Solution to Southland’s Traffic Woes: Go Mini

More nonsense. Put big money into road repair (Feb. 19). Open diamond lanes to hybrid vehicles (Commentary, Feb. 19).

Why does Southern California have the most congested and poorest freeways and roads? Not because the roads are not kept up! Not because diamond lanes are not open to single-driver hybrid vehicles. I’ve never seen diamond lanes that are not fully congested when the main road is also fully congested.

The answer is a no-brainer. Mass transit? Sure, but that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars for quality light rail and subways. The answer is fleets of mini-buses that are the only users of diamond lanes and have great flexibility in delivering commuters to many destinations in the spread-out environs of Southern California. The price tag of such a program would be minuscule compared with the cost of mass transit that involves massive construction expenditures.

Steve Oppenheimer

Northridge