Comments on Genius on Genius

It's weird that bike-riding is considered 'wacka-doodle'. It seems like the most normal, boring thing in the world.

Are Barnett and Hiller humping or something?

Normal and boring to you in your organic yurt, sure...

Where's fnarf?

Is there a point here? Or is it Josh just writing about his drinking buddies?

This reads like a high school paper.

I don't understand.

Organic yurt? No, just the suburbs. There's lots of room to bike.

Hiller seems centrist because he strongly advocated the Mayor's bike plan and anyone who sides strongly with this Mayor on anything seems centrist because the Mayor is a business-friendly Democrat. However, since so few people commute by bike compared to the whole commuting population, it makes bike commuting seem fringy, despite the Cascade Bicycle Club's 7,000+ membership.

However, Sandeep's work background is King County, where bike riding is something people do strictly for recreation, not commuting, hence the 'wacka-doodle' put-down.

@ #5,

Actually, what reads like high school is: Anonymous pot shots.

If you want to criticize people, you should at least put your real name on it.

P.s. I wasn't writing about my "drinking buddies." I was writing about a meeting with the advocates of the roads & transit plan where Erica and I were taking notes and getting the pitch on the ballot initiative.

Sandeep's a great guy, witty, sharp and like so many Seattle liberals on the right side of the national debate and the wrong side of the local. Building more highways is a bad idea. I don't care how much transit is tied to it, I don't care if they promise to build the fucking monorail, it's not worth the tradeoff and no amount of transit that will possibly get built in our lifetime will undo the further and longstanding damage of more drivers and more sprawl. The planet is dying: get with the plan, Sandeep. Good luck with Burner, though.

Barnett criticized the plan and Kaushik rolled his eyes and called her a “wacka-doodle-doo hippie enviro radical.”

Genius?

Josh is right! Put your real name on your posts!

signed,
Tim Eyman

I'd say that the 2% of Seattleites who ride a bike to work - wonderful though that is - do not exactly comprise the center. The 67% who do drive are probably a lot closer to it.

Oops - typo - make that the 3% who ride bikes.

@8 - please don't get high during the work day.

And, sadly, @13 is correct in his amended @14.

Which is why the RTID/ST2 is such a bad idea.

OK, Josh, fair enough. This is my real name, and here is my real criticism:

I do not understand the significance of one person I don't know much about thinking another person I don't know much about is a centrist. Your article here doesn't contain sufficient detail for me to discern the relevance of what you say. Would you care to enlighten me?

(PS, I'm not the poster from above...I'm a different person who is perplexed by your article.)

Lee @16,

Got ya.

The links in the initial post are supposed to help with context. But I can see how the post may have seemed remote.

The deal is this: The news team at the Stranger picked a "Political Genius" to compliment our annual arts Genius Awards. We also picked three Ones-to-Watch. Geniuses in the making? You can read about them in this week's news section (or in the links in my post.)

After the issue came out, I realized that I was sitting on an anecdote where one of our Ones to Watch, Sandeep Kaushik, had made a clever quip about another one of our Ones-to-Watch, David Hiller.

Meanwhile, the quip kind of exposed the Stranger news team's hand. So, it was an attempt to spoof our own wild eyed politics.

Really though, it was an attempt to highlight and promote a new tradition in the news section—picking a political genius.

I can see that it was a bit "inside baseball," but there you have it.

Isn't Sandeep part of the reason Dan Savage supported the invasion of Iraq?

CHEESE Wrote:
"Where's fnarf?"

Someplace. I trust somewhere nice.

--- Jensen

"Center of what?" What exactly is clever about this comment? Guess you had to be there.

And how the fuck did riding a fucking bike become a radical political statement?! It's just a fucking bike.
The bike hostility in Seattle is out of fucking control.

Josh,

Thanks for the post. The political genius awards are good.

Moon did great work.

Dunn is fabulous too: smart, savvy, beautiful, and develops good buildings too.

Hiller is a strong advocate.

Seattle should figure out where their multiple priority networks overlap and out what to do when they want to give priority to multiple modes on the same arterial. NW Ballard now has sharrows on NW 85th Street that has bus routes 48 and 75. How about sharrows on NW 80th Street that has no transit routes? Are they going to restrict parallel parking anywhere to create a bike lane?

Cogswell raises a good point. How will geniuses Moon and Hiller vote on the Sandeep joint ballot measure?

It is very difficult to get a good package from any three-county body.

We need to send a clear message that the sales tax is an inappropriate revenue source with which to widen unpriced general-purpose highways while we are supposedly concerned with global warming. This message should be sent to the Governor, Legislature, and RTID (may it rest in peace).

Consider just one large RTID project: SR-509. It would extend four unpriced freeway lanes from South 188th Street to I-5. It would cost almost a $1 billion in 2006 dollars. Moon's efforts helped lead to the current process to limit the SR-99 through capacity in downtown Seattle. Is this really the time to make it easy for traffic to shift to SR-509 and clog up the 1st Avenue South bridge? That bridge is critical to freight and transit flow. If SR-509 is critical to freight movement to and from the airport, why is it not being tolled from its initial implementation? If RTID was really serious about tolling, they could have placed more toll revenue in their financial plans. They were allowed several revenue sources other than the MVET and sales tax they chose. Seattle essentially took the commercial parking tax away by using it first. But vehicle fees, employer fees, and the local option gas tax remained untouched. And tolling was only added from SR-520.

RTID emphasizes limited access highway expansion and not maintenance. What is the fiscal plan to rehab I-5 at $2 billion or add sidewalks to the numerous arterials developed after WWII that lack them?

Just because the Legislature granted the three counties the power to add capacity to the highways of statewide significance does not mean that it is best set of transportation investments. We can say no. First, we need to figure out how to manage and price the highways that federal funds provided us.

eddiew says:

"It is very difficult to get a good package from any three-county body."

Yes it is. And it is difficult to pass pro-transit legislation through our state legislature. The legislature picked the taxes for ST and RTID. The legislature(thanks Ed Murray!) married roads and transit. The legislature came within a whisker last session of dissolving Sound Transit and forming a new transportation mega-board. The legislature has shown no leadership on transportation in years. Hell, a bunch of the Seattle reps are stupid enough to even like an elevated viaduct.

So, eddiew and his pals at the Sierra Club now want to say--not good enough?

Well, I am not willing to roll the dice and forgo 50 miles of light rail to trust a bunch of folks who don't control the political agenda in this state. I wish they did, but they don't. I would rather pass this package and then work like hell in the next decade to make sure all highways are tolled and that we fix the stupid tax system in this state.

Sorry about that transportation crap--what I meant to say was Hiller, Moon, and Kaushik are geniuses--congrats!

NW 85th street is not "NW Ballard". That's like saying Beacon Hill is "South Capitol Hill"

NW 85th is Crown Hill/Loyal Heights. And home of the fabulous Olympic Manor: The place where, in a just world, I would live in a fabulous 50's view home, and have the most over-the-top Xmas decorations in the neighborhood.

Please make a note of it.

I heart Sandeep.

To Amelia at 18: I always opposed the war in Iraq. Thought the administration had not made a compelling case on WMD, thought the invasion was a foolish overreach that would likely end badly, and did not think the Bush administration would ever make a real committment to nation building. Of course, it didn't take a genius to realize that going in.

On a separate matter, supporters of the surface-transit solution for the Viaduct ought to be the biggest backers of the Roads and Transit package. The package funds the critical -- and expensive -- work at Spokane and Lander Streets that is a prerequisite for the surface solution to work.

...yeah, along with squandering $100+ million to build a fancy boulevard on Mercer Street for Paul Allen's development projects - one that will actually reduce eastbound travel times over the current street configuration.

Great deal, that....

genius at #18:

yes, most of the $800 million the RTID spent after the AWV project was killed by the Seattle election was fairly well spent. The South Park bridge, the Industrial Way center access ramp, the third phase of R8A, the SR-99 BAT lanes, and the South Lander Street overcrossing are especially strong. Constantine and others had to work too hard to get them included and phased early.

But those $800 million in projects are just the bicycle on the back of the global warming SUV.

The SODO projects were thought to be needed for any AWV alternative, not just the surface and transit one. The project is evolving. WSDOT will show off some south end concepts soon and they will include an interchange at the south end of downtown.