The Opposition Gets Schooled
At the Evans School debate between Mayor Greg Nickels and opponent Kemper Freeman.
The Seattle Times and The Stranger both report.
And both articles focus on the weird moment in the debate when Kemper Freeman points out that our mass transit solution only really addresses rush hour. Freeman sees this as a problem for some reason.
We see it as the best thing about our plan.
The Stranger agrees, and highlighted Freeman’s odd line of argument:
“The trips that we’re particularly concerned about are the trips into and out of our major urban centers, like UW and downtown Bellevue and Northgate,” Nickels said. “This will not eliminate congestion. … What it will do is create the capacity for up to a million people a day to take light rail rather than get on the freeway in their individual automobiles.” Freeman, bizarrely, made the same point in arguingagainst light rail, noting that trips to and from work “are less than one fifth of our trips in this region. Our public leaders have been leading us down a wild goose chase and we can’t do that,” Freeman said.
But that, Nickels noted, was exactly the point: Transit is supposed to serve people at the most congested times. “The problem is that we all try to get to and from work and to and from the university at the same time every day,” Nickels said. “We wouldn’t have to put down another cubic foot of concrete if all those trips were spread out throughout the day and night.”
The Seattle Times was more subtle, but gave the last word to Nickels on Freeman’s “point” :
Only about one-fifth of car trips are by commuters, observed Freeman, the developer of Bellevue Square Mall. So fixed-rail transit serves only a fraction of a fraction of all trips, he said. Therefore, it wouldn’t reduce congestion.
Nickels replied that it’s precisely the rush hour when a rail option would pay off.
“We have plenty of concrete out there for our nonwork trips,” he said. “The problem is we’re all trying to get to work, or to the university, at the same time.”
