Opinion: Cars aren’t the problem. The people who drive them are, and they need to be put on a road diet

To the editor: I agree with the premise of your editorial: It is past time to reconsider how we think about mobility. (“If California is serious about climate change, the car can’t be king of our roads,” editorial, Dec. 16)

But cars constitute no political constituency; people who drive do, and many of us feel content with the subsidies that continue to fuel an outmoded mobility paradigm no matter the cost. And is there a cost — more than 3,000 Californians are killed annually in traffic.

The car is king only because we the people consent to this monarch. We elect policymakers (and threaten to recall them when they put our roads on on a diet). We leverage traffic frustrations to put the California Environmental Quality Act to “off-label” use to stop developments we don’t like.

There is an inherent contradiction as we cling to our driver’s prerogative but then complain about gridlock or champion the cause of climate change. We can’t continue to have our cake and eat it too. After a century of gorging on auto-mobility, it’s time for a diet. We can start with our roads.

Mark Elliot, Beverly Hills

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To the editor: Your editorial on the new CEQA guidelines, which remove barriers for projects that reduce people’s dependence on cars, is spot on. We should be facilitating transit-oriented development and infrastructure investments that support people walking, biking and taking transit.

You leave something out, though: the new guidelines’ failure to reform how transportation analysis is done for highway expansion projects, which fuel both sprawl and continued addiction to cars.

By allowing freeway proponents to continue to use a traffic-oriented metric of analysis, CEQA will continue to fail to consider the many harmful impacts of such car-is-king investments. Reform can and should go a step further.

Bryn Lindblad, Los Angeles

The writer is associate director of Climate Resolve.

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