Commute

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By JILL ROSENFELD

Staff Reporter

When people think of Los Angeles, they think of sprawl long, pockmarked, asphalt distances between friends, relatives, home and work.

In fact, Los Angeles drivers travel shorter distances on average than people in many other major cities 21.6 miles a day on a per-capita basis, according to a 1996 Federal Highway Administration study.

That’s lower than Cincinnati (26.5 miles a day), St. Louis (28.4 miles a day) Dallas (29.8 miles a day) and Atlanta, the leader with 36.5 miles daily.

Even with East Coast metropolises like New York (15.1 miles daily) factored in, Los Angeles still falls below the national average of 22.5 miles daily for urban areas over 750,000 people.

What accounts for L.A.’s relatively middle-of-the-road statistic?

The answer lies in the fact that L.A. is not one city, but many with major employment centers in such disparate places as Long Beach, Century City, Warner Center and Glendale.

As a result, people don’t just hop in their cars and drive from the San Fernando Valley to downtown. They do that, but they also drive from the Valley to the Westside, and the Westside to the Valley.

“For instance, the Santa Monica Freeway, when it originally opened, had a peak direction toward downtown,” said Dave Gilstrap, a senior transportation engineer with the state Department of Transportation. “But now it’s virtually even in both directions. In fact, congestion is even worse in the outbound direction in the morning than it is going toward downtown.”

Kevin Starr, an author of numerous books about the state and California’s state librarian, credits the pattern of diverse employment centers to L.A.’s famous freeways.

“Prior to World War II, and especially around World War I when the Pacific Electric Railway was in operation, L.A. was highly centralized, with some 50,000 people coming into downtown each day,” Starr said. “This pattern survived thorough the Second World War era, and began to change in the 1960s first of all with completion of the Santa Monica Freeway, which opened up an east-to-west, downtown-to-west corridor.”

As a result of the freeway system, Century City rivals downtown as a corporate center and exceeds it in prestige, many believe. And as L.A.’s economy shifts away from Fortune 500 firms to small, more-entrepreneurial companies, cities like Burbank, El Segundo, Calabasas and Culver City are emerging as regional business powerhouses.

Atlanta is an entirely different sort of city. Downtown Atlanta remains a hub, with a concentrated downtown business district, and major arteries radiating from its center like spokes.

“In Atlanta, the commute from the suburbs is as if you lived in Chino Hills or Santa Clarita and went to downtown L.A. every day,” said Osama Assaad, a senior transportation engineer for L.A. County.

With only one-third the population of Los Angeles 3.5 million people to L.A. County’s 9.5 million and almost as much land, the Atlanta region developed its highway system well in advance of its suburbs. Highways were built in the early 1950s in what were then extremely rural areas, providing superior access to cheap, undeveloped land.

“The highway has driven development here,” said Jeff Rader, vice president of transportation development for the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

Residential and some commercial development followed the highway’s trajectory, sprouting at the numerous exits along the arterial highways and from I-285, which rings the far outskirts of the city. And an increasingly large percentage of Atlanta’s workforce began to commute long distances into the central city.

The arterial highways were eventually widened, encouraging even more development. Gwinnett County, for example, an area 37 miles from downtown, was one of the fastest-growing counties in the early 1990s. “Much to our chagrin,” added Scott Knight, an engineer for Atlanta’s Department of Transportation. Knight used to live in the area. “It’s not a little old country town any more.”

What is the future of the average daily drive in Los Angeles? There’s long been talk that it will get longer as people opt to live farther from heavily commercialized areas.

But on the whole, people don’t seem to want to make the long trek to downtown, said Gilstrap of Caltrans.

“I’ve been here 35 years,” Gilstrap said, “and the whole time they’ve talked about how the Antelope Valley is the future location. And the population there has increased over the years, but there’s still a great reluctance to live there.”

Moreover, as the suburbs mature, new employment centers are springing up. Santa Clarita, long a bedroom community, is now attracting corporate headquarters. The long-stalled Playa Vista project, with its mix of residential, commercial and industrial development, holds out that promise that people could live near the ocean and still walk to work.

And the future of Atlanta? It’s shaping up more and more like Los Angeles every day, said Rader of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. New employment centers include cities in the “Northern arc” in the suburbs well outside Atlanta proper, and Buckhead, an office park area within the city limits that is actually larger than the central business district.

“It’s more likely that our commutes will be from farther suburban areas to other suburban development centers. And we’re seeing an increasing number of cross-radial commutes,” he said.

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