The thing is that here they go maassively overboard and build multiple freeway exits downtown encouraging avalanches of cars to be poured into the city daily. I mean, is everybody always moving/getting back from Oso? Qu'est-ce que fuck?

Cars yes. Freeways and their exits? no.

The commuter bus has always been pretty worthless to me though, for the times I've wanted to be there, because it's designed just for commuters only on weekdays who are presumably commuting from Oso rather than to it. I think it's an appropriate trip for a car. It's not like I do it every day, anyway.

It's an understatement to say that Erica and her ilk are out of touch with reality. She faults TCC for drawing a line in the sand that is so far from a weak compromise, she reminds me of Israel's Orthodox Jewish community insisting that they'll settle for nothing less than all of the territory captured in the '67 war. What's so delusional about this "We will not compromise on anything short of revolutionary change" stance is that it flies in the face of today's political realities and public opinion.

Consider viaduct replacement. In February, the House Transportation Committee voted 26-2 to force the city to come up with the funding for a new tunnel by April 1 or else the state would have had to go forward with a new viaduct. Thankfully, that ultimatum ended up getting stripped from the final bill that made it through. But it illustrates the reality in Olympia that Transportation Choices Coalition has to deal with. If there is anything that should be anathema to the transit/density/environmentalist crowd, it is building an elevated highway along a scenic downtown waterfront. And yet that plan had overwhelming support in the state house.

Obviously, this isn't suburban and rural legislators ganging up on Seattle. Mary Lou Dickerson and Helen Sommers are Seattle legislators who are leading the new viaduct charge. Apparently they think they're still living in the 1950s, but they keep getting elected, and Seattleites keep trembling at anything that may upset the status quo.

Viable, affordable transit technology needs to be developed further before one can expect its use to widen and DOTs to focus their expenditures upon it.

Viable. Affordable. Care to provide some definitions, criteria? Besides just anything but what's currently being offered?

Hey, with $2.5 billion or so to build another viaduct, do we also need to come up with some "viable, affordable" highway technology while we're at it?

I am a nondriver who lives in a Seattle neighborhood on a hill with a small business district. reasonable rents, and exactly one bus line. On summer weekends, the whole neighborhood is inundated by Transportation Choices types who bypassed the hillclimb by "riding" here with their shiny bikes in the trunk of a well-used car or SUV.

Hey, Alvis. So it's not enough that someone decides to earn a living working for a non-profit for a good cause, but on top of that they have to -- let me see if I have this straight -- vow to fill their own personal transportation experience with as much suffering as possible. Did I get that straight?

I guess by this logic we should require that all school board members have school-age children and send them to the worst schools in the district. Otherwise, they're just "sanctimonious gits."

Anyway, I'm sure the TCC staff is happy to hear that you know the personal details of their lives so intimately.

I said "in cities," not on the way to Oso, wherever that is. You know, like London.

I stand by my comments. They refer to the loudest mouthed TT advocates who preach to the choir and fully expect a medal for their supposedly courageous and radical lecturing of others who already know and agree that American society should be less dependent on cars.

The smug philosophy of the TT fundamentalists is that you're either with them or you're with terrorists. I don't buy that self-delusional declaration of moral superiority.

Those ARE the criteria, sadly. It's not a black and white solution. Some invention, development and proliferation is required.

Going with the mass transit status quo and indebting the city in many ways for the next few decades isn't necessarily the best solution.