L.A. IS A GREAT BIG FREEWAY.

Not big enough, according to "experts."

So we take part of the expressway out of service to do the construction, which might reduce the vehicle flow whilst temporarily increasing the cramming: then comes the ribbon-cutting, and afterwards, the number of trucks will soar further, and the cramming will return to pre-construction levels.  "The idea of simply paving our way to reduced travel times should thus be a non-starter."

Let's, instead, look at that special pleading in the third paragraph of the report. "[Unspecified] Transportation officials [whose salaries and promotion opportunities depend on building and maintaining their fiefdoms] say the widening is necessary [in the absence of any market tests] because a soaring number of trucks is cramming each day onto an inefficient route [in the absence of any market tests] that needs to be modernized [where 'needs' is in the sense of 'we're sticking someone else with the bill']."

For instance, taxpayers alone presumably will be on the hook for that separate truck lane in the vicinity of the 405 interchange.  I see no reference to a toll lane or to special assessments on the motor carriers.  (Again, as an aside, with a California full of politicians who are implacably hostile to Our President, getting this project into an infrastructure bill might not be easy.)

Five years and a new president later, it's not any better.

Brake lights, honking horns and drivers battling it out to the very end of merge lanes — all familiar scenes for California drivers.

For those who live in the Golden State, gridlock is part of life. This may be why three California freeways are among the “most loathed highways in America,” according to a recent survey.

Vehicle dealer Gunther Volvo Cars Daytona Beach surveyed 3,000 drivers across the U.S. in October 2023, and then ranked the top 100 most loathed roads to drive on based on those results.

As it turns out, the top three detested highways in the country, according to this survey, are in the Golden State.

The top three are the San Diego Freeway, I-405, which “carves its path through the heart of Los Angeles, earning notoriety as a symbol of gridlock nightmare,” Interstate Five, "Some contributing factors to what makes this highway undesirable include endless construction and the dreaded 'rush hour,'" and California 101, particularly in the big cities.  Rounding out the top five are the Pennsylvania Turnpike, particularly near Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and Interstate 70 from Denver into the ski areas.  Whether an interstate highway should have been run through Glenwood Canyon is for another day.

I'm not sure how this Florida based Volvo dealership obtained participants in the survey.  To my eye, it illustrates the folly of running expressways into big cities, as among the rogue's gallery are the Kennedy-Dan Ryan, Eisenhower, and Stevenson Expressways of Chicago, but nobody saw fit to mention the Borman through northwest Indiana.  The Indianapolis Beltway makes the list.  Has anybody considered closing it for part of Memorial Day and doing twenty laps around it for the Indianapolis 500?  In Milwaukee, the sections of Interstate 94 and 43 that are either undergoing widening or are the subject of local analysis paralysis before any widening takes place.

I suspect, though, that if anybody raises the idea of turning those expressways into tollways (which the Chicago portions singled out are not) or applying congestion pricing in urban areas, the Volvo drivers who participated in the survey would cry like babies whose candy had just been taken.