LA’s journey to free public transit

But first we must abolish means-testing.

Los Angeles has a geometry problem. Multiply the space that even the smallest car occupies by the number of Angelenos who need to get from A-B and you’ll see that there’s no way that the city is compatible with private vehicles.

Building more highways means clearing more live- and work-space, which pushes everything apart, which makes journeys longer, which requires building more highways…

Sadly for advocates of individual transit solutions, geometry has a socialist bias.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/21/ex-urbe/#arcology-politics

(and no, you can’t fix this by putting private vehicles in tunnels, no matter how fast the tunnels are — these are just shitty, inefficient subways that let plutes escape the company of their laboring neighbors during their morning commutes)

Los Angeles actually has one of the world’s most extensive public transit systems, but it’s not a system that most people use voluntarily. While the subways are fast and efficient, they’re not nearly extensive enough.

The bus system is very extensive but it’s slow and meandering and lacks the dedicated lanes that the evidence tells us we need if we’re going to seriously shift people out of…