Can-Do Society

Downtown Tokyo, originally uploaded by pbev.

Point out that additional freeway capacity must be central to any infrastructure plan that honestly expects to accommodate a growing Southern California population, and seven times out of ten you'll get a response adhering loosely to the following script:

“We can't double-deck the freeways in Los Angeles—one big earthquake and they’d collapse.”

In my experience, the earthquake card is typically played by people who are dogmatically opposed to cars—and, by extension, freeways. These folks aim to end debate early (before it turns philosophical), and operate on the assumption that you won’t take to the Internets, where, among other things, you can find photos of multi-level freeways snaking through Tokyo and Taipei—places, of course, where the ground shakes with greater ferocity and frequency.

Truth is, for all the big talk of transforming Los Angeles into a world-class “Jewel of the Pacific,” the Asians are, quite frankly, shaming us in the department of rolling up the sleeves, embracing the latest technological and engineering advances, and doing right by the people.

As they build the necessary infrastructure, we continue to spin our wheels and sink deeper into the mud; electing people politicians who campaign, cynically enough, on “bold ideas.”

Today, our cars run on fossil fuels. Perhaps, someday, we’ll all be pulling into hydrogen fueling stations. How we ultimately fill our tanks is yet to be determined, but one thing is crystal clear: most of us will not give up the Los Angeles lifestyle to live in Los Angeles.