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Saturday, December 8, 2007

Re: Seattle, Pg. 138

posted by on December 8 at 8:37 AM

Behold:

barcelona-metro-map.jpg

On the other hand: A resident I met last night told me that after one of the Metro lines broke down a few months ago, city transit officials shut down the whole system, causing total chaos. Half-hour train rides turned into three-hour trips by bus or car, and some commuters even stayed with friends in the city rather than go through the commute. This lasted two weeks. Yikes!

RSS icon Comments

1

Hours long trips by bus or car? That sure does sound familiar.

Posted by Tiffany | December 8, 2007 9:11 AM
2

Barcelona is three times as large as Seattle, and is a major financial and cultural center and a major port. It's also a massive tourist destination, and a quasi-national capital. What kind of Metro do more comparable cities like Malaga have?

Posted by Fnarf | December 8, 2007 9:15 AM
3

ECB,

You love to lecture car owners, and claim that congestion is just do to us selfish SUV driving yuppies. While you, a wonderful, altruistic, socially responsible bicyclist don't have to deal with any of this.

So what do you care if it takes me an hour to crosstown during rush hour?

Oh, thats right, just to have something to complain about and feel superior to.

Posted by ecce homo | December 8, 2007 9:16 AM
4

Fnarf,
Totally. After we boppin to BOAT last night-

"take the red line red line, take the green line green line, take the brown line brown line" -Elephant Ears

much more energy than the Nazi-Bike day at Cal Anderson.

-my friend told me about the subways and redlight district of Tokyo that he spent the last 3 weeks "skirting" around. he could probably a funny pappy for all i know.

Posted by June Bee | December 8, 2007 9:25 AM
5

Barcelona has a metro area of about 5 million. Seattle metro area is about 3 million. Barcelona is not 3x bigger than Seatle -- just 40% bigger. By the time we would build a system like Barcelona's we would be up to 4 or 5 million.

The metro area of Malaga i 800K- 1 million.

The Iberian metro area closest to our metro population today is the Lisbon area. This is their metro system:http://urbanrail.net/eu/lis/lisboa.htm

What we are acually building is like the metro system for teeny tiny Palma de Mallorca (8km built, 11 km planned. We have zero miles built, 16 miles being built).

Our metro area population today is about the same as Washington DC's when that area started to build its Metro.

Are we too poor to do it? Well, I would say Washingotn State is richer than Portugal was when they built thier system. Richer per capita than SPain was when Spain built anyof hte large systems in Barcelona or Madrid or the medium size systems in Valencia or Bilbao (less pouplaton than we have in the Seattle area). (See urbanrail.net).

Washington State has about the same gross economic product of Sweden or Switzerland. They have all kinds of trains. They have water issues, mountains, etc.

Switzerland just built a 20 mile tunnel 6000 feet under the main spine of the Alps for less than what our estimates for a new 520 floating bridge are.
And that tunnel will be permanent, while our floating bridges seem to be basically disposable after 60 or 75 years.

Posted by Cleve | December 8, 2007 10:11 AM
6

Even Gore is getting the message that he can't do one thing and tell the rest to do another - you can take all the transit in the world but if you keep flying you cause more pollution than if you drove all over Seattle. And eating meat oh my.

Posted by whatever | December 8, 2007 10:34 AM
7

The Barcelona metro population is about 5 million, while the Seattle metro area population is about 3 million. Of course, after a reasonable period to build somethinghere, say 25 years, our metro population would be higher -- certainly 4 and maybe 5 million.

Malaga's metro population seems to be less than one million. Also there are areas in Spain with that kind of population that do have good urban rail systems, like Valencia and Bilbao. See urbanrail.net.

The Iberian cities with rail systems include Madrid and Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao, and Lisbon. Their metro populations range from smaller than ours to larger than ours. Lisbon's sems closest to our regional populatio today with about 2.6 million; they have a multiline metro rail system, too, which is "denser" (covering the inner dese core, pretty much all of it) than the far flung "long liner" proposal put forward in Prop. 1 for ST 2 (which would simply leave out half of Seattle and other places like Southcenter that should obviously be hooked up sooner than Tacoma).

Our metro population today is about the same as that of Washington DC whn they began to build their system a couple of decades ago.

We are far richer per capita than Portugal or Spain were when building their systems. Today the Washington State gross economic product is about the same as Sweden or Switzerland -- nations chock full of rail infrastructure. (don't worry, car lovers, they have cars, too).

The two main diferences are: (a) they use taxes to give more to people with needs instead of overburdening them so heaavilty the way we do in regressive Washington State, (b) they know that trains work and don't have endless debates over whether trains work (same with public power, sewers, etc.: this stuff works pretty much everywhere), and (C) they have good planning and often more centralized planning than we have here.

If you want a good anallogy in Spain to what we are atually doing here, chck out the rail system of tiny Palma de Mallorca in Spain. (Metro pop about half a million). They have 8 km now, and are building 11 km more. That's about what we are finally building now with our first leg of the light rail (0 miles built, but 16 miles being built today).

Seattle: rapid transit on a par with Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

Great.

Posted by Cleve | December 8, 2007 10:39 AM
8

Barcelona is AT LEAST TEN TIMES more significant a city in every conceivable way than Seattle. It's on the shortlist of greatest world cities; Seattle's not even in contention. Anyone who doesn't understand that shouldn't be talking about what we should be doing.

One of the things that's holding us back is an absence of realism. We always get this kind of thing -- "look at New York, look at Paris, look at Tokyo, they have great Metros, why can't we?" More to the point, we can look at San Diego, San Jose, Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, Minneapolis -- cities that are actually similar to us.

Posted by Fnarf | December 8, 2007 11:14 AM
9

@8 What? you don't think that crayon drawing looks like Barcelona? She is a realist straight out of the Compton School of Linguistical Cartography. Still a few credits short of an official BS though.

Posted by brandon | December 8, 2007 11:27 AM
10

@8,

Is there any reason why we can't strive for that kind of system?

Posted by keshmeshi | December 8, 2007 12:03 PM
11

This a stab in the dark. Behold my ass, bitch.

But bloggers, journalists, critics are kinda like the precoscious singers that gets some studio time. They tell the producer, who knows the equipment 50x better than they do, the 'artists' are saying, "I want it to sound THIS way, THAT way, with THIS..."

And the producer nods, going, "Sure, yeah, cool ideas, can you just be quiet for a "few" minutes? I need to check on the fusebox, then get a powercord, read the latest specs on ProTools - maybe you can sit back and write a poem in your diary. Thanks."

Feel free to say this is dumb. I've got much better things to do today, sorry.

Posted by June Bee | December 8, 2007 12:18 PM
12

Spain was way behind Europe in infrastructure because of Franco. Barcelona has a great mass transit system, but Madrid and other major Spanish cities do also. They're putting in high-speed trains between major cities also - the AVE from Sevilla to Madrid takes 2 1/2 hours, much faster than the six-eight hours it used to take.

From railway-technology.com: "The Spanish government has allocated €41bn for the construction of new rail infrastructure before 2007 and intends that all provincial cities will be less than four hours travelling time from Madrid, and six and a half hours from Barcelona.

Spain has ambitious plans for its high-speed network. In the future the target is for 7,200km (4,500 miles) of high-speed railway for 350km/h (217 MPH) operation, and in 2006 progress was being made on several fronts to extend the network."

Posted by Ebenezer | December 8, 2007 12:23 PM
13

Keshmeshi, why don't you get some quotes on what Barcelona's Metro would cost to duplicate here and get back to me. A trillion dollars is not out of the question. Where's that going to come from?

Posted by Fnarf | December 8, 2007 1:32 PM
14

Fnarf, et al, I think this discussion points to what the problem is with infrastructure development in Seattle - It's like the dart hits bullseye and then all this time is spent pulling it away from the bullseye, till we are at square one. Again. and then spending time chiding ourselves for not throwing the dart sooner. Hard truths of this type of development:

1. Need a plan that properly integrates city and suburbs and not have competing systems.
2. This shit is expensive (transpo grants and local funding), cost overruns are normal and even as you get parts of it built, its not all finished and people will be inconvenienced. You need people who know their shit to manage it, and keep the public informed.
3. Cost is relative - the longer you wait the more expensive it always gets and at the rate we are supposed to grow, we are absolutely fucked in terms of our economic engine if we don't have a solid plan. And follow and stop fuckin' asking people to vote on it every five minutes.

We may not be Barcelona, but sometimes Seattle acts like its this unique oddball where lessons learned elsewhere just don't apply, so let's reinvent the wheel.

Posted by stone | December 8, 2007 2:56 PM
15

stone @14, I think you're being generous with that interpretation. Seattleite opposition to transportation planning comes from a desire to do nothing, a very deep resistance to change of any kind. Seattle works just fine, thank you very much, no need to change or do a damn thing. We're unique, you see. Sure, when the oil begins running out and the Sound inundates SoDo, we might begin to rethink that - but until it does, by god, we're going to come up with every reason that sounds half-sensible to prevent us catching up with the rest of the developed world!

And Fnarf @8, is it coincidence that the US cities you described are ALL further along than we are in developing mass transit? Denver, of all places, is beginning work on something like five new lines. Hell, we're 25 years behind San Diego as it is.

Posted by eugene | December 8, 2007 3:15 PM
16

FYI Erica, the story about the entire Metro being closed down is either a gross language issue or someone was having fun with you. The entire Metro was not closed down for weeks, or even for a day. Residents of this city would riot in the streets were something like that to happen.

Posted by alan | December 8, 2007 3:46 PM
17

Alan, surprisingly, Erica is a really good conversationalist. Give her a call and tell her what you wrote. The cute debate queen might be happy to turn it into a podcast. Today she's probably out and about sniffing for some more malleable gossip to stuff into her iPhone.

Posted by heart | December 8, 2007 4:54 PM
18

Barcelona: 63.75 miles of track (Wikipedia).

Seattle: 18.95 miles under construction or with allocated funding.

Difference: 44.8 miles of rail.

Prop 1: 50 miles of rail.

Thanks, Stranger Editorial Board!

Posted by MHD | December 9, 2007 1:30 PM
19

Seattle is totally different than any other place anywhere ever. And Barcelona is a zillion times bigger. And I'm a "bitch." Awesome.

Posted by ECB | December 9, 2007 3:19 PM
20

They're just jealous, ECB. Keep writing interesting SLOG articles.

Posted by Will in Seattle | December 10, 2007 1:23 AM
21

So tell us: how would we replicate the Barcelona transit system in Seattle? How long would it take to build? How much would it cost?

Posted by Greg | December 10, 2007 8:57 AM

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