Slog

The quickest new gridding would be to take down the jersey barrier on Aurora North put in lights and cross walks and lower the speed limit.

What's the rush to get up north to the land of strip malls anyway?

Dense neighborhoods near jobs. Decrease commutes. All to the good.

So what the fuck is up with this Sound Transit ballot measure that would encourage commuters to live 40 miles from downtown employment centers? They do their 20 drive from their McMansion subdivisions in the Cascade foothills, park in a park and ride lot in Puyallup, or Overlake or Lakewood or Shoreline, then get a highly subsidized train ride for 30 more miles to their job.

Hint: that's not dense walkable community "New Urbanism" building, that's massively subsidized sprawl, auto-dependant planning, and the wrong revenue source.

ST2

Seems the economic pressure will push politicos to start lining up projects they can claim will add jobs soon, so the teardown option may take the lead in that way too.

@2 Newsflash, dunce: People are already living 40 miles from downtown employment centers! Lots of people! And a whole hell of a lot of them drive single-occupancy vehicles to work every day, causing incredible pollution and gridlock! At some point, we need to start looking for ways to get them out of their cars, because whether or not we provide them with transit options, THEY'RE STILL GOING TO LIVE IN THE SUBURBS AND EXURBS!

This whole "if we punish them enough, they'll all move to the city" meme is ridiculous and completely out of touch with reality. Some people want big houses, big yards, and quiet nights. You will not convince them to trade it all in for 500 square feet in a 40-story downtown condo tower with crack deals going on below them. It sucks, but that's the truth.

butbutbutbutbutbut... SEATTLE IS "DIFFERENT"!

"Some people want big houses, big yards, and quiet nights. You will not convince them to trade it all in for 500 square feet in a 40-story downtown condo tower with crack deals going on below them. It sucks, but that's the truth."

So tax them. Don't float a plan calling for taxing Seattle residents to subsidize selfish suburbian employees' massive commutes. If they want to choose to live 40-50 miles from where they work it is all to the good to punish that choice, with higher gas taxes, or tolls on roads, or taxes on employers (a per-capita by employee tax).

Hernandez your much higher sales taxes "solution" sucks. It would be hitting Seattle residents who by and large wouldn't benefit in any way from subsidizing the commutes of those selfish goobers out in the suburbs whose sensitivities you seem so caught up with.

Why do you hate Seattle residents who are just getting by, Hernandez? What do you have against progressive revenue raising schemes? Don't tell me - you would make money if ST2 passes, right?

If you take a walk along the waterfront north of the Market, you'll see the future of the "open space" that will be available should the Viaduct not be replaced - wall-to-wall condos and retail, with a four-foot pedestrian way. This is all about commercial development, nothing about public access.

"Opening up 335 acres of public land on Seattle”s waterfront could give way to new parks, beaches, and development."

HAHAHA! Beaches? Really? Where? A new park? Really? How will it fit next to the Alaskan Way "boulevard"? The development part is undoubtedly correct, but whoever wrote this statement has never been to the downtown waterfront.

@2,

But density will increase along the light rail track, which is a very good thing.

Public transit in the Seattle metropolitan area is a joke. If you live anywhere outside of Seattle, public transit is infeasible, especially if you need to get in the city anytime between 10 am and 4 pm or after 7. And heaven help you if you need to get in the city on the weekend. We need to join the rest of urban America and connect our communities with transit.

@2: "But density will increase along the light rail track, which is a very good thing."

That density increase will be of inconsequential size, it will not create any vibrant urban centers, and who'd want to live in a residential tower near a train station here in the great northwest?

"Public transit in the Seattle metropolitan area is a joke."

Stop lying. METRO has 400,000 boardings a day. The greater Seattle area has the highest percentage of transit commuters of anywhere in the country (outside NYC). It works extremely well for many, many people. There's a concept call "rate of diminishing returns." Throwing billions at Sound Transit now will not meaningfully increase transit use overall, nor will it benefit the vast majority of those the sales taxes would impact.

A poster above had it right, provide minor financial disincentives to driving during the peak commute hours. Transit use would increase, congestion would decrease (due to discretionary trips being eliminated during those periods), and GHG emissions would decrease (due to less overall auto use, and how the congestion relief facilitates higher speeds on roadways).

I think we all know what's going on here: certain interests who have the politicos' ears want the people to tax themselves for this particular short train line. This we don't need, especially now as we head into rough economic times.

Light rail construction is well under way. Soon we'll have rapid transit service from downtown, through South Seattle, and all the way to the Airport. The Tukwilla station is almost complete, and looks great. One question - if not now, when?

@10,

That density increase will be of inconsequential size, it will not create any vibrant urban centers

Wrong. You've never actually been outside of Seattle, have you? Real metropolitan areas with real transit have multitudes of vibrant urban/suburban centers. The San Francisco Bay Area has smaller vibrant communities stretching from SF all the way down to San Jose, and east to Oakland and beyond. Those communities are the most dense along freeways and transit.

And I'm not lying, asshole. I've occasionally considered moving out of Seattle, but commuting by transit from anywhere north of Shoreline or south of Seattle is impossible. I occasionally have to be in Seattle later than 7 pm. I occasionally have to be in Seattle on the weekends. That shit is impossible with the system we have now.

And you're talking about Metro exclusively? Who's the fucking liar now? There are 4 million people (approximately) in this area. How many of them use transit? There are 18 million people in the New York metropolitan area. How many of them use transit? Stop manipulating the statistics to suit your argument. It makes you look like a liar.

On behalf of 80,000 West Seattleites and tens of thousands of other people like me who need to get to and through the west side of Seattle, these out-of-town urban planning dilettantes can go fuck themselves.

@11,

Um, your tired Sound Transit informercial notwithstanding, there are NO plans to run any kind of mass transit that will serve the west half of Seattle anytime in the next 50 years. None. Nada. Zip.

Oh, and memo to those same dilettantes, the so-called "Surface/Transit" option wasn't on the ballot.

If it had been, it would have been crushed by voters my a margin as bad or worse than the tunnel scheme was.

Oops, "By a margin..."

@10,

It must suck to be you.

Cities with highest transit ridership:

1. New York, New York - 54.24%
2. Jersey City, New Jersey - 46.62%
3. Washington, D.C. - 38.97%
4. Boston, Massachusetts - 31.6%
5. San Francisco, California - 30.29%
6. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 26.43%
7. Arlington, Virginia - 26.28%
8. Yonkers, New York - 25.47%
9. Chicago, Illinois - 25.38%
10. Newark, New Jersey - 24.04%
11. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 21.14%
12. Alexandria, Virginia - 20.55%
13. Baltimore, Maryland - 19.55%
14. Seattle, Washington - 17.79%

@16:

See that 17.79% for Seattle?

Do you know what that number would be for Seattle in 20 years assuming ST gets what it wants ($20 billion dollars worth of sales taxes) and 34 more miles of light rail? That number still will be 17.79%.

Another thing - if you are going to start saying ST's trains are going to transform us into some other part of the world, don't use the Bay Area as your gold standard. Instead of saying we'll be the new Oakland, Freemont and Foster City, try saying we'll be the new Paris and Berlin.

HAHAHA, Foster City. That's my home town and let me tell you, public transit connecting you to the rest of the bay area is a joke.

Waldo, what's your relation to Foster City?