The Los Angeles Times published a truly remarkable article today: "MTA Fears A Bottleneck At OC Line."
Basically, Metropolitan Transportation Authority is complaining the Orange County Transportation Authority's ongoing program of freeway widening is making MTA look bad. OCTA's freeway-centered investment collides with MTA's lightrail-centered priorities at the LA-OC county line in the form of traffic bottlenecks. It's a vivid illustration of the different outcomes of the two agencies priorities.
OCTA has funneled its money into transportation modes the vast majority of people actually use: freeway and roads. As a result, our freeways move faster than those in Los Angeles. The MTA, by contrast, has prioritized its money into modes of public transit that far fewer people use, i.e. light rail. Or as OCTA Director Jerry Amante put it:
"We build lanes, not trains."
And we're supposed to be proud of that? OK, so widened freeways may be useful in relieving traffic in the short-term. As long as we have all these cars on the road, we have to have something for them to drive on. But really, wouldn't some long-term solutions also help here?
Follow me after the flip for more as I explain why OCTA shouldn't exactly be gloating over this...
As noted here a few days back, the California Transportation Commission voted earlier this week to allocate billions more from the recent highway bond to urban projects, including the widening of the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass.
Unfortunately, to do this, the CTC robbed the rural Peter to pay for the urban Paul's freeway widening, and the folks in Mendocino, San Luis Obispo, and Fontana are *pissed*. Mendocino, which lost funding for the Willits bypass on Highway 101, had this to say, from the Ukiah Daily Record:
"This is clearly a blatant display of power politics disguised as a competitive process. There's not any other way of saying it," Dow said, adding that the nine governor-appointed commissioners, not one of whom lives north of the Golden Gate Bridge, acted as if their function was "to bring home the bacon to whatever community they came from," rather than address the entire state's needs.
