Filling potholes puts a bounce in mayor’s step

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last week filled the city’s 800,000th pothole since he took office in July 2005 and that being a seemingly large number, a news conference was called.

“I love my life and every day I wake up grateful -- I’m grateful for the great leadership in the city,” intoned Cynthia Ruiz, president of the city’s Board of Public Works.

That prompted the Sage to put down an uprising by his breakfast. Too bad Ruiz didn’t mention that Villaraigosa hired her to the tune of $115,090 annually to say such things.

As for the mayor, he also opined on what a great job the city does filling potholes. “We are not only a pothole filler, but a pothole leader in the nation,” Villaraigosa said.

Hard to argue with that if you’ve bumped along Wilshire Boulevard or Hill Street recently.

Here’s the actual news: The city doesn’t really know how many potholes are out there; the city is resurfacing about 200 miles of road each year (New York City says it does four times that); and it would cost about $2.5 billion to properly repair city roads instead of patching problems as they arise.

Fascinating, eh?

So why does the Sage go to such news conferences? Because politicians intent on providing a visual for the media always insist on filling potholes themselves. That means they get to use heavy machinery to flatten freshly laid asphalt.

Now, I certainly don’t want to see anyone get injured. But if ever a day comes along in which a harried aide says, “Have you seen the mayor’s toe?,” the Sage feels compelled to be there to record history.

Someone’s gotta do it.

Birthing unit https://:// www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0%2C28804%2C1709961_1711305%2 C00.html “> www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0%2C28804%2C1709961_1711305%2 C00.html reported recently that traffic is so bad in Bangkok that “hundreds of women over the past few years have been forced to give birth in cars.” So I e-mailed the California Highway Patrol and asked how often that happens on state-patrolled roads here. The answer: rarely.

And then, a few hours later, it did. On Route 50 in Sacramento early Friday, CHP Officer Charmaine Fajardo helped deliver a baby. The mother -- get this -- is a labor and delivery nurse.

“It probably helped me stay calm that she was so calm,” Fajardo said.

The CHP, by the way, trains its officers in delivering babies, and expectant parents should know that CHP officers carry umbilical cord clamps as part of their first aid kits.

Scooting right along

With gas prices still threatening to hurdle the $4-a-gallon mark, here’s a question: Why aren’t more people riding scooters, particularly for errands or short commutes?

Scooters are similar to motorcycles but usually have a step-through frame -- in other words you don’t have to toss a leg over the saddle -- and often have smaller engines and tires. Vespa is perhaps the best-known brand, but Honda, Yamaha and Genuine also make popular models. Many get at least 70 miles a gallon and typically cost $2,000 to $9,000 new, depending on size.

Although very popular overseas, scooters have never caught on in the United States in a big way. The Motorcycle Industry Council estimates that about 131,000 new scooters were sold in the United States last year, although numbers have been climbing in recent years and California is the biggest market.

I asked several scooter riders around the region why more people don’t ride them and the answer was uniform: You have to be on guard against getting plastered by one of the region’s many inattentive and lousy drivers.

“The fear factor is big,” said Todd Huber, who lives in Simi Valley and rides a scooter to work there. “Almost every day I have to flip somebody off. You have to assume that no one sees you.”

And, still, Huber swears by his scooter. Nearly every scooter owner I talked to said much the same. They’re fun, save their owners a ton of money and are easy to park.

Oh yeah, there’s also this: Scooters are apparently not considered the manliest vehicle on the road -- and some people aren’t afraid to say so.

Huber, for example, mentioned that he’s been called “scooter boy” and not in a good way.

Echoing that sentiment was Mickey Zolezio, who commutes a mile to work on a scooter in Riverside and said that someone once threw a Big Gulp at him. “I’ve been laughed at by people standing at the bus stop,” he added.

This gave pause to the Sage, who badly wants a scooter to tootle around Pasadena. It’s not having my manhood challenged that bothers me -- Ms. Road Sage does that pretty much every day. But the idea of getting mocked by some schlub with a bus pass? That just kills me.

More next week on scooters and the environment.

Transit cause and effect

It will also be fun to see whether gas prices drive more people to take mass transit.

Ed Muncy, the ridership guru at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the number of bus and rail passengers surges when gas prices soar, but then ridership begins to slip as time goes on.

“There’s recidivism every day that people walk past their car and feel some weakness,” Muncy said. “It starts with ‘I’ll drive this one day’ and soon they’re back to driving every day.”

It’s much the same story at Metrolink, where officials are considering a fare increase because of the rising cost of diesel fuel. Understandable perhaps, but too bad.

Here’s why: Most transit experts say that the bigger the difference between the cost of driving and taking mass transit, the more likely people are to take mass transit. That’s logical enough, and toward that end there are two policies that public officials could pursue: make the cost of driving more expensive (by raising the gas tax, for example) or make mass transit cheaper -- or both.

A couple of years ago, Los Angeles’ planning chief, Gail Goldberg, mentioned an idea to me: make mass transit free or really cheap on an occasional basis. The idea is to lure people from their cars and give them a chance to familiarize themselves with mass transit.

So here’s one for the pols to chew on: scrape together the funds to eliminate bus and light rail fares one weekday a month. This wouldn’t cure all the region’s traffic ills, but maybe it’s a start.

Small steps, people.

Next week: “Direct User Fees.”

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Think the Road Sage should be pulled over and cited for being a complete numskull? Send your thoughts and ideas to steve.hymon@latimes.com