I want to thank Mr. Villeneuve for his editorial in The Reporter, (“In praise of light rail,” July 24, 2009) and I also want to add a few thoughts about his article.

His comments, and the accompanying editorial cartoon, both identify congestion relief and/or increased mobility as positives for light rail. I suggest the results will be less than their expectations for a couple of reasons.

First, the light rail system is not really an increase in transit service but only the replacement of an existing, and well-functioning, bus system. Second, even though light rail costs several billion dollars, it adds only 14 stops to a three-county area serving more than 3 million people. Together, these two reasons are more than sufficient to overcome whatever euphoria may erupt because light rail now makes Puget Sound a ‘world-class’ region.

It is interesting that the construction of new capacity for highways is probably the only governmental activity that is derided and dismissed because it will result in more usage of the product.

New schools, fire stations, jails, etc., are all supported because the existing facility is full.

But highways? Heaven forbid! What gets forgotten is that the reason highways fill up and become congested is that people need/want to go somewhere or do something more than they now can. What is wrong with that?

A couple of other issues against light rail usage are more systemic. First, our existing bus service philosophy is a ‘one-seat ride’ where the rider gets on a bus close to his/her residence and gets off the same bus close to his/her destination with minimal to no transfers.

Adding light rail to our existing bus service will inevitably require more transfers, between at least buses and trains.

Without a concomitant change to widely incorporate transfers into the total system, both the bus system and the light rail system will be ill-served. Unfortunately, the majority of current bus riders are wedded to the current system and will not favor a major change to a system of transfers, no matter how convenient the transfer may be.

Second, our current Eastside rail plan, like our current bus system, is oriented east-west, whereas our needs are for north-south service.

From Issaquah or Sammamish, how easy is it now to travel south of I-90? With all of the current discussions for light rail on the Eastside, how will that change? Not one trip. So what do we really gain here for our multi-billion dollar investment?

If it is true, as Mr. Villeneuve believes, that light rail has lower operating costs than bus service, why has Sound Transit extended the originally voted sales tax beyond the completion of our now voted Phase II system?

Regardless of how well we may like mass transit, we cannot ever afford to build sufficient light rail to make more than a modest dent, if that, in the congestion we now have throughout Puget Sound. And I won’t begin to talk about the increase in population density required to make light rail cost effective except to say the density is considerably more than we have now or will have in the foreseeable future.

In total, I remain unconvinced that the future of transportation for this region has arrived on the tracks of a technology that remains little changed from its origin prior to the 20th Century – even our buses are more modern than that.

If anyone is interested in the data behind my comments, please contact me through the Issaquah and Sammamish Reporter.

Rowan Hinds is a former Mayor of Issaquah, and is a member of the Eastside Transportation Association.