendleton. Yesterday, BEFORE Carmageddon, I left at 6:15 am and drove 115 miles to West Los Angeles in a mere 3 hours...on freeways designed for 70 mph.
Glad we're not having a SoCal Ricochet meet-up this weekend.
Re: Carmaggedon
I'm hoping it will be like the 84 Olympic scare. The emptiest freeways in the history of freeways, I sailed up from the O.C. to watch the games everyday; thanks to the talk radio hype. KFI AM 640 is doing wall to wall coverage of the closure. Good. Keep up the hype. I've got a gig in Burbank on Saturday and a radio show in Burbank on Sunday. Maybe I should live in Burbank.
May '10
Re: Carmaggedon
Because it was designed by the same people who thought "The Los Angeles Angels"
[The The Angels Angels] was a good name for a team.
May '11
Re: Carmaggedon
I've lived on the LA Westside (four blocks off the 405) for twelve years and have learned many hard lessons. One of them is that the Los Angeles traffic system is like a 90 year old smoker’s circulatory system – it's in an extremely precarious state and even mild jostling could destroy homeostasis – or freewayeostasis. CalTrans is actually going to shut down THE major thoroughfare for an entire weekend. It's like a doctor telling the hacking emphasemic that he'll be fine without his carotid artery for a few days. What could go wrong?
I'm expecting the resulting chaos to be far worse than any dystopian vision constructed by the most demented sci-fi writer (i.e. roving bands of refugees, who days before had innocently set out to catch a cheap weekend red-eye to Milwaukee, now reduced to scavenging for food and water in the barren hellscape that is Westwood Village). My panic room is stocked and secure, and I'm assuming anyone at my door is a traffic zombie infected by the highly contagious gridlock virus – shoot first and ask questions later.
May God have mercy on the City of Angels.
Sep '10
Re: Carmaggedon
My favorite short feature is still 405: The Movie.
May '10
Re: Carmaggedon
Reason #3,254 why Coastal Elites should stop looking down their noses at we peons in Flyover country...we don't waste half of our lives commuting to work. ;)
Sep '10
Re: Carmaggedon
As long as they don't have clothing optional days.
Mar '11
Re: Carmaggedon
I loved this - read it to my family at breakfast.
Re: Carmaggedon
I'm in Orange County and have to make it to LAX for a flight tomorrow. I spoke with a driver down here who suggested, and I am not kidding, purchasing a flight from John Wayne International (Orange County's airport) to LAX. We're driving instead. If you don't hear from me by sundown, please alert the authorities.