Readers React: Keep your toll-collecting, profit-seeking hands off our freeways

To the editor: Edward Humes proposes that we adopt congestion pricing, rethink the workweek, convert carpool lanes into dedicated big-rig lanes and encourage walking and biking to school as ways to help untangle the gridlock that slows down goods movement. (“Four easy fixes for L.A. traffic,” Opinion, April 10)

Californians paid for freeways. Transforming them into tollways is highway robbery. Toll roads increase traffic for the poor and reduce it for the rich. Instead, increase the gas tax; doing so would encourage drivers to choose more efficient and less polluting vehicles.

As for the 9-to-5 day, government offices are magnets that could easily transform work hours. When the offices are open, people come. Changing hours could accommodate working people.

Carpool lanes work. Keep them. They promote ride sharing.

Having children walk to school can’t and shouldn’t be enforced. Here’s an alternative: Studies have long shown that teenagers have trouble waking early. Offer them two school schedules: one traditional and one that starts at 10 a.m. and ends later in the day.

Clara Solis, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Humes writes as if your very soul and existence is predicated on whether you own a car.

Here’s one “easy fix”: Put a $1-per-gallon tax on gasoline and spend the money on mass transit. Why not? You know that the oil companies will probably raise gas prices by $1 soon. Why not put that money toward making a better life for everyone instead of increasing corporate profits?

There is also the “zero easiest fix”: Do nothing. Eventually, traffic will come to a permanent standstill and we’ll all have to walk or ride bikes to get anywhere.

Gregg Ferry, Carlsbad

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