Diamond Lanes for the Rich
The late Michael Harrington, who examined the roots of American inequality more closely than anyone before or since, loved nothing better than to end the day with a few beers and a good argument. On one such occasion, he raised his glass, looked at the reporter across the table and said, “The great thing about beer is that it’s one of the few good things in life that the rich do not begrudge the poor.”
When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted Thursday to convert carpool lanes to toll routes on as many as three Los Angeles freeways, the question of just what that decision begrudges to whom was lost in a flurry of self-congratulation.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the move “a great opportunity to think outside the box,” and added: “Part of the reason Los Angeles has not been able to grapple with gridlock is because we’ve been unable to make the tough decisions.”
Right. It takes unconventional and courageous thinking to come up with a plan that clears a highway lane for the well-off, while the middle class and working poor are left to inhale each other’s $5-a-gallon exhaust fumes.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina called the plan “a good beginning.” On what? On making the daily lives of the hundreds of thousands of moderate-income commuters in her district even more intolerable?
The worst thing about this ill-considered decision to allocate freedom of movement according to income is that it represents local public policy made for the worst of all possible reasons — simply because there’s federal money available to do it.
There’s never been any great debate on the MTA board about the wider implications of toll lanes or of the benefits of so-called congestion pricing — which is a euphemism for reducing traffic by making it costly to use certain streets or even enter certain neighborhoods at peak travel hours. (London now uses this scheme to make it painfully expensive for all but the affluent to commute into the city on a daily basis by private car during business hours.) The issue has arisen now simply because there’s free money to be had.
Here’s how it unfolded. Federal transportation authorities have lately become enamored of imposing congestion pricing through toll roads, and have been offering the states funds to experiment with the concept. When New York’s Legislature declined this month to endorse an agreement that also included congestion fees for parts of Manhattan, money became available for other municipalities, and the MTA board jumped outside the box to grab $213.6 million of it. As a consequence, existing carpool lanes on the Foothill, San Bernardino and, perhaps, Harbor freeways will be converted to toll routes, with the highest charges levied at peak commuting times.
Carpool lanes are a sensible and equitable way to encourage responsible behavior. People who choose to ride to work with other people or those who purchase low-emission, high-mileage vehicles have the opportunity to travel more conveniently while reducing congestion, pollution and fuel consumption.
Note the word choose.
Congestion pricing will reduce traffic as well, but it will do so by allocating a precious resource by income. In California, we long have used everybody’s tax money — mainly from gasoline purchases — to build and maintain roads.
Moreover, in Southern California, the middle class and working poor have no choice but to use the freeways to get back and forth to work and school because, decade after decade, public officials have encouraged urban sprawl while neglecting public transit. For most commuters today, the highway is the only way.
California’s great public resources — free schools and universities, libraries, the freeway network — once were creators of opportunity. And because so many availed themselves of that opportunity, these resources became powerful engines of equality — distributors, if you will, of the American dream.
Today, as The Times recently reported, public schools are going hat in hand to parents hoping to make up for the shortfalls in public funds. Affluent parents in affluent neighborhoods will find that money; the children of the poor will do without and fall further behind.
Now the MTA proposes to address the all-too-real problem of gridlock on the cheap — and on the backs of working people.
Since when was that “a hard decision”?
It’s the sort of thinking that will make Los Angeles and Southern California the sort of place Harrington described in “The Other America” — one where “life is lived in common, but not in community.”
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times
Being poor may not yet be a crime, but the punishment for being poor is already in place. This is another example of how the empire has to squeeze its own in an attempt to keep afloat the rapidly declining empire we live in today..
Hoa binh
Considering the way price of beer has been moving that too might be on its way to being a pleasure of the wealthy.
When I visited my family in Southern California, I made the mistake of taking the 73 toll road, which goes all of 12 miles for a price of $4.00. I was enjoying the sweeping route, lightly traveled by luxury cars when all the main alternate routes which are less convenient, are almost always clogged with heavy traffic, and was wondering why. Until I hit the toll booth. More and more you feel the heavy hand of tiered access to resources. The well-off, including my other family members, breathe a sigh of relief as they get onto “their” empty toll road. The rest of us, including myself, make do. That “freeway” wasn’t made for us to use.
You could think of it as progressive taxation, but not really. The wealthy have automatic pay pass transponders in their cars that send them a bill every month. They do not even have to pass through toll booths and pay like visitors do.
If you look at that toll road to Irvine in Orange County, you will see very few people on the toll road, but you will see major congestion just past the turn off on the freeway.
Is this the most good for the most people? I think not. Rewrite Prop 13 and make people pay their fair share of property taxes and we will have good roads and schools for all.
Combine this story with the one on the sidebar …. “Polls show Americans ready to raise taxes on the rich.” Now, ask yourself who the politicians serve. Raising taxes on the rich would gain the politician support and votes, yet instead they vote more benefits for the rich instead. Which is more important, money or voters?
The sad thing is that the voters continually vote for the rich’s candidates. Will people someday learn that the candidate with all the money for tv ads is exactly the candidate they should never vote for? Toss in the corporate media’s constant pushing of the rich’s candidates, it should almost become an ironclad rule that if you see a politician on TV, you should never vote for them.
It’s funny to see Michael Harrington presented as a hero in a story about traffic, while a dozen anti-war stories are posted on the same website.
Michael Harrington was one of a very few leftists who supported the war in Vietnam, at a time when he actually had some influence with John Kennedy. This catastrophe completely undermined progressive politics in the United States for a whole generation, and we have “liberal hawks” like Michael Harrington to thank for it.
What an idiot!
And now Tim Rutten wants to rehabilitate Harrington as a hero of free expressways! And to make it worse, Mr. Rutten claims that “the working poor have no choice but to use the freeways to get back and forth to work.”
Obviously Mr. Rutten has never been to Watts or anywhere in LA east of La Brea, or he would know that tens of thousands of “the working poor” commute to minimum-wage service jobs every day on buses, those big, ugly, infrequent and poorly connected vehicles that are apparently invisible to Mr. Rutten and his middle-class friends.
The political system makes monsters out of the good politicians. Antonio Villaraigosa grew up in a poor neighborhood, became a union organizer, was backed by Gloria Molina in his first political campaign, and he won for the CA Assembly seat in 1992. He was a good liberal Assemblymember until termed out. In 1996, the campaign contributions skyrocketed across CA, and it became impossible to run for any office without tons of money. The only way to get that was from other people, so many more politicians had to return favors for the contributions. Without public campaigns giving public funds to candidates, as is done very successfully in Maine, Arizona and other states, all the politicians are in the same boat. Either they gather lots of contributions or they don’t get elected. If we spent as much effort working to enact those public campaign laws as we spend complaining about the current abuses, we would have them in all the states and then the federal government. See http://www.publicampaign.org/
According to the Jetsons cartoon of 40 years or so ago, the rich were supposed to have jeticopter thingys by now to just fly OVER the poor. Guess not. So buying access to fly PAST the poor is where they’re headed, now, especially since more of them can afford it via the Bush tax cuts.
The right answer of course is to restore steeply progressive taxation so that real money (not debt) is available to build PUBLIC infrastructure expansion.
And since this author mentioned beer for not much reason, I’ll take this opportunity to remind everyone to be informing your conservative church-based friends about the McCains’ big beer distributorship, Hensley and Company of Phoenix. Defeating McCain is step one to the goals in previous paragraph. Broadcasting about the beer is going to be all the more important if McCain picks Huckabee for VP. WE MUST drive a wedge between those guys and the real evangelicals—not only to win, but because the prospect of a hard-cussin’ skirt-chasin’ beer profiteer stealing your election by buddying up with a Baptist preacher is too outrageous an hypocrisy to bear. I cannot abide it! And neither can the CD crowd. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I have long believed in Public Money for Public Office. If every tax payer had $5 taken from the general fund every year, that would be over $500 million every year, we could offset huge wealthy donors and bring the government back to the people.
People tip the pizza delivery guy more every week than it would cost them for this once a year, but they would rather have the candidates return favors to the rich at their expense. Not very smart.
We are all forgetting that the government has now outsourced highways in many states. In Indiana, Bush’s garbage Bitch Daniels has sold the tollways to private companies from Australia and Spain. These companies get our tax dollars, get our tolls and in turn pay people like Daniels millions to stay in power.
By the rich for the rich.
The technology is now available such that most of us can work from home. It is the power hungry retards, who not only want control of you money, but also of your time. Otherwise why would we have to make the commute - unless you work in a hard track industry - like fast food?. If you are shuffling paper, you can do it at home.
If the leasees of our publicly owned airwaves met their legal civic responsibilities and provided free prime time air time to ALL candidates and we also had publicly financed campaigns, this would be a very different country, not one by and for the corporations.
Not a chance.
kathyodat
I bet they pave the “Diamond Lanes” with real diamonds. and restrict it to SOCH’s (Single Occupant Celebrity Hummvees)
COMarc - I lived in California when Prop 13 was passed. I voted against it. After it passed, public services were cut back. So, we got a couple of dollars and lost valuable services. It was not worth it. There was another Proposition on the ballot at that time - Prop 8, which would have been better.
My rule of thumb, when I lived and voted in California, was that whatever I heard being advertised, I was against because that meant that there was big money behind it, and so it was probably going to benefit big money, not ordinary people.
So, you are right - if you see a lot of money behind someone or something, be suspicious.
OK, I am mixed on this since I don’t use the only toll road across Toronto ( Canada’s largest city)on a daily bases since I don’t live in Toronto. When I do drive there I save time and for the 10$ to go about 40 to 50 miles at 70 MPH. I also like the diamond lanes as I try to take someone along for the trip so I can use those lanes. Now if I had to pay to make the trip daily then I can see your points in the story.
Jacob Freeze:
I thought Harrington quit the Socialist Party in protest to the party’s support for the Viet Nam war. No?
Re. toll lanes and carpool lanes:
The proposed toll lane and all car pool lanes are a wasteful misuse of freeway real-estate. It causes unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.
The number of cars per hour in the toll/carpool lane is far below the average for all lanes in the system. Thus, the number of cars per hour driving in the other lanes is higher than it used to be before the toll/carpool system was introduced. (Especially since most carpool vehicles were carrying two or more people before the carpool system’s introduction.) This causes congestion and slower average speeds for all vehicles traveling in the non-toll/carpool lanes.
To make traffic flow at its most efficient, make all lanes available to all automobile traffic, and strictly enforce the speed limit. The left-most lane is NOT the fast lane.
… they’re just _ C A S T I N G _ d i a m o n d s _,
Rail.
That is the word which (apparently) must not be spoken.
Or written.
-matti.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the move “a great opportunity to think outside the box,” and added: “Part of the reason Los Angeles has not been able to grapple with gridlock is because we’ve been unable to make the tough decisions.”
WTF!
rarmai April 26th, 2008 12:48 pm
“Considering the way price of beer has been moving that too might be on its way to being a pleasure of the wealthy.”
rarmai,
There’s a shortage of hops in addition to the other agricultural commodities. As long as the G7 gives the wealthy few a green light to manipulate the alleged “free market”, people will go hungry and we will continue to see food shortages around the globe for years to come.
Another nail in the coffin for “net neutrality”. When “fast lane” privileges for the rich becomes so endemic in our society, then it will be easy to extend these privileges to the net.
ZeroPointField wrote: The technology is now available such that most of us can work from home.
That is a very dangerous situation (and also grossly incorrect…at this time). People who “shuffle paper” actually have little work-skill worth. When the financial crisis (depression) really hits the US, only people with skills in manufacturing and construction have real worth. Telecommuters may be really hot using Microsoft products, but basically their job could (and will) be out-sourced anywhere overseas.
Thank you Tim Rutten for this very timely and well put article. The well-off get reduced congestion and the rest of us get to suck fumes crawling around at 5 mph. I agree 100%. Viaragosa and the rest at MTA would sell their asses if the price was right.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2006/260706rfidcard.htm
If you live here, get out of the LA Basin. It is a toxic sewer waiting to explode. The richfilth always turn prosperity into degradation, bounty into mass hunger. They have done it before, they are doing it now. Cut off their heads or simply accept the chains they have put on you. The bought and paid for politicians are paid to smile at you while shoving the RDIF chip up your ass as the bloated richfilth animals sharpen their knives for the blood feast - and you are the featured entre. The monsters are playing for keeps while America plays dead.
Here comes Iran…..
wood boot:
Traffic surveys I’ve read or heard in the DC area (the LA of the east) have demonstrated that those empty-looking HOV/bus lanes are actually carrying more people than the other three or four slow-moving lanes combined.
But, if the HOV lane tolls are sufficiently high as to not slow the trips for buses and multi-occupant users, AND if the toll revenue gets earmarked strictly for public transportaton improvements, then maybe it is an idea worth looking at.
Why not commuter rail in LA? With Park and Ride in the sprawling suburbs. Cleaner, more efficient, more democratic.
They are selling public highways to foreign investors. These toll roads will be corporate owned, this is happening all over the place. The only people that lose are the people that actually built and paid through thier taxes to build roads that are being sold to people like the King of Spain.
You can’t think of it as any sort of “progressive taxation”. To a wealthy person, $4.00 for 12 miles is like throwing a few cents out the window; nothing at all. This is the problem: because economic inequality has become so great, actual numeric dollar values are only either of serious significance (to most), or they are of no significance (to a few). This means, that in essence the rich are getting their expansive freeways free while the rest of us suffer to pay or simply have no access.
If local governments really want to do toll roads right, then what they need to institute is fee amounts that come up close to the “suffer value” for the well-to-do, while lowering the cost (below, but close to, the “suffer value” - or maybe just contingent on fuel economies or carpooling as before) for those with less. This would be a fairer system and would net much more revenue. It would also make the rich think twice about the true value of the public resources they currently use so cheaply.
If they are going to charge a toll then no public funds should be used to maintain it. Simple.