Distorting MAX facts

Letters to the Editor: MAX; health care; dead zones

, Nov 17, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

jaime VALDEZ / clackamas Review

Riders exit the Green Line during its first day of operation in September. One letter writer takes issue with light rail's impact on traffic.

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To the Editor:

Regarding your editorial on Nov. 11 about Park Avenue being the right choice for light rail, it concerns me in several ways. Your view that reaching Park will be crucial in mitigating traffic congestion on McLoughlin is far from being accurate. This is part of the smoke and mirrors Tri-Met has been peddling for years. Light rail does not alleviate congestion, it increases it. In just one scenario, bus lines will be eliminated in order to steer riders to light rail, and these riders will have to drive to the park-and-ride station, creating more congestion than before. The truth is, light rail will never carry more than 6 percent of commuters. A recently published survey shows 68 percent of commuters are still made up of single-driver, no-passenger automobiles, even after all of the money spent on light rail. The General Accountability Office has also come out with figures showing bus rapid transit and busses as being far more efficient and less costly transit options than light rail.

The editorial statements were also quite casual in skimming over the cuts that will be made in amenities to make the Park Avenue terminus possible. Safety and security come to mind immediately and those are two issues, among many, in which Milwaukie cannot be shorted. For instance, station cameras for Hillsboro were at least 10 years in coming, if they're even there yet, and crime, including physical assaults, were common news fodder in that area until recently. If Tri-Met is short on cash it would be easy for them to slip back into their old habits.

Tri-Met always seems to bid these huge projects short, gambling that the Feds will bail them out down the road. The trouble with this type of thinking is that they are rolling the dice with the liveability and safety of those they are supposed to serve. It's time for the Milwaukie City Council to take a good hard look at the Memorandum of Understanding they have with Tri-Met and see what options are open to them.

Ed Zumwalt

Milwaukie

Does protestor believe in freedom?

To the Editor:

Bishop Carlton Pearson is a fourth-generation fundamentalist and Pentecostal televangelist. I draw considerably from his wisdom to respond to the Oregon City News/Clackamas Review letter writer Casey Flesch.

In these times, Bishop Pearson warns that we mustn't abdicate thinking for ourselves, that thinking mustn't be displaced by the acceptance of repetitious propaganda and that thinking isn't the rearranging of one's prejudices. Mr. Casey writes that "our own health care [should be] our own business. Bishop Pearson, "there is no moral justification for selfishness." Casey Flesch writes, "[I] believe in freedom and liberty." There is no greater manifestation of our freedom and liberty than when we the people exercise our right to cast a secret ballot. Exercising that right, President Obama and Representative Schrader became elected representatives of the people, a fact that reader Flesch finds intolerable. I would suggest that writer Flesch fears freedom and would much prefer discipline, doctrine and dogma. I see folks like Mr. Casey as duelists. They believe that humankind is under the influence of opposing principals, that of good and evil, and there is no gray. Bishop Pearson submits that life is far more complicated. I submit that resisting that which we perceive as evil doesn't necessarily define that which is good.

D. Kent Lloyd

Gladstone

Dead zones threaten Oregon coast

To the Editor:

Being born and raised in Oregon, it is hard not to appreciate how amazing this state is. Not many other states can claim mountains, forests, rivers, deserts and an ocean. But now, our precious ocean is threatened by dead zones. These dead zones, in which low-oxygenated water caused by the mix of cold, nutrient rich deep waters with surface waters, result in many sea creatures dying off.

This used to only be a summer phenomenon, but now climate change is causing a rise in both ocean and wind temperatures, which is further depleting oxygen in the Pacific Ocean. If we don't take action now to prevent these harmful effects of global warming, the future of Oregon's coast could be drastically different than what we know and love today. Not only will sea creatures such as crabs, sea cucumbers and starfish be in danger, but a huge part of Oregon's economy may disappear.

Oregonians need to make sure President Obama commits the United States to science-based carbon reductions at the global climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December. The future of our coast depends on our action today.

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