Quake and L.A. Driving Habits

Although making it more expensive or more difficult to drive your car to work might help make commuters change to mass transit (“Quake Fuels Only a Brief Affair With Mass Transit,” by Nora Zamichow, Feb. 12), mass transit operators could attract more riders by at least delivering the service they post in their schedules.

In my daily commute, I regularly wait 15 to 20 minutes for buses that are scheduled to arrive every eight minutes. Then the buses arrive in clusters. Because of this, my 30-minute commute is extended to 45-50 minutes three or four times a week. The distance is only seven miles, and I can do it by car in about 20 minutes. Taking the bus may be worth it at 30 minutes, but it may not be at 45 minutes.

I know there are people who commute a lot farther, but the same principle applies. I have written the MTA, but officials don’t seem to be able to solve the problem. More focus should be put on improving the delivery of the mass transit service, or more of us may go back to our cars, not just those affected by the earthquake.

BOB ABRAHAMS

Los Angeles

* Given the expense, complexity and sheer human effort required for most people to commute via Metrolink and our other mass transit options, is it really any wonder that ridership declined once the road system was again an alternative, however horrific? But instead of continuing to blame our supposed “romance” with the automobile, how about pointing out the obvious: Our public transit planners have designed a system that fails to take people quickly and easily where they want to go. This is most obvious on the Westside, where the fact that a Downtown-to-ocean transit line isn’t even in the planning stages seems especially absurd, given the collapse of the Santa Monica Freeway.

Build a rapid transit system between heavily traveled places that can offer a true alternative to the auto in price, convenience and time, and people will use it. Otherwise, why are we wasting all this time and money?

EDWARD McQUEENEY

Los Angeles

* I was pleased to see that Zamichow seems to understand that a commute includes a number of segments, only one of which is a high-speed mass transit mode. If you were to dissect the trip from Santa Clarita she describes, you would find that Metrolink represents only a small fraction of the total door-to-door commute time. This is the aspect of travel-to-work our transportation planners have not faced up to. If mass transit is to work, then either everyone’s ultimate destination must be Union Station (obviously impossible) or there must be reasonable transportation modes connecting Union Station with workplaces. Having to take several very slow buses to reach Century City from Union Station is unreasonable, and travelers-to-work will not do it.

In her Feb. 13 article, Zamichow mentions jitneys, a concept long considered but never implemented. Employer-supplied vans are another possibility, as are express buses dedicated to taking busloads of workers to high-density employment centers such as Century City. Commuting is a system problem, and simply solving one segment of it is not very helpful.

SAUL SOKOLSKY

Rancho Palos Verdes

* Your article makes it sound as if correcting the market forces which govern travelers’ choices would be punitive. You put the wrong spin on the answer to your own question, “If a magnitude 6.8 quake will not permanently change solo driving habits, then what will?” The answer is obvious. And sensible. Remove the enormous subsidies which force commuters and shoppers to drive their cars.

Driving would become convenient again; tax levels would decrease. We would have a less-costly alternative to the private, one-rider automobile. Each of us would have more money in our jeans and in our savings accounts. Our police, our schools and our libraries would have adequate funding. Air pollution would decrease.

Our present automobile- and truck-only freeway system is the world’s most costly (in dollars as well as in societal impacts). We are throwing away 25% of our earnings on automobiles, highways, trucking and services. Costs, of course, are tucked away everywhere, including increased taxes and retail prices.

There is already a law on the books to cash out some of our “free” parking; it would add 5% to 8% to paychecks. It must be implemented by the cities and counties of California. An initiative is being prepared to put into place a pay-at-the-gas-pump method to pay for automobile insurance. Get behind it. It will save each of us hundreds of dollars each year.

STANLEY HART, Chairman

Transportation Committee

Sierra Club Angeles Chapter

Los Angeles