Letter: High Speed Rail deadline

By David Anderson, Tillicum Woodbrook Neighborhood Association president

The high-speed deadline approaches for your letter protesting high speed rail through Lakewood.

To the degree that Lakewood residents don’t like the Washington Department of Transportation-Federal Railroad Administration (WSDOT-FRA) plan to run fast trains through residential neighborhoods, emailing comments by November 9 directly to the top boss at United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the FRA in Washington, DC would have more of an impact than emailing WSDOT.

For evidence-substantiating verbiage for your letter, see www.communitymattersweb.com.

November 9^th is the first day under law that the FRA is allowed to make a decision based on the Environmental Assessment (EA) recently published for WSDOT’s plan to run high speed rail through Lakewood.  While Nov.9 is not a hard deadline, it is an indication of the earliest that a decision can be issued.

So letters are best due before Nov.9^th.

Whether Romney or Obama wins on Nov.6^th, the FRA will probably be interested in issuing a decision ASAP after Nov.9^th.

• Main contact: Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo: joseph.szabo@fra.dot.gov
• cc: Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood: ray.lahood@dot.gov

Include ccs also to your two U.S. Senators and Congressional Representative:

• Senator Patty Murray: patty@murray.senate.gov
• Senator Maria Cantwell: maria@cantwell.senate.gov

Congressman whomever, but better just to wait and send a cc to the Representative-elect in the new 10th Congressional district after November 6!

Would be polite to include a cc to Larry Mattson: MattsoL@wsdot.wa.gov

The City of Lakewood has promised a letter by Nov.9^th as well.  Dave Bugher, Assistant City Manager/Community Development testified at WSDOT’s open house last week, as did other Lakewood residents, in which Bugher “outlined deficiencies” in WSDOT’s plan.

Meanwhile, mostly vacuous, cavalier and evidence-less opinions dominate the ongoing online debate at The Lakewood Patch, The Suburban Times (google “Death by Train” in the search box), and The Tacoma News Tribune.