By Stephen Corwin, February 12, 2015
What
they tell you about Los Angeles is that it’s a city for cars. They’ll
tell you you can’t live here without one, and that being in one can be
frustrating. They’ll tell you about bad drivers and parking problems and
about how the meter maid has a stick up his ass. But none of that
matters, because those things aren’t problems—they’re just annoying.
See,
driving is like smoking. It’s fun in the beginning. If it’s not
pleasant, it’s at least exciting. Maybe it gives you a little bit of a
rush, but as time wears on, it becomes routine. That routine can get
pretty annoying, but nobody ever stopped smoking because it was
annoying; People stop smoking because they don’t want cancer. Well guess what:
Los Angeles has cancer.
Our
experiences driving cars in this city are, for the most part, fleeting.
We drive somewhere, we get out of the car, we close the door, and we
walk away. But to think that we can escape the world that cars have
created as easily as we escape the car itself is foolish. In fact, when
we leave our cars, we walk into that world. We have to live in that putrid mess.
I’ve
heard enough about traffic. I don’t care. People only complain about
traffic because they don’t have the balls to talk about the real issue,
which is that car culture is leeching away their quality of life, and
there’s nothing they can do about it. We’ve spent more than enough time
at this point talking about how being in a car is annoying. Los Angeles
has cancer. Let’s talk about that.
Let’s
talk about how Los Angeles is a city where construction projects can
fence off whole blocks, including the sidewalks, without offering people
on foot an alternative. Let’s talk about how when that happens, no one
even considers converting one of the two car lanes into a temporary
sidewalk, because dear god, that might cause slight
inconvenience to people in cars. And let’s talk about how ironic it is
that inconveniencing people in cars is the end of the world, but doing
the same to people on foot is a non-issue. Then let’s talk about how
when frustrated walkers decide to use the car lane rather than take the
ridiculous detour, the city’s totally acceptable solution to that
problem is not to concede space to those people, but rather to bolt permanent, metal signs into the middle of the sidewalk to keep them from doing so. That is cancer.
Let’s talk about how Los Angeles is a city where a new bridge
is deemed ready to open the moment it can handle car traffic, and how
our traffic engineers think painting the road with an image of a person
on a bike should be considered safe, even on a one-lane bridge with a completely blind corner that handles so much car traffic that the stencil is worn off after less than 6 months. That is cancer.
Let’s talk about how in Los Angeles, the interests of the film industry are enough to sway the city counsel into making us the first city in the entire country to ever unpaint a green bike lane, despite its significant and measurably positive impact on safety. That is cancer.
And most importantly, let’s talk about how when it’s 80 damn degrees in
the middle of winter and I suggest going for a bike ride, the idea flops
because no one can think of a place that’s safe enough to do so. Cancer.
Let’s
talk about how in Los Angeles, people will back their pickup trucks
into a parking space for a bike, totally destroying it, and drive off
without so much as an apology. That is cancer.
Let’s
talk about how in Los Angeles, it’s not unusual when a friend calls me
feeling anxious about starting a new job, not because of the job itself,
but because she’s worried about the impact the commute is going to have on her quality of life. That is cancer.
And most importantly, let’s talk about how when it’s 80 damn degrees in
the middle of winter and I suggest going for a bike ride, the idea flops
because no one can think of a place that’s safe enough to do so. Cancer.
Over the last several years we’ve made a lot of progress toward getting
people out of their cars, and we’re proud of it. We should be. Changing
long-standing habits isn’t easy. But just like quitting smoking, driving
less alone won’t cure our cancer. Fixing the world for people outside
of cars will.