Mailbag: Transportation hub is already here

Richard Tafilaw is too late. Burbank is already a transportation hub (“Don’t aspire to be a transportation hub,” Aug. 18).

We have two rail lines, two freeways and an airport, and they are not going away. The challenge for the Burbank City Council and the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, as well as state and regional agencies, is to find ways to mitigate the impacts of these essential facilities.

The proposed transportation center at the airport does that by making it easier for passengers to use public transportation by bringing together rail, bus and airline services and making the transfer between them more convenient. Another benefit is the elimination of automobile trips between the airport and the servicing location for rental cars.

A successful and prosperous city will be reflected in an increase in passenger journeys. Well designed public transportation facilities, combined with well planned, user friendly public transit services, represent the best way of coping with the growth in traffic.

Folks like Tafilaw should be applauding this project instead of opposing it.

Paul Dyson

Burbank

Editor’s note: Dyson is president of the Rail Passenger Assn. of California and chairman Burbank Transportation Commission.

Griem’s ignorance belongs in the closet

Well, perennial hatemonger Bryan Griem has managed to sink to a new low in his latest homophobic rantings (“In Theory: Reactions to Prop. 8 court ruling,” Aug.14).

Griem now is actively arguing that homosexuals should be forced back into the closet and away from “thinking society.” This is an insult not just to gays and lesbians and their children, but to the millions of “thinkers” who believe that all Americans should have constitutional rights.

Griem also makes the stunningly ignorant “argument” that gays and lesbians shouldn't have rights because the Constitution doesn't expressly grant those rights. Griem smugly notes that the Constitution “doesn't say that men may marry men or women may marry women.”