The leftist snobbery that drives Nithya Ramans bike lane plan

Of all the bad ideas.Nithya Raman and her allies want to make LA — a city built around the automobile — more congested and even less drivable. The mayor-elect and some of her large campaign donors have pushed for a $3.1 billion road overhaul that would add bike and bus lanes, while squeezing and subtracting driving lanes. That would mean less space for motorists, more traffic and longer drives on main city arteries such as Lincoln, Santa Monica, Sunset, Venice, Sepulveda and Ventura boulevards — along with the streets around them.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story What a bleak prospect for LA residents.This plan is woke ideology masquerading as a health initiative. Raman would do well to drop it, and spend city time and resources on initiatives that would enhance — rather than degrade — the lives of everyday Angelenos.While the road-slimming plans are sold as health, safety and climate initiatives, they’re really just leftist snobbery. Elites enjoy telling others how to live: from which shower heads you buy to where you live and how much you drive. These elites include two wealthy donors to Raman’s campaign, who reportedly spent $2 million combined on the race to help advance their anti-car cause.But reconfiguring LA roads would likely decrease safety — clogging and removing lanes used by police, fire and paramedics — while doing nothing to lower global temperatures.

In fact, all the idling in extra traffic might drive emissions up. And the left’s carless utopian vision is particularly ill-suited for LA.The city is vast, sprawling, spread out.It’s often impractical to take a bike or a bus to one’s destination. And even if it were feasible to ride a bike for, say, 10 miles each way to work, what then? Can a person also pick up the ...