{"id":181179,"date":"2010-01-14T15:54:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T20:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2010793447_lightrailandbusroutes.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-01-14T15:54:11","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T20:54:11","slug":"light-rail-and-bus-routes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/181179","title":{"rendered":"Light rail and bus routes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Create shuttle routes to and from stations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nowhere in the article about parking at light rail stations [\u201cIn switch, commuters will get to park in lots near light rail,\u201d NWTuesday, Jan. 12] is there any discussion of the most logical approach of establishing a system of bus routes that will feed into the stations.<\/p>\n<p>If you live even a mile away from the station \u2014 which is too far to walk \u2014 a bus could come by and pick you up and take you and your neighbors to the station.<\/p>\n<p>This system works well in many other cities that have metro rail lines \u2014 for example in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n<p>Large parking lots are only at the terminal stations. Feeder buses even serve outlying park and ride lots. This allows the property near stations to be designated for high-occupancy housing. Office buildings can be built near the stations to attract riders who will then commute from other neighborhoods to the stations to go to work.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Myrna J. Aavedal, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Light rail hijacked bus routes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Its no surprise light-rail ridership has increased with the opening of the Sea-Tac Airport station. Eliminating Metro bus route #194 guaranteed it. What is surprising is that light-rail ridership is averaging 15,000 weekday passengers, which is only a bit more than Metro\u2019s #48 bus route.<\/p>\n<p>While continuing to burn coal and oil threatens to destroy the world as we know it, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars for a transit system that essentially replaces a single bus line is simply stupid \u2014 and building expensive streetcar lines that get stuck in traffic is just as pointless.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to get daily commuters out of their polluting cars, build parking garages at every freeway interchange where they can board express buses every few minutes. HOV lanes are already in place and can be turned into full-time bus lanes because there are fewer cars on the road. A fee on all employee parking spaces will discourage driving to work, while helping to fund the new system.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a new world now and doing more with a lot less money is the only real option our leaders have. Will they begin to make smarter choices or just lead us over the cliff?<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Daniel Castro, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Create shuttle routes to and from stations Nowhere in the article about parking at light rail stations [\u201cIn switch, commuters will get to park in lots near light rail,\u201d NWTuesday, Jan. 12] is there any discussion of the most logical approach of establishing a system of bus routes that will feed into the stations. If [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}