Cry Carmageddon!

by Gary Phillips

So the feared Carmageddon has come and gone and civilization as we know it still stands or, that is, rolls. The planned closing of a ten mile stretch of the 405 Freeway, to demolish part of the Mulholland Drive Bridge in preparation to create a High Occupancy Vehicle Lane, had been talked up, written about, tweeted, e-mailed and warned about for at least a couple of months leading up to the closing. L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslovsky, whose 3rd district covers that part of the 405, had been all over the place for weeks telling the residents of the Southland to keep your ass home that past weekend. He provided extensive info and detour maps up on his website. The message was clear; bar-b-que, catch up on your reading, do some gardening, rent a few DVDs to watch, but for God’s sake, stay off the roadways!

Heh.

Of course, Chicken Little, the sky didn’t fall. Though from all the crying wolf and whining in print and them Internets, you’d have thought this was the worst traffic disruption ever perpetrated by a public works project. Mind you I scoff, but given I had to be on the 10 Freeway that Saturday to get to a panel I was on at the Monrovia Public Library—a gig laying out an honorarium, I hasten to add, so had incentive to get there—I left extra early to make sure I was on time. Monrovia is in the San Gabriel Valley, way the hell east of the construction work, but there was a small part of me wondering if there might be problems. In reality I had a better chance of being delayed because a big rig had overturned or three car pile-up, the usual on our freeways.

Bars offered Carmageddon specials, flash mobs were threatened to break out, and at least one chopper pilot I heard on the radio was selling discounted helicopter transport to LAX. As if they were covering the blitzkrieg of a foreign country by our armed forces, think D-Day or the bombing of Iraq, the L.A. Times devoted a hell of a lot of real estate, more than say of the Murdoch scandal, to Carmageddon (a term inspired by a video game of the same name which in turn was inspired by the 1975 Roger Corman film with David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone, Death Race 2000—which was remade recently as the high octane Death Race, spawning a direct-to-DVD sequel, Death Race 2), including a history of the building of the 405.

But to me the best that came out of this was the John Henry-like struggle of man vs. machine. JetBlue had advertised a $4 flight from Burbank to Long Beach, roughly 40 miles away. The Wolfpack Hustle, a Silverlake-based cyclists’ group, were then apparently inspired by the tweet of New York-based writer Tom Vanderbilt that a skilled cyclist could beat the plane. His qualifiers being the time consumed checking in, getting though security, taxiing and so forth. There are a couple of facts to keep in mind as well. A top cyclist on a proscribed closed course can average nearly 35 miles per hour. The Wolfpack Hustle had to obey all traffic laws in the race. A jet averages 500 MPH, but that’s once it’s in the air and underway.

The challenge was presented to Jet Blue by the Hustle, and as district court judge and boxing referee Mills Lane used to say before a Mike Tyson fight, “Let’s get it on.” Well, John Henry was avenged. If you recall, dear reader, from the fable, the mighty steel driving man races an automated hammer to lay down a certain amount of railroad track. The bosses back the machine, John Henry is doing it for the working class.

John Henry said to his captain:
“You are nothing but a common man,
Before that steam drill shall beat me down,
I’ll die with my hammer in my hand.”

John Henry wins the contest but his heart gives out. Fortunately no one from the Wolfpack had to die for them to win. The event was tweeted live and the cyclists averaged close to 25 MPH over the hour and 34 minutes it took them to beat the jet, which got delayed taking off.

All said and done, Carmageddon did not transpire. Probably because it was hyped so much that hardheaded Southland drivers paid attention and planned around the closure. The contractor, an ex-marine, faced a hefty fine for every minute he fell behind the projected completion time. And because they didn’t have to stop work due to flash mobs or knuckleheads in general, they completed the demo ahead of schedule.

The 405 returns to the perpetual snarl of cars and trucks it always was. During the two weeks of the ’84 Olympics here in L.A., we had staggered work times, created temporary one-way routes, car pooled, added bus-only lanes and so forth to great success in easing traffic congestion. But just like then, we saw this traffic planning as a mere annoyance to put up with for a certain amount of time and when the construction or event was over, we returned to driving whereever and whenever we felt like—and complained every foot of the way should we be delayed. And while sitting in traffic, listening to Snooki Polizzi’s A Shore Thing read by Kim Kardashian on your iPod, you daydream once again that if you had a flying car, how cool would that be as a means to escape bumper-to-bumper jams?

Not for the first time here on FourStory, I and others on staff have pined for the flying car a la The Jetsons and illustrated covers of old issues of Popular Science. Beyond concept models like Audi’s very awesome Calamaro, there are working prototypes of small plane/hybrid land vehicles out there now such as the Terrafugia. But it seems DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, is taking the flying car lust steps further, with a boost of inspiration from the Transformers. Here’s a passage from the Transformer (TX) proposal they issued:

The objective of the Transformer (TX) program is to demonstrate a four (4) person flyable/roadable vehicle that provides the warfighter terrain-independent mobility. This presents unprecedented capability to avoid traditional and asymmetrical threats while avoiding road obstructions. TX will enable enhanced company operations of future missions with applicable use in strike and raid, intervention, interdiction, insurgency/counterinsurgency, reconnaissance, medical evacuation and logistical supply. The TX vehicle will have Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) capability with a minimum combat range of 250nm on a single tank of fuel.

That’s right. DARPA is talking about a flying death machine outfitted with .50 machine guns and one of those microwave cannons that boil your blood. Shit. Imagine when that gets on the civilian market. Carmageddon. Shit. It’ll be Death Race 3: Air Combat Over the 405.

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