Davis Plan for Transportation

In your April 7 editorial you state: “Even if the Davis plan is far from a solution for all the state’s transportation woes, we commend the governor for his effort and urge him to carry over the momentum to longer-term needs, along with creative ways to finance them.”

All of the efforts mentioned are nothing but Band-Aid solutions to our transportation nightmare. It seems ludicrous to commend Gov. Gray Davis for his lack of creativity and vision in this critical area of our lives. How about taking the lead in innovative mass transit ideas, like a statewide monorail system? How about state-funded free transportation for all Californians? How about getting rid of oil-based transportation, which is slowly killing us all? We now have the technology to get us all to work on time, for free, stress-free and without hurting the environment in the process. You have a duty to bring these ideas to the public.

THOMAS LASH

Huntington Beach

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Remember “If you build it, they will come”? Time and time again, that has proven to be the case with transportation policies in Southern California. Contrary to those Republican politicians who feel that not enough of Davis’ transit plan goes into highway improvements (April 7), I say not enough is going into mass transit.

Has anyone ever considered that we might have a mass transportation system in L.A.? I own a car, and because of our shoddy and time-consuming bus system, I must use it every single day. If only we had an effective mass transit system, like so many other metropolitan areas in the world, I wouldn’t think twice about it. So build more busways, light rail and even (gasp) subways. And maybe with that infrastructure in place, even Republicans would become fed up with crowded highways and get on the bus like everyone else.

JASON BUSHMAN

Hollywood