A section of the 405 in LA is being shut down for the weekend and the media is going bugnuts about it? Is that what we’ve come to?
Hey, LA–it’s the weekend. Stay home. How hard IS this?
If you have a job that’s on the weekend and you absolutely can’t take off, see if you can crash with a friend who’s within walking distance. You remember walking. Or maybe not. I once was in LA and walked from point A to point B, about two miles, and didn’t encounter a single other pedestrian.
Carmageddon. Christ. What’s next? Auto De Fe?
PAD
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http://www.theonion.com/articles/nations-busiest-highway-closes-for-weekend,20941/
I drove through CA from Oregon to Arizona last weekend, and it seemed to be a big deal all the way from at least Sacramento on south. I couldn’t quite figure out why. I wasn’t even ON the 405, or going on the 405 at all. I mean, sure, warn that the freeway will be closed, but EVERY single sign warned that the 405 would be closed this weekend, radio announcements warned about it. Yet none warned about upcoming construction on the freeway I was on. (Which would have been helpful, since there were lots of sudden stops.)
California’s weird.
Oh I just finished a looong motorcycle ride, which I was on 101 from just north of LA all the way to Portland (for part of the journey) …
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California is really weird. I got lost in SF, because I missed one turn off… ya’d think they’d mark their roads better. I just chose a road, because I thought I saw a sign. Luckily it did cross the Golden Gate.
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I personally loved the roads, but they have their priorities wrong on what should be posted or not.
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TAC
All I can picture when I hear the word “Carmageddon” is cities drowning in caramel.
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Disney/Pixar presents Cars 3: “Carmageddon”
A Film by Michael Bay
*Bwap!*
It just goes to show that the media is more interested in creating news than simply reporting it.
You remember walking. Or maybe not. I once was in LA and walked from point A to point B, about two miles, and didn’t encounter a single other pedestrian.
Back when I was a teenager riding a horsecart to school, Missing Persons did an entire song on the subject of “Walking in L.A.” and how nobody, or only nobodies, do it.
Walking… Walking… not ringing a bell. Is it a Chinese restaurant?
Also, obligatory Matrix Reloaded quote:
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“You always told me to stay off the freeway.”
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“Yes, that’s true.”
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“You said it was suicide.”
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“Then let us hope…that I was wrong.”
I know Carmageddon. I’ve played a lot of Carmageddon over the years (and the sequel, Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now).
And you, sir, are no Carmageddon.
You call this Carmageddon? Where are the rocket launchers? The mine-droppers? The overpowered semi with the snowplow blade on the front, ready to knock an unsuspecting blade-bumpered Porsche into the nearest wall? The “concrete car” power-up?
Oh, sure, this’ll frak with traffic throughout the San Fernando Valley region, and since most of the major networks are headquartered in the region it will be presented as THE END OF THE WORLD OMIGOD WE’RE ALL GONNA [i]DIE!!!!!11!!1![/i], but Carmageddon? I think [i]not![/i]
I know, it’s ridiculous. It’s actually a pretty small section of the 405 that doesn’t even get much traffic on weekends, and which runs parallel to Sepulveda Blvd. the whole way anyway. So Sepulveda will get a lot of traffic this weekend, but other than that, I just don’t see how this is a big deal.
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Last night I was driving home from Northern California, and there were warnings for well over 100 miles that the 5 freeway had been reduced to one lane and that there would be a one-hour delay so you’d better use alternate routes blah blah blah. So I’m thinking, “Wait, do they mean the entire freeway (meaning, both sides combined) is reduced to one lane?” Because both sides only have two lanes a piece anyway, so unless there was one lane open between the four of them, I couldn’t see how there’d be an hour delay. There turned out to be no delay at all, and all it meant was that I had to drive at 60 mph for a few miles, instead of 70 or 80. Argh, Carmaggedon! Cartastrophe!
Every day is Carmageddon on the highways here in NY. I can’t remember a time when I got on the Belt Parkway and didn’t crawl 5 MPH, for no obvious reason, from the Verrazano Bridge through to Long Island. And that’s at all times of day, too, not just rush hour.
Anyone who drives in heavily traveled areas and doesn’t have a GPS with traffic updates, I have no sympathy for.
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PAD
Well, GPS devices are not infallible.
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Just last weekend, I was driving using mine (a Garmin) and it told me to get off the highway… then immediately told me to go straight and take the on-ramp back onto the highway. 🙁
That used to happen to me all the time when I lived in Jersey. I think the reality of Friday night summer shore going traffic in Jersey just overwhelmed it, (but to be fair there were other times when it saved me considerable grief).
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Yeah, my friend had one (wasn’t a Garmin) and one time we were driving to a training class when it told us to turn right. I kind of looked at it and asked him not to do that if for no other reason than the people in the houses to our right (with no road to turn onto for almost a three miles or more) might not like us driving into their living rooms.
Give me a good paper map with a pre-planned alternate route, just in case. Has never let me down.
Robin Williams had a joke about a GPS in his Weapons of Self-Destruction DVD. He talked about how one GPS he owned told him to make an to make an immediate right turn… while he was going over a bridge.
I used to laugh about it… until I got a Garmin myself, which did the exact same thing not even two hours out of the box.
“No thanks, H.A.L. Not feeling that depressed today.”
I find that statement odd. You have no sympathy for people that can’t afford things? Or had it stolen from them? (Ironic, I would think, since one of yours was stolen.) Or is it that everyone that can drive can afford one?
I think if you live in a heavily traveled area, you drive a lot, and you worry about traffic, then yeah, I don’t have a lot of sympathy if you haven’t gotten one, especially considering how much they’ve come down in price.
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Which is a far stretch from the assertion that “everyone that can drive can afford one,” but that’s not what I said.
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PAD
It was all part of a perfect plan to get Californians to stay home this weekend. Southern Californians don’t like being told not to drive places, but if you make it sound bad enough, people decide to just stay home “on their own” and the problem is solved. So far, it is working!! 🙂
Mehhhh. Even though Sepulveda’s being restricted to only residential traffic, this weekend shutoff isn’t going to make much difference to the messy traffic of the area. I’d be more curious about the impact of the rebuild of the Mulholland Drive bridge, as people going around that are likely to cause Ventura Boulevard to clog up a bit more in Sherman Oaks.
Car addicts, I tell ya.
PAD,
I am still smiling from your closing comment about Auto De Fe. Brilliant! Hilarious! If I may say so, Apropos.
Dennis
It’s what you oughtn’t to do, but you do anyway.
I get the feeling that PAD came up with that first and then wrote the rest of the post as a lead-in …
Here’s a live stream of the 405:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/livenow?id=8254053
It looks like people actually ARE staying off the freeway. Looks like it’s a good idea I didn’t go through with my plan to sell hot dogs and root beer on the side!
Maybe if Carmageddon hadn’t fizzled, they wouldn’t have had to go back to ALL CASEY ANTHONY ALL THE TIME coverage. Selfish Californians, coping with a road closure without rioting. Pfeh.
So you’re saying they stayed home. What a wacky idea.
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See, I don’t know how in hëll this became a national story. This should have simply been noted in the same manner that the weather report says there’s going to be an intense heat wave on the weekend and people are advised to stay indoors, preferably in air conditioned environments if possible. This should have been nothing more than a traffic alert for the local area: “As reported previously, the 405 will be shuttered this weekend between the exits of blah and blah. Authorities are advising you minimize your driving over the next two days or, if possible, stay off the roads entirely in the surrounding area. Now let’s turn to sports…”
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PAD
I knew I could no longer could take the media seriously when they coined “Skategate” when Nancy Kerrigan was attacked at Tonya Harding’s behest.
Come to think of it the media uses “gate” as a suffix for any alleged conspiracy.
Is it just me or does “Carmageddon” sound like it should be the name of some kind of monster truck show?
“CARMAGGEDON! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! KIDS SEATS STILL ONLY FIVE BUCKS! WE’LL SELL YOU THE WHOLE SEAT BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EDGE! BE THERE!” :p
Pretty friggin’ sad. So if you want to invade LA (don’t know why) just tell them they can’t drive. For torture make them walk – muahahahahahah. Throw in a smog beast and we have a SyFy saturday night movie.
On my first visit to the USA I stayed for a month with a foster family in Huntington Beach, Orange County (so actually not LA but same metro area). I was 16 and this was 91. One day some friends and I decided to go see a movie at a mall. I knew it was just like two miles along the same street the bus took every morning to take me to class so I decided to walk. After all, it was a straight line during the day.
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Not only I didnt see any other pedestrian, but a police car slowed down to check, drove away and when 5 min later they saw me again and realized I wasnt just walking home from the corner shops they stopped to question me. Upon hearing my story they told me I better called my foster family to pick me up on the way back, that people might get nervous seeing a teen kid walking alone, that they might think I was looking for a house to break into.
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My friend’s foster “parent” agreed with the policeman when I told him the story (he had taken my friend to the mall) and added that I was lucky I didnt “look spanish at all” because I would have had a hard time convincing the cops I was european.
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Just a few weeks ago a friend went to LA to cover E3 for a magazine and he hated it. “So many places to go and none you can walk to”. Cool kids dont drive here in Madrid. 🙂
wow, just wow. That’s crazy.
To be fair it WAS Huntington Beach. The PD looks at you funny if your tan is too dark. But what do you want from a town that kept electing the Maverick that nobody watched to the city council?
Not only L.A., I’m sorry to say. I was on a training course for work at a professional park on the outskirts of Washington DC a few years back. Come lunch I was looking around for the cafeteria but was told that, outside of a guy selling sandwiches somewhere in the area, there was nothing. People just drove their cars into town for lunch.
Glad I don’t live there.
Done the NYC from LI commute for years. Not pleasant, but not as terrible as described. Know your routes, is all.
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LA, on the other hand…No one whose written lives here, clearly.
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It’s not so much that closing a 15 mile stretch of the 405 would eviscerate the collective traffic patterns of a major city — I mean, it’s not like the 405 is a major north/south route through the most populous city in the US — but it’s that, as a whole, LA drivers are actively incompetent, especially once you take away directions (LA is not, in any way, built on a grid, so going “one direction” for any substantive length requires GPS or a freeway).
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I learned to drive in NY, and I’m pretty sure the only time I’ve touched 70 there is after 2am. Here, if you’re not weaving at 70, it’s actually dangerous.
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Conversely (perversely?) in traffic, it takes 4 HOURS to get from Malibu to Hollywood, and I’m fairly sure it’s about 5 miles.
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If you don’t know, and haven’t spent some real time doing it, the idea of a “car culture” really is foreign. You actually have to actively plan for this weekend. Even if you’re a “walker,” you’re actually lucky (and this takes real-estate planning and preparation) if your local grocery is within walking distance (let’s call that less than 1 mile away).
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You can’t go anywhere. You can’t do anything. You sit at home, hope the cable works, and stock up on food. It sounds over the top — I realize this — but there aren’t other options. LA simply isn’t built for the number of cars actually flowing through it without clogging an artery.
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Actually, that’s a pretty good metaphor. This is the functioning equivalent of giving the city an aortic aneurism. Sure, she’ll survive the surgery, but it’s a major procedure.
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Think of it as shutting down the LIE for three to four days (functionally, they started Friday and end Monday morning) between Long Island City and the tunnel (while simultaneously eradicating the LIRR, which we don’t have here). If that were the case, I could pleasantly whimper about what whiners you New Yorkers are, how easy it would “really be” to get around.
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Just walk those tickets to that latest Broadway show. I mean, sure — you bought $300 in tickets two years ago to see it — so you should have planned ahead, right?
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No, the 405 closing really is “Carmageddon.” Stupid name; appropriate response.
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Sadly, living in LA and holed up for the weekend (fortunately, my Bowl tickets are for Wednesday).
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AD
Dude, you are on crack. I just spent most of the day driving in and around L.A., and traffic has never been better.
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The 405 closing only affects people driving from West L.A. to the Valley. West L.A. is West L.A., the Valley is the Valley. Nobody travels from one to the other unless they have to for work, and how many of those people work on weekends?
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And I’ve never heard of anyone taking 4 hours to get from Malibu to Hollywood. And I work as a courier, so I drive around the L.A. area for a living. That just doesn’t happen.
The 4 hour thing was an exaggeration, sure, but I’ve spent plenty of time “parked” on PCH waiting for something — anything — to move, and there has been more than one commute that lasted an hour or more from the 110 to LaBrea on the 10. So, yeah, traffic can (and does) get gnarly in LA, even on the weekend.
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As for this weekend, I’m glad it seemed to have worked out for you. Several friends of mine (who use the 405 and work 7 days a week (not all at the same time)) had double their commute time last night and today, and ran into significant delays on Friday. The shutdown isn’t catastrophic, but it is a major pain.
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And I’m glad you know no one who needs to travel from West LA to the Valley. I mean, it’s not like the Getty or Skirball or LAX or Santa Monica or UCLA are anywhere between “the Valley” and “West LA.” Really. They’re in East LA. Down the 110. You should update your maps.
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Of course people had destinations down the 405. Not you, maybe, but plenty of people. The world, and I’m sure this will shock you, doesn’t revolve around your unique (and clearly special) needs.
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Fortunately, since a lot of people left (Vegas is booked), it seems that traffic elsewhere was ameliorated somewhat. Honestly, I’m glad it worked out this way. I chose not to drive today because I didn’t have to. I was prepared. As, apparently, were others. In large part due to solid foreknowledge of the event, in large part due to media coverage of the impending plausibility of gridlock.
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My argument, simple as it is, is that the news — however hamfisted the coverage might be — did its job. It got the attention of everyone, including me (who doesn’t watch television news because when I seek news I seek to be informed). So to knock it as LA whining, which is what the threads came down to, is to misunderstand the potential situation. The serious impact the closure could have had on life in LA was ameliorated by the fact that the media created a buzz about “not being on the road” for the next 2 days. This is, in fact, a good thing. Of course, you’re too clever by half to realize that the light traffic the intended cause of the coverage. For you, the better explanation is “magic.” Because, as you note, there’s never, ever, ever been traffic on the 405 on the weekend. I mean…how ridiculous. Traffic on the 405.
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You may feel I’m incorrect, but you are under no obligation to be a sh•t about it, and your intrusive and unnecessary ad hominem proffers license for the customary return. I may wish to know you less.
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AD
The shutdown isn’t catastrophic, but it is a major pain.
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That is the point: the media has dubbed this “Carmageddon”.
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And it isn’t.
Think of it as shutting down the LIE for three to four days (functionally, they started Friday and end Monday morning) between Long Island City and the tunnel (while simultaneously eradicating the LIRR, which we don’t have here). If that were the case, I could pleasantly whimper about what whiners you New Yorkers are, how easy it would “really be” to get around.
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It’s not remotely comparable. First the 405 is being shut down only for two days, not four, no matter how much you’re trying to stretch out the shutdown to make it sound longer. Second, just because LA has never bothered to develop a functioning public transportation system, why in your scenario should you decide that the LIRR is out of the mix? Third, you’ve totally changed what I said. I said if it’s going to be that much trouble getting around, just plan to stay home for the weekend, what’s the big deal? You made it sound like it would be the worst fate imaginable. Oh my God! You’ll have to stock the larder and sit around and watch cable! The horror! For crying out loud, crack out the DVDs and have a Harry Potter or LOTR film marathon. Or even Back to the Future; you’ll like that one, it’s got a car going at high speeds. Or even read a book. I hear there’s a good one from Crazy 8 Press out.
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If you want something remotely comparable, go back to the transit strike thirty years ago. It went on for much longer and was much more disruptive. What did New Yorkers do? We sucked it up. We cracked out bicycles, women started wearing comfortable shoes to walk to work, some people roller skated, and me, I stayed in an apartment in the city that, as I recall, my then father-in-law found and walked to work. Oh, and gridlock–blocking the intersection with your car–became a punishable offense. We learned from the experience and made adjustments that continue to this day (women still can be seen wearing sneakers with their power suits and blocking the box still gets you a ticket). Is LA going to realize that its vehicular infrastructure is crumbling and they need to build a useful public transportation system? I wouldn’t bet on it.
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Just walk those tickets to that latest Broadway show. I mean, sure — you bought $300 in tickets two years ago to see it — so you should have planned ahead, right?
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And you’re saying…what? Everyone in LA has tickets to shows?
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PAD
Slate, on the Carmageddon Challenge:
[R]evealing the secret efficacy—and perhaps, for some remote Twitter spectators, the existence—of Los Angeles’s oft-derided subway system.
Is LA going to realize that its vehicular infrastructure is crumbling and they need to build a useful public transportation system?
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I’ve always heard back things about the public transportation LA, but we’ve had no problems with it whatsoever when we’ve used the buses and subway.
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There was, however, Dodger Stadium. Talk about being built on a concrete island. That is one place where I cannot fathom the fact that there is basically no public transportation around the stadium.
PAD,
Now you’ve done it, I have to defend LA; and I HATE LA. LA had a very good public transportation system, that stretched all over the county and into Orange and Riverside Counties. It was ripped up after WWII by the elected officials and pro-car industries. As much as I hate to admit it, LA has built a pretty good rail system the last twenty-five years. Just not good enough to replace the 405.
I’m inclined to ask that question about the rest of America, with pretty much the same conclusion.
I live in southern California, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of how things were impacted. A good friend of mine, who lives and works in LA, had to use the 405 this weekend. He went 80.
He was on it so long that his 79th birthday passed?
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PAD
No, that happened during California’s regular traffic!
Auto De Fe?
What’s Auto De Fe?
It’s what you auto not do, but you do anyway!
The American living arrangement is fundamentally flawed, chews up tens of thousands of lives annually while wasting billions of dollars, disfiguring the landscape, and wrecking the environment. But who cares, there’s a new Best Buy in the massive strip mall five miles away that I have to spend an hour driving to.
Buh. I live in Dallas/Fort Worth, and any time someone suggests building a city for people instead of cars gets accused of spreading UN socialist conspiracy. They’d rather keep building highways, which is sort of like addressing obesity by buying a bigger pair of pants. It’s killing us slowly.
It’s an ongoing debate in a lot of places. I live in Denver, CO, where we’re just now trying to really push to build a bigger light-rail system (far too late to build subway).
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Yet, the funding is now running short on being able to complete the proposed lines around the metro. The problem is two-fold: the explosion in cost of goods needed to build the lines in the last few years, followed immediately by the recession drying up the sales tax that would fund the projects.
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But even before this push began, people would rather just build more highways. Now they see the costs going up, and the voices for canceling the whole thing – in favor of more roads – just grows louder.
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And I can understand those voices. I’ve never owned a car, but I’m awfully tempted now because even we are tired of dealing with public transportation and the quickly deteriorating value of the service.
Ultimately, though, highways are more costly in the long run, in a variety of ways.
I love the east coat vs west coast mentality. As someone who lives in the south and does not have the traffic of either city I can honestly say that I would rather visit NY than LA. While I was married the ex wife and I met a family from NYC while on Vacation in Grenada and we became good friends with them while there and we had a standing invatation to come to NYC and stay with them. Except the ex wife did NOT have any desire to go. Oh well. One of the many reasons why I am not married to her anymore.
It seems like the media has progressed to the point where it invents disasters — with the appropriate cringe-inducing catch phrase — and then has a follow-up story regarding how the disaster that never really was a disaster didn’t happen.
O.J. Simpson will answer for the 24-hour-news cycle.
O.J. Simpson will answer for the 24-hour-news-cycle.
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Well, that and for killing a couple of people, one tends to think…
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PAD
If only Judge Doom hadn’t gotten rid of all the streetcars…
“My God. It’ll be beautiful.”
I live in LA and Carmegeddon didn’t effect me at all. In fact, it didn’t affect most people, just the people north of downtown and south of the valley. That area is usually congested with traffic anyway, so people who don’t live there usually stay away. But It’s like PAD said: this was all just blown out of proportion by the media. The local authorities made it quite clear: there’s going to be traffic, so you should just stay away from this area. People did, things went well, and they even finished their work early. Was it a disaster? No. Not even close. However, that could have been because it was on the news all the time here like a tsumani report. I think the news editors just wanted to hear the word carmegeddon over and over again.
By the way, a metro system is already in the works for the westside and its supposed to start construction 2012.
In my mind, the whole Carmegeddon brouhaha thing just reinforces my attitude about L.A.’s overwhelming (and often hypocritical) addiction to automobiles. For me, this past weekend in L.A. was like every other weekend, but then again, I’ve opted not to own a car here. When I mention that at L.A. social gatherings, the reaction is always confused silence, because the L.A. mind can’t wrap itself around such a concept. I’m sure their brains, in an effort to process, without exploding, what they’ve just heard, start flipping through a myriad of possible explanations for such a statement. “Is he homeless and out of work? Is he legally blind? Does he have dementia? Is he afraid to drive? Is he from a visitor from another dimension?” Then, by the time I add the fact that I use public transportation to get around, the confusion has turned to solemn political correctness, and I get comments like, “That’s very commendable” — as if I’d donated a kidney to a stranger or something. But I guess the most ironic thing about the whole car situation here is that so many people in L.A. are green fanatics, or consider themselves “green-minded.” Yet the only way you can ever separate them from their cars is if you pry the steering wheel from their cold, dead fingers.