SIVACRACY.NET

I carpool to work, since I live about fifty miles away from where I teach. It gives me an opportunity to chat with colleagues from other departments (mostly people from computer science and informatics, but I do sometimes drive with philosophers, political scientists, and educators). And obviously it also takes another emissions-producing vehicle off the road and reduces congestion.

Here's the amazing thing: this behavior is somehow abhorrent to the Bush administration.

According to "Carpoolers free ride may be over," local officials in the MTA are being forced to take a more free-enterprise approach to freeway management in order to qualify for federal transportation dollars. Although Southland policy makers held out once before on converting carpool lanes to toll lanes for affluent, impatient drivers, they apparently now need the money enough that the "free ride" of people willing to take turns and coordinate their schedules with others in order to ride collectively in the diamond lanes is apparently over.

So nice to know that the conservative movement is so in favor of local control and states' rights . . . as long as you don't live in California.