In this essay, I propose to demonstrate how a light rail system can benefit Los Angeles in social, intellectual, and environmental ways. Though I won’t go into a discussion about it, I believe that these will all have positive implications to the economy as well, thus offsetting any argument about the cost of such a large-scale municipal project.

Los Angeles could easily become a more livable city if they would only invest in a light rail system that could move people around this giant suburb that they refer to as a “city.” So long as the mayor’s office of Los Angeles thumbs its nose at the implementation of a descent and efficient mass transit system, “La La Land” will forever be regarded as America’s Most Pathetic City. I’m using the term “city” loosely here, since Los Angeles is more like a giant suburb like New Jersey, without the advantage of being within proximity to New York or Philadelphia, which really are cities.

First, I want to make it clear that after living in Los Angeles for five months now, I can safely say that the bad rap that the citizens of this get from the rest of the country (or at least from New Yorkers) is right on the mark. Los Angeles ranks as the United States’ second largest city in population. However, this is hardly a cosmopolitan city. Austin is a much more culturally diverse city than is Los Angeles. Miami is more of a world city. A decent mass transit system can get Los Angeles into contention as a city that people don’t have to be embarrassed to say they are from.

The most obvious reason Los Angeles needs a light rail system is transportation. A bus system that rides on the same overcrowded streets and highways as everyone else is redundant. You could never fit enough buses on these streets and highways to make much of a difference to the traffic problem. And if traffic were somehow eliminated entirely, buses still wouldn’t solve the problem of how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B quickly. For example, as it stands now, without traffic, it takes about twenty-five minutes to get from Santa Monica to Hollywood in a car. A monorail running down Wilshire Blvd would take about fifteen minutes to get from La Brea to the Pacific Ocean. Not such a big deal, you say? Let’s examine this a bit further. First, there being no traffic is a “best case” scenario that almost never exists in reality, therefore, one would always be saving at least ten minutes. The reality would be more along the lines of thirty minutes or so.

Time saved on the highway is time invested in people. This time can be used to work (i.e., script reading jobs can be performed on the train; financial managers can read The Wall Street Journal, etc.) Perhaps all the SitCom writers and filmmakers will have some time to think about the shit that they’ve been pumping out of their anal expulsive pens and start creating, God forbid…Art. This is probably wishful thinking, but the fact remains the same: Mass transit allows for multitasking, which is akin to productivity.

While riding on these trains that have been in most cities for almost one hundred years already, people can educate themselves. One may be able to walk into a bar in Los Angeles and be able to have an intelligent conversation. Imaging that? A conversation that doesn’t have to do with Cher’s new botox injection, how The Govenator’s political policies resemble his character from Total Recall, or organic chickens. I get goosebumps at the thought of one of my actress roommates on set at the Kraft Services table and they’re talking to someone who knows that there’s a war going on in Iraq, and that The Taliban isn’t a new vegetarian New Age group.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, there was a big stink about what to do about illegal immigrants and the fact that they needed to drive. Since everyone needs to drive in Los Angeles, the theory goes, the illegal immigrants will drive to their underpaid jobs whether they have a drivers license or not. So what’s the big deal? Well, they can’t buy auto insurance. And with no auto insurance, when a pickup truck filled with “undocumented” Mexicans crashes into Brad and Buffy’s Mercedes, who’s going to pay for it? To solve this problem, they used total California logic and put into law something like, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” If someone wants a drivers license or to register a car, they don’t have to prove that they’re a citizen of the United States of America. One of the many problems with this theory is the fact that the illegal immigrants that Brad and Buffy so desperately want to have auto insurance are working for what amounts to modern day slave wages and therefore who says that they’re going to use money that they need for food and shelter (if they make that much) on insurance in case they plow into a couple of Beverly Hills jerk-offs? An efficient mass transit system is the answer. We don’t have this problem in New York. Most rich people on the East Side don’t have cars. Why do undocumented workers need cars? Do we not have enough smog in Los Angeles?

So now we’re moving towards a concept of a city where the populous is self educated, can move freely and efficiently between different parts of town, doesn’t have to worry about as many drunk driving accidents since people would have an alternate way home, and a workforce that is able to multitask. We can get people to work without having to pollute the air or have to disrupt big business profits by actually having to pay illegal immigrants the minimum wage (which would be one of those annoying side-effects of citizenship, now wouldn’t it?) Well here’s more good news: People in Los Angeles would now have to deal with each other in public on the same footing. Those of you who haven’t spent much time out here may not know what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain. On a New York subway, a stockbroker making $250,000 (not counting bonus) sits next to a busboy that makes about $50 a shift. Though they are in totally different economic classes, they are sitting next to each other on their way to work. At the present time in Los Angeles a meeting on common ground like this almost never occurs. That’s why in Los Angeles you see so many assholes treating their waiters like shit in the restaurants. They just have no clue as to what it’s like to deal with real world people. Everyone in Los Angeles needs a therapist in order to deal with the few people that they have in their lives. Mass transit will help cure the clueless Los Angeles zombies – no longer will they have to walk around with their heads up their asses. When they see that everyone has to get to work just like they do, they may behave a bit better when confronted with them later on. They may not need so much Celexa or Zanex either.

In conclusion, I believe that a viable mass transit system would help alleviate the burden of ignorance that the residents of Los Angeles have been plagued. To be fair, as of this writing the people of Los Angeles have little to no choice other than to pollute the air with their cars. The bus system that is in place right now in Los Angeles is just not adequate to meet the transportation needs of the populous in an efficient manner. Therefore, people have gotten used to being trapped in their Ignorance-mobiles sitting in endless traffic instead of on a train where they could read the newspaper, a book, a journalistic magazine, etc. (Yes, I know people around here will probably read a rag like “People” or “US Magazine” instead, but it’s a step in the right direction.) So, please, someone in power, PLEASE lets get a light rail system in place in Los Angeles. The rest of America is counting on it.