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Louis Rea: : Grin and Bear the Traffic Congestion

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Louis Rea, a professor of city planning and the director of the school of public administration and urban studies at San Diego State University, suggests that the best antidote to increasing traffic congestion is to simply grin and bear it:

“Traffic is symptomatic of a vibrant economy. Transportation is a means to an end--to get to work, to go shopping. San Diego is growing because the jobs are available here and because this is a lovely place to live. With that comes even more development and more growth.

“Just as you can manage growth but you can’t stop it, you can try to manage traffic but you won’t be able to stop the congestion.

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“You could only do that through some tremendously negative kinds of sanctions, such as not permitting vehicles downtown or to be driven at certain times of the day--the kinds of things that would not be appropriate or politically or socially tolerable.

“The automobile is just too convenient, and it is ingrained in our lives, especially in Southern California. We were built around the automobile.”

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