High Density

Your editorial, “High Density Makes Sense,” Jan. 10, is filled with “new urbanist” boilerplate.

“Transit planners really do understand . . . the public’s multi-billion dollar investment in rail”? Hardly. Statistics on the subject on Portland’s rail system and the homes built to be serviced by it (Oregon’s “pride,” funded by the entire state!) show 9 out of 10 of those residents take their cars not light rail.

Reason magazine blows the lid off the lies told by urban planners and their love of social engineering.

That their plans do not work doesn’t deter them. Facts don’t matter when you’re trying to build an urban utopia. Two thousand dollars for a parking space? Your editorial forgets whose money this is.

The so-called “subsidies lavished on motorists” have been more than paid for through gasoline taxes, property taxes, Department of Motor Vehicles revenue etc. That the money has been siphoned off by state and local bureaucrats to be dumped into the general fund, was conveniently forgotten by your editor.

Another “Let ‘em eat cake” editorial re Valley issues by the Los Angeles Times.

DAVID GREGORY, Van Nuys