So Long To L.A.'s Freeways?

LA’s freeways have been anything but free for a LONG time. You can spend hours in congestion over the course of a week. I’ve been in full out traffic jams in the middle of the afternoon on weekends, or even after midnight on the weekends. I don’t know about the rest of you but time is money to me! Therefore in their current state LA’s freeways are particularly expensive. Anything the city could do to untangle the grotesque congestion, would be positive, especially if you could generate money for transit while at the same time. I hate the term Lexus Lane or congestion tax. Essentially what a congestion toll is a USER FEE. No one is guaranteed by any law the right to unfettered, free access to highways. That logic is simply ludicrous, auto centric American thinking of yester years. Thus if you want to use a highway fine, but your going to pay a price for it, and your going to pay an even high price if you want to use the highway during rush hour. This will help generate money for transit in LA and shift the cost of construction and maintenance of highways away from general taxes. Thus the so called “Lexus Lanes” will actually benefit the poor by providing them with more access to transit and by reducing their share of taxes which go to highways and roads, all while reducing air pollution and congestion in the region. If you want to talk about Lexus Lanes then lets talk about the current situation in which the poor, who use transit at far higher levels, still have to pay taxes on roads and highways so the middles class and rich can drive their fancy cars from the west side to downtown! All congestion prices will do is shift the burden of financing roads and highways to those who actually use them, while generating a little extra cash for transit. This system might not be perfect but it sounds far more equitable to me than the current situation! Either way we are going to have to pay for highways, the question is do we want to pay with them through diminishing gas taxes revenues which now require us to rob from a city’s budget or do we want to use user fees?

This is a trend which has SPECIFICALLY caught Southern California by storm (you won't be seeing this in the Bay Area anytime soon).

San Diego has been dabbling with the concept of privatization (based upon the Indianapolis model) by laying off a huge percentage of its municipal employees (including most of the planning department) and "outsourcing" to consultants.

Carl DeMaio, from the neoconservative/extremist think tank "Performance Institute", has been wooing San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders for over three years to completely outsource most of its city services.

As for L.A., Barry Goldwater would be so proud...

It is no surprise that toll roads caught on in Orange County before anywhere else in the state of California. Orange County happens to be the poster child for Ronald Reagan-style governmental minimalism.

Unfortunately, this is sign of things to come, outsourcing public facilities (and avoid having to pay for public transit). This is to allow private corporations to become profiteers of infrastructure and roads, which are supposed to be for the benefit of the common good.

We are seeing this same type of privatization situation on a much more drastic scale in Iraq, with the contractors peforming "services" which are supposed to be performed by the military.