Mayor Eric "Gridlock" Garcetti is taking Los Angeles backwards when it comes to transportation. He's putting the city on "road diets" and thinks the answer to our traffic problems is to build more railways.
It just won't work. The city is too sprawling, too many people have to go to too many different places, and who honestly wants to rely on public transportation?
The car is the best form of transportation right now, it should be embraced. Joel Kotkin does a fantastic job of explaining all of this in his latest piece "The Great Transit Rip-off:"
"Over the past decade, there has been a growing fixation among planners and developers alike for a return to the last century’s monocentric cities served by large-scale train systems. And, to be sure, in a handful of older urban regions, mass transit continues to play an important — and even vital — role in getting commuters to downtown jobs. Overall, a remarkable 40 percent of all transit commuting in the United States takes place in the New York metropolitan area — and just six municipalities make up 55 percent of all transit commuting destinations.
But here’s an overlooked fact: Transit now serves about the same number of riders as it did in 1907, when the urban population was barely 15 percent of what it is today. Most urban regions, such as Southern California, are nothing like New York — and they never will be..."