SUBMITTED BY: Kedar Iyer
It’s 5 p.m. on a Friday at UCLA. The couple hundred stragglers still in class stream out onto Bruin Walk, and the final procession of students for the week marches over to the Hill and the apartments beyond.
Most of us are already in weekend mode, having crashed onto our beds hours earlier to catch up on all the sleep lost during the week.
For the thousands of students who commute to campus though, the longest part of the week has barely begun: Friday evening rush hour.
There are three elements synonymous with the city of Los Angeles: celebrities, smog and traffic.
In particular, L.A. traffic has become the stuff of legend across the country, a shining example of everything that is structurally wrong with our car-centric society.
As our gridlock and smog indicate, L.A.’s transportation system is broken and in need of a transformation.
This is why I’d like to applaud the Metropolitan Transportation Authority resolution endorsing the 30-10 initiative, a crucial step in modernizing our subway and bus systems.
In 2008, Los Angeles County passed Measure R, thereby adding a half-cent sales tax to expand the region’s public transportation infrastructure.
Among the projects included in this measure are subway extensions to Westwood and Santa Monica and a 405 Freeway rapid corridor connecting the Valley to Westwood.
Currently, these projects are scheduled to be completed in 30 years.
However, the 30-10 initiative proposes accelerating the construction so the projects are completed within 10 years through loans from Congress for the initial investment.
The loans are then repaid with the guaranteed money from the sales tax.
Accelerating the construction would save the county nearly $4 billion in the long run and create nearly 160,000 construction jobs over the next decade, a deficit-neutral economic stimulus through infrastructure advancement for a city that is in sore need of both.
Unfortunately for the 12.9 million people served by Metro, the details of the legislation have gotten mired in Congress’ bureaucratic sinkhole.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s resolution is a major boost to a campaign that already has endorsements from Sen. Barbara Boxer and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. But while Boxer’s endorsement of this visionary initiative is laudable, carrying it through Congress will not be an easy task.
It is imperative that our representatives know we stand behind them in this campaign.
It’s time for our public transportation to enter the 21st century.
Iyer is a first-year mechanical engineering student.