Traffic a growing problem that just won’t go away

If you traveled somewhere for Mother’s Day, you couldn’t ignore the obvious: Southern California’s traffic problems are getting worse and worse.

The average person has grown to accept that it takes an obscene amount of time to get anywhere in the Southland. No matter where you’re going, you must leave earlier and earlier to get there on time.

Even if you’re a patient person who doesn’t get frustrated while you’re getting nowhere on a Southern California freeway, it’s depressing to realize that even an economy car gets zero mpg when it isn’t moving.

Are there any easy answers? No. It takes money—enormous sums of it—to build more freeways or to introduce a functional, economic, safe and dependable mass transit system.

Diamond lanes aren’t equitable because they penalize the majority to reward the few. It doesn’t work because everyone payed for the new lanes but only vehicles with more than one passenger can use them. Diamond lanes were meant to increase car pooling, but they haven’t been effective. Only families and speeders seem to have benefited––not commuters.

Maybe toll roads are the answer. People are willing to pay for the privilege to use new routes that can be built with the revenue that toll roads produce. Meanwhile, the toll road traffic takes vehicles away from existing freeways, making life easier for everyone, even those who can’t afford to use toll roads.

Toll roads are more sensible than cranking up the gasoline tax, which penalizes everyone—especially the poor.

Maybe there’s a silver lining on the high price of gasoline: it might motivate more people to consider car pooling or taking the bus or Metrolink.

But if it’s happening, it sure wasn’t evident on Mother’s Day weekend.

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