The closure of the 405 freeway through the Sepulveda Pass ended early today, but its impact on Southern California may only just be starting. The predicted traffic nightmare that spawned the term “carmageddon” did not materialize, as people adjusted and found ways to live and get around without relying on the freeway. This should come as no surprise to anyone who remembers the 1984 Olympics and the 1994 Northridge earthquake, where similar disruptions to freeways did not produce a predicted traffic disaster.

The fact is that California’s dependence on freeways is overstated. There are other ways of getting around the region, as many discovered the benefits of trains – apparently the Pacific Surfliners were standing room only on Saturday – and other methods of travel. There was the flight versus bike challenge, where a group of people riding bicycles got from North Hollywood to Long Beach beat people flying JetBlue from Burbank to Long Beach Airport by well over an hour – and beat someone taking public transit (Red Line to Blue Line) by about 15 minutes.

Many more Angelenos realized they could live just fine without driving everywhere. “Carmageddon” was avoided because many people simply took fewer vehicle trips. That’s not a bad thing either. In a metropolis of nearly 15 million people, it makes sense for most of the necessities of life to be locally available, with restaurants and coffee shops and retail and groceries being accessible by foot or by bicycle. It’s just a better way to live – no wonder people are saying they wish it were like this all the time. Southern Californians learned this weekend that they can live just fine without being solely dependent on the car.

Of course, the 405 closure came on a summer weekend, and avoided a rush hour commute. One of the main problems with Southern California’s urban geography is the distance between many residents’ homes and jobs. On the other hand, nobody actually likes having a long commute. I have yet to meet the person who enjoys sitting in traffic on the 91 at 5:30 AM or who likes that it sometimes takes two hours to drive from downtown LA to Orange County on a weekday afternoon.

But Southern Californians usually don’t have much choice because of the mismatch between workplace and home. That mismatch is the product of deliberate policy choices. In the decades after World War II, SoCal was designed as a series of bedroom communities, with work and home purposely not in the same area. My hometown of Tustin, located smack in the middle of Orange County, has a sign at many entrances to the city that reads “work where you must but live and shop in Tustin.” It’s a classic example of 1950s-era thinking, that livable communities are not ones where jobs are located but instead are oriented around residence and retail. Following this logic, workplaces were spread out across the region and housing often located nowhere near one’s workplace. Freeways and wide arterials were intended to handle this far-flung situation, enabling sprawl and commutes.

60 years later, hardly anyone seems happy with this arrangement. Commuting takes a huge toll on marriages and happiness. Home values near the urban centers are high and have held their value far better than the furthest suburbs, where home values fell the furthest. That’s no coincidence. As gas prices soar and the toll of the commute wears on people’s lives, more and more Southern Californians realize that living near your job leads to a much better quality of life. Policies that promote density and provide the infrastructure to support it can help more people live near their jobs, which would reduce dependence on freeways to a significant degree.

That being said, there is still value in having access to a region-wide job market. If you live in Riverside, it’s good to be able to have the option of finding work in Orange County or LA, and vice versa. Improved rail transportation – including, yes, high speed rail – can help meet those demands, allowing people to participate in a region-wide economy. HSR adds to that economic activity, bringing places like Fresno and Bakersfield into the SoCal economic orbit. And if someone still finds value in commuting from, say, Riverside to downtown LA, rail makes that commute much better, allowing folks to stay connected to their family and friends rather than sitting behind a wheel on the 60 cursing their fate.

Rail could also have helped provide an alternative to the Sepulveda Pass during the 405 closure. The Cahuenga Pass has a rail option, with the Metro Red Line running beneath it from North Hollywood to Hollywood proper via Universal City. With the Orange Line BRT connection, it helps give people an alternative to the 101, and played a key role in helping move people from the Valley to downtown LA during this weekend’s closure.

Providing a similar rail route under the Sepulveda Pass seems a pretty high priority. The folks at The Transit Coalition have come up with a plan to do just that, using a tunnel (as was built for the Red Line) to connect Sherman Oaks to Westwood as part of a larger 405 rail corridor. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa included the Sepulveda Pass corridor as part of his visionary 30/10 initiative, although the discussion is early and all modal options are still on the table.

At least three times in the last 30 years – 1984 Olympics, 1994 Northridge quake, and now the 2011 closure of the 405 – have shown Southern Californians that life without the freeway is not only possible, it can be wonderful. Let’s hope that this time the lesson sticks, and the region – which has already been moving away from dependence on the automobile – can seize the moment to develop a fuller range of transportation options. Some folks will still drive, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I love to drive, and I acquired that love on the streets and freeways of Southern California. But there are a lot of other things I love as well in the region, and each time I’m down there I find that trains in particular help me enjoy them more completely than driving ever did. Judging by the public reaction to “carmageddon,” I’m not alone.

Southern California has the plan to build a better system with the 30/10 initiative, with high speed rail, and with growing awareness of the economic and social value of density. 2011 ought to be a tipping point that sees the coalescence of public support behind those efforts to build a better Southern California, instead of maintaining the completely and utterly failed fantasy that freeways are the best way to get around a region.