Will the Metro to the Beach Ease L.A.'s Traffic Woes? Probably Not.
Mayor Garcetti's hopeless effort to rewrite history.
"We're literally rewriting history with this train," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday at a preview of a new metro line extension that ends in downtown Santa Monica. City officials are hoping the $1.5 billion extension will ease traffic congestion along the 10 Freeway.
It probably won't.
"Los Angeles has been building a rail system for 25 years," Reason Foundation Transportation Policy Analist Baruch Feigenbaum said in an interview last year with Reason TV. "All of the places where rail possibly makes sense are already served by rail."
Los Angeles, which was built up around cars—not rail transit. "Everybody wants to be New York City," Feigenbaum said, but in LA "people live in many areas and work in many areas…so you've got people going from everywhere to everywhere."
To hear Feigenbaum's ideas on how to solve the city's congestion problems, check out the video below:
