单选题 It's 2:45 p.m. on a Wednesday, and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is in the backseat of a black Chevy Tahoe that's inching its way to city hall along the 101 freeway. This stretch of the often clogged road is eight lanes, but there are so many cars on it that everyone is moving at about 30km/h, a single mass of steel and glass lurching toward downtown.
Just a few hours earlier, Garcetti was traveling a lot faster. To get to an event in University City, about 16 km from his office, Garcetti took the city's Red Line subway, which can reach speed of up to 110km/h—a pace L.A.'s rush-hour drivers can only dream about. Persuading more Angelenos to take the train could go a long way toward solving one of L.A's most intractable problems. "We don't need people to completely give up their cars," he says while holding onto a pole on the Red Line. "But right now, we average 1.1 people per car. If we could get that to 1.6, the traffic problem would go away."
In L.A., cars are a source of smog, billions of dollars in lost productivity every year and endless frustration for residents. "Every working person plans their life around traffic in this town," says Zev Yaroslavsky, a Los Angeles County supervisor and longtime friend of Garcetti's. "Building a transportation infrastructure is something that needs to be focused on, and Eric gets that." Should Garcetti, 43—who was elected in May as the youngest mayor of L. A. in more than a century—ever manage to get the freeways flowing, it would be a triumph. And it would only begin to cure what ails L.A.
Los Angeles' structural problems are daunting. The city has fewer jobs now than it did in 1990, with a regional unemployment rate that is more than 2 points higher than the national average. L.A. is also buckling under health care and pension costs and is scaling back public services to compensate. The 2014-2015 budget is projected to be $242 million in the red. As the Los Angeles 2020 Commission, a group of business, labor and public-sector leaders charged by the city council with diagnosing the region's ills, put it in a December report, "Los Angeles is barely treading water while the rest of the world is moving forward."

单选题 In the first paragraph, the descriptions are about ______.

A.traffic jam
B.social issue
C.political issue
D.population problem

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 段落主旨题。本段几处关键词的描写体现了本段的主旨及作者意图，如inching its way(缓缓前行，寸步难行)，clogged road(堵塞的马路)，即使上述两个词组都看不懂，至少我们能看懂当中的moving at about 30km/h(汽车的速度达到每小时30千米)，这是什么概念?就是拥堵的概念，故本段讨论的主要问题是A．traffic jam交通拥堵，而在第二段的尾句出现了traffic problem，进一步证明文章主要讨论的是交通拥堵问题。

单选题 Garcetti took a subway instead of traveling in a car because ______.

A.traveling by car is out of date
B.subway is environmentally-friendly
C.taking subway is more convenient for him
D.subway is much faster than car during the rush-hour

单选题 We know from the third paragraph that ______.

A.L.A. has to focus on manufacturing more cars
B.Garcetti is the youngest mayor in L.A. history
C.traffic jam is one of the problems that L.A. faces
D.Garcetti has already made the highways flowing

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 推理题。选项与原文对比。A原文：Building a transportation infrastructure is something that needs to be focused on，原文说的是我们需要关注的是建设更多交通基础设施，而非制造更多汽车，故A错误。B原文：Should Garcetti, 43—who was elected in May as the youngest mayor of L.A. in more than a century.可见Garcetti是洛杉矶100年以来最年轻的市长，而非历史上最年轻的市长，故排除B。C原文尾句：...ever manage to get the freeways flowing, it would be a triumph. And it would only begin to cure what ails L.A. 即使Garcetti使得交通顺畅起来，这也仅仅是begin(开始)，故我们可以得知除了交通问题以外，洛杉矶还面临许多问题，第四段的开头Los Angeles' structural problems are daunting.可以进一步证明。故C为答案。D原文：Should Garcetti, 43—who was elected in May as the youngest mayor of L.A. in more than a century—ever manage to get the freeways flowing...，原文用一个特殊的虚拟语气表达，强调的是“如果”，而非他已经使交通顺畅了，故该项错误。

单选题 L.A. has all these problems except ______.

A.traffic jam
B.aged population
C.unemployment rate
D.health care and pension costs

单选题 Which one would be the best title of this text?

A.L.A.'s Traffic Problem
B.Subway—Replacement of Car
C.L.A.'s Traffic—the Worst in the U.S.
D.L.A.'s Traffic Jam and Structural Problems

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】[解析] 篇章主旨题。选项与原文对比。本文前三段都在讨论洛杉矶市的交通问题，而第四段讨论的是结构性问题。第三段尾句说：...ever manage to get the freeways flowing，it would be a triumph. And it would only begin to cure what ails L.A. 而第四段第一句说：Los Angeles' structural problems are daunting.说明本文不仅讨论了交通问题，还讨论了其他结构性问题，故D是比较全面的答案。