Chris Segal
Associate Editor
Students entering the job market for the first time or completing their internship requirements will quickly learn the pro and cons of living the greater Los Angeles area – great weather but terrible traffic.
Venturing off-campus further than the local hot spots in Malibu can leave drivers frustrated. Drivers must sit behind thousands of other cars on the roads making a simple trip to the mall or the Calabasas Commons take an entire afternoon.
The California Transportation Authority in partnership with the Web site commutesmart.info provides drivers with up to the minute traffic updates on the more than 90,000 miles of roads in California.
Drivers can call 5-1-1 while cruising around the busy roads to avoid congestion caused by accidents or road closures. The number works in most of California and will be available in the majority of the country by the end of 2007, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
Traffic information has been available since the early days of the Internet as well as being a hallmark-programming segment on talk radio. Using 4-1-1 has also become common for finding numbers, so 5-1-1 should be a no-brainer.
The problem with the 5-1-1 number is it lacks an instantaneous flow of information. Instead of talking to an operator, drivers are forced to navigate multiple menus. A driver calling to find out if there is was an accident on Pacific Coast Highway before heading down to Santa Monica will be halfway there before hitting the correct series of 1s, 2s and 3s necessary to access the correct information.
This is an odd move for a state that has banned the use of cell phones while driving to develop a toll-free number that targets drivers.
CalTrans provides travel information about road conditions, road closures and traffic delays, as well as bike, train and bus routes to the general public as a public service. The real-time data is accurate and great when sitting in front of a computer, but not as accessible when on the 405.
There are still some useful tools for the Pepperdine community driving into Los Angeles or Ventura for internships, work opportunities or other excursions. CalTrans may not effectively package the data it collects, but private firms repackage the instant information and custom tailor it for individual travelers.
One free Web site is traffic.com. The site allows users to sign-up, create 20 different routes and pick notification methods. Traffic.com can send e-mails, text messages or call cell phones to notify drivers of traffic delays.
The site is neatly organized and easy to use, but it focuses on major roads. Faculty and Staff commuting on the 101 to campus from Ventura County can easily set up notification, but students living through the campus will be at a loss to find Malibu Canyon or PCH on the site.
Until members of the Pepperdine community are able to select personal notifications for Malibu Canyon and PCH Public Safety’s road closure line at ext. 7623, word of mouth will remain the primary way drivers obtain local traffic information.
01-18-2007