(First of two parts)
Say goodbye to the personal car and welcome to the “Socialist Republic of Los Angeles.”
Have you noticed how certain politicians keep pressuring us to give up the freedom and independence of our personal cars in order to start riding public buses, trolley cars and subways?
From their authoritative, know-it-all viewpoint, motorists would be better off riding in overcrowded public transportation with complete strangers than driving on overcrowded streets in the privacy of our own cars.
Equally absurd, these self-anointed “transportation experts” declare that bumper-to-bumper gridlock is the fault of L.A.’s motorists.
Let's be perfectly clear about who is responsible for what in this foolhardy claim; it is not motorists driving back and forth to work in order to provide for their families who have created the worst traffic conditions in the nation for the past 19 consecutive years.
To the contrary, it is the vision-less, apathetic politicians who have failed to do their own job of providing up-to-date traffic solutions to prevent gridlock from happening in the first place.
That, and that alone, is the sole cause of today's oppressive gridlock.
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail
We are facing a great modern-day tragedy in that we're living in the 21st century, in the “creative capital of the world,” and L.A.’s politicians still do not have a master plan for our traffic and transportation problems other than parroting the feeble cliche of “getting motorists out of their cars and into public transportation.”
But this begs the question, “Into what public transportation?”
Make no mistake. If more buses, trolley cars and subways are supposed to be the answer to L.A.’s horrific traffic problems, then we've certainly been asking the wrong questions.
Unless the backward planners start planning forward with an elevated ultra-modern monorail system that will inter-connect L.A.’s vast landscape of communities to mobilize our citizenry quicker and more efficiently, we, as an advancing society, will diminish while gridlock will grow even greater.
The Mission of a Clueless City Council
According to a Nov. 28 article in the Daily News, members of the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee have finally conjured up a “mission statement” that has six goals to be used as a “road map for traffic problems.”
They are:
1) Emphasize environmental issues by reducing emissions.
2) Protect neighborhoods.
3) Ensure safety.
4) Promote the city as a center for international trade.
5) Develop a stable funding source.
6) Increase mobility and accessibility.
Clearly, a class of second-graders could have come up with a more meaningful set of goals to reduce gridlock than what these extremely overpaid “experts” fumbled and bumbled around with.
(To be continued)
