Two Tales of a City
I want to be haunted by the ghosts
The LATimes has two stories on American car culture. One is about continuing the idiocy, the other is about the road forward. The first concerns the opening of another expansion of the 405. One great thing about America, we've always sinned big. As a good American, I’ve always advocated forget the venial transgressions, go big, go mortal, and sisters and brothers there could be no greater sin this year of Our Lord 2023 then spending $2.5 billion expanding the 405. Those choosing to use the 405 today should be damned to eternal gridlock, a stop and crawl, the next exit always the one you just passed.
Best is they made a couple toll lanes. Phew, having spent years advocating America take the cure for our car addiction, reading the article made me think of a long ago conversation I once had with an attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). It was either in LA or San Francisco, though this old brain is thinking they might have been in Oakland? EDF was one of the American environmental organizations founded by Ivy Leaguers. If you want to know the reason for the limp-wristed weakness of too much American environmentalism, start there. Though, I always liked the EDF folks much better than the NRDC.
This would have been early 90s, the beginning of the era that markets were going to solve everything, not that that's changed. I had long conversation with this EDF fellow about transportation, he was the first I heard advocate congestion pricing. Happy to have an intent listener, he gave me his whole plan. I replied we certainly needed to charge more to drive, but I'd rather tax oil. Congestion pricing would just allow those with money to move fast. Three decades later, an era of much greater inequity, we have congestion pricing on the 405 – call it progress.
The second piece is much better, written by a fellow now using an e-bike. If you advocate electric transport, bikes should be right at the top followed by buses and trains. For years, this guy commuted at peak traffic from the Eastside to LAX, a two hour journey by car most days! His e-bike has cut the time by a half-hour. He talks about how dangerous it is to ride a bike in LA. From three years personal experience, I can tell ya, it's a not very thrilling death-sport. However, it is a much better piece, I wanted to say more hopeful, but then Obama pretty much soiled that word for the foreseeable future .
Over the last century, a very short time in historical terms, America’s landscape was totally transformed by the automobile. Americans perceive the automobile as a fish perceives water. The real change America needs to undertake is a redesign of the infrastructure created by the automobile, so we can walk, bike, and mass transit, instead of driving for the majority of our daily activities. Advocating that for decades will leave you marginalized and not much in the bank, so maybe, better, follow the Israelis' lead and start blowing up and burying our cars – via the most honorable Max Blumenthal. There’s a policy of brutal brawn.
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