Transcribed by Ernie Piper.
Eli Sanders: The people of this region have voted repeatedly for light railâand they seem to like it, even if you donât. How do you explain this disconnect?
Kemper Freeman Jr.: Well, in 1970, we virtually stopped building new roads as we had been before. Thereâs been some exceptions, but not much. Itâs been a very modest increase in land miles since 1970. So, weâre 41 years into this schemeâŚ
So why arenât people driving around with pitchforks out of their car windows?
Sound Transit. I donât know what their total budget in PR and advertising, marketing is, but itâs plus or minus a million dollars a month. Which makes them by themselves one of the largest advertisers in the market. And they use that money toâif thereâs another word besides advertising to describe it, Iâd call it brainwashing. I mean, it is the largest scale of brainwashing on any topic in the Northwest. There has never been a topic or policy or idea of the government that has had that much money spent on it. There isnât even anyone in second place, not by far.
So what do you think the motivation is for this brainwashing?
This thing is being promoted⌠by the people who are from the industry. They build the equipment, they sell the engineering services, financial services, everything relating to it. Theyâ When they run a public campaign, theyâll do everything they can to make it appear as if the publicâas if itâs bubbling up from the public. But when you look at where the checks really came from, 90 to 95 percent came from the industry.
Well, youâve put a lot of your own money into opposing light rail.
Weâre a little tin can compared to a million dollars a month since 1996.
So do you feel like youâre losing?
No, I donât feelâweâre not losing. We arenât able to play in the big leagues. I mean, nobody, no public agency or anybody can compete with Sound Transit. Nobodyâs got a million dollars a month to spend on thisâŚ
I would describe Sound Transit as an agency that doesnât see any barriers, legal or otherwise. Ethics or fibs or anything elseânothing is a barrier to them. They feel that. Iâve seen this in the legislature. There are people who have political drive, who are so certain that their goal is worthy, that the ends justify the means. Iâd describe Sound Transit as exactly that. They know theyâre doing Godâs work, philosophically. Iâm not sure how they can know that, because they arenât, but they believe it.
You say they think theyâre doing Godâs work, but youâve also been associated with language that describes promoters of light rail as socialists and/or communists. And thatâs sort of a Godless ideology, at least to a lot of people. Do you really think light rail is the tip of the spear for a creeping socialism?
Well, I think it is a fantasy of the left that this is somehow good, nationally.
The socialist left?
Well, the left is a whole collection of different people. But I thinkâI think it is. It has been the adopted philosophy of Democrats, although not all of them, and people who Iâd say are the left. And, none of this means theyâre bad people. I have full regard for anybodyâs thought. Iâm not one of these guys who thinks that everyone who thinks different from me is somehow the devil. What I respect most is someone whoâs thinking. But in this case, most everyoneâs being led like sheep. And thereâs a lot at work leading this.
In a way, it was your grandfather who created the bridgeâthe I-90 floating bridge over Lake Washingtonâthat youâre now trying to keep light rail from going over.
My grandfather, from hisâif you read Generations, you know that he wasâ He went to hisâ They were fromâ He grew up in Yakima. He quit school in the fifth grade, working full time for his dad, setting type, delivering papers, collecting copy, writing stories, doing everything to put the paper out. And on his 21st birthday he went to his dad and said, âI appreciate all youâve done for me, Iâve worked for you full time since the fifth grade, but at some point could I get a salary? Or could I at least someday know that I might have some ownership in the paper, or some kind of remuneration? Because if there isnât any, itâs my birthday today and I need to start seeing what Iâm doing for a living. Youâve helped me, Iâve helped you, that got us to here, but whatâs next?â The great-grandfather, story goes, the great-grandfather blew his stack and said, âYou ungrateful son of a bitch.â
This is Legh Freeman talking to Miller Freeman.
This is Legh talking to Miller. And he said, âYou donât appreciate all weâve done? Weâve housed you, clothed you, fed you, treated you when you were sick, and now you want to be paid?â So, my grandfather, Miller⌠He left on his 21st birthday. The only thing he had with him was an old bicycle that he used to deliver papers, and the clothes he was wearing, and less than five dollars cash⌠And heâs 21, and heâs healthy. And he rode away from the office and sat down and said, âWhat am I going to do?â And his idea wasâwell, Legh Freemanâs paper had sort of covered the farm community of Yakima. And Miller, my grandfather, was already aware that in Wenatchee there was another farm community, and in other parts of Eastern Washington there were several, and he was even aware thatâthis is the way he tells the story: This community had more hay than it needed, but didnât know what to do with it. This community had more cattle than it had hay, and didnât know what to do with the extra cattle. And there was no way to communicate back and forth, so his idea was to do an Eastern Washingtonâwide, half-the-state-of-Washington farm paper that would cover all these different farm communities and become a vehicle for them to communicate things they couldnât ever do before.
So that sounds kind of simple, but thatâs what he did. And in fact, then he got on his bicycle and went from farm to farm to farm, collecting the stories, and where he could, he got someone to pay for an ad for a paper that had never been printed. And then he would ride an empty boxcar over to Seattle and wander around until he could find someone to print the paper for him. And then he would take the paper back on the same route with nothing but his bicycle and drop off the paper and try to sell another ad. Well, that became what was for many years the largest farm paper in Eastern Washington.
And it sounds like he learned the power of a trade publication, because he went on toâ
Thatâs what he ended up specializing in. But he owned this farm paper for years, and what was one of the major stories all those years that he ran that paper was the railroads had a monopoly in this state, which was just driving the [agricultural] community crazy. And you had two choices, you could ship your goods to the world ports via the railroad and there was no competitor, or you could barge it down the Columbia River. But they didnât have all the locks and all the stuff in it, so the barges would have been less expensive, but they didnât have a way to work it very well. And the agricultural industry of the state said, âWe need an alternative to the railroad.â And they started talking years ago about the cross-state highway. My grandfather ran for the legislature in 1913 on the single issue of creating the cross-state highway, and thatâs a story all by itself. But it got passed, by one vote, and then was built later on. So one day the director of engineering for DOT in Olympia called my grandfather and said, âWell, since this was your idea, that we have the cross-state highway, whereâfrom starting in Snoqualmie pass come down this sideâwhere should it go? Howâs itâwhere should it go to tidewater?â So my granddad went down to Olympia and all he had with him was a Standard Oil road map, which is not a fancy thing, and somewhere in my files Iâve got this mapâall he did was take a ruler and a pencil, and he said, âElliott Bay is the best deepwater port in the Northwest; Snoqualmie Pass is here,â and he just took a pencil, a map, and a ruler, drew a line from Snoqualmie Pass to Elliott Bay, and said, âThatâs where it should go.â
And the engineer said, âOh my God, that goes right across Lake Washingtonâthe waterâs too deep, and thatâs too long a span for any normal bridge.â My granddad said, âListen, you just asked me where it should be. Youâre the engineer, you figure out how to do it. Thatâs where it should be. Agricultureâs over there, this is the low pass, the road should come over here, thatâs where it should go. Youâre the engineer, you figure out how to build the bridge.â And he did it, invented the floating bridge. They invented it in two years, from conception in 1938 to opening in 1940. Without computers or any of the other BS we think is standard today. They created something nobody else has ever done before of that scale. And it lasted until the contractor drilled holes at the waterline and, surprise, it sank.
I watched that happen when I was young kid.
Wasnât that something? I went across that bridge one day, and I looked overâIâm a boater, have been all my lifeâand said, âThose guys think theyâre working on a bridge, they donât realize theyâre working on a boat! You canât put holes like that that close to the water and have that thing float.â
What kind of boating do you do? Sailing or motorboating?
Iâve had a sailboat for 22 years, but we sold it⌠When I was 10 years old, we had a 10-foot boat. When I was 13, I got a 13-foot boat. When I was 30-something, I got a 34-foot boat. Five years ago, I got a 55-foot boat⌠I love boats, but it doesnât matterâany kind of boat. So I love boating, I love to sail. My wife, after twenty years, four years ago, said, âIâm not sailing any more.â I said, âWhy?â She said, âIt tips.â I said, âIt doesnât tip, it heels.â She said, âNo it doesnât, it tips.â
Sheâs a Virgo, which means everything needs to be in place.
Iâm a Virgo.
Is that right? Okay, you seem like you might be. [Laughs] My mom was a Virgo, my daughterâs a Virgo, my first grandsonâs a VirgoâŚ
What are you?
Iâm a Libra, on the cusp of Scorpio, so Iâm a balance with a little fire. But Iâm right on the cusp.
Back to the Lake Washington floating bridge. Do you feel a sense of ownership over I-90, since your grandfather helped get it built?
No.
The biggest thing I hear when Iâm talking to people about you, is that they donât believe your opposition to light rail is financial. They think itâs ideological, or maybe something else. Like: You donât think light rail will bring the right class or color of people to Bellevue Square.
Thatâs a Sound Transitâcreated perception⌠Sound Transit will do everything, if you emerge in any way, with âem or against âem, they will come to you and see how they can get you on their side. If youâre not on their side, all kinds of things will happen, and all of them have happened to me⌠And then, at the end, and then the last step isâand this is for any opponentâthe last one is to vilify, any way they can.
âŚThey vilify me. They just decide, well, heâs a developer, heâs a white boy, heâs a developer from Bellevue, obviously doesnât like minorities, so he must be doing this just to keep minorities out of his shopping center. Thatâs the storyline they present to each other; thatâs how they explain me to each other⌠If any of those guys come see our center, theyâd see that we have twice the number of minorities than in Seattle, and they donât even know that!
And the quote they refer back to is something you said about Southcenter a long time ago, is that right?
Okay, that is crazy. Okay, thatâevery shopping center that I know something about, thereâs 50-some-thousand of them in America, Iâve been a trustee of the shopping-center industry since 1987, I chaired it â94 to â95 worldwide, Iâve traveled the world, Iâve still got a lot to learn, but this is a topicâweâve got one of the best ones in America, in terms of productivityâI know something about shopping centers. I think I was being asked, I think she was covering retail, but I think [the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter] asked, âWhat is the difference between the markets, Southcenter, Northgate, et cetera?â
âŚI said, âWell, I think one of the things youâll see when you come to Bellevue Square is that itâs an occasion they look forward to, theyâre a little more dressed up than they would be at Southcenter or someplace else. And anyways, it keptâ And weâre talking aboutâ And you can talk to any marketing person, and this is what they talk about all day long! This isnât some weird thing, this isâany shopping center can describe in detail the profile of its shopper like it was one person! It isnât one; itâs tens of thousands. So they pressed on and they said, âYou mean, if you go to Southcenter you can see differences?â And I said, âOne thing you wonât see around here too often is pink and blue hair curlers in a womanâs hair while sheâs shopping here.â But, I guaranteeâ And that isnâtâ Is that wrong? It isnât wrong. Itâs just true!
Occasionally people will just put onâI have three sisters and a mother. When they just want to be comfortableâand, two sisters lived in Hawaii for a year and a halfâthey would put on, the most comfortable thing is a, whatâs called a muumuu. And itâs just a shapeless dress thatâs comfortable, and when you want to be comfortable and relaxed you put that on. So I described sometimes theyâll wear something like that, and sometimes theyâll just wear flip-flops. And for that I was called a racist. Out of contextâŚ
So if itâs not about the type of people, why donât you want a train that drops a whole bunch of people in front of your stores every eight minutes?
I would love it, ifâ This is the key point, and I can explain this in black and white: Today Bellevue attracts 350,000 trips, in and out of Bellevue, per day. In 20 years we expect it to be 695,000. So we have a problem of finding a way of getting 695,000 people in and out of here in a day, but the current trips is half that. So our trips are expected to double. And thatâs not my number, thatâs Puget Sound Regional Council, City of Bellevue, Sound Transit⌠So, can we stop for a second? Sound Transit has never made good on original estimates of ridership, not even close, not even once. So theyâve never accomplished what theyâve sold us, when theyâre selling.
Okay, so [they estimate] 51,000 riders [on East Link each weekday by 2030], but specifically related to Bellevue: 9,000 get on or off in Bellevue. So thatâs 4,500 peopleâlike, if you commuted in and commuted out.
Okay, so, if you read the Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] youâll also see that of thatâof the 9,000 that get on and offâaccording to the EIS, 7,000 of them are already on the bus. Already using transit. And they just assume that the four bus routes are now going to be canceledâthe four best, most used, most efficient, most popular, are being canceledâand the assumption is the full number goes over to rail.
It may or may not, but itâs irrelevant.
So whatâs left is 2,000 new trips 20 years from now, out of 695,000 trips a day. This is a rounding error. Itâs two thirds of one percent of the new trips, is their best guess⌠I mean, I have gone through interviews as long as this, I have never had anyone use these numbers in the story. Never happens.
Iâll use them.
You can be the first, but Iâve been interviewed a lot of times. They donât use that. They start with a picture of who I am, and all the things theyâve heard⌠I donât mean itâs bad, itâs just the way it is. Reporters, by the time they call me theyâve got a story in their head what theyâre looking for, and most often they want me to say things, theyâll record it, theyâll pick up the pieces that fit and fill in the blanks and write the story that they envision.
Well, Iâm going to take these numbers and call Sound Transit and see what they say. But Iâll use them.
Get a hardcopy of the EIS because they fiddleâthey have professionalsâyouâll forget what day it is by the time they get back to you. But⌠Iâll stake my life on those numbers. Thereâs nothing tricked-up about those numbers.
So your answer to get to 300,000 more trips is more bus transit and more roads.
Yes.
I think part of what people object to are the environmental concerns related to just building more roads and running more buses over them.
I can refute virtually 100 percent of all of those thoughts with facts. That is a facade of things that have been cloaked. This thing [light rail] has been blessed as if it somehow does all that stuff. Letâs start with electricity. Electricityâweâre not doing any more hydroelectric, sun and wind are minor players, very expensive, but minor players in terms of amount we get. About half of all new electricity is from coal⌠it comes from carbon. And somehow, Sound Transit likes to take credit for the fact [that] theyâre environmentally sound. Like a light-rail carâs environmentally sound, because you canât see the pollution. But believe me, it is polluting somewhere worse than a car.
So youâre saying that light rail, at some endpoint, uses just as muchâ
More. I can show you a proven chart.
Okay, but for now, how about just a basic question on pollution. Do you believe in global warming?
Iâveâmy favorite topics in high school and college were sciences and math. And Iâd taken literally all the math you can possibly take, and all the science you could take. I took seven periods, we have two study halls, I just went straight through. So Iâve had two years of biology, two years of botany, two years of zoology, a year of oceanography, and a whole bunch more at the University of Washington. So I understand a lot of those principles really well, and I understand also the synergy between plants and animals. And anybody who could possibly vilify CO2 is beyond anything I could imagine. And theyâve done it, and I donâtâ I do not believe it, and hereâs why. Animals breathe oxygen and exhale CO2. Plants breathe CO2 and exhale oxygen. Itâs aâ Oxygen is a good thing. CO2 is a good thing. I think people get confused with carbon monoxide, which can kill you. But, I mean, CO2âs inert.
I thinkâ Iâve talked to people whoâve taken their boats through the Northwest Passage because the ice cap has moved north, and they did that to prove all the global warmingâand Iâve talked to some of the people on those boats that did it, and they talked to the Natives that lived all along the way, and they asked âem what they thought of this fact, and universally they all said the same thing. They said, this has been going on forever. There is nothing new here. This goes through cycles. This cycle weâre in is a warming cycle. Weâll be in a cooling cycle. This is continuous. And I think whatâs gone on is more for political reasons. Donât mistake me, I am an environmentalist. But I also believe in real science.
When youâre talking about adding road capacity for cars, youâre talking about increasing dependency on oil, and therefore dependency on foreign oil. Do you have a problem with that?
Okay, unlike everyone youâve ever met, I took a five-day trip 30 years ago, paid for it on myselfâit was half government people. I was either just finishing my term in the legislature or still in my last term. And a group of us, half public, half private, half Canadian, half American, chartered a 737 and had a well-thought-out trip where we basically stopped five times a day starting here, Spokane, going step by step all the way through Canada, Alaska, all the way up to Prudhoe Bay. This 737 had skis on it, landed places weâd never seen an airplane land before. A 737âlike we were in a little Alaskan piper bush pilot plane.
Anyways, breakfast lunch and dinner⌠We stopped and saw some of the biggest hydroelectric facilities, natural gas⌠We saw Athabasca [oil sands] before anyone else. Iâd never even heard of it. Saw that they already had $2 billion worth of extraction equipment up there, and it had five times the known oil reserves of Saudi Arabiaâthat was just one stop. We got to Anchorage, a spokesman there saidâIâm not advocating this, but if the world were to decide the power itself, the world were to decide just to use coal from now on, and it could be solid, powder, liquid, gasifiedâ It could be made to burn as cleanâ Within an hour and a half of Anchorage we have enough energy to power the world for 200 years.
So you would be for more drilling in Alaska?
Absolutely.
I know it got boiled down to âDrill, baby, drillâ in the last election, but you would be in the âDrill, baby, drillâ camp.
Well, let me go further than that. Thereâs North Dakota, which is an unbelievably muted topic and should be in the headlines right now, and I have a copy of this hereâand I could give you a copy of it, a national agency that keeps track of known reserves, first announcedâ I think itâs the Bakken oil field that is most of North Dakota, part of it goes into Canada, part of it goes into Montana, part of it goes into South Dakota, that has eight times the known reserves of Saudi Arabia⌠We should be up there, with all the unrest in the Middle East. We should be tearing into thatâ
You donât seem super concerned about the environmental impact of cars and oil consumption.
That is absolutely not true. Iâm as concerned as anybody who Iâve met. But Iâve studied on itâ I think at bestâ Unless we want to totally destroy the country, and some people do, and among us some people want to just destroy it, âTo hell with this country,â itâs on their lips. Not just outside, but within. I think itâs a 30-year transition. If we were to decide that weâre no longer gonna be oil-dependent, as hard and as fast as we can go, short of destroying the country, itâs a 30 year proposition to begin to get us into meaningful alternatives to oil. And I am more than satisfied that we haveâwithin this countryâwe have all the oil we need to make it through that 30-year transition. And Iâm not saying we shouldnât go through a 30-year transition. We ought to study this real hard and have a plan to get there. But to just with no planâ
Who are these people who want to destroy the country?
Thereâs always people who just donât like whatâs going on in every country. Iâm not saying itâs a majority. Iâm just saying thereâs people within us, thereâs always people that donât like whatâs going on.
And you think that anti-roads, pro-mass-transit sort of people are part of the problem.
If it was on your mind as the fall of this country, and you wanted to stick your thumb in and jam the gearsâ For whatever reason thatâs a legitimate thought of people, and Iâm not sayingâ Thatâs just somebodyâs thought, thatâs fineâbut itâs not my thought. There is no single place you could jam the gears better than screwing with the transportation system, if that were your goal. Iâm not saying thatâs everybodyâs goal thatâs against cars. Within some of the most ardent folks Iâve met, it is their goal. And, to just shut this country down is their goal. I donât think thatâs the majority⌠but to some people, thatâs just fine. So, and Iâm saying itâs unnecessary to do that.
Iâm confused about something: You talk about socialism, and people wanting a state thatâs more intrusive in their lives, but youâre depending a lot on the state to intervene and build you bigger roads.
I think there are basic functions of government which are fundamental, and transportation is one of them. So I have my peace with them being in the transportation business.
Okay, well, like you suggested, Iâm going to talk to Sound Transit and see what they have to say about your arguments and ridership assertions.
They have hired, or employ on the side, the best spin guys I know. And they will spin these facts but they cannot change these facts.
Well, thereâs time before this piece runs, so I can come back to you with what they say.
Iâd love that⌠These points Iâve been making, Iâve made in every interview. If you put these points in there, youâll be the first one that did. Iâm an optimist so I keep thinking, âOkay, maybe this time thisâll be the one thatâs fair.â
Well, when we do an article we can really give it some space.
I mean, you guys are a breath of fresh air. You guys are bringing some new, good stuff. The traditional mediaâs running out of gas.