Editor,

This letter is in response to the Feb. 17 letter with the headline “Clipper Claims Are Out of Touch.” Several, if not all of the letter writer’s claims are mere opinion. But a couple of the claims seemed very odd to me and turned out to be not factual.

The Langley planning department map places the proposed funicular station on the top of the bluff at a point near the intersection of Fourth Street and Cascade Avenue. The letter writer claims that, “… the proposed funicular station on Cascade Avenue creates a 1,100 foot walk to the nearest destination in town on the bluff side, much farther than from the base of Wharf Street.”

I took “the nearest destination in town” to mean the library. I was curious. I actually measured the distance with a measuring wheel from the end of the dock to the library. It is 1,075 feet up the steep hill. The distance from the proposed Cascade station to the library (I included the 72 extra feet people would walk from the end of the dock to the lower funicular landing area) is only 666 feet along a fairly flat walk. The difference is 409 feet. That’s over one-and-one-third football fields!

Even if “the nearest destination in town” was meant by the writer to be the Pizzeria, the distance from the proposed Cascade Station to Village Pizzeria is still 152 feet shorter than up the steep hill from the end of the dock.

Having measured these routes twice, I am confident that the proposed funicular station on Cascade would drastically shorten the walk, not to mention the steepness. The writer’s claim is just not valid.

This easily researched example casts doubt on all the letter’s claims. It appears that it is more important to discredit the funicular proposal with misleading statements than to research the facts of what would be most beneficial for all of Langley.

Thank you,

CLAUDIA MITCHELL

Freeland