News Gas Prices and Light Rail
posted by on June 16 at 14:11 PM
Pricey gas seems may result in a bigger, better light rail plan landing on the ballot this November, Mike Lindblom writes in today’s Seattle Times.
Just two months ago, the transit board’s three Snohomish County members questioned whether the agency would be ready to go back to voters this year — especially if the proposed rail line stopped at Northgate.But now board members are talking about whether they can stretch the rail line to Lynnwood, instead of stopping it at Northgate, five miles shy of the King/Snohomish line.
Representatives from South King County also are seeking support to push the line beyond SeaTac to Federal Way.
Mass transit has always been a hard-sell in the ‘burbs, but with gas prices rising and more people crowding on to what passes for transit around here, now would be a great time to call a vote on a truly regional transit system. While housing prices are falling all across the country, houses in ‘burbs served by transit—by rail, not bus—are holding steady or increasing in value. And voting “yes” on light rail can be sold to suburban voters not as some commie plot to pry them out of their SOVs, but as a good way to protect their property values.
Hairshirt environmentalism isn't going to take this lying down.
Because lying down is too comfortable?
Hey-oh!
Behold! The market at work!
make sure you put down a blanket first .... the Invisible Hand of Market Capitalism likes it hard and fast ...
at a certain distance, light rail will be DOG SLOW from point a to point b.
too many stops.
i'd wager that point is lynnwood to the airport with a crawl through the U district, cap hill, downtown, and rainier valley. what would the estimated time be, 90 minutes?
@6 Noone cares about that route for rail.
If you want rail past quick and fast, offer it up and down the East side, from Tukwilla to Bothell(with 4 stops at Renton, Bellevue,Redmond, and Kirkland, and from Downtown Seattle out to North Bend, with 4 stops at Issaquah, Eastgate, Bellevue Way, and Mercer Island.
Those 2 routes will get the measure passed. Seattle metro already has all the transit options it needs, and they already have the SLUT, BRT, Monorail, and their new toy train with the tunnel.
Time to give the rest of King county their due.
Ohhh and with those limited stops.. the east/west route should take 25 minutes, and the north south route a little longer at 40 minutes.
More stops than that and it no longer becomes an express train. Start small with limited stops and increase from there after having tested the route with the unknown demand.
Light rail will come to Ballard and West Seattle a decade after Seattle's taxi fleet has converted to plug-in flying cars when President Gore takes her scissors and opens the new lines.
And not a minute sooner.
Meanwhile, Seattle bus service will continue to get half the transit they pay for while the rest of the region rides high and proud in their subsidized lines!
Last time I rode down MLK along the new train tracks I thought, holy crap, Seattle is becoming a real city now. I've lived in cities with light rail, and without. Living with light rail is WAY better. Anyone living near a stop on the MLK line scores big time, imho. Dan said it right last year: the people pushing the bus option are people who don't ride buses.
-Some Sound Transit skeptics argue that if the problem is gasoline, the answer is to increase buses and toll lanes, which can be done relatively fast.-
Those skeptics should check the last Elway poll on tolling. The public hates it overwhelmingly, unless the dollars are prescribed straight to the physical bridge or road being widened. Which, I thought, progressives opposed.
Light rail opponents ALWAYS choose alternative schemes they know will never be implemented. When each goofy and unpopular trial ballon pops, and drops from the sky like a rock, they just go on to find the next one.
Tolling and BRT are just the latest fad in the imaginary kingdom of rail opposition.
-"The relief cannot be provided by Sound Transit; it takes decades to complete their mission," said Mark Baerwaldt, a leader of last year's opposition campaign.-
Well, they have their Tacoma streetcar up and running, a bunch of long-haul bus routes, their Sounder trains full, a whole host of transit centers and bus ramps on-line; and we are a year away from light rail.
So, if that weirdo Baerwaldt is focusing soley on the light rail project, he is right, sort of. By "decades", Mark Baerwaldt apparently means 12 years. Which is, indeed, over one decade. Yay Rovian rhetoric.
Baerwaldt offers us no solutions.
Light rail opens next year, we have 10,000 daily riders on Sounder (a steadily growing number), and we can keep the momentum going with a vote to expand. Right now, for all the commutes people actually *do*, light rail is competitive with driving in the same corridor. Arguments to the contrary ignore "same corridor" or "commutes".
-Meanwhile, Seattle bus service will continue to get half the transit they pay for while the rest of the region rides high and proud in their subsidized lines!-
Light Rail Downtown Overlords: do you pass along this bad information knowing it's bad information? Or, are you just poorly informed?
-If you want rail past quick and fast, offer it up and down the East side, from Tukwilla to Bothell(with 4 stops at Renton, Bellevue,Redmond, and Kirkland, and from Downtown Seattle out to North Bend, with 4 stops at Issaquah, Eastgate, Bellevue Way, and Mercer Island.-
Reality Check lives in his own reality. The reality which picks wacky light rail alignments based on the position of the stars, as opposed to ridership and population/jobs centers.
North Bend. Good one, dude.
"i'd wager that point is lynnwood to the airport with a crawl through the U district, cap hill, downtown, and rainier valley. what would the estimated time be, 90 minutes?"
max solomon, you would lose your wager. From what I have read, the travel time would be roughly 60 minutes, not 90. On a bad day, that drive can take 2 and a half hours.
Northgate to downtown will be 15 minutes. Which is pretty darn fast.
max solomon, reality check, Light Rail blah blah blah are all typical of car loving trolls who never ride a bus and don't care about anything that doesn't help them and their automobile.
#6--max trots out the "it will take too long to get from Lynnwood to the airport" line. Of course it will dumbfuck, Lynnwood is a long ass ways away. Reality says that light rail will travel on mostly grade-separated tunnels and elevated tracks. Even in the at-grade alignment for the Rainier Valley, the extra time taken adds four minutes. Reliability, not four minutes, is what gets folks out of their car.
#7--Can I get some of what you are smoking? You suggest that two eastside light rail alignments are the sure route to electoral success. I don't know if you have noticed, but Seattle is what passes big tax measures to improve our region. Eastside voters are improving but are still 50-50 at best. South King just sucks. You also posit a system that has four goofy stops on each line. None are near major employment centers--Mercer Island? North Bend? Bellevue Way on I-90? And I really don't understand how you go to Redmond AND Kirkland without a bucket of money. Oh wait...you are just monkeywrenching those of us who want transit...
#8--Um, you see, the stops are where they pick up the riders (say it real slow). If you don't have stops where the people live and work, then you have to build stops where people want to live and work, not by dirty freeways. But by all means, build stops, they pick up riders.
#9--Seattle gets 63% of all existing Metro service. We need more, but so does the rest of the county. People want transit, except trolls like you.
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