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September 18, 2005

Foolish Tunnel Plans in SoCal

First, a precursor: I'm so sick of people dismissing the LA area out of hand. I love my hometown. I grew up in Northridge, in like, the San Fernando Valley, which is part of Los Angeles (as in the mayor of Northridge is the mayor of LA).

But I gotta say that as an adult I am happy to not deal with the traffic. I have sought out places with good public trans systems. The most extensive is DC. While that system is great, you really can't eat or drink on it which is a negative. Plus, it's difficult to figure out what the fares are, since it varies depending on where you get on and off. Boston was rather good, as long as you live in the city. And it was relatively cheap - plus I had an employer who would pay for my metro card, which was a huge plus. And Chicago is fairly decent - the El takes me to work everyday, and the buses seem to work well too. I wish they would update the tracks and the El trains, and put more money into public trans so they could stop threatening rate hikes every time they have to put together an annual budget.

Back to the article that started this rant - public officials in Southern California are thinking of building TUNNELS through the fault-ridden San Gabriel Mountains and underneath Cleveland National Forest (because apparently protecting a forest only means a few feet down from the surface), and underground in South Pasadena and Pasadena. Gotta say the LAT article would've been easier to read if (a)it coherently moved from one project to another and (b)was accompanied by simple maps of the proposed tunnel areas.

Come on people - stop with the single passenger solutions and get a lot more mass transit systems up NOW!

More info:
"With Traffic at a Crawl, Planners Talk of Tunnels," by Dan Weikel, Jeffrey L. Rabin and Daryl Kelley in the LAT

Posted by cj at September 18, 2005 5:54 PM

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