Thank you for bringing the rail-trail issue to the public. Your articles paint a nice picture of having both rails and trails that is relatively easy to support if you don’t look any deeper. What your articles failed to mention are:

· BNSF sold this line because it wasn’t financially feasible to make it profitable. (They run the Sounder trains – they know how to make money with commuter trains).

· The Port of Seattle and King County partnered to keep this in public hands rather than see it developed into hundreds of million dollar homes, we should applaud them for that.

· Taxpayers have spent over $1 million on two studies, both of which came back stating that rail on this corridor does not make sense for 20 to 30 years at the earliest.

· The Rails to Trails program that allowed BNSF to sell the corridor to the Port for such a low price, guarantees through railbanking and Federal Law that we can put a train back in the corridor at any time in the future. This has been successful every time it has been attempted elsewhere in the country.

· The trains envisioned do not compare to light rail in any way other than they carry people and run on tracks; they are heavy and noisy.

· Initially those trains will go from Snohomish (population 8,500) to about the Bellevue Home Depot (where riders would walk or wait for busses into downtown) and return in the evenings at an average speed of 24 mph. The eight-mile service to Renton will require the replacement of the Bellevue Trestle and a 740’ bridge over I-405. (read hundreds of millions of dollars)

· There are 67 crossings in the 34 miles of track between Snohomish and Renton, 32 between Bellevue and Woodinville, that will create even more congestion on our local roads as trains move through during the busiest times of the day, not to mention the whistle blowing at each of them.

· Like many people I support rail, but I won’t ride this train, and the few that do won’t help the traffic on I-405. I will use the trail, whether it’s next to a rail or not, but If reducing congestion is the goal of this rail, then we could give away free bus passes for a lot less money and better results. Let’s hope our representatives in city and county government will be fiscally responsible and do what’s best for all of us. If not, let’s hope they check out the plan thoroughly before giving someone our money for the next 50 years.

Kirk McEwan, Bellevue