Eric Richardson [Flickr]

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — I was reading a book yesterday and it had this to say: "It doesn't matter much what we say we believe or what we want others to think we believe. When the rubber meets the road, we act out our actual beliefs most of the time. That is why behavior is such a good indicator of a person's beliefs." Oddly, that struck me this morning as very applicable to the traffic I saw outside on my street.

No matter what the city does about banning construction during rush hour or putting limits on curb-side parking, I will never believe that they care about traffic until action is taken to limit shoots that block off lanes during peak hours.

Update (3pm): Of course now they're gone, even though the notification said 7am - 10pm. My point still remains, and 4th Street has it even worse today.

Outside my building right now is a shoot for Outback Steakhouse. The filming notification says they'll be there 7am - 10pm both today and tomorrow. They're filming at 650 S. Spring, and so they have the curb lane in front of the building blocked off for them to set equipment in and random people to stand in. To their credit, this shoot didn't just close the contraflow lane like others have done before. Bus traffic is routed a lane in, and a lane is taken away from southbound traffic.

None of that's a huge deal.

But what's ridiculous is that they allow the shoot to stop off all traffic (as seen in the top photo) to get their shots. This throws off normal traffic, and disrupts bus service on what may be the heaviest bus corridor in Downtown.

How can you say that you're fighting to improve traffic and yet issue permits that make it perfectly legal and acceptable for this sort of thing to occur? I'm not anti-filming by any means, but these sort of things must be done responsibly. Shots that cause traffic disruption must not be permitted to occur during either the AM or PM peak periods. Otherwise all that talk about fixing traffic is just that.