Phillip Washington, the transit executive who thinks Los Angeles isn’t congested enough, has been named the leader of Biden’s transition team in charge of the Department of Transportation and Amtrak. Washington is the CEO of Los Angeles Metro, the main transit agency in Los Angeles County.
A year ago, as Los Angeles bus ridership was collapsing due to LA Metro’s insistence on building expensive light rail, Washington blamed the loss of bus riders instead on Los Angeles’ famously uncongested freeways. “It’s too easy to drive in this city,” he told the Wall Street Journal. To restore bus ridership, the city has to “make driving harder.”
“Sometimes you have to tell people what’s good for them,” Washington also told the Journal. He will clearly fit right in to Biden’s top-down view of how the world should work. Washington’s support for obsolete light-rail transit will go hand-in-hand with Biden’s support for obsolete intercity passenger trains. Continue reading
