Traffic, traffic and more traffic.

Southern Californians identified traffic clog as the No. 1 problem for regional planners to fix, according to a December telephone survey of 1,000 residents in six counties. They also want planners to solve problems of crime, crowded schools, polluted air and water, and housing costs.

Consultants hired by the Southern California Association of Governments hope to address those and other issues as they help residents from Ventura to El Centro craft a vision of how the region should grow during the next two decades.

SCAG is the regional planning agency for Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura and Imperial counties. Southern California Compass is the growth-planning project launched last month.

"What we've been doing isn't working," Brea Mayor Bev Perry told about 40 business and civic leaders gathered in Fontana for the first meeting of the Citizens' Advisory Committee that will help guide the two-year process. "We're trying to find a different way to manage growth."

John Fregonese, a Portland, Ore., consultant guiding the effort, said the survey helps identify issues that most concern residents. It also lists the steps they favor to improve the quality of life for the region's 17 million residents and the 6 million newcomers expected in the next 20 years.

For example, nearly three-fourths of those surveyed said they prefer redeveloping blighted neighborhoods and business districts instead of paving over farms and open space. "There are choices we make today that will affect our future," he said. " . . . It's not smart growth, not dumb growth, not sprawl. We're hoping to get pragmatic solutions that fit you like a glove."

The Big Look's point isn't to dismantle our system, but to give it a good ol' rebuild: Replace parts that aren't working, add some new ideas, maybe jettison unuseful ideas. Solutions will emerge from numerous workshops that will be held throughout the region, Fregonese said.

Traffic congestion won't improve without better regional planning, said Ron Nuckles, a seven-year resident of Reche Canyon and father of two. "Traffic is the primary issue," he said. "It takes longer to get anywhere. . . . It makes people more tense and diminishes the quality of life."