Despite what Sound Transit and government entities might say, light rail is not the answer of the future, according to Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman.

In presentations at the Reporter offices on March 17 and April 12, Freeman detailed his “Mobility 21” plan to improve transportation in Puget Sound.

Freeman claims that the area is woefully behind on transportation needs, and a little-known federal- and state-mandated organization that controls where a significant portion of transportation funding goes is misguided on what people need.

He said the Puget Sound Regional Council allocates money for Seattle and for mass transit, when it should be proportionally allotted to the Eastside, the rest of the region and to technology to make highways safer and quicker.

“There has been a shift in the dynamic,” said Freeman, owner of the Bellevue Collection of malls, noting that his plan would not only benefit his customers, but the entire region. “Bellevue is no longer the stepchild, we are a major community.”

According to data Freeman provided, the Eastside currently has 670,000 residents, compared to Seattle’s 650,000. Retail business east of Lake Washington also eclipses that of Seattle, $8.9 billion to $4.5 billion. The regional plan is far too Seattle-centric and focuses too heavily on transit, he said. Mobility 21 would aim to fix that.

The Puget Sound Regional Council — an agency that plans transportation throughout King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties — allocates half of its funding in the regional transportation plan (more than $86 billion of the $173 billion plan) to transit. Freeman said this “anti-auto” way of thinking benefits only a select few commuters (only 2.9 percent of commuters use mass transit, he said) and does not consider the reality of the region’s transportation needs.

To counteract this perceived slight, Freeman’s Mobility 21 plan would be an alternative to the region’s transportation plan.

“Most of my life, government stayed ahead of transportation,” he said. “That’s no longer the case. All kinds of things can be done to fix our problems. Why are we falling behind?”

Freeman commissioned a group of experts in finance and transportation to produce Mobility 21, as well as a national panel to review the study. His head engineer Bill Eager said that despite large public campaigns to get funding for light rail, highways would continue to be the future under the Mobility 21 plan.

Mobility 21 would focus more on bus rapid transit, eliminate the Sounder train and contain light rail to what already had a record of decision. A semi-distant vision in the plan also would involve a tunnel for Interstate 5 that would bypass downtown Seattle through Beacon, First and Capitol hills. That portion needs more analysis, Eager said.

Either way, the current path is not an effective one, according to the Freeman camp.

“The public is really keen on light rail,” Eager said. “And I don’t blame them, because they’ve been lied to by government agencies. By 2040, only about 8 percent of public transit will be on light rail, and that’s about four-tenths of 1 percent of transportation overall.”

“There is an irrational love affair with light rail all across the country,” he continued. “Transportation decisions are always political.”

Rick Olson, communications director for the Puget Sound Regional Council, said Freeman’s data is perplexing.

“We do know that elected leaders from throughout the Eastside led in the development of the [council’s] plan and worked hard to ensure that the Eastside’s transportation priorities are also priorities in the region’s plan. They succeeded — the plan has been broadly embraced throughout the region, and within East King County,” he said.

However, Freeman said his team of engineers gathered their data directly from the council itself.

According to the Puget Sound Regional Council’s own numbers, light rail riders were at an all-time high in 2015, and that study was finished before the recent grand openings of the Capitol Hill and U-District stations in Seattle.

Olson said a 2014 survey showed that transit percentages to key areas in the region are far different from what Freeman asserts. According to Olson, Downtown Seattle sees 54 percent transit ridership, Downtown Bellevue sees 25 percent and Redmond-Overlake sees 19 percent, numbers that could change with the finishing of light rail.

While the council focuses on rush hours to dense-urban areas such as the U District in looking at total transit numbers, Freeman and Eager use a 24-hour a day, four-county wide metric to show that of the region’s 15 million daily trips, less than 3 percent use mass transit. In the council’s most optimistic plan, this percentage would grow by just a few percentage points. Eager said that the council has a dismal track record of meeting its own goals for transit.

Even so, the region has one of the highest uses of mass transit in the country, with each resident making an average of 63.6 trips per capita each year, according to data from the National Transit Database.

This isn’t enough to be a good use of funds, the Freeman group claims.

“According to the council’s adopted plan, by 2040 each trip by transit would end up costing about $13, while in an automobile it will cost about 51 cents a trip,” Eager said. “We would propose boosting transit fares to about 65 percent of operating and maintenance cost. Currently, people pay 25 percent.”

Subsidized transit prices would still exist for low-income people, but Eager said most of those who use transit could easily pay more.

“We know transit isn’t for everybody. We know this because we reached out to thousands of households across the region to get details about how they get around now and what their preferences are for the future,” Olson said. “That’s why the plan has a diverse set of investments and improvements to match urban and rural needs, based on the ways real people get around.”

Sound Transit’s East Link line will have a stop in Downtown Bellevue, not far from Freeman’s own shopping centers.

Eager said Mobility 21 would put money where it is needed, and spend $30 billion less than the Puget Sound Regional Council’s $173 billion estimate. The plan would also allocate funds proportionally to private vehicles, but still fund transit at 14 times the amount with which it is used.

Freeman’s expert panel would research government alternatives for regional transportation and lobby for reduced federal restrictions on tolling interstates.

Government shortcomings such as the Interstate 405 express toll lanes are worsening congestion in the region and particularly on the Eastside, Freeman said. The technology of vehicles continues to improve, and companies such as Uber and Lyft make ridesharing a distinct possibility, he claims. By not looking at advancing technology, government organizations are hamstringing themselves on what should be a simple fix, he said.

“Self-driving cars will be here in 20 years,” Freeman said. “In six months, every car manufacturer will have a model like mine (Freeman drives a Tesla with self-driving capabilities). We have to be forward looking.”

King County Executive Dow Constantine weighed in on the matter in his recent State of the County speech.

“But the blunt truth is this: the age of freeway building is over,” he said. “Even if we had the money, we lack the physical space to build enough lanes to build our way out of this crisis. And even if we could build more freeway lanes, our arterials and side streets could never handle the additional traffic these lanes would deliver. The case for light rail is simple: at peak capacity, a light rail line can carry 16,000 people an hour — in each direction — absolutely reliably.”

Freeman said logic like this is why Puget Sound is so behind where it needs to be.

“I’m not anti-transit,” Freeman said. “I’m for making transit more useful for more people.”