The GoobNet SPEED fixes Los Angeles traffic

Rich: All right. What is happening this week?

Nina: I was in Vegas last week.

Rich: Cool. Did you win anything?

Nina: Nope. Just kept losing. Finally I reached my limit and just stopped.

Jhonny: What’s your limit?

Nina: None of your goddamn business.

Wen: My limit is $44.95.

Jhonny: So is mine. But in euros. I only gamble in euros.

Nina: Of course you do.

Rich: So where did you stay?

Nina: Main Street Station.

Rich: Where’s that?

Nina: It’s downtown. On Main.

Jhonny: Fremont Street?

Nina: Yeah, just up Main from Fremont.

Jhonny: I’ve never really been to Fremont Street.

Nina: I don’t usually spend much time up there. I usually get a hotel on the Strip.

Jhonny: Me too. But I’ve only been there a couple of times.

Rich: Where do you usually like to stay?

Nina: I’ve stayed at a few places. Circus Circus, the Mirage, the Excalibur, ... oh, and the Bellagio. I think that one’s the best.

Rich: Let’s do a SPEED trip to Vegas.

Gaby: That phrase could be misconstructed.

Rich: What, “SPEED trip”?

Gaby: Yeah.

Rich: I guess it could. Okay, so what should we talk about this week?

Wen: Hey, Edvard had a good thing about traffic last week.

Nina: What about traffic?

Wen: It was about, like, this report that said where the most congested freeway sections in the country were.

Nina: Bet we have all of them.

Wen: Not all of them. But we had, like, five out of the top ten, and shit.

Gaby: So how do we fix LA traffic?

Rich: Get people to drive less.

Wen: That’s the same thing that Edvard said.

Jhonny: Well, he’s right. If people don’t drive everywhere, boom, no traffic. Just like that.

Gaby: Yeah, but getting people to drive less is the problem.

Jhonny: The problem will solve itself.

Gaby: How’s that?

Jhonny: Look, the daily commute is just getting longer and longer. The more cars are on the road, the more backed up the freeways will get. And it can get plenty worse. There’s already people who drive, like, two hours to work and two hours back. For an eight hour workday, that’s half their day. Literally fifty percent of their day is spent going to work, being at work, and coming back from work. How are they raising kids? Being in plays? Doing all that other shit that people do? I don’t know.

Rich: So you think that, like, people will stop doing that?

Jhonny: They won’t have a choice. I mean, what happens when the 10, or the 91, or whichever freeway you need to take – what happens when it gets so backed up that you can’t get to work within a reasonable time? What happens when you have to spend 60% of your day? 70%? Nobody seems to be thinking about this.

Gaby: So what do you propose?

Jhonny: I don’t know.

Wen: Well, Edvard said, like, people could take public transit to work once a week. That right there would help.

Gaby: Yeah. That would help. But I don’t think everybody would be able to do that. Right? Some people can’t get to where they’re going on public transit.

Nina: Then those people should demand public transit that goes to where they want to go.

Rich: Yeah. There’s that Measure R money. LA is already building some stuff with that.

Gaby: What are they building?

Rich: Well, like, the Expo Line. That’s a light rail line that serves USC and the Coliseum. Then there’s supposed to be a light rail line to LAX.

Nina: You know what they should do? They should build train lines along all the freeways.

Rich: Rail lines along the freeways? What kind of rail lines?

Nina: Doesn’t matter. Subways, light rail, heavy rail, doesn’t matter. They just gotta build lines along each freeway. See, everybody in LA already knows how to get around on the freeways. Like when you tell people where you live, you don’t say, “Oh, I’m a couple of miles from the Blue Line stop on PCH.” No. You say, “Oh, I’m off the 710 at PCH.”

Wen: That’s true.

Nina: Not only that, all the people who take forever to get to work on the freeway. They’ll be sitting there on the freeway, not going anywhere, and what happens? A train, full of commuters, blows right by. Then another one. Then another one. And you’re like, “I’m sitting here in my car when I could be going to work on that thing? Fuck this!” And then you start taking the train to work.

Jhonny: Yeah, that could work.

Nina: Bet your ass it’ll work. That’s what we shoulda been spending that TARP money on.

Gaby: How long do you think it would take to build that many train lines?

Nina: I don’t know. It would take a while. But it’s definitely a lot easier than adding more lanes to, like, every single freeway in Southern California. Which is the only way you can really improve traffic other than getting cars off the roads.

Rich: So is there any opposition to this plan? Rail lines along each freeway?

Gaby: Wait. What if you want to go somewhere that’s not near a freeway? Then what do you do?

Nina: Well, nobody says you can’t put some train lines someplace else. That would be another thing to do. You know, like all the freeways that were never finished. The 710 was supposed to meet up with the 210 in Pasadena. The 105 was supposed to go all the way to the 5. You could do that with the train lines. They don’t need as much space as a freeway. Hell, if you make a subway, you don’t need any space on the surface.

Rich: Good. Anything else?

Wen: Nope.

Jhonny: I’m good.

Rich: Then it’s settled. Nina, make it happen. Report back to this group every six months with your progress.

Nina: What’s my budget for this task?

Rich: How much did you lose in Vegas?

Nina: None of your damn business. I told you.

Rich: All right. Well, then the budget comes out of the SPEED trip to Vegas.

Jhonny: So it’s fix the traffic or go to Vegas?

Rich: Right.

Wen: So we can either go to Vegas for one weekend or solve all of LA’s traffic problems once and for all, reducing carbon emissions and improving air quality, while we create jobs at the same time?

Rich: Right.

Gaby: A two day trip to a city, which will complete almost as fast as it started, or a long term investment that revitalises our fair city’s future for generations to come?

Rich: Right.

Gaby: Wow.

Jhonny: Gotta go with Vegas.

Wen: Sorry, LA.

Gaby: Can we skip next year’s trip and start then?

Jhonny: Let’s go to Vegas for two years and start in three years.

Wen: Why not go to Vegas for three years and start in four years?

Rich: Now you’re thinking like a politician.