At Slog, there is an awesome put down on Kemper Freeman’s Truth About Traffic via links to sources that disprove Freeman’s factual errors. It has a wealth of great links, and if your a transit fan, it’s definitely worth a read.
Oh, and she has the video I mentioned in my previous KF post.
I want to add my two cents to this. Even the linked document’s stats ECB put in response to the 3% trip statistic are misleading, because they are measured in Vehicle Miles Travelled, which is not the same as trips. Someone driving from Spanaway to Redmond counts the same as a fifteen people riding the bus from Ballard downtown or five people riding from the city to Redmond. Plus, all other commute options (biking, walking, skateboarding, etc.) are left out.
Finally, if all you care about is congestion (as Kemper Freeman alleges to), trips taken at midnight don’t effect congestion, so why consider the 3% statistic when talking about congestion? We care about number of commute trips during rush hour, that’s what congestion is. Not the number of miles travelled by people. I can drive from LA to Seattle and that won’t cause congestion, but driving across 520 during the middle of rush hour will.
Tons of people make long commutes by bus!