405 Freeway

By CBS Los Angeles, Oct. 14, 2014

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A new study finds the shutdown of the 405 Freeway to add a carpool lanehasn’t relieved traffic congestion during rush hour.

KNX 1070’s Jim Thornton and Diane Thompson spoke with Jim Bak of traffic service provider INRIX, whose analysts found “relatively no change” in travel speeds and times when comparing data between the middle two weeks of September in 2013 and 2014 on the northbound 405 between the 10 and the 101 freeways.

“The average trip through that stretch of the 405 during rush hour is about 35 minutes,” he said.

Bak insisted there is “no silver bullet” to solving the rush-hour gridlock in Los Angeles, noting there are challenges with traffic “across the entire system.”

But he also noted there were some improvements.

“What we do see is it helps delay the on-set of rush hour and it helps bring rush hour to a close a little faster because you’re moving some volumes of vehicles that would be in the regular lanes into the HOV lanes,” Bak said.