Welcome to LA's Traffic Gridlock Disaster.
This is Emmy Award-winning Full Disclosure with Leslie Dutton, bringing you the news
behind the news.
In 2016, Full Disclosure began investigating the massive traffic gridlock problem in Los
Angeles.
We were inspired by the interview with James A. Thomas, the founder of FAST, an organization
formed to develop solutions to LA's traffic gridlock.
This led to our series of interviews with civic leaders and activists to discover the
reasons why traffic gridlock was such a problem.
As a result, Full Disclosure hosted luncheons and private screenings of the series, discussing
the problems and advocating some solutions.
Featured in the Traffic Gridlock series are notable authorities, including Assistant Chief
of Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Department of Transportation, Chief Deputy
Director of Metro, Major Developers, Caltrans District Director for Los Angeles.
H. Andrew Thornberg is a corporate consultant with an engineering background who led the
discussion following one of the screenings.
It takes something like a Detroit, a Stockton, and these other cities to finally shake people
up and make it happen.
Jack Humphreyville is a civic advocate and columnist for CityWatchLA.com.
He was also a moderator for one of the private screenings.
Here are some of the riveting statements made during those discussions.
I think Hollywood's gone.
I mean, I think that's a done deal.
I mean, they're just going to keep on throwing this up.
They're going to use the affordable housing game, saying, well, you know, we don't have
enough, we don't have enough units, therefore we're going to build baby build.
People have tried to wake up local leaders to no avail.
James Reedy was mayor pro tem for the city of Santa Monica and professor emeritus of
computer science from LA Pierce College.
But come to the local city councils or the governing bodies, they don't listen to you.
They're walking around while you're making a presentation.
Your presentation doesn't mean a damn thing.
Our discussion group included high-powered developers as well.
Malcolm Reilly is the CEO of the Reilly Company and past president of the International Shopping
Centers Association.
We've done over 50 shopping centers and every one of them, we've done a detailed traffic
study.
And almost every one of them, we've had to go in and widen streets and put in traffic
signals to deal with the results of the traffic study.
Ray Carrier is a real estate investor and civic philanthropist.
So if they would have done it that way, you could have had traffic going in and out of
Santa Monica pretty easy because you could have Broadway going in one way and Colorado
going in one way.
You could have gotten traffic in and out.
There were discussions of wild-eyed futuristic plans.
Harlan Thompson is an investment banker who serves on the corporate advisory board at
USC.
One of the responses that consistently comes back from the powers to be is that the urban
planners and the forward thinkers know that self-driving cars are coming and in 10 years
we won't really have cars individually anymore.
We won't have cars.
Cars will just know when we need them.
Cars will be available.
They'll be parked in Glendale at massive off-site places and when you need a car, you will dial
it up.
It'll show up when you want it.
We won't need parking.
We won't have traffic worries.
William Wilson is my city councilman, he's a former tech guy.
He thinks that this is true and he is talking to the urban planners who are all feeding
him this crap.
But there were serious discussions of studies and research that is being conducted.
Jill Stewart is the former managing editor of LA Weekly who recently managed the Neighborhood
Integrity Initiative project in Los Angeles.
We've taken a look at and talked to a lot of traffic-studying people.
Not at the level of the fights over projects, but bigger traffic.
And we found that there's an amazing lack of real study of what goes on with traffic
in urban areas and how do, for example, suburban areas get affected by the giant city that
they sit next to.
But civic leaders seem to ignore the studies.
They seem to have their own agendas.
Barbara Thornberg is an author and was a former senior editor of the LA Times Style
section.
I'm sure the numbers are so bad, they don't want to reveal it because people probably
be, you know, incensed.
What can we do?
Public records requests.
Judicial Watch has been a leading organization attempting to hold the rule of law in every
area.
Paul Orphanides is the director of litigation.
But when we do have, we collaborate with subject matter experts and we know who to ask and
what to ask specifically for.
We have expertise and course and government action to produce.
One of our moderators, Jack Humphreyville, suggested that voters should vote against
bonds and other funding measures.
My suggestion is whenever they come up with any money stuff, you vote no.
Just vote no.
And starve them.
I mean, I don't like the argument of starve the beast, but I think that's sort of the
only way you can get something across.
Former LAPD assistant chief Dave Gascon agreed and went further.
We're in a triage unit.
You've got to stabilize the patient before you figure out what's wrong with the patient
and start treating the patient.
And part of what we need to do in stabilizing the patient is to take the discretion away
from those morons.
You really do.
You've got to take the discretion away for them to start, you know, to stop all of this
mindless, the projects and the density issues.
All of those things can be controlled if the public can rise up enough and stop it.
This program was conceived due to the lack of media attention.
Year after year, the media doesn't take a critical look at the real problem of traffic
gridlock in Los Angeles.
Without an accurate understanding of the problem, it will never be solved.
If you would like to attend one of Full Disclosure's private screening luncheons, we invite you
to join the Friends of Full Disclosure by making a tax-exempt contribution.
You can click on the link below the video screen.
We will continue to explore the problem here on Full Disclosure in an upcoming edition
of L.A.'s Traffic Gridlock Disaster.
I'm Leslie Dutton.
Thank you.
Full Disclosure, the news behind the news.
