(Rachel Crouse/ Fernando Hurtado, Neon Tommy)

Name: Rachel Crouse

Neighborhood: Downtown Los Angeles

Job: Hostess

Age: 20

 What are the top issues facing Los Angeles, and why?

Traffic! Cars. I got a car right when I turned 16, and just a few months ago, my parents sold my car, so the whole difference of it changed. And you really recognize that you can get places faster if you take public transportation sometimes. It’s gnarly. And the whole freeway system is messed up. It’s really small. Orange County must have smart people there or something because they have huge freeways and we have a lack of as many as we need.

What could Mayor Garcetti do to address your top priorites?

First of all, I don’t really know who he is—

He’s the mayor of L.A. 

[Make us] carpool more. Or you know, take away the damn express lanes because who wants to pay for that? I got places way faster, like if I’m getting out of L.A. on the 10, like, I could have gotten places way faster if I were on the carpool lane, but now you have to pay for it like the stupid FasTrak. They said it [carpooling] was supposed to help traffic, but it’s just helping public transportation. [People are now using public transportation] to get to places on time. 

Did you vote in the May election? Who did you support?

Actually, no, I didn’t. I didn’t even see little poster things on the grass. I had no idea. Even though L.A. is very immersed in pop culture, there are a lot of people who are not, because it’s cool to not be, you know? And I’m one of those people; I just don’t understand sitting and watching TV, and learning about stuff. But then I feel bad sometimes because real things happen, and I’m like, “Oh, I should have known about that.”

As far as the traffic goes, some people say freeways are so congested because people are looking down at their phones half the time. Do you buy that?

Yeah, like if everybody moved at the same time, we’d get there faster. Yeah, I’ve noticed that. But I’ve actually seen a lot more people with headsets on now. I would say that six out of ten people have headsets on. But I don’t know, I think it’s just this general thing of us being used to traffic that we don’t know how to move efficiently—especially when it’s raining. People act like we’re driving through like 10 feet of snow.

Reach guest contributor Fernando Hurtado here.