Summer Takes a Parting Shot at Road Warriors

If you’re sitting in your car, clenching the steering wheel with a psychotic look on your face, staring at the same roadside shrub for a full minute, then you have most likely discovered post-Labor Day traffic.

Driving on Orange County freeways and streets isn’t normally like flashing down an autobahn. But with kids going back to school and people returning to work from vacations, the morning and afternoon stampedes have moved with the speed of molasses.

“It’s miserable. People are shocked that there can be so many people in one place,” said veteran KNX radio and KCBS-TV traffic announcer Jim Thornton.

And it may get worse next week because there will be a lot more people coming off summer vacations, Thornton said.

With school back in session, the morning gridlock is settling in earlier than usual, said Allen Lee, a Stanton resident and traffic reporter for radio stations KFWB and KTWV.

“There’s been a huge buildup of volume earlier because you have people taking their kids to school before going to work,” Lee said.

There is also the usual caravan of older students who roll into high school parking lots in their own cars this time of year.

All this aggravates the county’s already-burdened traffic situation.

In Orange County, the westbound Riverside Freeway through Santa Ana Canyon, the northbound Interstate 5 through the Saddleback Valley and the southbound San Diego Freeway from Westminster to the Corona del Mar Freeway in Costa Mesa are just three of the traffic hot spots that have become even more congested this week, Thornton said.

Parts of Pacific Coast Highway also become glutted with morning school traffic, Thornton said.

Because cars are being driven so slowly in congestion, there are fewer fatal accidents but probably more fender benders that block lanes and slow traffic even more, said California Highway Patrol Officer Sergio Flores.

Flores recommended that people study alternative routes and drive on surface streets as much as possible.

Because traffic problems are cyclical, things will get better around October, then worse right before the holidays, Flores said. Then there’s a “slump” in January, after Christmas and New Year’s Day.

“Most people are broke and partied out,” Flores said.

But after the Labor Day weekend, drivers get more impatient and try to pass on the shoulder. They’ll make four lane changes, only to advance 40 feet, Flores said.

“You have to grin and bear it. Turn on the radio and relax,” Flores said.

Of course, some people relax too much and get involved in other activities. Some put on makeup, others talk on their cell phones or rummage for things in the car. But they’ll bolt forward as soon as they see that traffic is moving, the officer said.

Things will get better, Thornton said, until it rains, which generally throws traffic into chaos.

“It’ll get a hell of a lot worse when we get rain,” he said.

Times correspondent Ana Beatriz Cholo contributed to this report.