I hate to keep picking on the P-I, but really, does anyone edit that thing? Today’s story on the SLUT’s impending debut contained a gem of a non-sequitur:
Why did we build this thing? The answer isn’t quite as clear as, say, the monorail, which promised to whisk people over city traffic until it was scuttled in 2005. But at least the streetcar got built.
OK, if the answer isn’t as clear, then it would follow that the monorail should have gotten built and the streetcar shouldn’t. So where are you going with this? A clearer-headed friend from West Seattle had a more utilitarian assessment. The streetcar buys him nothing, whereas the monorail would have gotten him all the way home, completely plastered, from a night at the Tractor.
Redeemingly, the story contains a great quote: “Right now, it just seems like a toy for tourists.” Now why would someone say that? The car I saw yesterday on a test run was purple, just like Barney. The other one is reddish orange, like Boober Fraggle’s hair. Come to think of it, has anyone tested those paints for lead?
Anyway, real soon now SLUTs will become official, even if the nickname Nazis keep up their censorship campaign. My take: SLUT will stick, and not only because of the streetcar. Think about Hutchinson & Others (including Group Health) being the hos, and the Mayor and city council being Vulcan’s bitches, and the whole mix starts to resemble an upscale First & Pike. Anything that costs $40M or so per mile to build is paying off a lot of people, let’s face it. Even the P-I is sniffing that coffee: “Some residents are also concerned that Vulcan may be allowed to move forward with 12-story buildings before a neighborhood-wide discussion about taller buildings, view protection and urban design occurs.” Here’s a little tip, passed along from a lawyer friend in commercial real-estate: The stuff already built isn’t selling. Could be a story there.
So here’s a PR inspiration: Invite all the folks around the city complaining about flooding (especially those whiners in Madison Valley, where someone actually died in another one of those 100-year-floods just last year) up to SLU to ride the trolley during its grand debut…for free! Then they’ll understand exactly why it’s more important to build a 1.3-mile amusement-park ride than waste valuable taxpayer dollars on expanded storm sewers. The latter, after all, would be pointless: “The city is not going to spend ‘billions and billions of dollars’ to construct a larger system, Nickels said.” If they did, there might not be anything left over for purple streetcars, developer kickbacks and the grand corrupt miasma of SLU, aka Allentown.
Also, further proof that news media get wet just thinking about flooding: More, so much more, coverage. Good thing this only happens once every year or two. That’s all for now, I’ve got a trolley to catch…
Next time some HA Happy Hooligan rags on me for contending that taxpayers are cynical about where their $$$ goes causing them to revolt, I’ll point this article out to them.
Want to know why Tim Eyman is so popular? Because of SLUTTY spending on gee-dunk while storm drains go un-cleared. In the meantime, Mayor Quarters is dusting off his conducter’s hat and doing his best Polar Express imitation in order to do his Big Daddy thing in SLUT’s inaugural cruise through SLU trolling for John’s.
“Hi’ya commuter…new in town?”
Curious…will Sen. Adam “There’s No Pork or Fat in Governmental Budgets to Cut” Kline be in SLUT’s first class accomodations for the inaugural cruise?
In the meantime, it’s not just high water that causes taxpayers to think it’s getting pretty deep around here.
The Piper
We should just accept the world as it is and factor corruption, kickbacks, and bribes into the cost of things.
Just include it in the budget and name names.
The Mafia isn’t so much an example of organized crime as a blueprint for humanity.
As a Jew do not really understand mas presents, could y’all help me?
I wnt to buy Paul Allan a nice present
we bought Mr. Allan a football stadium
we bought him a choo choo train
Lets buy him a nice tie next
So exactly how did something we voted for three times not get built while this thing I don’t recall voting on did get built? Was it like the Seahawk’s stadium that we didn’t want either? If your name is Allen and you’ve got mega-bucks we’ll build anything you want?
In other news, I’m not surprised the stuff isn’t selling. I’ve been wondering for a while just who they are building housing for in this town. It seems there are 3 or 4 condo projects with million dollar units built for every low income housing unit downtown. And let’s not even talk about “affordable” housing. How many millionaires does the Seattle Planning Commission think there are anyway?
@3. Let’s buy him a ticket to Portland and let him build all his project there. They don’t help us much.
re 4: Sometimes empty buildings are worth more as a business loss (deductions) while simultaneously owning the building and the property increases the overall worth of the holding company.
Similarly, credit card companies want you to believe that when people don’t pay off their credit cards, it’s costing ‘you’, the consumer, money — because the credit card company loses money.
They don’t.
They often get back the face amount they lent you, but when they write off the account they claim all the interest they didn’t get and the fines they didn’t collect as ‘losses’.
Fuck ’em’s what I say.
@1
Next time some HA Happy Hooligan rags on me for contending that taxpayers are cynical about where their $$$ goes causing them to revolt, I’ll point this article out to them.
We don’t rag on you for the cynicism, we rag on you for the hypocrisy. There’s no bigger waste of taxpayer money than Iraq (there’s more money unaccounted for in Iraq than was spent on the SLUT) and yet you continue to defend it.
@3…Steve…
Wouldn’t some nice tar and feathers better suit the mood? Or is the tar too un-green?
Please advise…
The Piper
Wait, I thought you guys were pro light-rail?
@7…Lee…
You’d rather jump off a cliff than find common ground with any other than those with whom you concure 100% of the time.
The issue here isn’t Iraq, or even federal spending (though some federal pork is sure to be found greasing the SLUT to do her thing), but, rather, the local and regional waste and profligacy that is so pervasive in governmental spending that the people of the State of Washington, under the State Constitution, a fourth branch of government, have collectively anointed Tim Eyman as the de facto Speaker of that branch.
Now, go back and tell me what a great deal Prop 1 was, then stick your head in the SLUT-slime, and ask yourself just how much “We the People” trust binge-spenders like Mayor Quarters and his nine little dwarfs on the seattle city council.
Get snide all you want, but a cold-hearted look at tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend goes a long way toward explaining and empowering Eyman. As long as the powers that be float bloat like Prop 1 and spread wide the public wallet for SLUT, Tim will rule the roost.
The Piper
@9
Light-rail that goes more than a handful of city blocks and doesn’t just serve the needs of a tiny group of developers.
I guess it’s possible that if the South Lake Union area gets really built up, it will be useful, but it seems like a patchwork solution to transit.
No State or County tax money to clean up the storm damage in Bothell and Woodinville. People who build in flood zones should clean up their own damn messes.
@10
Again, you’re missing the point. By complaining about how wasteful our state government is while also supporting and championing something at the federal level that’s 1000x more wasteful makes you a H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E.
You and I (and others) have a lot of agreement over the fact that our state government can often be wasteful. All governments can be wasteful. But there’s far from a logical basis for saying that Prop 1 wouldn’t have paid off in the end had it been built. But it is abundantly clear that our adventure in Iraq was money that will never see any type of return. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The money we wasted over there to accomplish basically nothing was only part of the damage done.
Personally, I will likely use the SLUT often. It runs from my office to the South Lake Union neighborhood where I can catch the 66 bus home. Even though it’s awesome for me, I still understand the criticisms over whether it was the most effective use of taxpayer money. In the end, it’s peanuts compared to some of the stuff I regularly blog about. And frankly, you sound like a complete buffoon by being so animated about minor things while blissfully ignoring the major things, and then railing at people who don’t agree with you. You’re a joke.
@11
SLUT is like Tacoma’s link and Portland’s Pearl District trolley, a distributor line. Built so that people who live and work in the same place can get around without a car, so people don’t need to drive to work so that they can run errands, so people can park once and then use the SLUT to get around.
Washington State has a growth management act that requires concurrency between housing development and transportation infrastructure development. SLUT is that concurrency for south Lake Union.
South lake union is also a good example of
Live–> work
instead of
Live——————————-> Work
Much better to have people living and working in the same neighborhood with a trolley to get around then to have them spread all over the place.
@14
I guess my main question was whether it will serve that many people. As I mentioned above, it’s actually great for me, and I’ll likely ride it fairly regularly, but it just seemed like such a seemingly random route to accomodate.
Piper: We heard nothing from the likes of you about finding common ground for the first six years of this presidency.
Paul,
Yes, you’re talking about SLUT, which I agree is a name they should keep (it will be used anyway, as you point out). But when you start comparing facilities in the area to “bitches” and “ho’s” you’ve really lost me (I don’t get your point, number one, and the pointlessly sexist language used is offensive, number two).
@15
Yeah, I think that is an open question.
I see Republican obstructionists in Congress have again blocked AMT tax relief for the 21 million additional middle-class taxpayers facing large tax hikes this year.
Republicans have put conditions on passage of AMT tax relief similar to those Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia in 1914 — they’re designed to be rejected to Republicans can blame Democrats. How cynical.
Specifically, Republicans are demanding:
– Eliminating the AMT entirely, i.e., letting the multimillionaires it was designed for pay no income tax whatsoever;
– Adding $1 trillion to future deficits and national debt;
– Replacing the current tax system with a flat tax, i.e., eliminating progressivity from the tax code entirely and permanently shifting a huge portion of the tax burden from the rich to the middle and working classes, and
– Making permanent Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts on capital gains and dividends, i.e., subjecting work and earned incoe to disfavored tax treatment in perpetuity.
Thanks to Republicans, 21 million more middle-income families will pay higher taxes next year, and the tax refunds of millions more will be delayed weeks or months.
Republicans are to blame. No one else. Just Republicans.
Democrats tried to be reasonable. They offered a compromise that went more than halfway. But Republicans responded with impossible, kaiser-like demands. Republicans need to stop playing political games and let Congress pass AMT tax relief.
Pelletizer (TM) the king of factless hot air class warfare is at it again. Dropping worthless pellets of dung which malleable “clueless” minds accept prima facie. Pelletizer just doesn’t know where to get unbiased info and he sits on his couch in his “bunny hole” doing nothing all day
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/22512.html
Operative wording.
“The reason millionaires don’t pay AMT is because their regular tax liabilities are so high that they drastically exceed their AMT liabilities. The top AMT rate is 28 percent, but for millionaires, much of their income is taxed at the 35 percent regular rate. Even if we doubled that top rate from 35 to 70 percent, millionaires would still not be paying AMT. In fact, even fewer would be paying AMT.”
Only a fool accepts blog entries from Pelletizer (TM) !
So HorsesASSes, are you a “Fool”?
“the monorail would have gotten him all the way home, completely plastered, from a night at the Tractor”
I have an idea on how Seattle taxpayers can save themselves $11 billion: Drink at home.
Seriously, if that’s what people thought the Monorail was for, no wonder they killed it when they found out they’d actually have to pay for it.*
* The Monorail was always based on the pie-in-the-sky notion that OTHER PEOPLE would pay the car tab tax. What killed it, you will recall, was (a) no revenues, leading to (b) the Legislature closing the loophole that had enabled its supporters to register their cars at post office boxes in Mountlake Terrace and Federal Way.
Considering how fast Paul Allen’s business ventures are burning up his Microsoft billions, he needs all the government subsidies he can get.
Paul Allen’s hobby is losing $20 billion in business every 10 years.
“Anything that costs $40M or so per mile to build is paying off a lot of people, let’s face it.”
So who’s on the take for pushing the light rail link from U. District to Northgage at $500M per mile?
Maybe the real reason Sims refused to endorse Prop. 1 is because they didn’t offer him enough baksheesh.
Nah, I don’t think so, though. Sims isn’t a crook. The Republicans have a monopoly on graft, bribery, and looting the public till.
When you see salmon spawning on Pike Street, that’s progress. We’re spending billions and billions of dollars on saving the salmon. We should be happy to see them spawning on Pike Street and Interstate 5. It means they’re staging a comeback. Hell, there might even be a coho season on Lake Washington two years from now. Hell, there might even be a coho season on Pike Street two years from now …
I agree with Michael @14. But also keep in mind that this streetcar line has the potential to be expanded north along Eastlake to UW (albeit, with an expensive Ship Canal crossing), and then along the 45th St. corridor to Wallingford and eventually to Ballard. To the south it has the potential to be connected to a revived waterfront trolley, which could then extend east to the CD. These are all extremely dense areas unlikely to ever be part of the regional light rail system. If the SLUT forever remains the same, it will be hard to justify. But, if it is the start of a major new system (like Portland’s first streetcar line), we’ll all be glad the Mayor took this gamble.
@30
I would love to see that, but this is the first I’m hearing about it.
@30
WADR … you are drinking the kool aid.
IF one wanted to create a starter line to solve an existing transport issue, the it would be built from the UW to SLU or around the lake. But that would not help PA sell plots. Rather it would have helped a lot of less affluent people build up businesses on the Eastlake area (where Vulcan doesn’t have properties to build on). This would also encourage student living in SLU .. unfortunately a low per square foot than Vulcan is aiming for. It would also encourage the growth of biotech .. so much for creds to Mr. A for being an industrial visionary.
Even taking the existing route and using it to build an in town shopping street, a la Europe, would be cool ..it can;t happen because Mr. Allan did not split for the increased set backs needed to support the trolley and street traffic.
Another imaginary reason for having the choo choo is to transport folks form the bus tunnel to SLU. WHO is going to do that??? If he makes SLU into Manhattan West, the folks who live there ain’t gonna want to buss out to Bellevue for jobs.
This toy train is there for one and only one reason … to help Mr. Allan sell properties. As such, if we really believed in a fair market, HE would pay for the effin thing and change his customers and extra $1.50 on each 100k of their purchase.
All that flooding in Centralia caused by the republicans
bombing the levies is because George Bush hates white
people.
Great piece! Did you hear the KPLU story this morning about MORE streetcars? UW transportation guru (and disclosure: personal friend) Mark Hallenbeck gloated about them, saying essentially “people think they’re cool” and now there’s a group promoting streetcars all over the city, presumably in tiny unconnected one-mile loops that do nothing about the real transportation problems in the city. Maybe at least you’ll be able to get trashed at the Tractor and then SLUT it home to your condo on Market. Aaahhh… to be one of the rich who doesn’t really work…