Kemper Freeman Doesn’t Care About Your Rush Hour Commute
One of Kemper Freeman’s misleading criticisms of Prop. 1 is that the light rail line will serve less than 1 % of daily riders. What he leaves out is this: He’s talking about riders over a 24-hour period. The Prop. 1 plan is about serving riders at rush hour—commuters going between residential and work centers. Prop. 1 is not about the gazillions of trips that people take in their neighborhoods to go to the grocery store or to pick up their kids at school or to go to the 7-11 for ice cream at Midnight.
The light rail plan is about giving commuters the option to get off the freeway. Hilariously, at the recent debate between Mayor Greg Nickels and Freeman at the Evans School, Freeman put his foot in his mouth by acknowledging that light rail provides a solution for rush hour commuters. He tried to dig himself out by arguing that rush hour isn’t the problem.
