Area Growth and Transit

Election results are now in and it appears that Prop. C won by a razor-thin margin of 14,502 votes. As a result, 8.5 million Los Angeles County residents are now faced with a one-half cent sales tax increase.

Think about it. A small percentage of the county’s population is forcing the rest of us to live with the burden of higher taxes to pay for a transit system that is doomed to fail. Prop. C won, not because of a reasoned debate on the merits of rail, but because of heavy campaign contributions from the railroads. They stood to gain most from the sale of their white elephant right-of-ways to the public.

Prop. C is absurd, since the county still has $370 million waiting to be spent. Not one single major transportation improvement has been completed with the money from the 1980 Prop. A vote, with the exception of the Long Beach rail line, which cost $800 million more than projected. Metro Rail’s overruns have climbed to $538 million without moving one passenger! All of this would be understandable if rail was a viable solution to our traffic problems. But rail only diverts patronage from existing RTD buses.

The only way to solve our traffic problems is to deal with the underlying cause--out-of-control growth. In the downtown area alone, more than 55 million square feet of new construction will be built in the next three years. The real culprits are the Los Angeles City Council, CRA, Mayor Tom Bradley and the County Board of Supervisors, none of whom seem to be able to understand that overdevelopment creates traffic.

What we need are tough limits on growth and development, and an honest admission of the cause of our problems.

GERALD A. SILVER

Encino