Buyer's Remorse

Jeremy Rosenberg, writing for KCET, relays the sad story of how LA ditched its growing multimodal transportation infrastructure for a network of clogged highways:

For reasons as basic and base as bureaucratic power grabs, expediency, and zero-sum options in lieu of smart and nuanced planning, Los Angeles – and many other major cities – wound up smothered with concrete and asphalt goliaths named like Hollywood sequels or Super Bowls – the 5, the 105, the 605, on and on.

How did this all come to pass? Collier-Burns increased transporation-related taxes and allocated millions and millions of additional dollars for freeways. Collier-Burns raised the fuel tax by 50%, vehicle registration fees by 200%, and in a maneuver with an efficacy that should never go underestimated, centralized bureaucratic power in one agency – the California Division of Highways (which later became Caltrans).

Sadly LA wasn’t the only one.