Public Transit In L.A. Is For Other People, Not Natives

"...Actually, Los Angeles already has two public transit systems, one of them full and one of them pretty much empty. The one that's full is the bus system. Its riders are mostly people who can't afford a car or â€" for one reason or another â€" can't operate one... The other transit system looks like public transportation should â€" light, heavy or subterranean, it runs on rails. It has stations and not just "stops." It's really expensive, so it should appeal to people with a choice, but the problem is that most of them still don't choose to use it.

...Worse yet, people once again have started nodding their heads when one or another dough-faced urban planner from the Institute for a Joyless Future or some pol with lots of contractor friends starts talking up another public transit project.

...Our transit system is a system in name only. What it most resembles is a defective connect-the-dots picture â€" lines running from one point to another, but never meeting to form something intelligible â€" or convenient. If Gertrude Stein had been forced to ride the MTA, she'd have concluded that there is no there there, or here.

...Try to get somewhere you really need to go on one of them and, suddenly, a traffic jam doesn't look all that inconvenient."