funny how riding a bus makes one a expert on capacity and system expansion, doesn't it?

BTW, try to get from a suburb at 9:00 at night. Miss it, you are there an hour.

So, it is equally funny how the person who decides to use their car for the reason to shave time off their trips, that is, when taking the bus is a hassle, also becomes an an expert on traffic patterns and rapid transit usage region wide.

Sims is doing a GOOD THING. Which is trying to give us a system that is compatible with what Seattle currently has. Rails are ok, but trains aren't stylish and aren't any less crowded then buses, except when looked at with rosey colored glasses. Even if The Magic Godmother of Public Project Financing gave Seattle all the money it needs to put rails in, it would still take years and years before the first train will run (followed, about 40 seconds later, with the first tag hung on the nearest blank space). Sims is facing reality of living on a fixed budget, and not simply dreaming about how great life will be after the lottery has been won. His focus should be on the greatest numbers of populace to where they need to be, in a timely manner. That, in reality is a time frame of months, of the SOONER THAN LATER.

Give up the monorail already. The greater populace, be either the stupidity of the voters, the ignorance of the city council, the piss-poor PR of the monorail agency, etc, has spoken. NO MONORAIL. TOO BAD.

I dunno, Josh. People don't like to ride the bus because it gets stuck in traffic? Do you have a source on this as a barrier to entry besides Dan? Is that the primary reason given in a random survey? It seems like an a priori assertion that makes your argument for you.

I'd argue that there are likely to be a host of reasons people don't choose to ride the bus, and very high on that list will be not wanting to wait more than 10-15 minutes for a bus to show up.

And, yes, unused capacity on Metro is visible outside rush hours -- but try picking up the #10 or #8 to Capitol Hill at 5:30pm. It's a sardine can. Not getting a seat is more of a barrier than being stuck in the same traffic that I'd be stuck in if I were driving a car.

Sims' characterization is secondary to the actual plan and its actual effect. There will be MORE buses, meaning fewer places you either can't get to or that take forever to get to. I consider the semantics debate secondary to the need to address transit in this city.

Also, how do you know Metro would assume control of the monorail? Accounts had the monorail operating under its own separate agency.

Don't get me wrong. I'm for more buses, and I'm mostly supportive of Sims's plan. (He's coming in on Friday to pitch it to our edit board.)
I have questions about his 21m numbers (and I also have questions about his claim that the plan will take 60K cars of the road a day.)
Hopefully, he can answer these questions on Friday.

Is this county bus proposal one of those things like Sound Transit and Monorail where it is for decades and decades, and voters in the future will have no power to stop it?

Maybe we could leave a legacy those who come after of not any more intergenerational tax requirements that voters and political leaders in the future can not end.

Dan is a bit hyper - values his time - does not like Strangers up close - and has money.

He fits no profile of the bus rider. BUT SHOULD TAKE CABS EVRYWHERE.

ALERT ALERT ALERT

And all this for a house hold estimate cost which wil be $25.00 per YEAR. If you but a lot of stuff- I buy cheap and used. For me, I bet it is $10.00 per year. Minimalist. Conservationsist. Entranced by the Goodwill Experience..

For approx 2.00 a month, who will vote against it?

You would have to be an utter fool.

We must insist on another electric trolly line or two and all energy state of the art buses....
Sims is brilliant on this one.... perfect timeing, among the angst ridden post mono you know what blues.

Thanks, Erica. Facts are after all facts.

If fuels keeps on going up, bus riders will multiply as well. BETTER schedules will help loads.

Among my circle of ten friends and co workers I own the only car. And I use it rarely. They all LOVE this proposal.

One of everyone's favorite reasons not to ride the bus is because of all of the "gross, fetid, loud, obnoxious" people you have to sit next to. And these same people won't be on the Monorail/train because...? I lived in Chicago for years and switched from the L to the bus after I had seen one too many penises on the train . Although, now that I think about it, maybe this is why Dan likes the train so much.

Dan is a bragging fool. He thinks none of us have been to Chicago and its wheezing, clanking, old, and crowded elevated train.

Once was enough.

As a tourist. I kissed the ground when I got back to Seattle.

Dan, tell us about the penis express?

Fair enough, Josh, and a question worth asking. Let's see answers from Ron Sims.

Michael wrote: "I dunno, Josh. People don't like to ride the bus because it gets stuck in traffic? Do you have a source on this as a barrier to entry besides Dan? Is that the primary reason given in a random survey? It seems like an a priori assertion that makes your argument for you."

I dunno, Michael. Next someone's going to make the claim that ugly people don't get invited to parties as much as beautiful people do. What, did someone actually conduct a scientific survey to verify this, or is it just some prejudiced old-wives' tale that they've decided to swallow a priori? Anyone who actually gets out of the house and interacts with other human beings in Seattle encounters regular folks who hate going downtown because the parking is not free and convenient, and they hate taking the bus. Would all these people be converted by mass transit? Of course not, but some would. More important, other people who are receptive to transit move to places that have mass transit.

Michael goes on: "I'd argue that there are likely to be a host of reasons people don't choose to ride the bus, and very high on that list will be not wanting to wait more than 10-15 minutes for a bus to show up."

This is absolutely true. But forgive me for saying that, when I read something like this, my first thought is, "Nice to know Ron Sims' staff is contributing to the Slog. Hopefully, this is not on taxpayer time." Well, perhaps I should give Michael the benefit of the doubt. But just try to avoid straining our credulity while pitching this plan. Ron Sims' minions are making an implicitly anti-transit argument when they make the pitch that buses are the best kind of transit.

More buses, great, now we can watch four or five of them arrive one right after the other after a 40 minute wait that should have lasted 15 minutes.
I gave up on the buses a year ago after I documented that 40% of the buses I took ran more than 10 minutes late. That's traffic and the way the buses are forced to navigate through it, it's not a lack of buses.
Three ideas: dedicated bus lanes through all high-traffic areas (like Paris has in most parts of the city), rapid load/unload stations (like Mexico city has in the most crowded areas), stop loading cripples (most of them I've seen are just fattycapped anyways) onto rush hour buses - sorry but there are better ways to handle that than to ruin the system for everyone else.

Cressona: I feel like I should respond but I can't for the life of me figure out what your point is.

Yes, that's it, I'm working for Ron Sims. So is everyone else on this thread who disagrees with or questions Josh on this point. You've ferreted us out!

My point is that when we're talking about spending upwards of $10 billion on transit, assertions about who takes takes buses and why don't help the dialogue move forward. If Josh can show me some evidence that getting caught in traffic is a primary disincentive to riding the bus, my god, this bus expansion thing is a huge boondoggle. That would be worth knowing.

My personal observation as a bus rider is that the more frequent inconvenience is standing around in the cold/dark waiting for one to show up. Or standing around in a hurry waiting for one to show up. But I don't want to assume my impatience is necessarily shared by the larger public.

A few weeks ago, I was at a Jaime Lerner talk on the all-bus transit system in Curitiba, Brazil, which has managed to make bus transit rapid. Sims' plan doesn't address some major elements (pre-pay kiosks to remove boarding/exiting delays; dedicated bus-only lanes), but it does play catch-up in addressing the problem of lack of frequency. Since it sounds feasible and relatively immediate to accomplish, I'm for it unless Josh can dig something up to persuade me otherwise.

Michael wrote: "Cressona: I feel like I should respond but I can't for the life of me figure out what your point is."

Michael, you know as well as I do what my point is. If you're going to contemptuously question common-sense observations like "one of the reasons people don't ride the bus is that buses get stuck in traffic," then I'm going to call you out on it.

If you're requiring Josh to offer scientific evidence of this observation, I would simply suggest that we wait until this plan passes (which it will) and gets implemented. As someone who wants to see more mass transit here and who sees buses for the limited, complementary technology it is, I'm looking forward to this. So yes, Michael, I'm rootin' for ya.

P.S. Thanks for mentioning Curitiba, Brazil too. It's remarkable to me that here we are, Seattle -- one of the wealthiest per-capita cities in the world -- and instead of looking at London or New York or Paris as a transportation model, or even Vancouver or San Francisco, we're looking at a third-rate city in a third-world country. Gosh, aren't we worthy enough to at least try to emulate, say, Rio?

by the way, while we whine about this, Vancouver, BC, is building more bus lines and more Skytrain lines, and laughing at our inaction.