Southland Congestion

Your editorial “Mobilizing for Mobility” (Feb. 7), and the silly column by Richard Katz (“To Unlock Freeways, Politicians Must Act,” Op-Ed Page, Feb. 7), both advocate doing a little of the right thing, but for the wrong reason.

Of course we need a gas tax. But we don’t need the tax only to build additional and better roads as these steps will only encourage more use of the roads and then we will be back to the inevitable gridlock. We should have better roads, but we should also have a much steeper gas tax to encourage car pools, more fuel-efficient cars, and workers to live closer to their jobs. The steeper gas tax would also discourage unnecessary pleasure driving and encourage the use of public transportation.

This is where the politicians need to have the guts to act. A higher gas tax will not be popular but it will come eventually as it has come to most other advanced nations. Tell Assemblyman Katz that it is wrongheaded and cowardly for our elected officials to come up with insipid programs such as he suggests.

If he and other politicians want to lead, then they should do what is best for our state and our country and slap a $1-per-gallon tax on gasoline. If this had been done five years ago we would have avoided many of today’s problems!

BERNARD G. RAMOS

Los Angeles