Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    Michael King, in “The Reading Railroad” [News, May 10], while making valuable points, seems to state that finding an initial route for urban rail is a problem easily solved after finding/deciding financing. This line of thinking is truly putting the cart before the horse, and the antithesis of good, intelligent, effective rail planning. Deciding, as a community, where the next rail route runs, what neighborhoods it serves, what transportation/commuting problems it addresses, and how it fits into an overall regional comprehensive system has to be accomplished before being concerned with financing it, important as that is. The public support of any funding mechanism for the next major investment in passenger rail isn’t going to materialize if the public isn't sold on the route. And there is a small group of citizens/rail advocates really causing official rail planners (at the city of Austin, Capital Metro, and the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization) to justify a rail route from Downtown to the Mueller neighborhood that is unjustifiable, in terms of what is the best next “major public investment in the future of Austin” (to quote King). And the local press, including the Chronicle, needs to start covering this as yet unreported story.

Dear Editor,
    Neighborhood leaders and members past and present of the city of Austin's Robert Mueller Advisory Commission (RMAC) deserve credit for helping launch Mueller.
    However, there are many challenges with the already developed space and the process for including input from the RMAC and the community – for example, unsafe conditions for pedestrians and cyclists in the retail section. It is bewildering how Barbara Jordan Boulevard received a construction green light to proceed when any transportation planner should have been able to see that chaos would emerge trying to enter/exit the curb cuts between the Home Depot and Best Buy. The master developer, Catellus, should accept some responsibility for this disaster. I am well aware that TxDOT changes to I-35 forced more traffic on to Barbara Jordan Boulevard. Citizens partnering with a few Mueller businesses convinced the city to retrofit Barbara Jordan Boulevard to help prevent the daily tire screeching of near misses and fender benders.
    Another example: Adherence to best practices for reducing diesel construction equipment emissions through equipment and fuel choices. Private sector and nonprofit developments including H-E-B are exempt from following the construction/air quality plan that the common area/infrastructure has to follow. Diesel exhaust can be carcinogenic and is a leading source of ozone-smog emissions.
    The aforementioned RMAC has a more limited advisory role than it, and perhaps the Austin City Council, expected. Major decisions are not based on collaborating with adjacent neighborhoods to the north and may be at odds with building a new urban mecca.

Dear Editor,
    Through various media, we are subjected to stories of Mueller: the construction project [“The Changing Face of Mueller,” News, May 10]. While that can be appreciated, Mueller's true story is not one of its buildings and infrastructure, but one of its people. As Austin's densest place developing within the fabric of other Northeast Austin neighborhoods, how have we honored our geography? How have we tried to nurture a sense of both regional and neighborhood community? Have we embraced Mueller's principles of sustainability and diversity? How has the neighborhood lured young families back into the city core with the promise of density? How will those young families reshape the educational landscape of Northeast Austin? The journalist that searches for those answers will tell the truer history of the place and its relevance to Austin's development for the next fifty years.

   [Michael King responds: "The Changing Face of Mueller," as Dusty Harshman notes, is largely devoted to the current physical changes underway at Mueller. And he's correct on the broader subjects suggested by those changes; we hope our additional coverage already in the works will answer some of his larger questions.]

Dear Editor,
    Things that keep Austin weird [“Point Austin: The Reading Railroad,” News, May 10]: 1) belief that one needs a train to get from UT to the state Capitol; 2) Chronicle columnists complaining about editor and journalist ethics; 3) “federal” money.