A Threefold 'Thank You' to Los Angeles
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Dear Los Angeles: I'm Thankful For...
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A Photo Gallery of the Things I am Grateful for This Year
I LOVE L.A.! My Thanksgiving Thanks
On a personal blog called ...yep by a guy named Glenn, the Los Angeles transit system is examined. Glenn has never taken the subway in L.A. before and he commutes one-hour by car everyday. He's not complaining though, "it’s just a way of life here in the city," he states pragmatically. He finds it to be "a fairly pleasant experience" and listening to podcasts on his iPod is a much better choice than some local radio.
However, he thinks Los Angeles is too far along in development (as to Irvine when it was master planned) and too spread out for a fully effective transit system:
I think we should just suck it up as Angelenos and stop trying to waste tax dollars on a problem that can’t be solved. You can’t have it all, and when you think about it Los Angeles has it pretty good. 85 and sunny is the year round forecast. You’re never more than an hour from the beach, but you’re never more than an hour from hiking and snowboarding either. The entire world’s cuisine can be found here, and any minute you can become famous for anything. If you want my advice, just deal with the traffic like I do: with mad, unreasonable, debilitating road-rage.
85, sunny, beach, hiking, snow, food. He's right -- us hedonists have it pretty damn good. But we can still have it better and should never stop fighting for that. With that said, get ready for subway construction causing more of what it is supposed to help cure.
Photo by xctmx via Flickr
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Why bother printing such a clueless comment from some guy who just moved here and is still in the, "Gee, look mom, beaches, sunshine and Palm Trees. And strange people with tasty food!" stage.
Once he has been here a while, and has to take kids in different directions to school and soccer and ballet and maybe wants to get downtown to the concert, he'll develop serious opinions about traffic.
It's about time for the subway and light rail to be built; wish it had been done 25 years ago, when Zev actually fought against their construction -- would have had less detrimental impact on road traffic during construction then, too. But our leaders have been as provincial as this guy until very recently.
By any chance, is Glenn considering running for mayor? Because I've always felt we needed a forward-thinking defeatist in that office.
The fact of the matter is that within the next 15 years gas isn't going to be something anyone will be able to afford to just pour into an engine and burn for the sake of private transportation. We can either put the alternative transportation infrastructure in place now or we can do it in a decade. Not doing it at all is simply impossible. It will happen. The only question is how badly we make each other suffer first.
LA is too spread out?
I hate hearing that tired old excuse for our collective inadequacy.
It's easily proven wrong by our past (we used to have an extremely elaborate rail system) and by our contemporaries (Mexico City is no less sprawling yet has one of the best rail systems in the world).
No, LA isn't too spread out. Rather, it's populated by stupid, lazy people.
Spread out? Ask the people who RODE THE FUCKING PACIFIC ELECTRIC!!!! And we didn't even have 4 million people back then.