Change gears on transportation solution

By: PHIL STRICKLAND - For The Californian | Friday, December 14, 2007 9:53 PM PST ∞

Concrete serves two important functions in Southwest Riverside County.

It is the medium we use to cover all that growing stuff with highways that immediately fill to capacity and it provides an almost impermeable substance in which to bury any ideas that might undercut the notion that its first use is the only way to resolve the agony of our commutes.

Even as we suffer under the burden of a weakened housing market, projections are that growth here will continue and will require some sort of accommodation to, if not free up our highways, at least keep the arteries from clogging completely.

If our highway system were a patient, it would be in triage, but we all know that government is the mother of all overflowing waiting rooms.

So now officials representing Riverside County -- its cities, consultants, nervous builders and the transportation commission -- are trying to figure out a way to alleviate the problem.

Actually, according to them, the solution is clear: Pour more concrete.

The real problem, they say, is how to pay for it. More specifically, the real problem is which way they'll pick our pockets to come up with the estimated $13.8 billion they figure will be necessary just to keep our clogged state from worsening as our population grows.

One of the obvious ways is adding yet another fee to the cost of new housing.

The argument in favor of building yet another fee into the price of a new house in Riverside County is based on the reality that by adding to our problems we are serving as a safety valve for the economic engine driving Long Beach and Los Angeles and to a lesser degree San Diego.

If you subscribe to that notion, then the question becomes, why should we pay for the solution to their problem?

Good question.

The answer, according to advocates -- read: homebuilders -- of spreading the pain among existing homeowners, is that adding the fee to new homes might drive the cost out of reach of first-time homebuyers.

The other solution they see is to raise the taxes on everything in sight.

It is surprising that they haven't come up with a tax on taxes. Don't laugh, that is not an unheard of thing. They call it a surtax and it has been used elsewhere to pilfer money when officials don't want to be accused of raising taxes.

The pitiful part of this whole argument is that, once again, government has overlooked what could be a major component of the solution. That being rail -- light, mono, maglev or some combination thereof.

In our auto-addicted world, the idea of giving up our cars and using public transportation is heresy. Off with their heads.

You have to wonder how people in New York, Chicago, Montreal, Washington, D.C., and Toronto, to name a few, survive reading, chatting, putting on makeup or even having a drinkee-poo or two (on the way home, of course) as they ride the rails to and fro.

Rail, for all its advantages -- in fact, it is hard to find a real downside -- is but a part of the solution.

To complete the equation we must start charging tolls for some lanes, or even whole highways, and expand the use of car-pool lanes.

If, for example, we had a four-lane highway in each direction, one lane could be set aside for toll use, another for carpoolers and the other two for use as they are now.

Add a rail line and you are much closer to easing our transportation problem than by pouring another lane each way.

Of course, if the various components of commerce could be spread more evenly about the region that would help too. But the location of private enterprise is just that, a private decision.

The manner in which we deal with traffic isn't, but until we insist that public officials think beyond the concrete vault in which they've buried themselves, we need to come to grips with the idea that traffic will only get worse. As will the taxes and fees necessary to keep pouring concrete and promulgating the problem.

You really do get it coming and going.

Oh, there is one other use for concrete in Southern California. It fills the space between the ears of too many public servants when it comes to transportation issues.

Phil Strickland is a resident of Temecula and a regular columnist for The Californian. E-mail: philipestrickland@yahoo.com.