Gridlock Grind
"America's Worst Commutes" cover story [May 7] told it like it is. There may be a partial solution that wasn't mentioned. Carpools help a lot, though it's hard to link up with people going from the same point A to point B at a regular time. What if strangers rode with strangers? It happens now in unique situations, specifically across the San Francisco Bay Bridge in what is referred to as casual carpools. Drivers and passengers get quick access to the bridge toll free and use of the carpool lane. And the system takes cars off the road and could work for most any commute.
LYMAN TAYLOR
San Jose, Calif.
As a professional traffic engineer, I recommend the solution of timing and coordinating traffic signals as one of the major steps to end congestion and, in turn, pollution. These are inexpensive and timely methods compared with facilities and other major solutions that take time to develop. Unfortunately, a synonym for a traffic signal is stoplight. It doesn't have to be.
JEROME D. FRANKLIN
Skokie, Ill.
"Road Warriors" stated "The issue mainly boils down to population growth outpacing road building." Wrong! The issue is too many developers are allowed to build offices where there are no workers and housing where there are no jobs. Taxpayers then have to fund the roads to try to get the two together while developers take their profits and do it all over again. Perhaps government finances could be partnered with office and housing developers to get the home-office within reasonable distance so our family structure can survive. The costs of highways would go a long way toward new business and housing development.
TERRY SLATON
Federal Way, Wash.
Your article on worst commutes overlooks the best method of curing this problem. Just disperse the job sites. Why in this age of high-speed communication, transportation, and overnight delivery in every hamlet do we think that everything has to be crammed into a few huge megalopolises with all the attendant problems? If labor supply is a worry, it must be obvious that jobs attract labor as that is what is causing the present mess. Build it, and they will come! This country is blessed with vast areas in which to expand that already offer better living conditions. For example, in 1992, Sioux Falls, S.D., was rated as the best place in the country to live, yet it has enjoyed only modest, although healthy, growth.
JOHN W. LARSON
Sun City West, Ariz.
Clearly, a massive, Marshall Plan-size investment in road construction is necessary. Mass transit, while certainly useful in certain large metropolitan areas with sufficient population density to justify its huge financial cost (along with the massive subsidies necessary to make it affordable to those who use it), simply cannot solve America's traffic crisis. America is paying the price for decades of neglect of its roads.
MICHAEL J. CORBIN
Faribault,
Minn.
There was no discussion of ideas that would enable people to work but not commute. By encouraging and enabling people to work at home or at satellite offices, the number of commuters on the road could be dramatically decreased. The idea has been adopted by many companies, and they have call or service centers located in small cities and towns where the commute to work is minutes, not hours. In addition to less stressed employees, there are other benefits like lower business costs. It can be a major plus in large cities, where there is a preponderance of white-collar jobs.
CHRISTOPHER M. TIMM
Albuquerque, N.M.
Living and commuting on the San Francisco Bay Area peninsula, the U.S. 101 corridor, and often traveling in rush-hour traffic, I am seldom hindered by the mess. With the exception of a complete road closure, I maintain forward momentum on my motorcycle throughout my commute via legal use of the commuter high-occupancy vehicle lanes. I realize that motorcycles may be an answer for only a small percentage of commuters part of the time (I use mine daily), but the desire for rapid commute times should be enough to persuade many drivers to try one. Add lower initial cost and half the average fuel consumption of four-wheeled vehicles along with the fun factor, and, to me and an elite few, vehicles with more than two wheels are not an option for the daily grind.
ROB KOPE
Millbrae, Calif.
I live approximately 14 miles from my workplace in midtown Manhattan. Every morning my commute on public transportation, using the express bus costing twice the regular subway fare, takes me from 45 minutes to 1
CELINA VEGA
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Your cover story on traffic congestion makes little of the important fact that travel times in Los Angeles have dropped over the past decade, despite considerable population growth. One important reason is increasingly dispersed employment. You report that Los Angeles "is undergoing a veritable transit boom," but Los Angeles County transit ridership peaked in 1985, the year L.A. County diverted sales tax revenues from the bus fleet to a capital account to fund rail lines. Bus fares went up, ridership went down, and 22 years later total L.A. transit ridership on buses and trains has yet to recover. Los Angeles can make good use of additional transit but not of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's "subway to the sea."
JAMES E. MOORE II
Professor and Chair
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
University of Southern California
Los Angeles
In the article about gridlocked roads, the president of the American Trucking Associations, Bill Graves, was quoted as saying "there is certainly a strongly held belief . . . that roads . . . are free." The magic government wand didn't build them. Americans' taxes paid for the nation's highways, city streets, and freeways, and gas taxes are supposedly used to maintain them.
NANCY ASTIN
Corvallis, Ore.
Missile Threat
"Looking for Trouble" [May 7] warns of the threat to civilian aviation from shoulder-fired missiles, which are all too available to terrorists on the black market. While the report focused on delays in fielding antimissile systems for civilian aircraft, and paints a local police officer patrolling the perimeter of an airport as "virtually the only protection against shoulder-fired missiles," there is another card we're playing. Operating worldwide, the State Department has gone on the offensive, securing and destroying shoulder-fired missiles that might otherwise fall into terrorist hands. Thanks in part to legislation I pushed in 2006, the State Department jumped its funding request for this program from about $8.5 million to $44 million. Congress should honor this request, giving police officers circling airports a bigger helping hand.
REP. ED ROYCE
Ranking Member
House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
America Versus Rome
In his comparison of the Roman Empire and present-day America, Vanity Fair editor at large and author Cullen Murphy stated, "Stop treating government as a necessary evil" ["Lessons From the Fall," May 7]. I consider skepticism about creeping paternalism to be healthy. Murphy also urges us to "see immigration as a source of strength," but our problem is that we're overrun by manual laborers, not doctors or engineers. And then Murphy states that "we have to take some weight off the American military . . . stop giving it so many missions." We're on the verge of naively quitting the war in Iraq, but, unfortunately, the war is not over.
SCOTT ANDERSON
Green Valley, Ariz.
Cullen Murphy claims there are "striking parallels between modern America and the ancient Roman republic." What a stretch! The president can serve a maximum of eight years. The United States is not an empire collecting taxes and tribute from other nations. The United States limits its military power to protecting its citizens from nations or entities that attack us or that threaten world peace or stability in a measure that endangers the United States.
JACK V. FOGARTY
Los Angeles
Business of Education
"Grade School Goes Corporate" [May 7] says that 50 years ago the paper mills would have no problem hiring a person with a basic high school education but that today global Kimberly-Clark would have a problem with that. Bill Sisson, Mobile, Ala., Area Chamber of Commerce vice president for economic development, said most people on the floor of today's paper mill are walking around with laptops. If corporate America is in such need of highly educated personnel to work in its factories and on its assembly lines, why are so many businesses transferring operations to Mexico, China, India, and other countries where the workforce is less educated? I don't understand corporate America.
TIMOTHY MASK
Grand Rapids, Mich.
As a teacher I enjoyed reading "Grade School Goes Corporate." However, I took exception to the suggestion that teacher pay raises be tied to student test scores and that a federal curriculum might be designed in part by business leaders. Once again, teachers are the whipping boys for all of society's ills, and the implication is that if students are struggling in school, then teachers must not be doing their jobs, hence, the need to involve noneducators in oversight- and enforcement-type positions. The fallacy is continued that standardized testing indicates learning. Any monkey can be trained to fill in a bubble. What is more difficult is to teach children to critically analyze and synthesize information, which is something that standardized testing does not require children to do. If you can read and write, thank a teacher.
REBECCA BOLTON
Mobile, Ala.
A few weeks ago, I was discussing the skills of incoming college freshmen with a friend who is a philosophy professor at a local liberal arts university. He commented that the students were not lacking reading, writing, or math skills; rather, they had no sense of history and were incapable of "connecting the dots" between past and present. After reading "Grade School Goes Corporate," I am not surprised. In Mobile, Ala., the partnership between school and business has improved Brazier Elementary's test scores by "shoving science and social studies into one period" to focus on the three R's. The article cited the Saunders Engine Co. "that would teach students subjects like properties of metals, properties of fuels and lubricants, properties of gaskets and sealing materials, and methods of cooling engines and machinery." Where is the science foundation needed to master these concepts going to come from?
PEGGY D. MULLER
Riverside, Calif.
I find it ironic that "Grade School Goes Corporate," in which a school's curriculum squeezes science and social studies into only one period, is in the same issue in which historian Cullen Murphy compares America's fatal parochialism to that of the fall of Rome ["Lessons From the Fall"]. Whether succumbing to pressures related to No Child Left Behind or satisfying corporate interests, it's alarming to see schools basing their success rates on arbitrary test scores. Is the future of education in America to be based on producing clones for specialized employment or to nourish the intellect of our youth so that they may grow to be wise citizens?
BOB GOLDIE
San Francisco
Correction: Hebrew text in a photo caption accompanying "Israel's Political Storm" [May 14] should have been translated to read: Elections now.
This story appears in the May 28, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.