Los Angeles Freeways, Oh How I Loathe You

Please prepare for a bitter rant.

I love Los Angeles… from a theoretical standpoint. I love the promise of the beach, the mountains, the desert (that is to say, the unpaved desert, because the whole stinking place is a desert, but you just can’t tell because of all of the concrete and stolen water… but I digress), the theatre, the museums, the culture, all only an “LA Hour” away. For the uninitiated, let me explain. An “LA Hour” is, however long it takes to get to some wonderful destination based on quantities of traffic and road construction that are entirely beyond your control. Traffic that has no logical pattern or end in sight. And road construction that is really a giant farce because—let’s face it—despite all of the repairs the road never seems to get any better. 

So, as I said, I love LA. And if fourteen million people left and all of the freeways were replaced with winding, tree-lined roads, I might move back. 
It’s very tempting to here descend into a rant about traffic, exhaust, and never being able to find the right parking spot. Instead, let me try to say something useful. 

Cars are great. They get us—and all of our stuff—from one place to another in tremendous comfort, ease, and safety. In the last three months we have traveled over 11,000 miles by car starting as far east as Washington, DC, as far North as Banff, Canada, as far south as San Diego, California, and as far west as the San Juan Islands, Washington—where we are now. They let people visit remote forests, mountains, deserts, and lakes. And they take us, most importantly, to see people who we dearly love to see. 

Cars are also noisy, smelly, and dangerous. Sitting in them alienates us from the world around us and every minute we spend in traffic brings us closer to a heart attack—both because of the stress it creates and exercise we are not getting. Our road infrastructure is threatening to take over the world. Etc.

This is where I want to focus my rant. 

We started using cars to get us places we couldn’t get on foot. But, then we began to make more and more roads. As people crowded these roads, we responded by making more roads and making them broader and broader. And so, walking became less attractive, leading us to drive more and… build more roads.

If you live in the suburbs, your neighborhood is probably bordered by a state highway. Many of these are a full block wide with cars going a mile a minute. Crossing is unpleasant and dangerous. So, you don’t cross the street on foot or walk along it. As a result, you never leave your neighborhood except by car. Which basically means that our car-centric society has trapped you within specific geographical boundaries. 

Or, you live downtown in a bustling metropolis. Everything is within easy reach: your work, your favorite coffee shop, groceries, stores, parks, etc. However, in between you and all of this wonderment, are four lanes of traffic. They aren’t going a mile a minute, but you need to look up from your latte, or they will take your knees off. They are loud, and they are pumping pollutants straight from their exhaust pipes into your espresso foam. 

Okay, positive stuff. 

We didn’t ask for this inundation of cars; we got them one sloppy decision at a time. Each decision by itself seemed to be a good one, but a hundred years later, we’re trapped and can’t figure out how to move forward—except in a car. There are, however, some things that we can do individually and societally. Maybe our kids won’t be in the same mess. 

We should drive less. If the great restaurant is four times as far away as the good restaurant. We should probably go to the good restaurant. Or we should stay in and have our neighbors over for dinner. We should go to nearby stores instead of ones farther away. We should move closer to work and/or work from home. 

We need to create more pedestrian areas, places where you can walk from home to commercial and retail spaces without ever encountering a car. These spaces are safer, more pleasant, and allow for more commercial exchange and density. Places where you can wander and sip your latte without fear and enjoy your espresso foam as your barista intended it. 

What are your thoughts? Ready to give up your car? Or ready for everyone else to give up theirs?