In all due respect and in my professional and personal opinion, I must take exception with Mr. Hirt’s opposition to light rail to Bellevue and avocation of adding a significant number of buses instead.

First of all, as urban transportation experts have proven over and over, a rapid transit system is virtually the only way to alleviate traffic congestion in a growing metropolitan area. Simulation models using queuing methodology provide analytical underpinning for this conclusion. In fact I have two masters degrees from Stanford in this area, one in Operations Research (optimization mathematical modeling) and a MBA in Systems Analysis & Finance. This is the sort of work that I did in the early years of my career.

The only thing that throwing a lot of new buses at the problem, with the attendant daily labor required, will achieve is to raise the congestion, pollution, loss of productivity and expenses of our transportation gridlock. Such a pursuit may well only preserve what seems to be a virtual, stranglehold monopoly of Eastside shoppers that Kemper Freeman appears to have at Bellevue Square and Lincoln Center.

Personally, I think that Sound Transit has done an exemplary job of building the light rail and stations with minimal interference of daily commuters these past few years. An investment in light rail is large, however, it is a capital investment that minimizes future labor intensive expense increases. A bus solution adds an incredible amount of variable expenses (buses, oil based fuel, labor, maintenance, road repair, etc.) that will continuously grow with inflation, oil shortages, healthcare and labor negotiations.

Again, look at BART in the Bay Area and how well it has worked. It has been so successful, that many wanted it expanded. We need to clean up our transportation strategies in the Puget Sound with a regionally oriented framework that is not buffeted around or further delayed by special interest groups.

Harvey GIllis, Bellevue