Letters to the Editor: L.A. is not Manhattan. We need parking, and a lot of it

To the editor: While I consider myself an activist in the housing movement both for affordable housing and the elimination of homelessness, I can’t agree with the idea of reducing the number of parking spaces.

When visiting Washington, Paris or London, I have the pleasure of getting to know the subway systems in those cities, which pick up passengers every few minutes and drop them off within very short walking distances from their destinations.

While I use the Gold Line and Red Line (now officially the L Line and B Line, respectively) every chance I get, I cannot do so as often as I’d like because our subway system in its current form is not timely and the stations do not cover all destinations.

If Los Angeles were more tightly compacted like Manhattan and if our underground transportation had been started more than a century ago, we’d have a different situation. But as it is right now, reducing parking would only make matters worse.

Ron Garber, Duarte

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To the editor: It’s not a binary decision of having more housing or enough parking spaces. The first thing this city needs is a decent mass transit system so that people will not be dependent on their cars.

I recently used the Metro to get to the Los Angeles car show in November. From Tarzana where my car was parked to the Los Angeles Convention Center, the trip took 2 hours, 45 minutes in each direction using transit.

During the trip, I was subjected to a lengthy verbal assault that was heard by everyone on the bus but elicited no reaction or help from the Metro driver.

Then again, this is the same city that missed the airport when designing its rail system.

Joe Sykora, Woodland Hills