Business Letters
Re: “U.S.-China friction mounts over yuan,” March 24:
Google is to be applauded for not buckling under to the communist Chinese government’s censorship of the popular search engine. If our government and other nations would take Google’s lead and toughen their stance on China’s unfair currency manipulation, the trade deficit would narrow and fewer U.S. jobs would be lost to overseas factories.
Tom Turner
Dana Point
Weighing in on public transit
Re: David Lazarus’ consumer column “A rough ride on public transit,” March 23:
A further obstacle in SoCal public transit is the lack of cohesion between municipal local bus lines. Public-transit riders don’t expect door-to-door transit. We are willing to walk. But, for example, where I live, Silver Lake, is a public-transit north-south sinkhole.
There’s a substantial residential population north of Sunset Boulevard between Vermont and Alvarado but no reliable, frequent bus service. Further, the area is split between City Council districts 4 and 13. Elected officials need to step up and improve local connections to MTA regional lines.
That doesn’t demand outrageous expense; it requires cooperation and better use of resources.
Ann Bradley
Los Angeles
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By using public transportation, David Lazarus discovered the reason public transportation is so user-unfriendly. The people who design it never have to use it. Perhaps if the people who make the decisions about public transportation actually had to navigate the system they designed, they would be able to identify ways to make the system more user-friendly.
Jim Bean
Los Angeles
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Three years ago I gave up my car and haven’t really missed it. Why? Because I live and work in Long Beach. L.A.’s second city has a mass-transit system that makes it relatively easy and convenient for me to get where I want/need to go.
But I cannot go from L.B. to L.A. on one pass. To get to my parents in the Valley, the most challenging part is making sure I stop to buy the next ticket each leg of the journey. Oh, if I could buy day passes or EZ passes for a week at the bank or post office or supermarket. Or even a monthly pass at any time of the month I wanted. Imagine! If the powers that be in transit would accept that transit riders are people who work real jobs and have real time conflicts (like people in cars do), they wouldn’t make getting convenient passes such a pain.
Melissa Balmer
Long Beach
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David Lazarus is so right about transportation agencies’ not doing simple things to increase ridership and revenues. A good example is Metrolink. Metrolink has cut some weekend service and is planning more cuts and fare increases next month. Yet it is difficult to transfer between routes on Metrolink. In one case, a train that could connect at Union Station leaves two minutes before the other train arrives.
There are numerous other examples of missing or poor connections on Metrolink. In addition, with budget cuts, connections with transit buses have been cut or reduced.
Noel T. Braymer
Oceanside, Calif.
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One thing you did not mention is how dangerous it is. Most of the metro lines go through some pretty “undesirable” locations. The trains should go through these neighborhoods because the people who live there are the ones who need public transportation the most. But the trains lack even the most basic security.
While riding the Green Line back from LAX one night, I witnessed a group of about 10 teenagers steal a girl’s necklace off her neck at the end of the car. What surprised me the most was how nonchalant the group was. They had no fear of getting caught.
There needs to be someone at these stations ensuring the safety of the passengers in those areas. If I saw that during one of my rare rides, I can’t imagine how many similar incidents frequent riders encounter.
Matt Beckerdite
Lakewood
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The MTA could tap into another stream of riders by paying attention to the busy calendar of events in downtown L.A.
I live in Ventura County. I would gladly attend more concerts, operas, plays and sporting events if getting to downtown were not so painful.
Every time I get a telemarketing call from Disney Hall or the L.A. Philharmonic, I tell them the same thing: Coordinate a route of public transportation to get there. How feasible is it to schedule trains from outlying areas to Union Station that coordinate with a shuttle to the major downtown venues and back, taking show times into account? I think many people would bypass clogged freeways and steep parking fees for the opportunity to leave the driving to someone else.
Margaret Messina
Camarillo
Bad choices led to foreclosure
Re: “Facing foreclosure again and again,” March 21:
You don’t have to believe in karma to see that Mohammad Ashraf and Brenda Duchemin got what they asked for. Who in their right mind would purchase two houses for $550,000 and $340,000 when they are physically disabled and their only income is workers’ comp insurance and Social Security, regardless of the status of the market? I’m no financial wizard, but common sense alone would have told me to stay put in my town home.
Cathy A. Housman
Fullerton
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“We don’t know what we did in a past life to bring this out,” said Brenda Duchemin, seeking to explain the financial straits that she and her husband find themselves in. “I must have been a horrible person down the line.” It’s not that Duchemin and her husband were horrible people in past lives, it is that they have made some irresponsible choices in this life.
Their biggest mistake was buying two houses when they already owned a town home and when their only sources of income were workers’ compensation insurance payments and Social Security. That the loans went through reflects “flimsy lending practices,” as the story points out, but it also represents irresponsible borrowing.
Now they don’t know what to do. The story says they have four bedrooms packed with stuff. They should sell as much of that stuff as they can at a yard sale, on EBay, at a consignment shop. Then they should rent two or three bedrooms out, possibly to another family that got in over their heads. Is this ideal? No. But it beats losing a third home and wondering where they went wrong or what sins they committed in past lives.
Paul Grein
Studio City
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