L.A. Metro and Female Commuter Rage
by Tony Chavira
GREAT NEWS! Yesterday the Metro Board approved a plan to essentially cram all 30-years of the Long-Range Transportation Plan into a 10-year span. Villaraigosa’s been lobbying for it as an agent of immediate (but sustainable) job building, and it looks like we’ve got it:
Los Angeles County transportation officials agreed Thursday to support Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s ambitious plan to accelerate construction of a dozen transit projects by borrowing $8 billion from the federal government.
The show of support by the Metropolitan County Transportation Authority board allows the agency’s lobbyists to pursue federal loans in Washington.
In 2008, county voters approved a measure to increase the sales tax by a half-cent to raise about $40 billion for transportation improvements over the next 30 years. Villaraigosa wants to build and open those projects, including the long-anticipated subway to the sea, in 10 years by borrowing $8 billion from the federal government and paying it back with the sales tax revenue.
Especially good news for women, as a 2009 study was revealed recently that stated that women hate commuting so much more than men do. Here’s a line pulled right from the abstract:
Our results show that, even after all these variables are considered, commuting still has an important detrimental effect on the well-being of women, but not men, and this result is robust to numerous different specifications.
We explore possible explanations for this gender difference and can find no evidence that it is due to women’s shorter working hours or weaker occupational position.
Rather women’s greater sensitivity to commuting time seems to be a result of their larger responsibility for day-to-day household tasks, including childcare.
There you have it, and trust me, it’s a good thing. Villaraigosa has actually taken a huge step toward relieving the Los Angeles female population from a plethora of transit frustrations. How do you think he wants to be thanked?
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