I-Callahan

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Monorail the Real Solution

Frank Swertlow is at least half right in his “Bus and carpool lanes” squib (“In & Out,” Dec. 29). But bus and carpool lanes as a “solution” to surface-traffic arteries that are approaching continuous daytime gridlock conditions? Please.

The solution, perhaps never to be adopted, is monorail. Over a dozen presentations were made to various public-interest groups, including the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce, when the subway plan was adopted. But there is no political clout to monorail, so it was not adopted. It would be an innovation. Can you imagine bureaucrats innovating?

No newspaper, TV station, or any other medium of public service has ever campaigned for the idea or lambasted the imbeciles who administer the Metrorail system except to cover the continuous, never-to-be-contained overruns of construction costs. San Francisco’s BART system was in place when we adopted the subway “plan,” and it had cost overrruns nearly equal to the original estimates. So it’s not like this all couldn’t have been foreseen except by bureaucrats and politicians.

Why don’t you mount a campaign to roast the bureaucrats and demand hearings on a plan to go monorail and send all of the remaining area proposed for subways to oblivion? All of the rights of way are in place: flood-control channels, existing freeway networks, etc.

DAVID M. CALLAHAN

Real estate appraiser

West L.A.

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