L.A. needs to transform itself

L.A. needs to transform itself. The L.A. traffic and congestion problem cannot be solved without L.A. transforming itself into a more walkable, bikeable, scooterable, motorcycleable, publictransportable city. There's no question about that.

Patchwork will not do it. "Tolling" and/or "increasing capacity" on the freeways will not do it. If your arteries are clogged, you reduce your cholesterol intake and exercise more. L.A.'s arteries are clogged. What will it take--a "heart attack" (an earthquake)--to wake everybody up?

L.A. and surrounding cities need politicians with GREAT VISION, who can sell that VISION to the public (angelenos), to the politicians at the federal, state and local levels, and to the urban planners and developers. A vision of a city of the future, a city that doesn't feel and look like the L.A. of nightmarish visions of the future like Blade Runner's, a city made up of vibrant walkable, bikeable communities full of highly mobile and highly community-conscious residents who think not only of themselves but of their neighbors and of their entire urban area as well.

That should be the vision, the blueprint, for an L.A. of the future, and that vision needs to be born now, today, not 20 years from now. At the rate it's going, in the year 2025, L.A. will be a highly unliveable place. That film Blade Runner will go from cult sci-fi classic status to prophetic. Of course, journalists like Ted Balaker will want to downplay such pessimistic assessments and call them "fashionable defeatism." It is people like him who have a voice in the media who should be calling for this vision instead of offering "band-aid-to-plug-a-leak-in-the-dam" ideas that are just patchwork solutions.

L.A. needs to transform itself.

That vision may not be popular with the gas companies, it may not be popular with the car companies, it may not be popular with the self-centered, self-serving, ego-driven set of drivers who think their needs or desires come first at the expense of everybody else. But this is not about popularity. It's about facing a tough reality and making some tough decisions for the good of the entire urban community.

L.A. needs to transform itself.

The politician who can sell that vision is the man or woman of the hour, the man or woman of the future...

And not only that... the politician who can sell this vision to the voters, to the politicians and to the beauraucrats in Washington, Sacramento and City Hall, to the urban planners and developers; the politician who can challenge the power interests that will oppose this vision with all their might-- the whole "oil/auto-industrial-complex" -- is a politician with real cojones...
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