Carpool lanes are a sensible and equitable way to encourage responsible behavior. People who choose to ride to work with other people or those who purchase low-emission, high-mileage vehicles have the opportunity to travel more conveniently while reducing congestion, pollution and fuel consumption.
Note the word choose.
Congestion pricing will reduce traffic as well, but it will do so by allocating a precious resource by income. In California, we long have used everybody's tax money -- mainly from gasoline purchases -- to build and maintain roads.
Moreover, in Southern California, the middle class and working poor have no choice but to use the freeways to get back and forth to work and school because, decade after decade, public officials have encouraged urban sprawl while neglecting public transit. For most commuters today, the highway is the only way.
California's great public resources -- free schools and universities, libraries, the freeway network -- once were creators of opportunity. And because so many availed themselves of that opportunity, these resources became powerful engines of equality -- distributors, if you will, of the American dream.
Today, as The Times recently reported, public schools are going hat in hand to parents hoping to make up for the shortfalls in public funds. Affluent parents in affluent neighborhoods will find that money; the children of the poor will do without and fall further behind.
Now the MTA proposes to address the all-too-real problem of gridlock on the cheap -- and on the backs of working people.
Since when was that "a hard decision"?
It's the sort of thinking that will make Los Angeles and Southern California the sort of place Harrington described in "The Other America" -- one where "life is lived in common, but not in community."
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timothy.rutten@latimes.com
