By a 16-2 margin, the Sound Transit board voted today to put a $17 billion, 15-year Phase II expansion package on the ballot this fall. King County Executive Ron Sims and Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer voted no, while state DOT director Paula Hammond proved earlier rumors wrong, voting yes after pushing through a last minute amendment to front-load expanded bus service.
The package expands light rail north to Lynnwood, south to Federal Way and east to Redmond, and includes a 25% expansion of ST express bus service and a 65% expansion of Sounder commuter rail, along with street car connectors on Capitol Hill and in Tacoma. All this would be paid for with a .5% increase in the sales tax; that’ll cost you about $69 per year on average, roughly equivalent to the cost of a single tank of gas. (Personally, I wish ST had a less regressive revenue source at its disposal, but it doesn’t, and so our choice at the moment is to build the infrastructure we need with the taxing authority we have, or build nothing at all. That’s reality.)
TANGENTIAL NOTE:
During their frequent appearances on my radio show, I routinely locked horns with The Stranger’s Erica Barnett and Josh Feit over last year’s “Roads & Transit” package. They opposed Prop 1, arguing that Sound Transit would come back the next year with a better package, sans roads. I thought they were being politically naive, and argued that the powers that be would never allow ST to come back with a transit-only package in 2008, and would be picked apart by the “governance reform” vultures well before 2009.
I am not at all unhappy to admit that they were right and I was wrong.
Yay, ST!!!
Thanks for the tangential note.
I believe the funding for Tacoma is to extend the link line from downtown (9th and commerce) to Tacoma General Hospital (About Division and J).
How about some actual numbers, like you will pay $69 dollars if you spend x amount a year.
You can only use averages for a number like that. As a courier, I know I use more gas than most, so therefore I’d theoretically pay more than someone who commutes two miles a day by bike or bus…..
You will pay one Hell of a lot more than $69 dollars because it does not include longer-term financing costs such as DUH the repayment of the 30-year bonds sold to finance the work.
Amatorize 18 Billion over 30 years and come back with a figure. It will be three times $69 at least.
That’s twice now Sims has got it right and I suspect the voters will agree with him on this one for the second time.
Light rail is just the wrong solution, and way the hell too expensive.
Oh and especially at this time….
Deleted by author. Decided to not feed the troll.
Deleted by the Troll, decided I already fed the author.
Sims had it dead right on this one:
His ammendment would have given relief now!
In his own statement
“My personal opinion is that given the poor state of the economy, this is not the time to ask voters for a big tax increase, especially since the tax doesn’t respond to the demand for bus service we see right now.”
“My bus proposal would have cost $136 million out of the $17.8 billion ballot measure and added 860,000 new bus service hours, accelerated the start of Transit Now service by three years and fully funded operation of 45 new buses on the Highway 520 corridor for four years. Unfortunately, my amendment did not pass and I could not support the overall plan.”
15 years out is not going to do a damn thing for $4.50 cent gasoline now.
Sims ammendment would have.
I applaud Sims in this instance.
Basic math: There are fewer than 1.5 million households in the Sound Transit taxing district. At $17.9 Billion, that’s $12,000 per family. That money can buy a lot of food, gas and housing. And, yet Sound Transit says their latest misadventure will cost only a few dollars per year per family. Horse hockey. And a 10% sales tax, too? Outrageous!
They guaranteed a 21 mile system “for certain” by 2006. Not a single mile is up and running. It will take 2 ½ times what they promised to complete the original fiasco. Costs are approaching 500% what they pledged with some stations eight miles apart. (Is anyone really going to walk 4 miles to catch a train?) Can Sound Transit be trusted for anything?
Sound Transit should be open and honest with a truer estimate: $100 billion, 50 to 60 years, countless disruptions to our lives. All to move 1% of the population.
Busses are a spider web. Rail is a single strand of spaghetti. Busses can reach 100% of the population. Rail can only carry 1%. Busses cost less than 10% of rail.
Light rail is the biggest boondoggle to come down the pike since the “Great Society” was gonna end poverty.
It’s gonna take 3 years to get oil out of the Continental shelf but that’s too long for a liberal. So how long will this light rail boondoggle take? Realistically, given ST’s history: 5 or 6 DECADES!!!
Oh great… More liberal BS that doens’t work. No wonder this state is billions in debt. roof roof
8. cmiklich
Wow! You tell ’em! Dam good arguments, IMO. Similar to RR’s arguments and I’ve been waving & cheering from the behind sidelines (unable to post since the mob took over the board).
All tracks lead to downtown Seattle – no different than Forward Thrust back in 1969 and 1970.
So now we’ve got the biggest boondoggle to match the biggest con, in the conservative lexicon.
I figure you got the same chance of being correct as the rest of the wingnut brigade.
Which historically is not a record I’d want.
Latest pole out of raw story says the public ain’t bying the we’ll just drill our way to energy relief story.
Washinton has good geothermal resources. It makes several kinds of good sense to start using them.
I like light rail. Though having to take a ferry to even get on the same side of the sound to use it. I and my bicycle can probably get to quite a few interesting places using it.
Face it we’ve all got lifechanging choices ahead of us. Deal with it rationaly, or yell and scream about it not being your fault, or the fault of your ideology. The fault being only with those who do not share your Ideology.
Oh my goodness, I now have a voice. Can once again post @ HA. Meow Meow!
One thing about it (I personally DO think the voters will be dumb enough to ‘bite the apple’ this go round, unfortunately. Hell, look how a jobless guy like Goldy is chomping at the bit & banging the tamborine.) It gives me renewed incentive to get my kitchen installed after the mold abatement before this foolish boondoggle kicks into place. Now that all the pipes are replaced at least I CAN start moving forward. Just kills me to be forced to use an equity loan to pay for the damages.
Not a luxury item kitchen, couldn’t even sell the house without a kitchen. Looking like a war zone with all the plasterboard torn out in 4 rooms & missing floor, cupboards, cabinets, to give a sense.
But that SINGLE initial leaking pipe that started the whole mess cost $1,000 to replace
Imagine how the taxes are running up on all the thousands of dollars required to even do the basics? Sure takes a chunk out of the retirement/fixed income.
People might not think 5% increase is so terribly much when forking over $10 or even $100 dollars – when you’re dealing in thousands, well oh my! So that the region has another pretty toy to move very few folks while leaving people waiting on the bus stops hoping even for standing room only.
In order to stay within your $69 annual quota, you can’t spend more than $13,800 a year. Note this amount isn’t inflation adjusted, so 20 years from now you’ll still be able to spend only $13,800 a year. If you go over that amount, that’ll make the ST propagandists liars.
“(Personally, I wish ST had a less regressive revenue source at its disposal, but it doesn’t, and so our choice at the moment is to build the infrastructure we need with the taxing authority we have, or build nothing at all. That’s reality.)”
How about if we give ST a less regressive revenue source first (such as a local-option sales tax on gasoline) and then expand bus service, commuter rail, and other mass transit options that make sense from a cost standpoint?
After all, we have a Democratic governor and legislature, and Democrats are against regressive taxation, so this shouldn’t be too hard, right?
@4 Nah, the math is easy. The $17 billion includes the bond interest, so all you have to do is divide $17 billion by 1 million households and you get … uh … $17,000 per household … and divide by the 20-year life of the tax and you get … uh … $850 a year. Well … uh … just think of it as the same thing as your friendly bank adding $17,000 to your mortgage balance — you wouldn’t mind if they did that, would you?
The average U.S. city pays $35 million per mile for light rail, but because we live in Seattle, we’re supposed to pay 5 times that and not complain about it. I hate to say this, but some of my liberal friends either don’t manage money very well or don’t give a damn that Seattle’s light rail is an incredibly bad deal for those paying for it.
@8 The “Great Society” wasn’t perfect but it lifted countless Americans out of the economic misery imposed on them by the capitalist system that you Republicans love so much. Oh wait, I forgot, you folks think people are poor because they’re immoral — and Wall Street greed has nothing to do with it.
Well Roger, on this one we’ll agree:
If they want $850 a year for 15 years, tell me it is $850 a year for 15 years and I’ll think about it.
If you tell me it is $69 a year and it is really $850 per year, then they haven’t got a chance on the next one
That’s what they did on the first build out – They lied about the true costs, and for that reason I will support no more of this ST nonsense.
We’re in pretty good company with Ron Sims
So no way!
“WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Thursday scuttled a bill that Democrats hoped would help lower gasoline prices by forcing the Energy Department to release 70 million barrels of oil … from the national stockpile.”
(Quoted under fair use from today’s Seattle Times.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I posted this in case you wonder why you’re still paying $4.40 for gas even though crude has plunged $20 in the last week.
Busheviks: It Ain’t Torture Unless We Kill You
“WASHINGTON — The Justice Department … told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed ‘in good faith’ that harsh techniques used to break a prisoner’s will would not cause ‘prolonged mental harm.’
“That heavily censored memo, released Thursday, approved the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques ….
“The Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion signed by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee was issued the same day he wrote a memo for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales defining torture as only those ‘extreme acts’ that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure.”
(Quoted under fair use from the Seattle P-I.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: There are rumors Bush will issue blanket pardons to his torturers. If he does, in my opinion, those pardons should be worth no more in a court of law than a pardon of Adolf Eichmann signed by Adolf Hitler. No matter what the Constitution says — because if he can disregard the Constitution, then we should be able to temporarily disregard one itty bitty little paragraph of it (the pardon power).
An interesting legal question is whether a blanket pardon would be valid. It seems to me a pardon has to name the person being pardoned — otherwise, it doesn’t pardon him.
Therefore, if Bush pardons all of his torturers by name, even if we can’t get at them legally we can damn sure publish their names on the internet for the entire world to see and know who they are.
So, let’s make this offer to Bush’s torturers: If you accept a pardon, we’re going to put your mug shot in the history books for the next 500 years. Since history books are written by liberal college professors, it’s doable.
Memo to Republicans
I see in the P-I that a Monroe couple confronted by an armed burglar beat him to a pulp with a baseball bat. It seems the public is fed up with crime, and is in a vigilante mood. If you think Republicans aren’t criminals and therefore this doesn’t apply to you, then don’t worry about it. Hey, I’m not saying vigilantism is good. It isn’t. It’s just there. That’s all I’m sayin’. Like I said, if you believe you have nothing to fear from a public in a vigilante mood, then go right on your merry way.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....ery25.html
It turns out the granite countertops builders have been installing in kitchens to jack up housing prices are radioactive.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.....144309.asp
Let’s say there’s 1.5 million households in the Sound Transit taxing district. If each household pays $69 a year for 20 years, Sound Transit will have only $2.07 billion of sales tax revenue to spend.
@19 If Ron Sims is against a tax, it’s gotta be a pretty bad tax. But because you’re a Republican troll, I won’t have done my duty unless I tell you to go fuck yourself, so, even though we agree this time, go fuck yourself for some other reason. I’m sure you can find one if you think about it long enough.
@13 If you can’t afford granite countertops, you lucked out! See #24.
I see in today’s papers that the Bush administration wants to weaken toxic chemical regulations.
Republicans are against minimum wage laws, workplace safety regulations, and oppose laws that would require employers to tell employees when they’re being exposed to dangerous chemicals. Why would anyone work for these ratfuckers? I won’t. They’re willing to destroy your health to be more profit in their own pockets. Fuck ’em. I don’t work! I don’t see why anyone should work under the conditions Republicans have imposed on us.
Let’s tweak the ST numbers a little. According to the P-I,
“The 15-year Sound Transit plan would [cost] a typical household $125 per year and a typical adult $69 per year … [and] the total cost estimate includes construction and inflation during construction and 15 years of operational expenses [but] does not include longer-term financing costs such as repayment of 30-year bonds sold to finance the work.”
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.....144313.asp
(Quoted under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: The Seattle Monorail was supposed to cost $1.75 billion, but after adding in interest it actually cost $11 billion. Now, I’m not saying that means ST’s plan will actually cost $112 billion after factoring in interest. All I’m saying is they’re lying when they say it’ll cost only $17.8 billion.
They’ve had a whole year to think about it, and the only thing that has changed is they’re promising to build it in 15 years instead of 20 years. For whatever their promises are worth.
What hasn’t changed is:
The system is outrageously expensive;
It will be financed by a regressive tax; and
They’re still lying about what it will cost and how much you will pay.
Another thing that hasn’t changed is:
I’m gonna vote “no” again, just like I did last year.
So, maybe my cost accounting skills are lacking, but isn’t 2,667,0000(population of sound transit taxing authority) times $69(per person cost of ST2 per person, supposedly) times 15 years only $2.67 billion?
So where is the other 14.4 billion dollars coming from? And, remembering my valuations principals, isn’t there something called interest expense, which should push up the bill a wee bit more? Like, isn’t $69 a year per person what interest expense alone should be on $17 billion?
And based on the way ST has projected costs in the past, isn’t it reasonable to assume that this is the least it will cost?
$17 billion to dig under glacial till and clay strata, go over a floating bridge(which has never be done before), and lay, what 40 miles, 50 miles of light rail? Then they are going to buy real estate, increase bus service, and add two new streetcar lines. Have they promised free entry into a new park yet called fantasyland? Because ST must already be living there. They must have found the WPPS forecasters to smoke up this pipe dream of a financial statement.
Does anybody really believe that all that is only going to cost $17 billion?
Is anybody really that stupid?
I mean, that would be like a 100% pure form of stupid, so stupid it would classify as a superpower.
@8 “Basic math” missed the basics: businesses and public entities pay sales taxes too. Please go back and redo your homework cmicklick.
@ 27. Roger Rabbit spews:
“@13 If you can’t afford granite countertops, you lucked out! See #24.”
HeHeHe! You must be a psychic Rabbit! How did you know that I immediately popped on that page and was reading it already?
Nawww, I’ll be lucky to afford plywood for countertops. Realizing that those two stain/rings on my former laminate counters are no longer an issue & no longer need ultra cleaning. They’re ‘decorating’ some landfill.
FUCK. RON. SIMS.
We need light rail and he voted against it being on the ballot.
Go Larry Phillips!
The Sound Transit II on the ballot in this November.The Transit board just voted 16 to 2 to place a bus and light rail expansion package before voters in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties in November.I think it’s probable that [the amendment] would offend voters in Pierce County,” said Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, pointing out that Sims’s proposal would only improve transit in King County.
mack
Addiction Recovery Vermont
30 & 32,
So when you buy a house, do you yell at the realtor because they didn’t tell you that your $200,000 30 yr. fixed mortgage will cost you something like $600,000?
One can honestly question ST on many fronts: the proposed costs, the usefulness of the project, the regressive financing, etc., etc. But throwing the bond interest in is simply a red herring.
Please stop.
All of you are wrong. We don’t need light rail. We need smartly routed light rail. If the future lines are anything like the slow, zig-zagging downtown to Seatac line, we’re in trouble. That line is nothing more than a glorified bus on rails, which won’t even reduce congestion. It’s just going to get poor, unemployed, car-less ghetto-dwellers of of buses an onto trains. What does that solve?
We need light rail, but only if it’s quicker than buses (which the downtown to Seatac line is not), and only if it’s designed to get people out of their cars.
I find it hard to believe that a transit measure will lose in this climate.
37 T
How is light rail as slow as a bus when it’s not subject traffic signals or sharing the road with cars and their congestion?
Personaly, I think we should make a much bigger investment into a multi-modal (trains, buses, etc.) and multi-focal (no more clustering only in Bellevue and Seattle) transit system.
We should have focal points in places like Lynnwood, Shoreline, U District, downtown Seattle, Tukwila, Fife, Tacoma, White Center, Renton, Factoria, Bellevue, Kirkland, and Woodinville (for starters), and we should run rail lines N-S on the West and East sides and E-W over each bridge and around the N and S ends of Lake Washington. Buses fan out from focal points and rail connects them.
Hey, all you “drill and burn” guys:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Fuck off.
@39
How is light rail as slow as a bus? Good question.
From Metro’s website, the route 194 leaves University Street Station at 12:02 PM and arrives at Seatac Airport at 12:30 PM. That’s a 28 minute trip.
From Sound Transit’s website (that I’ve linked below), their train will “Offer a 36-minute ride from the airport to Downtown Seattle.”
As to the how part of your question, it has to do with the routes themselves, and how straight they are. The 194 bus route is more of a straight line (which the light rail line should have been). But the rail line is more of a milk route, lazily meandering its way from point A to point B, much like a milk route.
“But the train has to go where the people are!,” you counter. That’s not how they do it in Europe. There they employ multi-modal system, which each system having a designated role. Bus routes serve as the slower, neighborhood public transit, with the trains providing the more direct, and quicker way to move people. Here, we’re doing it backwards. That’s my only point. I’m for light rail, but only if we do it right. Don’t build a multi-billion dollar light rail line if you’re going to design it in such a way so that it merely ends up being a glorified, local bus route.
http://www.soundtransit.org/x1173.xml
41 T
The problem with the rail line as it exists is that as far as they knew, they had only one shot at passing the original proposal, and thus they had to garner as much support as possible, which meant serving as many communities as possible. The rail line layout was a poltical and not an effiency decision.
But until we really commit to a large-scale regional solution that will allow decisions to be made on bases such as efficiency or speed of transit, every line will be laid out to maximize political support.
Republicans block such regional plans but then comlain about the consequences such as weird routes based on gathering votes to support each route. It’s simple: If you want rational routing, support large-scale regional plans and oppose Republican efforts to block them.
And if you had actually read my post, you would not so deceitfully mischaracterize what “I counter.” Don’t put words in my mouth.
@42
At 39 you skeptically asked “How is light rail as slow as a bus when it’s not subject traffic signals or sharing the road with cars and their congestion?”
I answered that question with stats from Metro’s and Sound Trainsit’s own websites. Now you’re cleverly avoiding the sad fact that our multi-billion dollar light rail line will be slower than a bus.
@42
Republican this, Republican that.
The mayor of Seattle: Democrat.
King County Executive: Democrat.
Gov. of WA State: Democrat.
#36
Just show me your numbers, and how $69 dollars a year times 2.67 million people, ST stated numbers, adds up to 17 billion plus 5% per year in bond interest.
It simply does not add up. It adds up at about 14 times that number, which will end up being 28 times that number IF all the promises are fulfilled.
Please, let us all debate transportation options on the merits and real costs, not bullshit numbers and fantasy projections. Let us demand accountability from our government entities.
This plan, when you do the numbers, and look at what is promised, is just opium smoke. It makes you feel great, but it is just a fantasy. $13.5 million a month simply does not buy all this stuff in the real world.
Uh, the Sound Transit krew has proven they are incompetent and untrustworthy.
No way should we hand them our credit card (which is really what they are asking for here) and say: “Go for it – charge whatever you want – put it on credit and we and our children and our grandchildren will pay it off.”
Bury this bitch at the polls. And I like trains for the most part . . ..
Nothing like an off-topic reply to an off-topic reply.
The two most popular americans in germany are obama and david hasselhoff.
Obama is in some select company.
43 T
Yes, because there are dozens, if not hundreds of bus lines and ONE rail line. “ooh, it doesn’t go everywhere I think it shoudl and not as fast as I think it should.” Well, it’s V1.0 and yes, it’s not as good as a well-established and much more mature system. Duh.
BTW, ask a Rainier Valley resident how long it takes to get to the airport by train.
But let’s talk in another twenty years, when we have >1 rail lines, rail lines to the eastside, north to everett, etc. And let’s talk again in forty years when we can more closely approach the European model you admire so much.
We have one presidential candidate who thinks it’s a BAD idea to station U.S. forces where they’re not wanted, and one who thinks it’s a GOOD idea.
I’m not handing out any hints as to who’s who.
I gotta say though that if the American taxpayer is financing Obama’s trip abroad I’m against it. It should be paid for by his campaign.
@39
The ST ballot this fall includes money to increase the number of Sounder trains running between Tacoma and money to extend Tacoma’s Link light-rail.
Why should you care. Everything obama talks about doing is with taxpayer money.
Are you kidding? Everyone who DOESN’T ride transit will probably vote this down. They don’t see how it could personally benefit them. It will cost them money, that they don’t feel they have to spare.
#8 is right in that….
You need to wait and let people see the current light rail WORK, so people are clamoring to have light rail to their neighborhood, not fearing paying to have go no where near them.
Or the politicians can just change spending priorities and pay for it out of the current budget, if it’s that good.
Daddy Love,
I’d like your opinion on something. Would you call the light rail’s downtown to Seatac routing brilliant or smart? If you had to grade the routing itself, what would you give it? I just want to see where you stand on it. I want to see how you think. I want to see if you’re just another brainless cheerleader for everything ST does, or if you’re an independent thinker. I give it a D. You?
I like the new plan.
It is not perfect but it does move Seattle to the multi-centric population model that I suspect is the future of the US. When it is done, folks will be able to live as far north as Evertett and as far south as Tacoma and as far East as the Cascades while working in Seattle (or vice versa) with no need to use a car to come and go from work. The same region will be able to attend mass entertainment events without cars.
Sound really cool!
One real issue is the one raised by Ron Sims and Roger Rabbit (hmmm). Is this more expensive than it should be?
Maybe, as the blog matures, we can find someone with reale expertise to comment on the cost?
The other real issue is whether we actually have a regional transportation plan and if so how well does this fit? Every time I hear the debate on a proposal like this, it seems to be ONLY about one part of the question.
Remember the monorail? That was a cool idea but no one whold say WHY the route was chosen or HOW it would fit in with other regional plans.
,
@45: I object only to throwing in the projected interest expense to make a scary number supporting your case. As for the rest of your assertions…give me a bit to look into it, just like any responsible voter would do.
Fair enough?
@Moron cmicklich
You just invent numbers – 69 dollars per adult per year is the correct number – you are just making up crap and forgetting to divide by years and adults.
Your pathetic logic and math skills show in the drilling argument – are you not apying attention or do you enjoy making up stuff?
It will take an average of 10-15 years to get any oil into the market from drilling. Experts (not idiots like you) say that at the MAXIMUM drilling for new oil would lower the price of gas by about 1-3 cents in about 15 years.
Drilling will do absolutely nothing for oil prices right now – and saying anything different is just a plain republican lie.
@52 – Stupid Stamm
And 100 years in Iraq and the billions wasted there are good for the economy?
Less regulation is also good for the economy? Gee, the current housing and loan crisis is DUE to less regulation.
Republican talking points are just plain lies – it is Bush who has run up the largest deficits in history and who bails out corporations for stupid behaviors.
Whenever these arguments come up, I like to look at another area with a similar population pattern, that had similar traffic problems.
The San Francisco Bay area.
Every argument against Sound Transit was used to oppose BART. Too expensive. Drivers shouldn’t have to pay for public transit. Won’t get enough cars off the road. Doesn’t go where it’s needed.
Of course, thirty years later, BART is an essential part of the Bay Area’s transportation network.
Even folks that don’t use it directly understand that without BART, the road system would grind to a halt, and that there simply isn’t either the money or the room to build that many additional roads.
The Puget Sound has a long, narrow corridor of high population density. It has several concentrated areas of business and industry. Quite frankly, it seems a better candidate for public transit than San Francisco did.
Will everyone use it? No, of course not. Some folks wouldn’t use public transit if it started at their front door and ended at their office.
Will it benefit everyone in the region? Yes.
1) It will encourage further concentration of housing and business, without the need to impose it by regulation.
2) It is a more efficient use of energy for transportation, reducing the need for additional carbon-based energy sources.
3) It will reduce the need for addition highways.
4) It will reduce the amount of pollution (not limited to, but including CO2) released into the atmosphere.
Is it perfect? No, of course not. There is additional pollution related to power plants. Some folks that don’t want to live in urban areas may find that they must, due to the availability of transportation and jobs near the public transit corridor. Like roads, public transit will likely run at a loss, and some will object to paying for it on that basis.
On the whole, however, it seems to be a net positive for the region. Additionally, we have the benefit of being able to observe the mistakes that were made in other regional systems, and avoid them here.
Perfect? No. More expensive than it should be? Almost certainly (but what government project, including roads, is not?). But it is an improvement over the current situation.
And so we should support it.
I’m not a math genius, but I’m estimating we’ve been there about 6 years. I could google the exact date if you wish to prove my point correct.
Are you making less $ now than 6 years ago when the war started. Oops, I mean 100 years ago when the war started.
Are you aware that seattle is the #2 nanny city in the nation? I understand that you people living in seattle are not qualified to make decisions on your own, please don’t project your lack of life skills on others.
My bad… I thought it was the democrats behind bailing out fannie mae and mac.
@37
Which is exactly what the extension of Tacoma’s Link line, which gets matching funds in the next ST package, is.
I’ll let the rest of you argue about all the other stuff, but extending Tacoma’s link line and increasing the number of Sounder trains are good policy.
@59
Whenever these arguments come up, I like to look at another area with a similar population pattern, that had similar traffic problems.
The San Francisco Bay area.
———————————
http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/.....peed=15000
Mr. Tukow:
I’m always happy when someone actually does some research to argue with me.
But a bit more reading into the Forbes page you linked to would have given you this quote:
It seems that Forbes is saying that the main failing of BART is that it isn’t extensive enough.
It is also telling that, even with the natural traffic bottlenecks that folks down in the Bay Area have to deal with, their traffic is actually not as bad as the LA area, where there is an extensive freeway system.
So, even with geographic advantages (from a roads perspective) traffic is worse in the Los Angeles area (with limited public transit) than the San Francisco Bay area (with more extensive public transit).
Geographically, the Puget Sound region has far more in common with the SF Bay area than almost any other urban region. We have a concentrated population corridor and we also have distinct business and industrial centers.
Cities that originally shunned the idea of BART are now asking to be included, even though the costs for construction are far higher now than they were originally. Yes, constucting a light rail system in this area will be expensive, and yes, I could argue with some of the decisions regarding placement.
But that will be true of any new system. This one looks pretty good, and seems to have at least considered the transit needs of the region.
Roger @ 25: “Let’s say there’s 1.5 million households in the Sound Transit taxing district. If each household pays $69 a year for 20 years, Sound Transit will have only $2.07 billion of sales tax revenue to spend.”
Incorrect. Taxable revenues in King Co. runs about 40+ billion a year. Assume a 5% growth rate for increased economic activity and a little inflation, and revenues project to nearly $5billion over 15 years @ a 0.05% tax rate. ST projects $6.9billion. So your initail arithmetic is off by only 200%, and I am being charitable.
Additional income is projected from federal grant money and system revenues. Also you do not factor in use revenues to retire the bonds (revenues 20-50 years out).
There are several good reasons to have second thoughts about the ballot measure. The one you present in this post(i.e., simply dividing current population by total projected costs), is grossly misleading and analytically meaningless.
You can do better.
With all due respect,
@ 50. Daddy Love spews: “I gotta say though that if the American taxpayer is financing Obama’s trip abroad I’m against it. It should be paid for by his campaign.”
Stumbled over this in another article I was reading tonight, linked below:
“The tempest occurred as Obama neared the end of an unprecedented election-season trip to the Middle East and Europe financed by his campaign.
Talking to reporters en route from Berlin to Paris, Gibbs disclosed the campaign had been planning for weeks to fly from the German capital to Ramstein so the senator could meet with wounded members of the armed forces at a military hospital in Landstuhl.
He said that the senator was to have left most staff and likely all traveling reporters behind at the airport while he went to the hospital to avoid appearances of a campaign event.” [snipped]
http://enews.earthlink.net/art.....6847708875
@39 asks: “How is light rail as slow as a bus when it’s not subject traffic signals or sharing the road with cars and their congestion?”
The fallacy is this writer is speaking in the agbstract, about light rail generally, without paying attention to the specfic plan we have here.
Light rail is slow when it’s subject to traffic and sharing the road with cars — as being built here. Light rail doesn’t add other benefits of rail generally such as BART or fully grade separated systems when it is designed to have low capacity and is designed to be un-expandable, as we have in the proposal here.
The light rail here shares the road for about four miles on MLK Way.
There are signals. There are cross streets. You can’t have trains whizzing by every 2 minutes the way you can in grade separated rapid tranist.
This is why BART, London, NY systems do not have trains running down the middle of the street.
And going in the street means our light rail trains can only be one block long.
This limits capacity. Short trains carry fewer people (per hour per direction past a given point) than longer trains.
Our light rail lines are being built for short trains — every station platform will be short.
We won’t have trains that are 6, or 8 cars long. There are also no express tracks. So all this limits capacity. We get all the expense of tunnels etc. but have a permanent floor on capacity due to train length that BART and other train systems elsewhere don’t have.
Our system is also poorly designed because of a funnel effect in the middle of Seattle.
Like the I 5 funnel where it reduces to two lanes under the convention center.
Our light rail tunnel being built under the ship canal/Capitol Hill (with the limit on train length), means that on opening day of the longer lines proposed now, flow capacity is maxed out in the tunnel.
So, you can’t add other lines to this “spine” later, to make a web or a network.
You can’t link up a line over SR 520 bridge.
You can’t link up a line from Ballard.
You can’t link up a line from West Seattle.
You can’t add lines or passengers coming from Renton, Bothell, etc.
So the benefits are very limited compared to what they “should be” or what they are in other places with other proposals or other systems.
Now add in anotehr special feature of Seattle:
the huge cost of buildling this tunnel under Capitol Hill and the ship canal.
It’s about two billion dollars.
So we have most all the expenses of a BART type system, and more due to geology and coming later (standards are higher, etc.) but the specific proposal only yields a fraction of the benefits.
Think of it this way: We are not building a “platform” for (relatively more cheap) future expansion (at lower marginal capital cost per rider).
You have to look at the specifics. Writers like @39 ask good logicl questions but seem to not know that the specifics of light rail here make it unlike BART or the most successful other systems in other places.
@65
That’s only part of the package. ST2 contains money for more runs of the Sounder train from Seattle to Tacoma, it contains more money for express buses and it contains matching funds to extend Tacoma’s Link light rail.
Wont’berailroaded @65, wrong on most points. Link light rail stations are all 380 feet long, enough to accommodate 4-car trains with a capacity of 800 riders each. Same length as a 6-car NYC subway train.
And most of the line is in fact grade-separated. The exceptions are one mile at grade in SODO with 3 grade crossings, and 4.3 miles on MLK where the traffic signal system will be synched up with the trains.
Seattle is not London nor NYC, nor will it become like them. We’re building a Seattle system for Seattle. Grade-separated where it’s warranted, at-grade where that works.
some of the posters are discussing tax incidence. the typical household figure from ST is that directly paid by an average household. but some sales tax is paid by firms and much of that will be passed on in the form of higher prices, so the households will pay some indirect sales tax too. Some of the indirect tax will be passed on to buyers outside the ST district and some will be absorbed by the firms.
the interest rate discussion is not very interesting unless it is an SMP situation and they are suggesting paying high rates and ST will not do that.
THE BUS HUB SYSTEM: Shuttle buses would pickup the people near their homes, take them to a Transfer Station (A covered area) where they would board a bus to their destination.
Some of these routes could be privitized by the employees who want to make a little extra money, and since they have to drive to work, why not drive a bus loaded with paying fellow workers?
The larger buses would not travel in the neighborhoods, they would be on the direct roads and the shuttle buses could also deliver people to them.
All of this is possible when you do a survey to find out who and where the commuters live.
“Leave you car at home and let mary or john drive you to work.”
If you would like a rough draft on this Bus-Hub system, please send me your email.
It will be in the website http://www.tollscreategridlock.org in the near future.