Maryland still hasn’t studied transit alternative
Re: “Commuters slog down Interstate 270,” Sept. 17
Frederick County Commissioner Charles Jenkins wishes that transit advocates had weighed in earlier on Interstate 270. We did.
Way back in 1997, when the State Highway Administration started its study, the Action Committee for Transit and other groups asked for an all-transit alternative. The Transportation Planning Board, the regional body Jenkins now chairs, backed us up.
SHA said it would meet us halfway and study an option consisting of one transitway plus high-occupance vehicle-only lanes on I-270.
But what SHA actually did was something quite different. It evaluated a mammoth construction project that would make the road 14 lanes wide between Shady Grove and Germantown. Most of the new lanes would be open to all vehicles.
Twelve years have gone by, and we’re still waiting for a study of the transit alternative the region’s planners asked for in 1997.
Ben Ross
President,
There’s no easy replacement for oil
Re: “Replacing oil with substitutes won’t put U.S. at disadvantage,” Sept. 16
How do I refute Peter Huber? Let me count the ways.
1. Backed by a green/red coalition, the Obama administration has sworn to take our 500-year supply of coal, now producing 70 percent of our electricity, out of any energy availability equation. By the way, this is the same electricity needed for electric cars.
2. If (and that’s a really big if) a company can get past the years-long and prohibitively expensive legal challenges and administrative fights to get a nuclear power plant site approved, the construction will take seven to 12 years. Most sites won’t be approved, so it will take 20 to 25 years to get a baker’s dozen built when a bushel is needed.
3. No other easily available source of power has oil’s low cost and portability. Only a drastic technology breakthrough will succeed against the economic convenience that so strongly ties world power demands to oil.
John Lewis
Baltimore
Elections in Honduras should be honored by U.S.
Re: “Democracy under attack — by the USA,” Sept. 11
The country’s supreme court ordered the arrest of the ex-president, a power-hungry bully. His removal was perfectly legal, say many lawyers and foreign policy experts, including attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, and Stanford’s William Ratliff.
The Examiner rightly criticizes the Obama administration for saying it may “refuse to honor the upcoming election results” in Honduras, even though the candidates were chosen before the ex-president’s removal. The U.S. routinely honors election results, even when they are held under military regimes. Refusing to do the same for Honduras, which is run by a democratically elected Congress and a civilian president, is disgraceful.
Hans Bader
Senior Attorney
Washington
