Digging into the tunnel debate

The Times’ arguments against proposed new tunnels under the mountains (editorial, Sept. 26) deserve a reply. On safety, tunnel engineering has advanced tremendously in the past 25 years. State-of-the-art tunnels include escape towers, emergency shelters, robust fire suppression systems and special accident response/rescue systems. The many long tunnels (five to 10 miles) in Europe and Japan have an excellent safety record. If safety is such a concern, why did The Times support the Red Line subway tunnel beneath the Santa Monica Mountains?

Tunnels would be costly to build and operate, which is why they would be toll-funded projects. And because they would offer premium service, it would make sense to charge value-priced tolls. That would provide powerful incentives for people to ride-share. According to a long-range transportation plan by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, if this region does everything it can afford to expand transit, by 2030 the vast majority of the region’s 23 million people would still need to use the highways. Not expanding the capacity of our highway system would doom L.A. to continued gridlock.

ROBERT W. POOLE JR.

Director of Transportation Studies

Reason Foundation

Los Angeles