Riordan Off During Strike

“Vacationing Mayor Pedals as Strikers Burn,” Sept. 22:

How does Dick Riordan get away with it? Pedaling through France’s wine country with his rich pals while students, the aged and the working poor struggle to survive the MTA strike. In any other city in America, the public would demand leadership of its highest elected officials. Can you imagine the mayor of New York City doing likewise during a similar crisis? New Yorkers would hang him high from the nearest lamppost!

Regardless of whether one sides with the strikers or not, Riordan, with his four votes on the MTA board, should have been here in L.A. doing his best to end the walkout. His failure to lead on this issue, as well as on the matter of the Rampart scandal, will brand him forever as an incompetent, though likable, boob.

STEPHEN LEMONS

Burbank

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Mayor Riordan shows his concern for the people of Los Angeles by leaving Julian Burke in charge of MTA negotiations while he goes to France. We didn’t get what we paid for; the $1 a year was too much. He should return at least 50 cents a year.

RUDY KOESLER

Sun Valley

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Re “Personal Toll Mounts as MTA Talks Continue,” Sept. 21:

Maybe somebody should picket the person who turned Sophia Arocha away from her housekeeping job in Carson for being two hours late. This person must have known that Sophia rode the bus to get to this job and must have known that there was a transit strike.

WARD HEMINGWAY

Dana Point

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We live in the hills off Coldwater Canyon and on any given day around 4 p.m. we give the housekeepers a ride to their bus stop on Sunset or Santa Monica Boulevard. We have been doing this since 1988, and we pick up three to four ladies every day.

Unfortunately, this past week we have not encountered any of them. My wife and I are really sorry for these particular people, as they need the buses to get to work, and they are not paid unless they put in a day of cleaning or minding the baby. Most of these ladies travel a very long distance in the morning, because they need the money desperately.

CECELIA WAESCHLE

CLIFF WAESCHLE

Beverly Hills

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Shawn Hubler (Sept. 21) asks who, other than politicians and transit contractors, desperately needs big rail projects. Lots of us. But I’ll speak for myself.

I am tired and frustrated by snarled freeways and the absence of an alternative. I am tired of all the time I spend behind the wheel.

I am tired of looking at all the ugly parking structures and lots that fill the city. I am concerned when I read the UCLA forecasts of ever-decreasing average freeway speeds. I find it hard to always “love my neighbor” when it is my neighbors on the freeway who prevent me from getting where I want to go.

I am embarrassed that our transportation system has for decades been a de facto segregation of the people of L.A., and I am embarrassed when visitors to this city see our public transportation system for the first time.

I do not believe that standing under a hot sun next to a noisy, dirty road, hoping that a bus will come, will ever be an acceptable form of transportation for the luckier ones among us, or on its own an acceptable transportation system for this immense urban area.

I do believe that major rail projects, taking people to places they want to go with speed, safety and comfort, can do more good for this city than one can possibly imagine. I do believe that the projects need to start now, because they take time to complete, and it would be a tragic mistake to lose the momentum built by, among other things, the Red Line extension to North Hollywood.

ANDREW SHADDOCK

Manhattan Beach

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Re “Reduce Los Angeles’ Vulnerability to Transit Strikes,” Commentary, Sept. 20: Bravo to Robert W. Poole Jr. in identifying the underling cause of the L.A. transit strike--greed! I agree that the whole transportation system should be privatized. Make it a competitive business so that all the people of the city may move freely without the dread notion that they may lose their jobs because some greedy driver doesn’t want to work.

FIDEL ROCHA

Santa Ana

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What tortured reasoning is shown by Poole. He ends with a pitch that says his proposed solution would make strikes like the current one far less harmful to the least fortunate among us. And what is his solution? Essentially, it is this: Take away the ability of the drivers to organize to protect themselves. Poole notes with admiration that several other transit districts in the region keep costs low by keeping the pay and benefits of their (nonunionized) drivers to a minimum. The tip-off to Poole’s position is in his first paragraph, where he complains that most of the strikers earn middle-class salaries three or four times those of the typical bus rider.

So the subtext of his solution is this: Let’s solve the transit problem by bringing the incomes of bus drivers into line with those of the typical bus rider. The average pay of an MTA driver is just less than $36,000 per year. So there’s your solution: Let’s divide that wage level by three or four, to make the average driver’s pay about $10,000 per year. The summary of Poole’s proposal: Let’s protect the least fortunate among us by shoving the MTA drivers into that same category.

ERNIE TAMMINGA

Goleta

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If I remember correctly, the Green and Red lines were designed to be operated by computer. Drivers were placed on board to satisfy union demands and to make passengers feel more secure. Since the union is on strike and there is a huge demand for mass transport, why not run those trains as they were originally designed?

BOB MARLIN

Los Angeles

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Our wasteful, self-centered MTA has done it again. It violated the consent decree, “didn’t have” money for clean-air buses and now “can’t pay” the overtime to the drivers. But the Taj Mahal headquarters, cost overruns, etc. were affordable. Fire the lot of them! Start over.

DAVID BAXTER

Sherman Oaks