Traffic on the Westside is awful, and there's no room to build more roads.
I think we should build a subway down Wilshire!
But that'll take ten years. In the meantime, I think we
should implement a bus-only lane on Wilshire during rush hour.
That would make the bus only slightly slower for me than driving,
and make commuting by bus much more predictable.
It might even be good enough to get me out of my car.
But it would be wrong to destroy the character of
Wilshire Boulevard by converting sidewalks into new lanes.
And it would be wrong to overload neighboring streets with
traffic diverted from Wilshire by the bus lane.
Instead, we need to ramp up Metro's efforts to encourage
commuters to switch to the bus.
For instance, we should give free or deeply discounted
universal transit passes to local residents and employees.
This has been shown to be highly effective in other cities, and
Pasadena is considering doing this to help solve its own traffic problem.
That could get enough people out of their cars to eliminate
the congestion caused by the bus lane.