In the weeks before the closure, Caltrans officials scrambled to set up commuter hotlines, eliminate on-street parking along alternative routes, and hire additional traffic police for key intersections in the affected areas. Caltrans' Bay Area Director of Operations Paul Hensley predicted bumper-to-bumper traffic for 45 miles east across the Bay Bridge and south of San Francisco.

Yet according to a 9/24 L.A. Times piece, Caltrans officials are now trying to explain a decrease in rush hour traffic along several major corridors.

"Caltrans had everybody jumping through hoops, worrying about what would happen without the freeway," explained local community activist Robin Levitt. "This shows it should have been torn down years ago." The road men are still trying to figure out where the 80,000 cars a day have gone. With ridership on public transit increasing only slightly, speculation has grown that other commuters are carpooling, bicycling, arriving and leaving work later, or telecommuting.

New Yorkers encountered the same phenomenon when the West Side Highway fell down in 1973, and when "deferred" maintenance cause the closure of the Williamsburg Bridge in 1988. Neither instance caused serious traffic problems.

British transportation officials concluded recently that new highways create additional traffic, and that many government road building schemes were therefore of dubious value. It also stands to reason that less road capacity will discourage some car trips. Highway officials in the U.S. won't even consider these questions, but instances like the S.F. Central Freeway and the West Side Highway -- and the findings of STPP's Crying Wolf report (see front page) -- make clear how self-serving their viewpoint is.

Regardless of where all the San Francisco cars went, many residents are content to know that the city hasn't ground to a halt without the Central Freeway. With the removal several years ago of the waterfront Embarcadero Freeway (also due to earthquake damage) and the subsequent revitalization of the area with pedestrian space and a light rail line, residents in the path of the Central Freeway are hoping the same could be possible in their neighborhood. Source: STPP's Transfer