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ChineseIs Villaraigosa the Anti-Rail Mayor?
[tags]villaraigosa, mayor, bru, metro, los angeles, yaroslavsky, fare hikes[/tags]
Here is the sound bite from the fare increase hearing last Thursday, wonderfully captured by SO.CA.TA Treasurer Henry Fung.
The Mayor is ripping Zev a New One. Very inappropriate. A.V. has really lost it in what he does in public. Listen to what he says in this emotional rant. He cites costs showing that the rail subsidy is more. He may claim he supports rail, but his cutting of rail service was a VERY real proposal. Try getting back the late night rail service that was cut 24 months ago.
The Purple, Green and Gold Line lost an hour of service and the most recent bus cuts removed the Green Line replacement bus service.
Another proposal, buying buses on credit, so you could pay off the loans out of bus operating revenue in a few years would only serve to damage the system even more. This no brainer idea was first brought forth by Bernard “buses get in the way of our police cars” Parks at a recent Metro Committee Meeting.
If this kind of terminal dumbness is the best proposal from Jaime de la Vega and the Mayor obviously accepted this advice, then we are still in for a rough road. We can’t let this continue to happen.
We need to communicate with the Mayor and we need to let him know that the “Metro Enterprise” must run on a financially sound basis, rather then his magical thinking style of problem solving.
Yes, I know all this may be true, but it is done. The Mayor lost, but he did acknowledge that Sup. Molina at least had the temerity and backbone to come up with a proposal. His arguments that Zev had not helped come up with a solution to this crisis (and had in part led to this crisis, having been a Boardmember for the years leading up to this) is both hurtful politically but not without some modicum of truth.
Zev is the same flipflopper that politically had prevented Expo from becoming a reality a decade ago, and yet been its greatest supporter at this time; the same can be argued with Sup. Burke, who is also fighting the Green Line extension yet in so doing is also enhancing the likelihood that her cherished Crenshaw Corridor project will be a second-rate busway. Yet she, too, is now a prime Expo supporter.
Zev and Yvonne, in a previous era, approved the Consent Decree that got us into this mess and avoided making a decision that might be politically unpopular, and the Mayor, in a previous era, was one of our champions at preserving late-night service, while he helped move the decree forward.
Stepping back from all this, I could argue that we need to save the politicians from themselves in the painful choices that have no easy answer. The real problem may be that we have a governor and a president that treat mass transit (and transportation in general) as something that gets third-rate funding.
This decision should be put behind us because this infighting will take away from pressuring the voters and Sacramento and Washington to fund transportation with the same zeal we do education and health care.
Discussion
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I like how the old guy sitting in the bottom right of the photo is looking at Antonio like, “what the hell are you doing here?” Ha!
This puts even more justification into my opinion that Antonio is a whiny little bitch…and a ham.
Thanks for the story on this. I have been covering Villaraigosa, too on the blogs and attend many of the City Council meetings. This whole City has turned into one giant “racket” and everyone is in “cahoots”. If you do something to go against that, you are gonna irritate the current administration at City Hall. That’s why we need a NEW administration at City Hall. And we can start with the Mayor in ‘09. This guy just can’t control himself. He says a lot of things I certainly don’t think an elected official should be saying. Go to youtube and search “villaraigosa” and take a look. Or check them out at http://neighborhoodcouncil.blogspot.com
Zuma Dogg
ZAP (Zuma’s Activist Program)
It is important to view the mayor’s actions for what they are: political ploys.
Here is an abbreviated summary of this tactic: call for something popular using rhetoric and PR, knowing full well that it cannot pass. Gain prestige for your “advocacy”, blame others directly or through implication for making the hard choices that need to be made.
The mayor’s demands to the MTA are like the familiar Republican strategy in California politics: never vote for tax, but never turn down an expediture.
It is sociopathic public policy, but winning politics.
I almost don’t blame the mayor for what he said - I blame *us*, as a people, for not knowing enough about the topic to understand why the MTA raised fares.
Missing from the whole transit discussion. Who is paying for all the free dumping by autos of carbon dioxide into the air? Once you look at it this way you see that autos are being subsidized and transit riders unfairly taxed.
http://www.freepublictransit.org
Who is paying for all the free dumping by autos of carbon dioxide into the air?
I was unaware that operating an auto was not only untaxed but entirely free.
Once you look at it this way you see that autos are being subsidized and transit riders unfairly taxed.
Transit riders don’t pollute? Transit riders don’t come anywhere near close to paying operating costs nevermind total costs. Newsflash, until you cover costs taxes do not exist. Hey, tell us about particulates.
Yes. Transit riders DO NOT POLLUTE!
Public transit compared to absence of public transit is a net mitigator of carbon dioxide emmission. The taxes and expenses of autos and sprawl ARE NOWHERE CLOSE to paying for their externalites. Autos are a net polluter compared to an all public transit/bicycle/walking world.