At Large What’s Missing from This Picture?
posted by on December 12 at 13:34 PM
Look at that—gridlock! At 3 pm, in New York City. All those brake lights! Cars, taxis, buses, trucks—and no one’s moving, no one’s going anywhere fast. But what’s missing from this picture?
Spineless politicians. Specifically the kind of spineless politician inclined to tell drivers that Something Must Be Done about their predicament. We do that in Seattle—and other cities with crappy public transit, cities that Seattle should be ashamed to associate with, cities like Dallas and Phoenix and Los Angeles. No politician in New York would promise new roads (they can’t—no where to put ‘em), or timed lights (they’re already timed), or any other angry-motorist-mollifying lie. If you don’t want to sit in traffic in New York, politicians tell you to take the subway. Or commuter rail. Or walk (don’t laugh—it’s how most people get around here). The message? You have options. No one has to sit in traffic—in fact, you’re pretty much regarded as a borderline retard if you choose to sit in traffic.
But if you must drive, well, that’s your choice. But no one is going to listen to you complain, no one is going to have any sympathy for your dumbfuckass. Take the subway, dope, it’s faster.
In Seattle we don’t have options. Politicians can’t brush off drivers and tell them to take, oh, the subway (that we never built) or the monorail (that we could really have used during the years we’ll be without a viaduct, regardless of what we build in its place). Hell, they can’t even tell people to walk—not in a city with neighborhoods that still lack sidewalks.
Yes, we’re building light rail. We’re going to need lots more of it—like they’re doing in Denver—and we’re going to need to make sure that any additional light-rail lines are grade-seperated, like a subway or a monorail, so that light-rail trains aren’t stuck in traffic behind cars and buses and taxis and trucks. People here take the subway for two reasons: the stick that is stuck-in-traffic gridlock and the carrot that is on-the-subway speed.
What are you doing in New York? You should call...
Having options doesn't help if those other options suck. Here in SF, we have a bus system, but it's so unreliable that many people consider it useless. (Thirty percent of the drivers will be absent on any given day.) Suggesting that the busses are an alternative means of transit is enough to get a person laughed at here.
Getting transit is the easy first step; running it well is the much harder second.
Buses are not rapid transit. Buses don't count. They're not an option—never mind what Ron Sims has to say about it. And despite the recent vote, Seattle is not getting Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). We're getting more buses stuck in traffic with the buses that are stuck in traffic now.
Bingo, Dan.
No Monorail to suck it up while the Viaduct is down? True dat. Dufus-type infrastructure planning that Seattle should continue to expect from the leaders here.
Guess what helped Boston deal with the (gasp! Seattle) Big Dig?
http://www.bostonvisit.com/visit/maps/t_map.html
The Purple lines are "commuter rail" -- amtraky trains that go quite a bit farther out. I took one to Boston from York, Maine once. I got to stay two days longer on my vacation than my ride did because of it.
yeah. it's too bad that everyone, including the Stranger, called for a re-vote on the monorail when the budget exploded all over seattle.
Not even Chicago--where I lived before--can compare to New York in terms of rapid transit, except when it comes to picking up guys (oh, that Red Line)...
Seattle is Dallas without the charm.
MG@5 -- Nothing fires up a Seattleite like a re-vote!
No, Dan. Not borderline retarded. Just retarded -- or physically handicapped.
Unfortunately the subway is not (and probably never will be) handicapped accessible. So folks who can't walk are still stuck in traffic.
No, Dan. Nor borderline retarded. Just retarded -- or physically handicapped.
Unfortunately the subway is not (and probably never will be) handicapped accessible. So folks who can't walk are still stuck in traffic.
No, Dan. Not borderline retarded. Just retarded -- or physically handicapped.
Unfortunately the subway is not (and probably never will be) handicapped accessible. So folks who can't walk are still stuck in traffic.
Also missing from that picture are: Christmas trees, menorahs, pentagrams and Dame Judy Dench.
Just to demonstrate the kind of spine politicians have over there, apparently New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seriously considering congestion pricing in downtown Manhattan to make traffic flow faster. Yeah, not unlike what they have now in London.
What's fascinating is that Bloomberg is a Republican. So here you have a Republican mayor potentially daring to side with ultra-left-wing London mayor Ken Livingstone and tell drivers they don't have the free run of the streets.
Likewise, I think we're hearing a surprising degree of receptiveness to tolling from conservatives here in the Seattle area. Why? Because such mechanisms are market-oriented. Because they amount to a user fee: shouldn't you want to tax users before you tax non-users? Because ultimately they help promote the flow of people and goods.
Don't neglect to remember, though, that even if you don't have a car, you're still a "user" if you buy anything from anywhere.
Lloyd Clydesdale: Don't neglect to remember, though, that even if you don't have a car, you're still a "user" if you buy anything from anywhere.
Lloyd, no kidding. Or are you mistaking me for a spineless politician?
Matty matt
Yeah, buses don't count as Dan pointed out. Buses can't serve the same function as rapid transit, but here in SF, they are far from useless and are used in hundreds of thousands of peoples' commutes every day.
The bus is still - and always will be - the bus, jus' staying...
Dan is right on the money though. You can and never will have enough road capacity, money should be spend on more attractive alternatives.
Cressona @ 14 No, I'm not. Just saying that if you tax only users, many of those users per force are commercial. If their rates go up, it gets added onto the cost of goods, which gets taxed, which everyone pays. So everyone pays anyway.
I echo DougSF -- The bus is sometimes really great and speedy, sometimes slow and smelly. It's the bus. Depends on when, where, etc.
However, I will say that with Muni and Bart, SF is a TON easier to get around without a car than Seattle. Which is why I decided to move here (after the Monorail died for the seemingly-tenth time). I was faced with: continue to live in Capitol Hill, where I can get downtown and pretty much nowhere else in town by bus (in under an hour), buy a car and (finally?) move off the Hill, or throw in the towel and move somewhere that has their sh*t together. I chose SF. And, hell no, it ain't perfect, but it sure isn't Seattle.
Please, people....shut the fuck up about the monorail. I love mass transit, but the monorail was a stupid idea, and we're all better off for its loss.
If the monorail "leaders" had designed a route that actually addressed a traffic problem, used a financing scheme that wasn't based on transparently idiotic assumptions, or simply planned a system that would have affected more neighborhoods, you whiny bitches would have your stinking monorail.
The reason that Seattle doesn't have a monorail is the same reason that Seattle doesn't have any cultural amenity that isn't ass-backwards -- this a town of provincial, spineless wimps, and the leaders don't have the guts to put down stupid ideas before they take root.
The monorail came in, what, 15% over budget? I challenge anyone to come up with a major project that has ever come that close with design-build-operate and maintain costs to those projected.
The leadership was *politically inept* and compounded their problems with unneeded secrecy.
The project itself, the route, the technology (given the topology here) were all acceptable. Maybe not ideal, but again I challenge anyone to come up with an "ideal" project. Far better than what we have now: crappy buses, light rail that skips First Hill (!!), and political leadership falling over themselves to blow 3-4x as many tax dollars as the monorail would have cost in a tunnel.
Ugh. Some days I can't wait to get out of here and move back to the East coast.
In Montreal, one of the city councillors is from a political party dedicated to the greatest possible reduction of car-based infrastructure through the introduction of light rail (on top of the (excellent) subway which they plan to improve, + commuter rail) lowering speed limits, and reducing the number of parking spots. So badass it hurts. The article is only in French though:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet_Montr%C3%A9al
It's called 'project montreal'.
They also want to control real estate speculation through 'social housing' and rent controls, and fight urban sprawl by making urban neighborhoods more attractive to young families.
Seattle definitely needs a "Seattle Project" party. Any takers?
I'm leery of direct rent control, but I think it can be done indirectly in better ways.
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are..."
@19 - word, Golob! Currently, the mayor's underwater tunnel is what - 120 percent over budget and we haven't even gotten to a vote on it ... so a 15 percent overage on a monorail is pretty slim.
Wow, it's really nice to read a transportation piece from The Stranger that isn't written by Erica Barnett.
ANM@18 -- Financing schminancing. Light Rail is, what, 1.5 Billion over budget already? The current overruns are estimated at 150%. The Initial Segment from Convention Center to Tukwila is the cheapest portion -- the portion that will open in 2007 (but not the final mile to Seatac Airport till 2009). Are they seriously talking 2016 for service to the U-District?
Yes, the Monorail and Light Rail would have had to connect Downtown where they overlapped for the two systems to make sense. Granted, increased costs to connect a couple of stations. But it does sure seem like a missed opportunity to have not made the Monorail happen. Esp with the AVW looming large now, and the Monorail mirroring -- to a significant extent -- the areas that are served by AVW traffic flow.
The Monorail would definitely have been a big ally to the AWV incapacitation. Even if a retrofit had to tide the thing over till the Monorail was done. But, no. Here we are still with no Rapid Transit, considering replacing the AVW with a further regressionist, traffic-snarling boulevard. Jesus, sell me the Tunnel/Rebuild already and HTFU!
lloyd -- if tolls loosened up traffic (which they would, to a certain extent, if they were high enough), then commercial drivers would be more efficient. this efficiency would make up for some of the money spent on tolls.
i have sales-rep friends who spend more time sitting in traffic than meeting with clients. i know they'd be happy to pay tolls if they could squeeze in more client visits each day.
If Seattle had any vision, we'd fish the monorail plan out of the recycle bin, cross out monorail, write streetcar, and get on with it. A streetcar will never be as fast, but its mostly a function of stops. Much of the route (Interbay, SODO) needs very few stops. Faster than a bus will ever be. Run the West Seattle leg into the Link tunnel, and the Ballard leg onto Western to replace the Waterfront Streetcar.
THEN tear down the viaduct. I would happily accept a cheap rebuild and spending the difference on this, and I think a lot of other people would too.
Gasp! I'm in love with a beautiful failure.
You do this constantly, Dan. That subway was built decades ago, before cars proliferated. There's no way NYC could afford to build a subway from scratch today, let alone any other US city.
We should minimize suburbs and exurbs. Change the zoning. That's why NYC works. Approximately half of the metropolitan area's population lives in the city itself. Meanwhile cities like LA have 1/4-1/5 of the population living in the city. Sprawl causes the increase in highways, roads, and drivers. And in turn an increase in pollution, congestion, and money wasted from commuter delay.
Also, LOL every time you tools bitch about Link being over budget and the city covering ST's ass but letting the monorail die. Link is over by around $1.5 bil, chump change compared to the $4-9 billion the monorail was projected over its initial budget... before we'd even broken ground on it.
Local stupidity's really starting to grate on me.
Cressona, not that it’s a bad idea, but how much political courage does it take to propose congestion pricing in a city like London or NYC where readily available public transportation can easily get you anywhere in the region? Just sayin’.
Gomez, hope you’re getting paid, if not stop selling yourself cheap! Sound Transit taxes were supposed to pay for the whole system in 10 years. The taxes are now projected to go.....well, no one can say exactly when they end. Their financial plan shows the taxes going on for nearly 40 years, but then again, they ain't even sold all the 30-year bonds they need to build the downsized version of what the voters approved way back when.
Remind you of another project?
Oh, and one more thing: I call bullshit on you counting the capital + financing costs for one project, and capital costs only for the other. Who do you think you are, the Seattle Times?
As I've pointed out to the revisionist historians around here before:
Promised cost $1.75 billion
Fixed price contract offered: $2.1 billion
That overrun would fit nicely into the original "Bridging The Gap" proposal's budget, I think. Or maybe RTID's contingency fund. The SMP fucked things up royally, but give up this shit about a $9 billion overrun.
Some Jerk @ 26 -- Agreed. Smart to run a second line along the second N/S traffic corridor. Makes me wonder, too, that if there were two lines being built, and they were competing with each other, this molassas parade would be moving a whole lot faster and better on budget.
TT -- Hear hear.
Light Rail is 1.5 Billion over budget NOW. On this, the (downsized, because of overruns) Initial Segment. And this is the cheapest segment to be constructed. Your overruns will tally up quite nicely through 2016, if it really is 2016.
And on the radio this morning: Light Rail to Lynnwood by 2027? Holy fucking christ. I definitely have to get my girlfriend pregnant...today. HTFU, HTFU.
Original monorail cost: $2 billion
Projected 2004 Cost: $6-11 billion
And that was BEFORE WE HAD BROKEN GROUND. The ST Link overruns came after construction began. Nearly every major construction project has some sort of cost overrun (and those that claim to be on or under budget are simply gerrymandering their books to cover it up).
The more you bitch about Link's overruns, the dumber and dumber you monorail whiners look.
Dumber than someone who can't understand the difference between capital and financing costs?
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