I have the highest regards for Mayor Ava Frisinger and Councilor Fred Butler, but I must disagree with their joint letter of support for Sound Transit in the Reporter last week.

The primary consideration for any mass transit rider ship is population density. Such density would require some 80,000 people to live within the current city limits of some 20,000 residents. We do not now have that in Puget Sound and will not have it in even the unforeseeable (distant) future to the extent needed to support light rail.

Further, the cost of some $17 billion will provide some 12 – 15 stations on routes now well served by at least two bus routes. For that same price, we could rebuild all of the Alaskan Way viaduct (probably including the Seawall), the SR-520 Bridge, (both projects probably in any scenario now under discussion) with money left over for considerable improvements, including bus rapid transit, to our bus system. One caveat, I am talking about only the total funding raised by the $0.005 sales tax increase and not what would need to be done to make these funds available for other projects. We have higher priority transportation (both transit and roads) needs that light rail can never replace, and it is never the right time to do the wrong thing. Paying $17 billion dollars for light rail is the wrong thing.

-Rowan C. Hinds

Former Issaquah mayor and Reporter editorial board member