21st-Century Ideas for Transportation Needed

I was planning to vote for the OCTC’s half-cent sales tax until I read the statement of Keith McKean, Caltrans’ Orange County district director, in today’s (July 28) Times.

If the money isn’t made available by the voters for widening the I-5 beyond the Costa Mesa Freeway, McKean said of the six new lanes to be constructed north of the El Toro Y (where the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways merge), “we’ll stripe them out.”

People in Orange County have to regard this as a threat and intimidation.

We already have car-pool lanes on Orange County freeways that will always remain largely empty--despite their enormous cost. Caltrans blames motorists when motorists are not to blame for a pre-existing sprawl that means places of employment are so widely scattered that people who live in any given area cannot make any practical arrangements to car-pool. (If you have to get up at 4 in the morning to connect with your “car-pool buddies,” just to save 10 or 15 minutes once you get on the freeway, who is going to do it?)

After spending billions to construct six new lanes on the San Diego Freeway, “striping them out” would be a criminal misuse of taxpayer money. And I suspect Orange County residents will finally have had enough. Old ‘60s activists and Orange County conservatives may make an unprecedented alliance and demonstrate in an organized way by deliberately and totally blocking the freeways at designated times until the lanes are restored. Drivers of Mercedes-Benzes and Toyotas alike may demonstrate their conviction on the subject by being carried off to jail in the style of other civil rights activists. Quite a picture, but it could come to pass.

I suggest a Caltrans official who would make such a statement should be “striped out” of his job.

KAYE KLEM

Mission Viejo