Seriously.

Will never happen. I have given up on the region embracing a serious effort to push rapid mass transit of any type.

Tell ya what, Prop. 1 supporter though I was, there are some things I'm liking about a post-Prop. 1 world.

One is that Gregoire and the state legislature appear to be committed to replacing the 520 bridge. I'm assuming that means six lanes with two HOV lanes. I'm hoping (not assuming) that means making it rail-compatible. I'm pretty much assuming that means tolls, tolls, tolls--some really substantial tolls. And tolls on the existing 520 bridge quite possibly as well as the I-90 bridge.

Can someone refresh me here what the tax source was for that $1 billion RTID was going to provide for 520 bridge replacement? If it was just MVET, I'd've had no problem with that, although I consider tolls an improvement. And I don't think tolls are a great thing because I'm a transit rider who wants to stick it to drivers.

In a sense, tolls benefit the drivers who have to pay them, not just because eventually they'll get something for those tolls (a new, improved bridge), but because tolls are a step towards pricing something according to what it's worth. This dysfunctional, tragedy of the commons situation we have now with the 520 bridge doesn't help anybody. The only sane way we can make the 520 commute sane (short of just seeing Microsoft move to Vancouver or Bangalore) is by seeing more commuters take transit across 520. But until we get tolls (and better transit), it's not in many individual commuters' self-interest to take transit across 520.

Oh, back to Westneat's point. I'd love to see the demise of that 520 widening project between Bellevue and Renton. Preferably a quick death. It's times like this I'd appreciate the input of a Bill LaBorde as to how likely that is.

I just wrote @3:

Oh, back to Westneat's point. I'd love to see the demise of that 520 widening project between Bellevue and Renton.

Obviously, I meant that 405 widening project.

This is the end of car culture. It's happening right now and you might want to take notes, to remember what it was like to see.

With every passing day, you're going to see more revised proposals, backpedaling, flip flopping and various mature sounding forms of rethinking. All in one direction: let's spend a little less on roads and oil company tax breaks and all the rest of it. Let's maybe add some more transit instead.

The next "leader" will see that and raise it by cutting roads even further and adding more transit. It's the times we are in now.

Why again do we want more cars coming and going into Seattle and a new ugly viaduct being built over the ship canal and more of the aboretum covered with highway and a wider connector across Portage Bay?

Mr. Westneat has his head on straight and it is in perfect working order.
Too bad he can't be transportation 'czar' for a year to get stuff rolling.

elenchos @5: Let's maybe add some more transit instead.

Elenchos, I notice you stated this equivocally. The one thing I'm fearful about with a post-Prop. 1 world is that, while we've made it that much harder for road-widening projects to happen, we're also lapsing into a "thousand little things," lesser Seattle, no-grand-visions approach when it comes to transit as well. In this region, we're really great at adding a little more bus service and ferry service here and there. But that's about as effective as adding more troops to police Iraq. It doesn't change the facts on the ground.

You change the facts on the ground by what you build, not by what you don't build. And what you build is a combination of mass transit and density.

elenchos: The next "leader" will see that and raise it by cutting roads even further and adding more transit. It's the times we are in now.

I'm afraid our current regional leadership--Gregoire, Nickels, Sims--has been just as credited by their past "conventional wisdom" stances on transportation as much of our national leadership has been discredited by their support of that delusional distraction that was the invasion of Iraq. Is there any way we could kidnap Al Gore and get him to be Governor of Washington and Mayor of Seattle and King County Executive all at once?

You people can take your tolls and your "congestion pricing" and your "end of car culture" and stick them where the sun doesn't shine. Unless and until mass transit provides reasonable alternatives to private transportation, that private transportation will be with us, and demands for right of way will grow as the population grows.

You're all forgetting the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- the Bush administration, which has cut off the federal funding for infrastructure improvements that would have helped finance 405, 520, 99, light rail, and heaven knows what-all else.

Instead, the money goes to the obscene and insane Iraq war, tax cuts for Bush's rich buddies, and no-bid contracts for which the line items are not subject to public scrutiny.

This puts the burden on states and counties and municipalities and gives rise to the Eymanite no-tax scum.

And none of you oh-so-smart, oh-so-hip, oh-so-green bozos ever once mentions this phenomenon, even though it underlies all this region's transportation woes.

Any Democratic administration that extricates us from this Iraq nightmare will free up these funds. Hell, just rolling back the Bush tax cuts should get us there. Quit squabbling over the crumbs and go for the cake. There's plenty of money to fix all of this without these coercive, intrusive, punitive measures.

Dammit, it's just too damn early for me to be writing. I wrote:

I'm afraid our current regional leadership--Gregoire, Nickels, Sims--has been just as credited by their past "conventional wisdom" stances on transportation...

Obviously, I meant to write "discredited."

How about MSFT moving to Seattle? It would be nice if they bought or built a faciliy in Seattle that would reduce their demand for roadway to Redmond.

It is interesting that 520 gets a pass from all the transit spporters and environmentalists even though it is the biggest blight of all the proposed projects and will not solve anything in the end. Also, the fact that these floating structures only have a life of 75 years makes them curious choice.

Time to review the whole approach.

Cressona I thought you promised to give up on Seattle and move to Portland or some other progressive haven.

We really don't need your big vision if it includes a double wide 520. Want a vision? Let 520 sink and build around the lake with above ground transit.

Right on!

whatever @12:

Cressona I thought you promised to give up on Seattle and move to Portland or some other progressive haven.

Sorry, whatever. I didn't promise you or anyone virtual blog person anything. I only made a clear-eyed assessment for my own sake that I likely eventually would leave Seattle if Prop. 1 went down. Actually, that assessment is just as true today as when I made it in the heat of the campaign.

The first thing I have to do is sell my place in neighborhood Seattle and start renting closer to downtown, which I'm looking to do some time next year. I guess I could be the poster child for how Ron Sims's dysfunctional vision of Seattle transit can be a windfall for Paul Allen's real estate in South Lake Union.

Once I make that move, I'll be in a better position to go wherever life takes me, which probably will be another city, although there's little chance that city will be Portland.

The sad truth is that, even if Prop. 1 had passed, it would have taken until, what, 2018?, until light rail would have gotten to any place that would have been useful to me as a commuter. (And when I say "useful to me," I'm saying it not only out of my own narrow self-interest but also out of a sense of identifying with other commuters.) Now with Prop. 1 dead, anyone care to wager when--if ever-- we'll see light rail reach Northgate or the Eastside? At some point, you have to ask, "If you're someone who really wants to take advantage of mass transit, would you live in Seattle?" Seattle is about as desirable a place for someone who cares about mass transit service as it will be soon for someone who cares about NBA basketball.

I see what whatever is getting at though. To paraphrase, "Hey cressona, why don't you shut the fuck up?"

Well, when I do leave, I will STFU about Seattle. Unfortunately for the likes of whatever, I haven't left yet.

Between the arboretum and the marshes on the north side of Portage Bay, the area 520 despoils is the most environmentally interesting part of Seattle. Using a local environmental issue (habitat) to attack a global one (car culture) sounds good to me.

@11 MSFT is leasing a number of buildings in Seattle, i believe some are already up and running.

While i agree w/ Danny's position, for some reason endorsing it on the slog just makes it seem like the Seattle elitists are just again trying to make believe that nothing on the East Side should exist. "405, bah! i live in Seattle, shut it down." "Microsoft, bah, wise up and move all 30,000+ of your employees to Seattle". wise up and realize that the East Side is just as big and important as Seattle. and we want mass transit too!

@15: How about all them condos and boat docks lined up nex to the Arboretum? Ya think those are helping the ecosystem a lot?

Don't leave us, Cressona! Grant Cogswill will probably move in to your old place.

Every so often a post comes along to make me realize how insular and Seattle-focused the writers and majority of readers are.

405 is busy because suburban drivers are coming into BELLEVUE from points north and south in the morning and then heading back out, north and south, at the end of the day. There are more cars coming INTO Bellevue on I-90 in the morning from Seattle than going the other way- the HOV should really be in the reverse direction!

Seattle is fucking awesome but the East Side has its own economy. More bridges/HOVs east-west won't alleviate the problem that the 405 widening addresses.

I live in Issaquah. My company used to be in Seattle and moved to Kent. I commute with a coworker, but even the regular lanes aren't too bad (for the reasons I stated above- we have the anti-commute). But there is no direct bus service from Issaquah to the Kent Valley and my half hour commute is 1hr45min on Sound Transit buses and ??? (many hours) on King Co buses.

Please consider the possibility that the other 3.4m of us in the Seattle metro aren't always focused around the needs of the 600k of you who live in the city proper. Thanks.

@ 9 "Unless and until mass transit provides reasonable alternatives to private transportation, that private transportation will be with us, and demands for right of way will grow as the population grows."

Ivan you idealistic twirp. You really should leave your dorm room once in a while. The ST2 transit proposal would have helped out businesses in downtowns an those who commute to them from far-flung locales. In other words, businesses and some single-digit percentage of suburbanites and exurbanites could have used it. The massive regressive sales taxes proposed would not have been worth it for the rest of us.

You deride the functionality of cars for the short trips on surface streets that comprise 99% of how autos are used. ST2 wouldn't have done squat as far as providing alternatives to those uses of SOVs.

It is clueless twits like Ivan who are the real roadbumps between us and cost-effective solutions that will serve most people well.

You know what?

This is not a bad idea at all.

You need to promote the transit alternatives to the suburbanites however, aggressively. Or they're just going to sit in traffic and grumble.

One of the problems with the I-405 widening is that construction will clog the existing lanes, creating bottlenecks in any portion being built out, and slow down traffic even more. And the process will take quite a while to complete. And while you're doing that alone, you're not building transit and you're not replacing the bridges.

In that time you could probably build out a commuter rail line, between Bellevue and the south end.

Very good idea.

But the road-building lobby already bribed the politicos.

So it won't happen.

oh, and @14, STFU. ;-)

@22 "the suburbanites"...are we now a mindless second class group that can't or won't do anything but drool until the people from Seattle show us how to live?

#17 "How about all them condos and boat docks lined up nex to the Arboretum? Ya think those are helping the ecosystem a lot?"

What are you talking about? Even if there were condo's and docks next to the Arboretum what would that have to do with building a 130' wide freeway?

As`I said earlier why is it that those that railed against the AWV don't make a peep about about 520? Ya think there are more condo and piers around the AWV?

@26: Oops, my mistake. Big buildings and docks, like the ones right next to 520 on the waterfront, don't ever pollute the waterways, not through contaminated runoff, nor leaking sewer pipes, nor diesel and motor oil spills from boats. And certainly boats never do any harm to fish and wildlife. It's all the fault of the evil cars.

i think i like what he's saying. except the ferries part. does he mean ferries across lake washington? i'm not sure about that part.

Soon enough the fastest way to get around here will be riding one's bicycle or walking. Then and only then will people really want an elevated mass transit system that people will pay for and use. Good ideas don't get many people to change behavior.

whatever @ 20 says:

It is clueless twits like Ivan who are the real roadbumps between us and cost-effective solutions that will serve most people well.

Yeah, right. What's *your* cost-effective solution, you smug little prick? Walk? Swim? ride a fucking bicycle from Kent to Seattle?

"You need to promote the transit alternatives to the suburbanites..."

This city-vs.-suburbs argument is long outdated. At least as many people are commuting FROM Seattle to Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, etc., as the opposite. And in fact, more people use buses in the east-west direction (check the numbers) than do those going the other way.

If you never leave Seattle (as many of you claim to do) you're probably unaware of all this. But if you're going to argue this one you really should get out more.

Greg we are not talking about a big condo with docks project. We are talking about building a huge 130' wide bridge and a viaduct that will bring 2000 more cars into the city that is already packed with cars.

DDV - MSFT has added only a few offices in the city while building huge capacity on the cheap in the burb.

"The company is also evaluating the potential for new construction on a 26-acre parcel north of Northeast 51st Street it purchased from Nintendo of America this summer for $42 million. Microsoft is negotiating a development agreement with the city of Redmond that will define what it can build there, a company spokeswoman said.

Also Monday, the company updated the status of a separate, three-year expansion effort it first announced in February 2006.

In addition to the previously announced 3.1 million square feet of new construction and building acquisitions, Microsoft has arranged leases in Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah and Seattle that will provide 2.4 million square feet. That's enough room for 7,000 people, bringing the total new capacity of the expansion to 19,000. "

Ivan #30 I think your rage was not for me.

You can't run proper commuter rail where that eastside BNSF corridor is: It's no where near any job center, it has bridges that trains cannot be run on, it goes through the center of city streets in renton and Kirkland (not accross streets like sounder, but actually down the middle, like a street car) and would never be able to get above about 30 miles an hour, making it way worse than driving

BNSF is a total red herring.

Build a new bridge, or don't; build more 405 lanes or don't; build transit to the Eastside or don't. None of the above will reduce congestion one iota.

"This city-vs.-suburbs argument is long outdated. At least as many people are commuting FROM Seattle to Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, etc., as the opposite. And in fact, more people use buses in the east-west direction (check the numbers) than do those going the other way."

You just completely made all of what you said up.

1. Go back to voters in 2008, the high turnout, high Democratic, pro-transit year. That means getting a new plan together fast, not taking years to rethink.

2. Prepare a separate transit only vote with rail AND busses.
The anti rail people say they like busses. The pro rail people like busses. Busses can be put on the ground faster than building rail.

We need more busses on all our overcrowded routes to have shorter headways, dedicated point to point express busses, etc.
Have to give voters some quick payoff.

3. For rail: improve / reconfigure the ST2 plans to make a better more integrated SYSTEM.

The key is to have a network of crisscrossing lines that hook up all the densest neighborhoods and key destinations in the inner core areas, prior to building out 45 miles to the South or north to reach places that are not "key."

I.e., Seattle Center is more "key" than Fife or Mill Creek!

So:

-grab that BNSF corridor on the East Side for rail. This hooks up Kirkland and Renton to Bellevue. You could even hook up Southcenter and a link back to the "main" light rail line in Tukwila.

This makes any rail connection between Seattle and Bellevue 10X more useful.

-Find a way to connect West Seattle and Ballard and the Seattle Center (and the whole "99" corridor west of I 5, the former Green Line monorail corridor). Light rail, Skytrains, trams, monorail, whatever, it has to be hooked up.
How can we have a good rapid transit system that leaves out half of Seattle?

This integration makes every part of the system more useful to everyone connected to the system. It also makes it more useful for people not directly connected to it to access it via car or bus.

Only with this type of system do you get the really high ridership that is needed, like 800,000 trips a day.

3. Plan future extensions now and serve them by busses now. We need the future regional transit "map" now, so that people who get connected later know they will be connected.

4. Put rail on 520 when it is rebuilt. The rail component can carry up to 150,000 trips a day in the same space that two highway lanes take (and the lanes would only carry only a fraction of that ridership).

It makes no sense to build a new 520 then try to wastefully retrofit/plan rail later.

5. Pay for it with the tolls, congestion pricing, gas taxes, savings from not adding highway expansions here and there thorugh out the region (which does nothing to improve mobility for the region) and progressive taxes such as MVET. Not regressive sales tax.

6. Have to change the debate from "how much is this tax?" to "how many thousands of dollars will I save by having a quicker cheaper ride to work?" And "gee, even if I only use this system 4x a year for going to ball games, it still saves me money copmared to parking fees and being stuck in traffic for an extra hour each way."

Win the cost benefit fight, don't shy away from it with vague promises about "improvements" or the falsehoods that improvements will improve congestion.

7. The global warming and CO2 effects need study and comparison to highway expansion and doing nothing.

8. The officials who propose transportation projects need to be accountable. In 2006 and 2007 we saw huge proposals be defeated at the polls, yet no elected official pays a price for failure. The lesson: nothing needs to be done.

9. It took five years for the officials to negotiate the Prop.1 proposal, longer than WW2.

Our environmental and mobility challenges require urgent action.

@36:

Sorry, I mistyped. It should have said "...more people use buses in the *west-east* direction."

Which of course supports my point that there are more people using mass transit from the suburbs, contrary to the prevailing view on this board.

85% of all numbers and statistics you read on the Internet are made up on the spot.

That's total bs it's only 83%

whatever @ 33:

Sorry, I meant realistic.

Actually, Dan's original comment- put Westneat in charge of transportation... has some merit.

While Westneat himself shouldn't be a transport czar, its time that we have someone that is. Someone with the power to do something and also someone that if they fuck up, they're accountable- ie their ass is thrown to the curb.

My disdain for the politicos grows by the day. I know it's the "NW way" to have "consensus" and talk about shit until hell freezes over, but guess what- we've now discussed for years and years with no real plan or improvement.

We need adequate transit now. It's that simple. We also need a workable roads network so that people, business and industry can continue to operate. And all of that needs to be done in a coordinated fashion.

You want to know why I voted against Prop 1? It didn't do shit for anybody west of Highway 99. I'm 40 years old. It had a plan time of 40 years. That meant that before us yokels out here in the sticks of West Seattle, Burien and other places west of 99 there wasn't going to be anything done before I was 80. I don't know who Dow Constantine was representing as a board member of Sound Transit and as my local county council member, but it sure didn't feel like it was anyone in his county council district.

My partner for his class at Seattle Central is writing a paper on the viaduct. He's not a political guy. He struggled to figure out who's responsible for what. Is it WSDOT? SDOT? Sound Transit? King County?

My point with that is that for many years now there have been wayyyy too many cooks in the kitchen. It's time to have a executive chef directing instead of a battalion of cooks that are accountable to no one. Until we're willing to do that, we will continue to spin our wheels (pardon the pun) just as we have for the last 40 years.

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