"Failure has no consequences"

Traffic Talk

This sounds familiar. New Yorker Fred Siegel visits LA:

...Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti offers a host of plans to alleviate the [traffic]problem: Vision Zero, Great Streets, Complete Streets, Streets for People, and the optimistically named Mobility Plan 2035. 

But any proposal to ease congestion runs up against the gangrenous environmentalists who view gridlock positively as a means of reducing car ridership and “saving” the environment. Los Angeles, explains urbanist Joel Kotkin, is “a region uncomfortable in its own skin.” 

The city was built for the automobile, but the liberals who run things have been trying to change that. They talk about putting highways “on a diet,” but they’ve only succeeded in worsening the traffic problem. Despite massive investments in public transportation, notes the Los Angeles Times, transit ridership has declined. Free H.O.V. lanes and “pay to play” H.O.V. lanes have made little difference. In a one-party town, failure has no consequences. Los Angeles mostly just throws more money at the problem...

We’re headed back to Brooklyn soon, anyway. As bad as traffic can be in New York, the issue doesn’t infuse every discussion of where and what to do as it does in L.A. In New York, we have real estate for that.