Gas Tax and Mass Transit

Certain Ventura County politicians advocate getting rid of the taxes on gasoline. They feel that this would make it better for Californians who use their cars for business or pleasure.

Their thinking doesn’t consider the need to develop a safe, clean, fast, efficient mass transit system for Ventura County and California. They know their arguments are sophisms and will benefit very few Californians in the future.

The rest of the Western world would consider our gasoline prices a bargain, even at $2 a gallon.

California is a dynamic state with an ever-growing population. This means more industry, which requires more workers who will need automobiles to get to work. If this continues, we’ll have total gridlock in the not too distant future.

The Southern California Assn. of Governments agrees. Freeways cost billions to build. We cannot continue to build freeways that, by the time they have been completed, aren’t adequate to handle the traffic that is going to use them.

By keeping the price of gasoline down, we encourage Californians to keep using their cars with no thought given to using the unfortunately fragmented mass transit system that exists in Ventura County. VISTA, SCAT, Metrolink and Thousand Oaks Transit must not exist as separate entities. This is an inefficient system and results in a top-heavy management, instead of having been in one efficient system with one person in charge.

Write your governor and state and federal legislators and tell them we must change our attitude about getting around our cities and beautiful state. We don’t want to look forward to a system that puts millions of cars with full tanks of gasoline, unable to move on our freeways and streets in a gridlocked system.

DONALD J. KATZ

Newbury Park