The front-page story of your Dec. 11 issue, “Transportation plan for Kirkland on track but still a challenge,” should have described the scheme as being way off-base and wholly unworkable.

Snaking Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) along the Cross-Kirkland Corridor(CKC) is expensive lunacy. Much of that old railway was built on a raised berm in the center of the right-of-way. The grading and fill that would be required to level the route of the CKC to accept two-way vehicular traffic plus accommodate a trail, to say nothing of the many bridges and overpasses on that route that are too narrow and would be demolished and replaced, are sure signs that the people doing the cost/benefit analysis aren’t the people that will be footing the bill.

Then the Kirkland City Council wants to use a transportation plan to engage in more of the sophistry of social engineering. Kirkland is already very “walkable” and “bikeable,” but for much of the year it is also cold and wet… so people use their vehicles to get around. Lots of people have children and there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get them from home to school, from school to dance lessons or soccer practice, and then back home at the end of the day via walking, biking, or on a series of busses. Our lives don’t lend themselves to a carless future so many politicians seem to embrace. And, of course our City Council wants to set “carbon reduction targets” that exceed our state’s goals and even those of the much ballyhooed “Paris Accord.” Just stop it. Every layer of our government wants a say in “carbon” reduction. All that tells me is that every level of government wants more of our money. [President] Barack Obama and [Gov.] Jay lnslee want to pick our pockets using their illusory “targets.” Do we really need to add Mayor [Amy] Walen and four of her colleagues to the ever-growing ranks of klepto-environmentalist officials?

The story in your paper was correct in that we in Kirkland can’t build enough roads to reduce traffic congestion. This city lies dead-center in the double-H

grid of freeways, where I-90, SR-520, and SR-522 form the legs and 1-405 is the cross. Thirty years ago the pattern was a double-U, but development far to the

north and east of Kirkland has changed that. I-405 will be jammed forever and traffic will divert to Kirkland’s arterials, until another major north-south roadway is built east of Lake Sammamish, transforming I-405 into an “inner beltway.” All the scheming and trying to force lifestyle changes on us won’t improve traffic one bit until the rapidly growing areas of Issaquah, Sammamish, Duvall, Woodinville and points beyond get their own freeway and the [people] at WSDOT stop trying to widen and toll ours.

Bruce A. Haigh, Kirkland