Streets Belong to Everyone
“Survey Fuels Call for Traffic Curbs” (July 31) once again demonstrates the lunacy and selfishness which has made Los Angeles the wonderful city it is today. The survey found that Valley commuters use side streets through Encino hills to avoid the daily mess on the Ventura and San Diego freeways.
As a resident of Encino (north of Ventura Boulevard), I found the article quite distressing. Rather than solving the traffic problem, the Transportation Department’s brainstorm is to close down the side streets. This is ridiculous.
Closing shortcuts merely forces more traffic onto the already non-functional freeways. That is not a solution; it compounds the problem.
No one wants others to use the street in front of their home as a shortcut. The problem is that everyone’s taxes paid for those roads, so everyone has a right to use them. It would be highly improper and undemocratic to use public funds to build and maintain what would be essentially private roads in the Encino hills.
Carried to its logical extreme, every side street in Los Angeles would be blocked to through traffic. If I am blocked from using the Encino hills streets, then everyone else should likewise be blocked from using the street in front of my house as a shortcut.
This selfishness obviously would shut down what’s left of our traffic “system.”
STEVEN A. SILVER
Encino
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