Transit choices along the U.S. 36 corridor
Re: “Region driving for U.S. 36 funds,” June 7 news story.
The Denver Post’s recent coverage of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation’s visit to Colorado to announce that U.S. 36 may be in line for a significant amount of federal funds prompted me to write. I applaud the U.S. 36 Mayors and Commissioners Coalition for its insight and leadership in trying to address the area’s increasing traffic congestion.
As a resident of Douglas County, it’s extremely frustrating to know that my local political leaders would rather do nothing. Instead, those of us who drive C-470 get to spend the next 25 years sitting in traffic congestion. Lucky us.
Kim Raabe, Parker
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Re: “Advanced bus system eases traffic congestion,” June 9 Bob Ewegen column.
My, Mr. Ewegen, an epiphany? We’ve been trying to advise, for years, that bus rapid transit (BRT) makes ever so much more sense than the light-rail money pit.
Jam a rail, light rail stops. Jam an intersection, BRT goes around. Demographics changing? Light rail has to build new tracks; BRT changes routes, and builds a new HOT lane. Light rail can’t begin to reimburse its costs. HOT lanes can and will pay for themselves.
We’ve heard so long, “You can’t build your way out of congestion.” Oh, really? Have you driven past the Denver Tech Center lately? For years that was the biggest traffic bottleneck in the metro area. Now you breeze through it, and it certainly isn’t due to the light rail, which has problems getting ridership on that route.
Light rail cannot, under the best of circumstances, begin to move as many people as a single traffic lane, nor does it significantly reduce pollution. If high-density cities like Los Angeles can’t show a happy result from light rail, why do we think sprawling Denver can? People bought the FasTracks white elephant. Now that it’s been exposed as the money pit it truly was, with gigantic cost overruns, perhaps it’s time to rethink it.
Bill Dietrick, Pueblo West
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Were The Post’s Bob Ewegen any more enthusiastic regarding the advantages of bus-rapid transit technology over fixed-rail trolley cars on the Boulder Turnpike, he’d start to sound like his own favorite “anti-gummint zealot,” Jitney Jon Caldara.
Strip out from Ewegen’s preferred solution the hassles of getting and keeping federal subsidies, of buying and maintaining public buses, of new and permanent public driver, scheduler, mechanic, supervisory, and human resource jobs, add in personalized service for the cost of a phone call (or e-mail), and we’re left with what Caldara advocated years ago: door-to-door mass transportation, without the enormous up-front and continuing cost of laying track.
Steve Baur, Westminster
Justice Department and checks and balances
Re: “Setting the tone for 2008,” June 13 Al Knight column.
Al Knight manages to create a column about an extremely important issue, the integrity of the Justice Department, and then throws it away on partisan whining.
As any schoolchild knows, the checks and balances in our government are what keep extremists from taking unreasonable power. Republicans in Congress have demonstrated that it’s OK with them if the White House kicks them to the curb and laughs while doing it. Senate Republicans such as Wayne Allard must like the fact that the attorney general can go before Congress and lie, obfuscate and demonstrate the extreme contempt for our system of government, all the while consciously twisting the Department of Justice into a partisan, vote-suppressing machine.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is an embarrassment to his Harvard law class, to Hispanics, to ethical public servants everywhere, as a corrupt and toadying Bush administration lackey. What’s embarrassing about this whole affair is that nobody in the GOP seems to be embarrassed about it.
Kent Phelps, Conifer
Felony charges for smoke-bomb prankster
If anyone is in need of affirmation that our judicial system is getting out of hand with its determination to make headlines out of nothing, one only needs to look at the decision of District Attorney Carol Chambers to charge (under the guise of zero tolerance for “serious” crimes) 17-year-old Ponderosa High School student Caleb Pegues as an adult for his obviously stupid prank with a smoke bomb. Young Mr. Pegues is guilty only of gross immaturity for setting off a harmless smoke bomb in an attempt to disrupt pot smokers on campus. He has already been dealt with, appropriately, by the school expelling him for a year. To charge him with four adult felony charges in lieu of some serious counseling and a youth diversion program is in itself criminal.
Is it worth a few soon-to-be forgotten sub-headlines to persecute a young man, a persecution that could lead to the eventual development of a non-productive, if not truly criminal, individual? Although I don’t personally know Mr. Pegues, I don’t believe another notch in the judicial bench is worth destroying a young life that only needs a little corrective nudge to become a productive asset to society.
David R. Forward, Aurora
Paris in the news …
Paris Hilton is not an admirable person, but what has gone wrong with the sense of justice of this society? Lost in the outpouring of outrage that she is not spending her full 45 days in jail is a basic question: Whom did she actually hurt? Whose property did she damage? Whose rights did she violate? Isn’t the law supposed to be about protecting rights?
It has been said that Hilton should be locked up because she “thumbed her nose at the system.” Ah, so that’s it (and a good dose of envy at the rich and beautiful). Her crime is to not bow and grovel sufficiently in front of the judge.
The government is supposed to be the servant and we the masters. Does it not seem now to be the other way around?
Tom Cooley, Parker
… but is it really news?
The dumbing down of our culture is mind-boggling, and the fact that the media are willing participants is even more disturbing. First, TV stations, in their frenzy to saturate viewers with details of Paris Hilton’s jailtime, allow her story to upstage the replacement of one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a key figure in the Iraq war. And then, as if to confirm that the fourth estate has sunk to a new low, The Denver Post devotes front-page coverage to the concluding episode of “The Sopranos” – in the national news section, no less! I certainly hope that nothing of national or international significance happens the next time Lindsay Lohan stubs her toe or checks into rehab again.
Karen Libby, Denver
No such thing as free
Re: “School’s out, food’s in,” June 13 news story.
The Post wrote about the “free lunch” program in Aurora. I love that word, “free.” Fact is, there is no free lunch. Somebody is paying for it. Guess who that somebody is?
Yes, I know it is just a matter of semantics. However, do we really want to teach these children that the food they receive is “free”?
John Rector, Loveland
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