Stimulus Watch

• Search for Keywords
• Browse by State/City
• Browse by Program Type

When in High School, we took Traffic Safety classes, and they expected us to have 3 seconds between vehicles to drive "Safe".

So to make a highway safe, it is a requirement to size them properly. Take a aerial picture of the highway, count the number of cars, and then allow each to be spaced 3 seconds apart on the roadway - that is 20 vehicles per mile of pavement per lane. Then at 60 MPH, each car will be safely 3 seconds apart - spaced 20 cars per mile of freeway, and then build adequate lanes of traffic to support the number of vehicles using that section of freeway.

So if there are 200 vehicles on a mile long section of freeway today, then it needs to be 10 lanes to safely carry that many vehicles.

Taking vehicles off the surface streets, and putting them on free flowing freeways will lower the cost of street maintenance by more than 50%! It will prevent premature street surface wear, and prevent many potholes. It will also increase the average speeds on side streets and boulevards.

Did you ever notice how much busier the streets are when there is a collision on the freeway, and many thousands of vehicles start to drive the surface streets? If the freeways where flowing better, then hundreds of vehicles would be using them, instead of crowding the surface streets.

Improvements to the freeways will save many thousands of vehicle miles on Los Angeles Surface Streets, so a small investment in the freeways will save the City thousands of dollars each year.

If you want to see how the same number of vehicles start to move more rapidly once there are more freeway lanes, take I5 south of state highway 55, and see it change from 5 lanes to 7 or 8 lanes, and see how the vehicles are then spaced further apart, and speed is now safely increased to 65 MPH.

Take the I5 north past Magnolia St. going into LA county, and you will see that changing from 6 lanes to 3 or 4 lanes causes the vehicles to slow down, and travel much closer together, in a more unsafe manner.

Increasing the lanes to 2 carpool lanes and 6 multi-use lanes, and the freeway will improve much in safety, as there will be more space between vehicles.

Yes this will require the destruction of homes near the freeways, and relocation of businesses. This is part of the progress to change to safer freeways.

Fred Golden

[edit] Points in Favor

[edit] Points Against