1/12 Letters: Raleigh transit improvements are underway to better connect people to jobs

Raleigh transit

The writer of “Bicycle lanes” in the Jan. 10 Forum said more jobs and employers should be located near bus lines in Raleigh and Wake. That’s exactly what’s beginning as a result of bus service expansions (happening and planned) under the Wake Transit Plan.

Once the plan is fully implemented, 70 percent of jobs will be within a half mile of public transit.

Already GoRaleigh and GoTriangle have increased frequency of bus service on some routes, expanded Sunday service, and launched new bus routes in Raleigh, Garner and Knightdale. This is taxpayer dollars at work, thanks to the sales tax voters approved in 2016.

New Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes are in planning phases. BRT will provide much faster bus service throughout Raleigh and connect riders conveniently to jobs and services in Cary, Garner and East, North and downtown Raleigh.

Improved bicycle lanes, future commuter rail, and a better bus plan will work together to provide more transportation options for our fast-growing region.

Karen Rindge

Raleigh Transit Authority board member

Social promotion

Regarding “NC superintendent, school leaders debate social promotion,” (Jan. 10):

The formal learning to read, write, and communicate begins when a child enters school. In Pre-K and kindergarten children are learning to read. If a child is not reading by the end of first grade, that is the time to give a child an extra year.

You do not wait until the end of third grade. That is too late!

As the past principal of Cleveland Elementary School in Johnston County, our children were reading when they entered third grade. That was our mission, our focus, and our job.

Read to Achieve has failed and we have failed our children. That is not right.

Mary Nell Ferguson, Smithfield

My tree plan

Thanks to the N&O for the superb reporting in “Slow Burn” (Jan. 3). It helped our family make an important decision about the former tree farm we live on.

Traditional forestry advice says it’s time to harvest our resource. Instead, we’re going to let our trees keep harvesting carbon, while we enjoy the emerging healthy forest.

We respect landowners who make different choices, and we agree with Enviva co-founder John Keppler (Jan. 8) that Enviva’s jobs and payments are important in a tough economy. But the rest of his argument was unpersuasive.

Cutting, pelleting and burning millions of N.C. trees in European power plants and replacing them with seedlings reflects, at best, old-school thinking about sustainability. Sooner or later the European Union, and perhaps North Carolina’s leaders, will conclude that old-school thinking does not apply at this moment in history.

In the meantime, we hope many landowners will just say no to Enviva.

Michael Wade, Hillsborough

Trump on Iran

President Trump thankfully understands the danger and horrible behavior of the world’s No. 1 exporter of terror, Iran.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats passed a war powers resolution in the House that only aids and supports the mullahs.

It is time that a government that pledges “death to America” and the destruction of Israel sees that someone will fight back.

Shame on Pelosi and her followers. God bless President Trump.

Steven Metzler, Raleigh

Mitch McConnell

Regarding impeachment:

Sen. Mitch McConnell makes a perfectly marvelous prime minister. Too bad that’s not his job.

Roger Bullard, Wilson

NC senators

Presently North Carolina is being represented in the U.S. Senate by a man from Kentucky because our two U.S. senators, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, along with other senators, have ceded their votes to Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Mary Jane Marshbanks, Buies Creek

Silent Sam

Just before the holiday five members of the UNC System Board of Governors defended the Board’s decision to pay $2.5 million to the Sons of Confederate Veterans to house and display the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam.

The five Board members said that this was the best deal they could strike to try to resolve what they saw as “a deeply divisive and personal issue.”

There is nothing remotely personal about this issue.

There is nothing “personal” about whether the perpetuation of slavery was central to the Southern cause in the Civil War. It is something brilliant historians, including many in the UNC System, have devoted their lives to documenting.

This is one of the things that is so deeply disturbing about the decision of the Board of Governors to pay a huge sum to an organization to preach the myth of the Lost Cause. It’s a $2.5 million investment in falsehood.

To watch this unfold is devastating. But it’s nothing personal.

Eric Muller

Professor, UNC School of Law