Let’s see… so the Seattle Times consistently opposes spending tax dollars to build a light rail system approved by a popular vote of the people, yet it supports spending tax dollars to build a passenger terminal at Everett’s Paine Field to support commercial airline service that is widely opposed by the surrounding neighborhoods.
Good to see that they are clearly in touch with the values of their community.
Maybe the Blethen family has some money in the airlines involved or some local businesses nearby. I’ve never trusted the opinions of this family newsletter (Times) like it’s whining about the estate tax they don’t want to be stuck with (which 99.5% of the public will never pay).
Maybe the community in the paper’s thinking is a little broader than just the neighborhoods around Paine Field? I imagine commercial service there might be of benefit to the greater Northern King/Snohomish community as a whole, no?
No doubt Uncle Frank is hoping to make a buck or two on the full-page ads that Horizon and Allegiant would presumably run to announce their new service.
I think their “community” is rich people who don’t live in Seattle.
Truth be told, ever since light rail opened I’ve noticed a slight warming by the Blethan paper toward the agency . . .
I am potentially in the flight path of commercial operations at Paine Field. As it is, there is the occassional test flight/ferry flight of Boeing aircraft over my home.
But I am in favor of somewhat limited commercial flights out of Paine Field. As it is, it takes me an hour to drive to SeaTac where I have to arrive about two hours before my flight to make sure I have enough time to navigate security and still make the flight without getting bumped.
That means I really don’t save much time by flying to Yakima, Spokane, Moscow (Idaho), Vancouver (B.C.), or even Portland. By driving I still arrive at those destinations either before or at about the same time I would if I had flown.
But the devil’s in the details, especially when discussing “limited” flights. If Southwest gets into Paine Field, they would use it to bypass SeaTac altogether (in order to avoid the improvements fees), and we would have Boeing 737’s landing at Paine Field every ten minutes or so. I wouldn’t mind some limited operations by Horizon, or a similar small carrier, though.
If Paine Field gets to be a big airport, with lots of people coming and going to it, wouldn’t there need to be better roads leading to the airport? How would the Seattle Times feel about public money being spent to enlarge the roads leading to the airport to handle the new traffic? If they’re against it, at least that would be consistent with being against light rail to SeaTac.
@2
With $70 a barrel the new floor for oil prices there isn’t going to be much of an airline industry in the future. Hell, at $40 a barrel they still needed govmnt’ support to make a buck.
Why should you get what you want over the greater good?
You can find another eingle family neighborhood esaily. And you’ll be gone anway in ten – thirty years….depending…..
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” ~Emerson
I agree with rhp6033 @6. Like most people in Edmonds, I would hear the increased Paine Field traffic. Because I fly to distant places, I would not receive any direct benefit from increased airline service to Paine. However, refusing to take advantage of this excellent (and already existing) airport is ridiculous. Imagine the hassles of building a new airport anywhere else.
I understand that neighbors don’t want more noise, but neither do the people around Sea-Tac. Why should we not share their burden?
@9
Are you sure that an expanded Paine Field would be serving the greater good? It sounds to me like it would be serving a small cabal of wealthy folks at everyone else’s expense.
Since building another major airport anywhere else in Western Washington isn’t feasible, Paine Field (and perhaps a few other “neighborhood airports”) is probably the best solution to the increasing congestion at SeaTac. Remember that in the L.A. area, there are several alternatives to the mega-airport which is LAX: Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, etc.
I love flying into Burbank when we visit my wife’s family. It reminds me of the old days of flying. Upon arrival, the aircraft taxis to the gate, the doors open and a stairway is rolled up. You walk down the steps onto the tarmac, and just thirty yards or so more to the terminal. Once in the terminal, you are within a stone’s throw of baggage retrieval and the doors exiting the terminal. Her father is usually waiting at the curb with the car, we jump in and drive fifteen minutes or so to get to his house.
I’ll bet there isn’t much democracy in the ST editorial room, either. ST is run by folks who believe only dollars should get to vote.
@1 At the rate Frankie’s business is going downhill, he won’t have to worry about his kids paying estate taxes.
@2 Why should the people living near Paine Field put up with all the problems faced by the neighborhoods around SeaTac for the convenience of people in South Snohomish/North King County? Are you willing to pay for soundproofing their homes, and to pay them for the diminished value of their property? If you want Paine Field airline service, you’ll have to.
@3 And this new service is what? Hourly flights from Paine Field to SeaTac?
@13
Oil prices will take care of the congestion at Sea-Tac in within a year or two. It’s foolishness to be expanding airfields right now.
@9 Please identify your neighborhood so we can put a sewage plant there.
It’s been my experience that people who decry so-called “nimbies” (proper spelling of acronym: NIMBY, for “Not in my backyard”) invariably are those who don’t have any impact projects in their neighborhoods and never will have because of their money and political clout.
@RR —
McGinn’s going to shitcan 200 fat-assed managers at city hall. Think “the public” will feel “reduced service levels from government”? I don’t. He’s showing what every government should do – knock deadwood out of the forest canopy.
@20 So you think managers are superfluous? That city workers can function without supervision? Do you believe any business would be run that way?
I know a thing or two about NIMBY activism. When Charley Royer was mayor, I lived in a neighborhood targeted for a huge municipal incinerator. (Back then, they called ’em “waste to energy” plants.) Of course, the people who lived there didn’t want it in their neighborhood. (Visualize 200 garbage trucks a day rumbling down your residential street, a 200-foot-high smokestack spewing mercury, dioxins, and other carcinogens into your breathing air, and everything in your home coated with toxic dust.) Some folks called us NIMBYs, in a disparaging tone of voice.
One day, eight of us were sitting around a kitchen table when someone said, “We can’t defeat this incinerator just by saying we don’t want it in our neighborhood. We have to come up with an alternative.”
And someone spoke the word, “Recycling.”
All the residential recycle you see today in Seattle and King County was born in that moment at that kitchen table. Of course, the eight of us didn’t accomplish that by ourselves. Many, many other people and organizations eventually got involved and helped make it happen. And the city politicians and bureaucrats fought us every step of the way. It took a decade of door-to-door campaigning throughout the city and hard fighting with city hall — but we won.
I was one of those eight people at that kitchen table who threw the little snowball down the hill that started the political avalanche which became the massive regional recycling program you see today. The incinerator was never built.
From my perspective, looking back on what the eight of us accomplished a quarter century ago, “NIMBY” is not a dirty word.
So you think managers are superfluous?
No you obtuse fuck, I think TOO MANY managers are superfluous.
I’ve been careful to avoid posting personal information that would help crazies with malevolent intent to identify me. I don’t want bricks or firebombs coming through my windows, or people who think it’s funny to report someone to the police as a child rapist knowing my real name. (If you think some rightwing freaks aren’t capable of that, ask Goldy.) However, I think enough time has gone by now — over 25 years — that it would be awfully difficult for anyone to track down who those eight activists were.
As Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story: Roger Rabbit and Mrs. Rabbit are two the original eight Seattle recycling heroes.
@23 What is your evidence that Seattle has too many managers? Do you have data and studies to back that up, or are you pulling that out of your ass?
Air traffic and noise at Paine Field has actually declined since many of its neighbors moved in there. It was originally an Air Force base, with a steady stream of very noisy fighter jets. The effort to make use of what was left when the military moved out created something of an industrial park, and preserved a runway capable of handling the largest airplanes which would have cost a fortune to duplicate–and which probably kept Boeing from building the 747/57/67/77 elsewhere. The surrounding property owners have been fighting ever since not only against expansion, but to get the entire facility closed. If the airfield and its associated industries weren’t there, their property values might actually decline…oh, wait. They are anyway.
This is somewhat reminiscent of what happened when the old Navy housing project on the east side of Magnolia was transformed into condos about 30 years ago. The new owners promptly tried to sue Burlington Northern to get them to close the second largest freight switching yard in North America, which has been there since before their grandparents were born.
Those 200 will leave the city’s payroll, and NOBODY outside government will know the difference. I guarantee it.
That will be the PROOF that McGuinn is doing what other top government officials in this fucked up state should be doing – disposing of deadwood that fills public sector employment rolls.
The Times’s editoral is consistant as they’ve always favored a handful of rich folks over everyone else.
aRT @ 26: You’ve got a good point. Even after conversion into a commercial airport, the early 707’s were very loud by today’s standards, and left a cloud of smoke and unburnt kerosine fumes behind as it climbed into the air. While air traffic has increased, the relative noise and air pollution from each flight has decreased.
The noisiest opponants to commercial service from Paine Field come from the relative newcomers just west of the airfield, in the Harbour Pointe development.
NIMBY really means: I want to put my problems in your back yard rather than deal with them myself.
hey roger: saying people who think X invariably have trait Y is really stupid, you know? It’s also unprovable it’s sort of like that idiot the other day who said “all liberals are litterers.”
In my case I am not wealthy and I do in fact live next to a noisy transportation facility. Each issue needs be decided on its merits with no per se rules, okay amigo?
Major cities have more than one airport, and it’s rather obvious that building a totally new airport somewhere is a worse decision that using Paine field; and sure, pay some compensation. In the end the folks protesting are going to die, and yes, they can go get their single family neighborhood many other places….so why should their wants decide the public good?
Btw you questioning my spelling of the plural, nimbies, by referring to the “proper spelling of acronym: NIMBY, for “Not in my backyard”)” which….isn’t plural…so….not relevant? And as long as you want to make this a childish gotcha game…woo hoo gotcha…backyard should be two words…you as per the rule of acronym being the first letter of each word….kinda shows how these little gotcha are gratifying, yet totally irrelevant to the main issue….ne’est-ce pas?
Tell me this Roger pal. Do you want an entirely new airport somewhere else, or just no new airport so that WE are the only top 25 SMSA area (oh please, I hope I got THAT acronym right….shudder…ohmygod what if a got an acronym WRONG! that would be aaaaawwwwful) where we have just one airport?
If your answer is “neither, high speed rail” pls specify the funding source, thanks.
@31 Uh….how much got blown on that third runway at Sea-Tac? How many Federal and state dollars are spent building and maintaining freeways so Joe Pickup can make believe he’s a real studmuffin getting to work or going to see his Aunt Martha in Salem?
Whenever someone advocates rail transit, somebody else who’s in favor of proliferating the status quo starts whining about cost, apparently ignoring that what we’ve been doing for the last three-quarters of a century has actually been ridiculously expensive.
I had to go to Portland for business pretty often for a number of years, prior to the inauguration of the Amtrak Cascades. Sometimes I flew, but most of the time I drove. Most of the work I was doing was in the “Silicon Forest”, and I could get there faster by driving (especially if I crossed the Columbia at Longview and went over Cornelius Pass) than by driving to Sea-Tac, checking in (even then!), riding to PDX on one of Horizon’s “death tubes”, picking up a rental car and fighting the traffic across town to Beaverton. Nowadays, if I were still doing that I’d probably take the train and maybe even ride the light rail out to the west side, although if where I was doing wasn’t close to that I’d have a problem. To my knowledge, the rent-a-wreck companies still don’t have cars for pick-up at Union Station.
Goldy, have you ever applied for a job at the Seattle Times?
@32, rail has been proven to never work anywhere in the world. tHe most modern rapidly advancing nations don’t build rail anymore. Everyone from China to India is getting on board with the USA approach which is to pour billions into remodeling short stretches of auto highways here and there.
Show us the numbers. The New York Times Mag, ten years ago, demonstrated with data that almost every recycling regime in the nation is a crock: far more resources expended on Potemkin environmentalism than were recovered.
To be fair and balanced, parts of Seattle’s program (and only occasionally, depending on prices) were cited as occasional winners that paid for themselves. But that was back in the days of cheap petrol and few petrol-intensive bins on Seattle streets.
Now we have all those poison-spewing petrol-based trucks rumbling through Seattle streets that are littered with bins for which trashmen get to act as a garbage gestapo, issuing tickets.
As for dioxin carcinogens, ask Ben & Jerry. They put in their mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm radical ice cream, so it’s gotta be green and it’s gotta be good.
And has anyone done the emissions math on all those rumbling trucks and all those recycling processes that probably generate more bad gas than a fast burn?
(And please publish your address so I can recycle my compost thru your bedroom window.)
By popular vote????…moron, how about popular vote against gay marriage??? idiot…go back to tel aviv…you fucking reject
Rail @ 35 said: “…rail has been proven to never work anywhere in the world.”
I’m guessing you haven’t traveled much, or you are getting your opinions from people who don’t know very much (or don’t care).
The rail systems in Europe and Japan are both very popular, efficient, and cost-effective. New airplanes are being purchased by air carriers who fly where trains cannot go – across large bodies of water.
In China most of the public travels by rail, to the point that trains are now so crowded that tickets are sold on a standing-room only basis during the holiday season. The reason for expansion of air travel in China is because the train system can’t expand as rapidly as an airline system.
Remember that you need to distinquish between the different types of rail. There is rail as a cargo transport system, vs. passenger travel. Within passenger travel, you need to distinguish between intercontinental travel (where time-in-transit becomes a significant factor), intermediate travel (such as a Seattle-Portland-San Francisco route), and commuting travel (often accomplished by “light rail”).
By the way, I’m in the aerospace business, so I know a bit about these things. If you have ever been to Japan and used the rail system there, you will understand how it is serious competition to the Japanese airlines for domestic travel.
36 said: “Show us the numbers. The New York Times Mag, ten years ago, demonstrated with data that almost every recycling regime in the nation is a crock: far more resources expended on Potemkin environmentalism than were recovered.”
If you compare the cost of recycling versus the collection, sorting, and re-sale cost, then recycling doesn’t make money.
If you add in the cost of sending those same materials to a series of landfills (new landfills would have to be created on a regular basis), and the environmental costs of those landfields, recycling comes out ahead again.
If you are compairing NIMBY issues, living next door to a landfill is even worse than living next door to an incinerator or a recycling center.
Hmmm… rhp6033 makes an interesting counter argument but it has some flaws. Here are some stories probably missed by rhp and other HA Libtardos.
1) Puddy guesses you missed this story. It seems subsidies were necessary to run CA recycle depots. You can read the story yourself… Again to balance the budget what do CA Dummocraptics in the legislature do? They kill programs that help out inner city youth. Way to go lib-tar-dos.
2) Who buys the recycled materials? As you said above about resale costs well that is a big part of the recycle bread and butter existence. Butt we were told recycling would save the higher energy costs of virgin manufacture. Seems this blows a hole in that theory. By the way Puddy hopes the Burnet Co. system works.
3) For those cities who are looking to recycle they are also concerned about the reduction of materials for their electrical and steam generated burn plants. Some cities get their energy needs from burning their trash and garbage.
4) Some cities are only doing recycling to make a show for green dollars from the feds. So what do they do rhp6033?
Ignorant moron @35 – Google is your friend.
“A new Shinkansen bullet train being built to go into service on the East Japan line will travel at up to 320 kilometers per hour (200 mph), making it the fastest rail service in Japan. Test runs for the Series E5 train are planned for July 2009 ahead of its debut in spring 2011. The 10-car train will be initially operated at a top speed of 300 kph, ramping up to 320kmh by the end of March 2013.”
“In 2008, the German rail operator Deutsche Bahn AG launched an experimental service between China and Germany by way of Russia.”
“Trenitalia, Italy’s national railway, which introduced high-speed rail service between Naples and Milan last December (www.italiarail.com), will soon be getting some competition. In 2011, a new privately owned high-speed train company, Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori, will introduce a stylish, candy-apple-red fleet of 25 trains collectively known as Italo.”
In India:
“Highlights of Railway Budget 2009-10 are as follows:-
Reduced Tariffs
For ordinary passenger trains there is reduction in passenger fares by Rupee 1 for fares costing up to Rs 50 per passenger for journey above 10 km.
For all mail/express and ordinary passenger trains, second class and sleeper class fares are to be reduced by 2 per cent for tickets costing Rs 50 and more per passenger.
Also there is to be a fare Reduction of 2 per cent for AC First Class, AC II tier, AC III tier and AC Chair Car.
New Passenger Services
43 new train services to be started in 2009-10.
Extension of 14 trains envisaged.
Frequency of 14 trains is to be increased. ”
Now go away.
@41
I thought #35 was satire. With trolls as whacked as ours sometimes it’s hard to tell.