"Punish us until we are green"

Berkeley is trying to solve its traffic problems with the same punitive anti-car measures as San Francisco. This letter is from the lively online Berkeley publication, The Berkeley Gazette.

PARKING FEES

Editors, Daily Planet:

The proposal for night parking fees is another one of those “punish us until we are green” proposals. Yes, please, charge us more for less. Purify us. Make us sacrifice until we have saved the earth. Tear down parking lots, and make us pay to park on the streets, then complain that there are lines at the lots that haven’t yet been torn down. Everyone pays, except, of course, Code Pink. (But don’t go overboard, by say, increasing public transit, extending the hours of BART or making rides cheaper, faster, and more convenient.)

We don’t need to go out anyway. We will all sit in our homes and read books written on recycled rags illuminated by ecologically correct low wattage light bulbs. After all patronizing downtown business wastes the earth’s resources. We’ve already said Fairfax to the UC, Berkeley, Cinema, and Act I and 2 movie houses. That probably isn’t enough. Now the city is determined to get rid of the UA, California and Shattuck, the last three downtown theaters, in the interest of increasing empty storefronts in the neighborhood. I don’t suppose this will do a world of good for the live theaters, the Rep and Aurora. The Freight and Salvage may want to reconsider moving downtown.

But we here in Berkeley are all so virtuous. Unfortunately most of the rest of the world will go watch movies in the malls.

Paul Glusman