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las ramblas, originally uploaded by Colin Busby.

Photo: Colin Busby

The LA Times writes:

“L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has his finger on the Easy button: Why not just turn Olympic and Pico boulevards into one-way streets going opposite directions?”

This is part of the ongoing conversation in LA on how people can get from one part of the city to the other. Especially on the Westside, traffic is now unbearable, and the wealthiest are the angriest at having to sit in their S.U.V.s for hours just to travel one mile.

I have seen one way streets in NYC and they basically work at moving traffic. Fifth Avenue goes south, Madison goes north, etc. But NYC also has a strong public transportation system and legions of walkers. There are more people on the subway trains and on foot than in cars.

Barcelona’s Las Ramblas is an enormous sidewalk full of life, commerce and urban pleasures. Can one imagine a one way Pico or Olympic providing the same amenities to Angelenos?

Part of the sickness of Los Angeles, and I do term it a disease, is the obsession with getting from point A to point B with maximum speed without stopping to enjoy the city along the way. We have built a massive, sprawling, polluted sea of monotony and junk billboards that barely qualifies as a world class metropolis.

The proposal to turn Olympic and Pico into one way freeways, full of red light running speeders, is a bad, dangerous and destructive idea.

Barcelona has a better idea. So do most cities outside of the US of A.