[Peakoil-announce] Los Angeles' residents learn to love the subway

[Jenny Goldie]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/carbesotted-city-learning-to-love-public-transport-20101126-18ald.html

Car-besotted city learning to love public transport 
November 27, 2010 
LOS ANGELES: This city with a car obsession - a place where people love their wheels almost as much as they hate the traffic - has embarked on the biggest expansion of its public transit system in decades in an effort to change the way people navigate its sprawling, clogged streets and freeways.

Los Angeles transit officials, after years of debate, have approved a 13.8 kilometre extension of the Purple Line subway, from Koreatown through a crowded corridor of offices, homes, museums, schools and shopping centres in Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood.

The projects are being financed by a half-cent sales tax surcharge approved by Los Angeles voters two years ago and expected to raise $US40 billion over the next 30 years.

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Still, the most intriguing question may be whether a place that has so embraced the culture of cars will make the kind of lifestyle adjustment envisioned by mass transit enthusiasts.

A public transit advocate, Joel Epstein, said changing demographics and population patterns - and ever-rising frustration over traffic - would inevitably drive people from cars underground.

''There's a whole new type of Angelino who has no cultural opposition to [taking public transport],'' he said. ''The whole old school LA thinking that people don't ride subways, that's a thing of the past.''

The New York Times

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