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Editor: 

The claim that “Gridlock is here to stay” is erroneous. The ‘solutions’ to traffic congestion exist and lack the will to implement them within Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The reason that the MTC’s Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) is now aimed more toward transit is that the RTP had formerly been badly out of balance favoring highways and BART, with little attention to many of the basic traffic problems. But in the last regular three-year Recertification Process, mandated by the Federal government to assure that the limited funds are being placed the right places, the MTC tried to hold the public comment session secret.  

The word got out and a mass of well-informed persons showed up and spoke their minds. The resulting instructions to the MTC were to provide better access to a more representative section of transportation users. That’s why this RTP gives transit more now than before, with even BART’s design problems getting the needed serious attention to prevent misapplication of funds. 

The ‘solution’ to congestion lies in a freeway bus rapid transit system, which does not need expensive new right of way (which BART needs) and is based on a well-functioning, integrated, area-wide bus network, which should have existed before BART was ever built, and on the most heavily-traveled bus routes. 

A system of comfortable, frequent buses that is within walking distance of nearly all residences and destinations, with one overall electronic ticket system, with convenient transfers that provide nearly direct service would wipe out traffic congestion. (A bus transfer facility should be built at the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza.) 

For instance, before BART, AC Transit was carrying 58 percent of the persons crossing the Bay Bridge during morning peak hours, with 300 buses per hour that used only 1/6th of a lane which normally carries 1,800 vehicles per hour.  

Those buses were 12 seconds apart, far safer than automobiles which travel about two seconds apart. 

Ridesharing has much more potential than is now being realized for persons who work regular hours and commute long distances.  

The way to determine the persons who are making the same long trips could be based on a survey and continually-updated reporting system maintained by the Postal System, which could keep track of the major trips taken by each household and could keep people in touch with each other from the changes of address forms routinely filed when people move. 

Car pools and van pools should be integrated with each other and then with the bus network, so that buses could eventually provide service to the persons making the most trips to any one destination. 

These are persons who are now sitting in congested traffic, wasting their depreciated time, breathing polluted air, who have the notion that more highways would solve their commute problems. 

About 20 percent of the commuters work regular hours, most of whom could be candidates for transit service.  

But somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of all the people, the elderly, the children, the handicapped, the poor, and non-drivers are transit dependent. 

The HOV diamond lanes should be primarily for buses, with a lane each for local and express buses.  

There should be feeder buses and bus pickup sites at each freeway interchange (as there are on 101 in Marin). Autos in the other lanes would have free flowing traffic. Trucks would have some restrictions, put into effect with their willing cooperation. 

All of the above ways to make the existing system work better, without major new investments are known as Transportation Systems Management (TSM). TSM includes flexible hours, staggered working hours, four-day weeks with staggered weekends, telecommuting and much more. 

One thing the highways do need is to require the contractors to guarantee their work so that the highways last much longer, as they do in France. 

Charles L. Smith 

Berkeley