Transportation and health in head-on collision!
-- Health doing poorly

By Gilbert Estrada

Los Angeles' automobile- and petroleum-fueled transportation system does not work very well. For the 17th consecutive year, Los Angeles is the most traffic-congested metropolis in the United States of America. For nearly half a decade, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) has offered its worse possible grade, D, for Los Angeles' area mobility and transportation efficiency. From 1967 to 1997, vehicles miles traveled has increased 187 percent, costing Angelenos approximately $2,500 in wasted time while losing 136 hours a year and burning 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline stuck in traffic, which increases about 10 percent a year, according to one of the major proponents responsible for Los Angeles area freeways: the Automobile Club of Southern California.

Health suffers
What's more, the system is bad for your health. With some 80 percent of Los Angeles' total pollution created by mobile sources (i.e., trains, planes, and automobiles) the intersection between transportation and health needs to be reexamined.
Political representatives and the voters who placed them in office must acknowledge: cars pollute! For every gallon of gasoline burned during travel, 19-1/2 pounds of carbon dioxide is produced. In one year, an average sized vehicle will produce approximately 5 tons of carbon dioxide. Annually, vehicle tires will shed about 1 pound of rubber dust from each tire; across the nation over 1 billion tires are thrown away annually, ending up in landfills, empty lots, and dump sites, which sometimes catch fire, lasting for months.
Before a new car has ever been driven, 1,207 million cubic yards of pollution is produced in its manufacturing. While driven, approximately 60 percent or 1,330 million cubic yards of pollution is created. When the car is finally disposed, an additional 66 tons of carbon dioxide is produced.

Big cars have big impact
And if that vehicle is an SUV during its life use it will create 5.5 times more tailpipe emissions than an average vehicle, cause an extra 2,000 deaths a year due to lax safety modifications, and by taking up more physical space on the road make traffic worse (a large SUV is equivalent to 1.41 the size of a regular vehicle), according to Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty, SUVs: the World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way.

Rail history
With a transportation system based on such polluting devices, it is clear why Los Angeles has earned the title as the most polluted metropolis in the United States. No more than 60 years ago, Los Angeles boasted the world's largest inter-urban electric railway system in the world, where Angelenos could travel on approximately 1,150 miles of track throughout the basin for only a few cents. We have exchanged that system with 1,155 miles of the most congested freeway system in America, creating 80 percent of the area's pollution and generating cancer risks at least 1,500 times above the level set by the federal government, as published in Air Quality Management District's 1999 MATES II study.
The Environmental Protection Agency's cancer risk allotment is 1 in a million; Los Angeles' cancer risk is 1,500 in a million; certain communities near Long Beach and Southeast Los Angeles reach 4,500 in a million.

Freeway expansion
In order to solve Los Angeles' transportation and public health nightmare, SCAG is proposing $120 billion worth of expansion efforts ($21 billion slated for highway "improvements") over the next 26 years. SCAG's only remedy for Los Angeles' traffic is to increase capacity. Expansion efforts are now being planned for the San Diego 405 freeway near UCLA, the Ventura 101 freeway, the 6.2 mile extension of the I-710 into South Pasadena, the San Bernardino 10 freeway (from East Los Angeles to Florida), the southeast Los Angeles portion of the Santa Ana 5 freeway, and the 18-mile stretch of the I-710 Long Beach freeway from the Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach to unincorporated East Los Angeles. That portion of the 710 freeway carries 47,000 diesel truck trips a day, brings in 15 percent of America's international cargo (expected to triple by 2030), and has left the communities along the corridor some of the most polluted in the nation, according to reports published by SCAG.
It is obvious that the people being paid to alleviate traffic congestion and the public health threat it produces have not efficiently done their jobs. With the support of active members like you, tangible changes can be implemented which can alleviate Los Angeles' transportation health threats.
For more information about the preceding article or to learn how to get more involved, contact the author at 213-386-4901 or by email.

Gilbert Estrada is a public health organizer for Physicians for Social Responsibility who writes on transportation issues.

Four things you can do to alleviate Southern California's transportation health threats WALK! Although only 10 percent of Americans walk regularly, it is the simplest, cheapest, and most available form of transportation. Bicycle. Bicycling is only 12 to 2 miles per hour slower than an average commuter's car speed, and bicyclists are 40 to 50 times less likely to suffer fatal injuries than motor-vehicle passengers. Use alternative/mass transit. Skating, rollerblading, carpooling, buses, subways, trains, alternative fuel vehicles, telecommuting, getting errands done by the phone or the Internet, and even questioning if you really need to take that trip. Support policies that encourage transit-oriented developments, pedestrian-friendly establishments, cleaner vehicles, and less automotive use.

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