{"id":579887,"date":"2010-05-26T17:58:09","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T21:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011961796_addingmissinglinkstolightrail.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-05-26T17:58:09","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T21:58:09","slug":"adding-missing-links-to-light-rail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/579887","title":{"rendered":"Adding missing links to light rail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Light rail moves less than 2 percent of 1.1 million drivers on I-5<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Recently, in a Seattle Times op-ed, former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels bragged that the Link light-rail system is carrying \u201cthousands of passengers every day.\u201d [\u201cDon\u2019t derail region\u2019s transit gains,\u201d Opinion, May 16.]<\/p>\n<p>This is true. It is also true that back on Feb. 11, 2000, then Metropolitan King County Councilmember Nickels claimed in a similar op-ed that light rail would carry passengers \u201cequal to a 12-lane freeway,\u201d thus \u201cfinding [us a solution] to traffic congestion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since the claim was ridiculous, I e-mailed him, asking if he really believed this. He e-mailed me back and said, \u201cWhy, yes I do.\u201d He went on to up the ante by claiming that Link light rail would carry the transit capacity of a 16 freeway lanes.<\/p>\n<p>Wow \u2014and I thought it was illegal to smoke that stuff. Anyway, here are the facts. Based on onramp data, I-5 moves more than 1.1 million people per day in the corridor. Link light rail moves less than 2 percent of that amount.<\/p>\n<p>So, is light rail a nifty toy? Sure. Does it move as many people as a crowded urban freeway or do anything noticeable about traffic congestion? Please.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Donald Padelford, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Light rail moves less than 2 percent of 1.1 million drivers on I-5 Recently, in a Seattle Times op-ed, former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels bragged that the Link light-rail system is carrying \u201cthousands of passengers every day.\u201d [\u201cDon\u2019t derail region\u2019s transit gains,\u201d Opinion, May 16.] This is true. It is also true that back on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579887","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=579887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}