Some folks are asking me what I think about this, so here goes:
First off, I’m not surprised. The Sierra Club’s campaign against Proposition One was predicated on an anti-global warming message as much as it was a “we’re lukewarm on light rail” message. When I went to the No on Prop 1 kick-off last year, few of the participants were actually excited about light rail. They were more excited to punish people living in Eatonville. Different strokes.
During the Prop. 1 campaign, the Sierra Club went into the campaign basing their opposition on the package’s increase in highway miles. Over time, their opposition shifted in part to a financial one. They attacked the Seattle to Tacoma line, saying it cost too much. (But they did that with numbers from Ron Sims’ budget office, numbers no transportation planner ever signed off on.) Re-reading Ron Sims’ Op-Ed against Proposition One, it seemed more like an anti-light rail screed than anything else. The fact that the Sierra Club is following Sims off a cliff is no surprise to me.
However…
I do think they have a point about parking spaces. Sound Transit shouldn’t be building a large number of additional parking spaces for any of their stations. That said, whenever Sound Transit does outreach to suburban communities, the first response is always, “where’s the park and ride?” You have to understand the folks you’ll serve with this stuff.
Park and Rides, of course, are necessary to get people onto buses. You have to coax and cajole people to get on the bus. You don’t have to do much to get people onto trains. Nerdy transit studies have shown that people will walk much further to get to a train station. I do. People don’t walk that far to the bus stop. I sure don’t. I’d much rather walk than ride on a bus that’s stuck in traffic.
In the first place, many of the proposed light rail stations are sited on current Park and Ride lots. Sound Transit should do like they do in DC, where the parking lots at suburban Metro stations are pay-to-park. That’s a perfectly reasonable option.
So I wish Mike O’Brien well on his soul-searching. I spent all of the campaign telling people that coming back to the ballot with a transit-only package in 2008 was an impossibility. I’m glad I was wrong (so far). How ironic is it that the very groups who promised us a 2008 transit-only vote are the same ones who are now dragging their feet?
Want to have your say? Join me and others at:
Post-Proposition 1: The Future of Transportation in Seattle
Thursday, March 20, 2008
5:30-7:30PM
Spitfire (2219 4th Avenue, between Bell and Blanchard)
$10 suggested donation includes a drinkMembers from both sides of the Prop. 1 debate, including…
*Seattle City Councilmember Jan Drago, Chair of the Transportation Committee
*Rob Johnson, Transportation Choices Coalition’s Regional Policy Director
*Mike O’Brien from the Sierra Club
*Greg Walker, Sound Transit’s Policy and Planning Officer
*Moderated by the Seattle Channel’s C.R. Douglas
From my time working on transit oriented development, as I recall, if a park and ride lot was developed with Federal highway money, then any development of the lot must retain the same number of parking spaces. The Overlake transit station is an example of this. When they built the transit station and the adjacent affordable housing on land that was a park and ride lot they were required to build a parking garage to retain the net number of park and ride spaces. Anyhow, when you accept money from the Feds, you can bet that there will be strings attached that limit what you can do with the facility built with those dollars.
Hey Will,
Let’s not pretend you don’t feel exactly like your Sierra Club butt buddies. You hate suburbanites, full stop. This is a leftist JIHAD against car drivers.
Dori Monson is a homophobic, hate mongering giant douchebag that needs removed from the airwaves. Anyone that listen to or agrees with this ridiculous little man, that has his opinions paid for, should seek serious psychological help, for they obviously are as ignorant and pathetic as Dori and his ideological, war mongering, hate spewing machine.
I’m all in favor of light rail, I would like to be able to take it between my home in Everett and my work in Bellevue. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some concerns.
Contrary to Will, I don’t see people walking to a light-rail station any more than I see them walking to a bus stop. In addition, you have the added problem that there will be a lot fewer light-rail lines and stops than there are bus routes & stops, so the walk to the light-rail line would be considerably longer, for most of us. Anything which discourages use would defeat the benefits of the light-rail lines.
And people are going to be very resistant to walking to a bus stop, taking a bus to the light-rail line, then getting off the train and taking another bus to get to their destination, and doing it all over again, in reverse, at the end of the day. People look at their commute time and cost as “portal-to-portal”. If you have to pay seperately for the bus and train parts of the journey, then the personal economics might tip the balance against using public transit at all.
As for myself, I tried to take the bus from Everett to Bellevue for a while (well, a SHORT while). I ended up having to pay for transfers twice, and take three buses, and still walk a couple of miles to my destination. The whole commute ended up being close to three hours each way, including waiting time for buses, and it cost about five bucks each way (this was several years ago). Since I don’t have to pay for parking where I work, I figured out that the personal economics were pretty much a wash (gas & maintenance costs were the same as bus fares), and I’d rather sit in a car for 45 minutes to an hour each way rather than stand on a crowded bus and endure a close to three-hour commute each way, including a couple of not-particularly pleasant trecks down major roads in the dark in the rain.
I don’t have a philosophical problem with charging for parking at a park&ride lot, but again, you have to include it in the entire portal-to-portal cost analysis. People who work in locations where they would have to pay for parking at their destination (such as in downtown Seattle) might consider it a reasonable cost reduction. But those who don’t have to pay for parking at all might think it tips the balance in favor of them continuing to drive to work.
Good common sense analysis, Will.
After all, mass transit isn’t an ideological issue. Unless your brain is the size of a pea, of course. FreedomLover: ridiculous comments like that have convinced me movement conservatism is just about over.
I will think back on 2008 as the year the dittoheads jumped the shark. Nothing useful to say, mostly because the intelligent ones have all moved on. We end up with the racist bigots and the retards.
Unless, of course, FreedomLover is 14 years old, and just now cutting his teeth.
If that’s the case, he gets a pass.
Sorry, couldn’t wait for an open thread:
“I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you…in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger.”
— George W. Bush, during a video conference with military briefers in Afghanistan
Some guys should just learn to keep their mouths shut.
Having a chickenhawk like Bush, who benefited from his father’s political pull to keep from going to Vietnam when he had the opportunity to do so, lecturing professional military men on the “romantic” nature of confronting danger? It must have given them one of those “I think I just threw up in my mouth” moments. Any soldier who has seen combat has been quickly disabused of the notion that there is anything romantic about warfare.
It is just one more item of proof that George W. Bush is among some of the most dangerous of men when in power. These are men having been exposed to the military just enough to think that they are an accepted part of the fraternity, but having been far enough in the rear to be free from any real danger, or to have learned any of the lessons of the horror and futility of war which real combat veterans have learned.
“It is good that war is so terrible, othewise we should grow too fond of it.”
—Robert E. Lee, just before the guns opened up upon advancing Union troops at Fredricksburg.
The park and ride near my house over flows on a daily biases and has for years. You don’t need need to cajole people in the suburbs to use them, they all ready are. I’m 2 miles from the closest lot and most of its users are coming from father out than I am. I doesn’t matter if you’re hopping on a bus or a train, if you live 10 miles from the lot you’ll be arriving by car.
Will, I was an active member of The Sierra Club for 5 years, in that time I met zero people who disliked people that lived in the ‘burbs. In fact many of the 26,000, or so, members of the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club are like me, residents of a suburb. For the record I did meet 2 people who didn’t like rural folks.
Take a deep breath and let it go Will. All sort of people disagree on stuff, but can still work together on common goals.
I’d also add that Mike O’Brien is only one of 26,000 (or so) members of the Cascade Chapter and that transportation is only one of many areas of where The Sierra Club is active. It’s wrong headed to think that O’Brien speaks for all members, that the clubs members in Eatonville want to punish themselves or to lump the transportation folks in Seattle in with, say, the hiking folks in Vancouver or the Ivy pull people in Tacoma.
See, Will, the thing of it is while you like to spout off about The Sierra Club, you don’t know shit about it.
@ 9
Wow, passive aggressive much?
“I do think they have a point about parking spaces. Sound Transit shouldn’t be building a large number of additional parking spaces for any of their stations. … Park and Rides, of course, are necessary to get people onto buses. You have to coax and cajole people to get on the bus. You don’t have to do much to get people onto trains … people will walk much further to get to a train station. I do.”
Oh christ Will, do you have to take Stupid Pills to write stuff like this, or were you born with the gift?
What about senior citizens who can barely walk to their mailbox and back? What about people who catch flu and pneumonia every time they get rained on? What about mothers with little kids in tow? As for car commuters, if $4 gas and $250 monthly parking won’t make them give up their wheels, do you really think the joys of steel wheels clacking on steel rails will? And they’ll walk miles to enjoy this privilege?
It’s hard to tell who’s denser, you or the utopians at the Sierra Club.
From the Stranger article you linked to (quoted under fair use):
“The plan the board is considering is a $6 billion dollar expansion taking light rail from Husky Stadium to Northgate and from Seattle across I-90, then tacking north to the Overlake neighborhood just south of Redmond. Current plans also contemplate thousands of new parking spots with several major new park-and-ride centers.”
All that for only $6 billion? When, just last fall, the U. District-to-Northgate link alone was going to cost $2.5 billion? Does this mean the 5-mile tunnel to Northgate is out, and a surface route is in? What surface route? Where? Are they going to replace 5th N.E. with rails, like I suggested? Or did tunneling suddenly get cheaper after someone told the contractors they have to settle for less graft than originally planned?
Well, let’s see here. If the U. District-to-Northgate link is still gonna cost $2.5 million, that leaves only $3.5 billion to cross Lake Washington on either the I-90 or as-yet-not-designed 520 bridge, run rails all the way to Redmond AND build thousands of parking spaces. Are they giving away land east of Lake Washington? Can right-of-way to Redmond from downtown Bellevue still be bought at farmland prices of, say, $500 an acre? Or are light rail proponents cooking the books and lying about costs again? E.g., by not counting the billion dollars (or two) that accomodating light rail will add to the costs of the new bridge, considering that to be “highway funds” instead? Just askin’ …
More from the Stranger article:
“‘We’re torn,’ says O’Brien [of the Sierra Club]. ‘ … In some communities that have built light rail, where there are massive park-and-ride lots, that enables sprawl. If … we start seeing all these investments in parking spots, we’re going to have to be critical.'”
Looks like he’s with you, Will — the greenies want everyone (including the young, aged, and infirm) to walk (through all kinds of weather) long distances to light rail stations. The “long distances” part of this is a given because there’s very little housing immediately adjacent to the light rail routes, but even if there was, you can’t exactly flag down the train nor do you have a bus stop in every other block (like you do with buses) because you have relatively few stations spaced rather far apart and even the hoboes living under the light rail tracks will have to walk quite a ways to a station.
Do you guys really expect people to walk a mile or more, each way, every time they ride light rail? Know what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you. Nobody will ride on your expensive white elephant, that’s what. The trains will be empty … MMMMMMM – TEEEEEEEEEE.
But waaaaait there’s more:
“Sound Transit’s Ilgenfritz has rejoinders to both concerns. First, he says the money for the park-and-rides isn’t only for parking spots; it’s for shuttles, pedestrian routes, bike facilities, and bus access — all things that encourage riders to abandon their cars. Second, he says the I-90 plan costs about $2 billion to $3.5 billion less than a 520 option (going across I-90 to Overlake will cost about $2 billion) — and more important, a 520 configuration would have to come after a new 520 bridge, putting any 520 light-rail option on hold.”
We’ve already spent a lot on money in shuttles, pedestrian access, bike facilities (including bike racks on buses), and bus access. We’ve built a lot of that stuff recently, and I don’t see people getting out of their cars to use them. To the extent they’re used (rather lightly, it appears to me), most people use them AND drive their cars just as much as they always have (if gas prices are any indication).
As for how they plan to save $2 to 3.5 billion by crossing the I-90 bridge instead of the as-yet-not-designed 520 bridge, it looks to me like they’re cooking the books (lying) again. Inasmuch as adding light rail to the 520 bridge would cost add about $2 to 3.5 billion to the bridge’s cost, there appears to be an implicit assumption here that crossing via I-90 corridor will be free. However, I don’t see any light rail tracks on the I-90 bridge, nor do I see anyplace on the bridge to put them, so I don’t know where they get that from.
What it all boils down to, I think, is more pie-in-the-sky conjoined with more lowballing of costs to pull the wool over taxpayers’ eyes. They do seem to understand the direction they have to go if light rail is to have any chance at the ballot box — lower costs, a faster construction schedule, a broader served area, and above all PARKING SPACES for people who will NEED CARS TO GET TO THE LIGHT RAIL STATIONS. But these promises appear, to me, to merely be marshmallows floating on top of rancid cocoa; methinks that down in the chocolately murk there lurks concealed costs, unpleasant design surprises, and of course revisions to the construction schedule as it goes along. The first two things to go will be parking spaces and stations. After those two amenities are axed the next thing to go will be riders.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The way the economy is going, maybe you light rail boosters should downsize your transportation fantasies a little.
Here’s something that appears doable: http://www.neenahlibrary.org/Horsetrolley.JPG
But with hay prices going through the roof even that may slip beyond our grasp.
So Will is in a tizzy over: “But they did that with numbers from Ron Sims’ budget office, numbers no transportation planner ever signed off on.”
Will did you vote for the Heilary loving fool? Caveat suffragium.
Greenhouse gases from cars aren’t a problem, Will. Well, okay, right now they are BUT that problem is going to fix itself. Trust me on this. What you can’t accomplish in 30 years with a zillion-dollar light rail system will be implemented overnight by $10 gas. Believe me, that’s where it’s going. This country will be forced to change its car-dependent lifestyle because there simply isn’t enough oil for everyone on the planet to live like we do, and to squander fuel like we do. When we can no longer afford our car commuting lifestyle, we will redesign our cities and reconfigure our work patterns. It can be done — it has been done — we are the only human society in history to be as car dependent as we are, and somehow all the other human societies in history made it work without our dependence on cars and cheap gas. When the cheap gas is gone, we will adapt.
Rhp6033@4: Where is your environmental love? Look at that carbon footprint you are expelling driving to work for that hour?
So you disagree with the political libtards who want to eliminate as many cars from the road as possible? Just think about your position here and how you disagree with your greenhouse gas buds.
I guess not every little bit helps after all does it?
I guess being green is for everyone else but you huh?
Now that they’ve figured out how to go from the U. District to Northgate AND expand to the eastside for only $6 billion instead of last year’s $17 billion (which was based on obsolete 2006 costs), they need only another 28% cost reduction to make it fit the financing package they promised us:
1.2 million households x $120 a year x 30 years = $4.32 billion
I’m not saying it’s not doable. In fact, it should be eminently doable. With Seattle’s light rail system to date averaging $179 million a mile, compared with an average of $20 million a mile paid by other U.S. cities, there’s still plenty of opportunity to find cost savings.
I’m curious, though, why the system that cost $28 billion last year PLUS adding the eastside PLUS thousands of parking spaces not in last year’s plan now costs only $6 billion? I don’t see prices for steel, contract, and trolley cars coming down. Maybe they’re planning to save a bundle on construction labor by importing $1-a-day foreign workers? But that would mean giving up the local jobs this project would create. Perhaps that’s not too great a loss to bear to get the kind of numbers they’re coming up with now. However, if they can now build it for $6 billion, why didn’t they figure out last year how to build it for $6 billion? Just askin’ …
Pelletizer@17 with reduced cost prijections how do we know there won’t be a bait and switch tactic? Once people say okay I can live with that price they come back and say “oops, our pencil wasn’t that sharp.”.
Can anyone say Tim Eyman if that happens?
Forgive me, but I don’t trust the people shilling for light rail. It strikes me they have some of the same credibility problems as our HA trolls.
@10
Nope, not at all. There’s nothing passive about anything I wrote.
@18: Just think more cheep labor liberals!
@19 Be careful, pudprick, or you may find yourself agreeing with Roger Rabbit — maybe even endorsing Roger Rabbit — and that will ruin you. You know it will. Your wingnut buddies won’t stand for that.
Pelletizer@20 discussing street or blog cred, I seem to remember a recent post on Haiti from your fingers.
@11
“Looks like he’s with you, Will — the greenies want everyone (including the young, aged, and infirm) to walk (through all kinds of weather) long distances to light rail stations.”
Please don’t mistake one guy in Seattle (well two counting Will) with the rest of us.
Pelletizer@23: You and I agree on TV and movie violence. There was no earthquake on that.
@!5
“Greenhouse gases from cars aren’t a problem, Will. Well, okay, right now they are BUT that problem is going to fix itself. Trust me on this. What you can’t accomplish in 30 years with a zillion-dollar light rail system will be implemented overnight by $10 gas.”
Exactly! $5 gas and infill development will take care of a lot of stuff, before we get to the $10 mark.
Don’t despair, railfans! There may be hope on the horizon for your otherwise-all-wet dream. The Dow is down 240 points this morning as the Wingnut Economy continues to implode. And Bush still has 10 months left in office to further mismanage the economy (and everything else). If he succeeds in pushing us into another Great Depression, as appears increasingly likely with every passing day, maybe President Obama will get to play FDR by throwing massive federal dollars at public works projects (including yours) to put the people in soup lines back to work. History is handing him (and you) a golden (and I do mean golden) opportunity here. Falling stocks, rising unemployment, soaring oil prices, the devaluing dollar, inflation, the collapsing system, the Middle Class squeeze — these things are GOOD!!! It all depends on your perspective. Every cloud has a golden lining.
collapsing financial system
@ 17
The 17 billion was for roads AND transit. The ST2 portion was less than 10 billion.
Roger- You need to tone it down with regards to turning the comment threads into your own personal toilet. Your views are well known on this issue, and your long, repetitive comments whenever I post on light rail are not informative. I don’t mind disagreement, but please, let the other kids play too.
@26 I don’t like censorship, but if something’s gonna be censored by folks who won’t be happy until they get to censor something — and given a choice between censoring violent TV/movies or censoring peace activists — I suspect we’re not in as much agreement as you think.
Strange how wingnuts who don’t like film violence are so in love with the real thing.
(I had to say something; I don’t want people thinking I agree with pudpacker on anything because that would ruin me … )
@29 Sorry, Will, but I can’t do that. I fire with both barrels all the time. I have only one mode — “Let ’em have it!!!” On the rare occasions when we disagree on something, if I pulled on kid gloves, I might have trouble pulling them off again to deal with the wingnuts — and you wouldn’t want that, would you? If you think your position on light rail is defensible, then defend it instead of trying to silence me.
@29 “please, let the other kids play too”
I’m keeping other people from posting? Well okay, if you let me know what the pixel capacity of Goldy’s server is, I’ll do the math and try to save 25% of the pixels for your other traffic …
here’s something for y’all to think about – I ride the train in from Sumner, and I love my commute, parking is getting harder and harder to find, and very soon, I may have to park at the Bonney Lake Park and Ride and take the bus to the Sumner train, adding 1/2 hour to my already 3 hour commute. No problem, if that is what I have to do, I will do it.
But what I really do not understand is this – Sound Transit lets Carpoolers park at the train stations free of charge. They don’t take the bus, they don’t take the train, they don’t pay anything. They must be Boeing people, because they get to the train station very very early.
I pay $153 a month for my train pass (not employee reimbursed), and the carpoolers pay nothing and take up the really limited parking. They could park at the bus park and rides, I know the one in Bonney Lake never even approaches capacity, or here’s an idea, why don’t they leave the cars at home, and have the home be the pick up spot? There are only like 275 spaces at the lot at Sumner – it seems unfair to let the carpoolers have them scott free and the train people pay and have to make another connection because of the lack of parking.
I have complained to Sound Transit, and got the proverbial so what, in not so many words. So bring on the pay for parking, I would gladly pay just to get a spot in the morning.
Will, in addition to being wrong in his desire to spend other people’s grocery and medicine money on subsidized transportation for himself, has a thin skin for criticism of his position as well. Please note that I’m not criticizing Will personally, only his position …
… although if you poke a stick at a rabbit long enough …
@29 Actually, Will, you know as well as I that the $17 billion was a lowball figure. The (realistic) stand-alone costs for Phase 2 were all over the map but $17 billion for the light rail portion of Prop. 1 may, in fact, be generously low.
Oh my god, Roger Rabbit really *is* SeattleJew.
Furthermore, even if the $10 billion figure is right, why does the same system (with some added amenities) now cost only $6 billion? Is it fair to ask where they’re stashing the other $4 billiont of the costs so we taxpayers won’t see them when they submit it to another vote? And I, with my simple rabbit brain, still do not see how you get $10 billion or even $6 billion by taxing 1.2 million households only $120 a year for 30 years, which (along with several other things, such as the lowballing of costs) makes me suspect the light rail pushers are lying to us about what this will cost us. Remember, also, these are additional taxes on top of the taxes we’re already paying for Phase 1, which itself costs billions of dollars — $179 million a mile, to be exact, compared to the U.S. average of $20 million a mile (figures from Wikipedia article on light rail) — this is a good deal for our city and us taxpayers? And, I’m also right about light rail being different from other transportation infrastructure in that it is financed by general taxes on people who won’t use the system and can’t necessarily afford to subsidize those who will, whereas roads and airports and other transportation is financed wholly by taxes and fees on those who use them.
It’s like this, Will. Some of us are retired and forced to live on fixed incomes that don’t go up with inflation, and there’s a lot of inflation, and we’re worried about paying for basic necessities. And you come along and want to take money from us for something that won’t even be built in our lifetimes. It shouldn’t surprise you that this doesn’t sit well, or that senior citizens as a bloc are opposed to the financing scheme that light rail proponents have come up with. When and if those who want light rail decide to pay for it themselves, or by hitting up car drivers, then you can build whatever you want and I don’t care what it costs. If you want to shut me up, that’s how you can shut me up. As long as it’s my money you’re after to pay for this incredibly expensive white elephant, I won’t shut up except by force. You’ll literally have to delete my posts and kick me off this blog to stop my squawking about this, because what you’re doing threatens my vital interests and I won’t sit quiet for that.
@39 No, and I’m not Goldy either. Are you Janet Stupid’s brother?
@ 40
It’s not the same system. Do at least a little research before you pollute the comment thread.
Will, call in your other brother Darryl and he’ll shovel the worthless thread pollution pellets created by Pelletizer.
@35
“But what I really do not understand is this – Sound Transit lets Carpoolers park at the train stations free of charge. They don’t take the bus, they don’t take the train, they don’t pay anything. They must be Boeing people, because they get to the train station very very early.”
Hmm… It does seem that if you’re shelling out $135 a month on a train pass you should have a reasonable expectation of a place to park. Why they don’t have train only parking (and permits for the cars that park there) is a good question.
The way the economy is going, maybe you light rail boosters should downsize your transportation fantasies a little.
A downturn in the economy is good for large projects like this. Saves money – cheaper steel and concrete; less competition for construction firms, so lower bids. Boosts the economy by putting well paid construction workers back to work.
If Bushie had spent our tax money on infrastructure instead of sending it overseas to Iraq (never to be seen again), our economy would be in much better shape.
@43 “It’s not the same system.”
Well now, that’s progress isn’t it? Sound Transit cut costs in half and provided parking, so now you’re against it and I’m more willing to support it.
Hey Will, I really enjoyed our conversation at the No on RTID kickoff–and each time we’ve met since. I never knew we left you with such a nasty impression. Sorry. I really don’t want to punish anybody in Eatonville, but (sorry again, you’re not going to like this) the more I think about it, I just don’t think Park & Rides are a good investment. We all want the suburbs to get on board, but there’s a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) for that. I think Park & Rides are outdated, honestly. TOD is exactly the kind of thing most “edge cities” have in mind these days. Check out my comment at the bottom of this string on Carless in Seattle to see what I mean.
I keep seeing talk about subsidized transportation and the idea that paying for rail only effects pocket books for people who don’t use it.
Funny.
What about your co-workers? People who buy whatever your business produces? The people who work at public utility companies and keep your lights on? Have you ever heard someone at work say “I’m sorry I was late, my bus was slow” or something to that effect? They’re not lying– their bus was slow!
@42: Senior citizens like to talk about their contribution while pretending they didn’t get us into this mess. Greatest generation? You mean the one that led to more deaths than there were people alive in the middle ages? Please. Some of the “greatest” generation needs to forget how to vote.
@49
The densities for light rail are not the same in the suburbs as they are in the cities. In Boston there are no Park and Rides in the city, but as you get further away like the Green the Park and Rides grow larger and larger. To support light rail you need ridership and ridership in the surburbs is more spread out. By demanding densities in the surburbs you are defeating the idea of growth management and forcing urbanization of the suburbs.
It may be true that people will walk longer for a light rail station than a bus stop, however there is a finite distance people will travel by foot.
2cents – nobody’s forcing anything. The market will make choices about where it wants density.
@52
I’m not sure what that has to do with my previous comment, but you’re wrong in this market. This market will support more development than possible. The government regulates growth. The government determines housing per acreage, commercial, residential, industrial or rural, it determines roads, sewage, storm water, water, schools, garbage, fire, police and often electrical. It hurt your sensibilities, but that’s reality.
Here’s your rail transit…
http://www.komotv.com/news/16745231.html
Like the supporters of rail themselves, the thinking is fixed. Rigid.
Do you suppose they sent another train to pick up any passengers and send them on an alternate route? No, wait. There ARE NO ALTERNATE ROUTES FOR A TRAIN!
Sheer ignorance to support rail