Because people who do ride the bus know that this is a stupid idea:
Under its proposal, the I-90 center corridor would be acquired by Sound Transit exclusively for light rail between Seattle and the Eastside. Buses, vanpools, HOVs and all Mercer Island vehicular traffic now using this inner corridor would be rerouted to the outer lanes.
The result would be increased delays and congestion on all traffic moving between Seattle and the Eastside. The cost of building light rail to the Eastside would be $6 billion. The I-90 bridge would suffer a vehicle capacity loss of one-third compared with today. Even with an optimistic doubling of transit ridership, there would be a 9-percent loss of total (vehicle and transit) person trips.
Light rail would not give us either the flexibility or the capacity that rapid bus service offers at a small fraction of the cost. Bus rapid transit can share the center lanes, thus avoiding the one-third loss of vehicular traffic.
People who like Bus Rapid Transit are people who never ride the bus. BRT is cheaper because, almost all of the time, it sucks.
The fact that Phil Talmadge would sign on with rightwingers like former Sen. Jim Horn and the Washington Policy Center shows just how out of touch Talmadge is these days. Phil also campaigned hard for a new elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct. The vote for the new Viaduct failed in every Seattle legislative district except, you guessed it, West Seattle’s 34th LD (Talmadge was the state senator from West Seattle for years). Talmadge is opposite many Republicans on the Eastside like Connie Marshall, the former Mayor of Bellevue. She supports rail, but this one-kidneyed liberal Democrat from Seattle doesn’t. Weird.
What happened to the Phil Talmadge who told Tim Eyman to go fuck himself? The Talmadge who challenged a sitting Democratic Governor in 2003 for not being progressive enough? Phil gave an anti-war speech to the Democrats at the King County Convention that was fiery as hell back in ’04?
Go figure.
Haha, Phil Talmadge has forgotten more about politics and policy in this state than an ignorant little twit like you could accumulate if you had nine lives like a cat.
Well they do have a point (buried in there somewhere), it might be cheaper to build a transit only bridge for the light rail. Suspension bridges are getting longer, and floating tunnels are now being used. If you only have to carry two sets of rails, you have more options available to you.
Geography and (too) many other issues are stacked against rail. (The land grab for this should have happened decades ago.)
Yeah, riding buses suck. However, they are way more flexible in terms of routes and timetables than rail.
A lot of what currently makes riding buses so “sucky” can be corrected if somebody really wanted to do so.
I find it ironic that those who want to get folks out of cars and into mass transit don’t set up these systems in a way that actually makes sense and attracts riders.
IMO: a “carrot” (Roger R. stay back!) in the form of a transit system that actually functions in a way that people can use would be more effective than the “stick” of higher gas taxes and tolls.
Will, I’m afraid public transportation is more complicated than you realize. Among other things, I believe you underestimate how wedded people are to their cars.
For example, do you understand that many people who vote for public transit do so hoping OTHER PEOPLE will get out of their cars, so THEY can drive their cars in less traffic?
But the overriding issue is that many people don’t have an option to use public transit instead of their cars. Either they work at a location not served by any form of public transit, or they have to drive around to customers’ locations during the day. And, believe me, there are plenty of women who don’t feel safe unless they’re locked inside their own car.
There is stark and irrefutable evidence right in front of us of how difficult it will be to pry people out of cars: $3.50 gas has not made a dent in driving habits.
I’m all for “trails to rails”. Run fancy commuter trails on all the old rights-of-way, with bar cars. Then watch people jump on board.
5 Commuter TRAINs, that is….we don’t want any drunken joggers.
How High Will Gas Prices Go?
Roger Rabbit Prediction: Much higher. Given limited supply, the industry will keep raising prices until people cut back on their driving. But $3.50 gas hasn’t made a dent. All the evidence indicates it will take much higher prices to change public behavior.
How high? I don’t know. We’ll hit $4 this year for sure. There isn’t enough gas to go around so people-must-drive-less. Period. $5? $6? That may not be enough. Prices will go up to whatever level it takes, even if that’s $10 a gallon.
“Oil Passes $64 on Refinery Problems
“Reuters
“(May 17) – Oil rose above $64 a barrel as U.S. refinery closures cut into gasoline supplies just ahead of peak summer demand.
“Despite record pump prices above $3 a gallon, there is no let up in robust demand in the world’s top consumer. More motorists than a year ago are expected to hit the roads during the May 26-28 U.S. Memorial Day weekend ….
“‘For a majority of drivers, the thought of driving less is simply out of the question,’ said Edward Meir of Man Financial Energy Group. ‘We don’t think we have seen the last of the current gasoline spiral, and could very well see one more significant spike higher during the new few weeks.’
“‘ … [T]he current tightness in gasoline is unlikely to ease in the short term,’ said Makoto Takeda, analyst at Bansei Securities.
http://tinyurl.com/2nux9s
@ 4
I underestimate nothing. I know the challenges involved. People leave their cars when they get a better option, and they don’t leave them for BRT. That’s why grade separated rail is much better than slow, stinky bus. Phil Talmadge likes slow and stinky, and I like quick and easy.
People in other cities with lots of rail are wedded to their cars too. But what do their mayors say when people compain about traffic? “Ride the train”
@ 4
Actually, higher gas prices DO make a difference. Gas demand decreases when the prices reach certain levels, even if people don’t stop driving.
The current U.S. refinery bottleneck and inventory shortfall, which is short-term, tends to mask the world crude picture, which is long-term. The world used to have several million bpd of spare production capacity, but that disappeared when demand rose from 77 million bpd in 2001 to 85 mpd in 2006.
And Mexico’s supergiant Cantarell Field, which produces over half of the oil produced by a country that is one of the three major exporters to the U.S., is going into a production freefall because of depletion; we’ve already lost 1 million bpd from that source, and over the next few years we’ll lost the other 1 million bpd from Cantarell as its reservoir is drained and its production plays out.
Canada is ramping up production from its tar sands, but the lead time for infrastructure investment, a shortage of workers, and even such factors as a shortage of housing for workers in the remote area where the tar sands are mined put brakes on how fast that source can be developed. It will take many years to boost Canadian tar sands production enough to offset declining Mexican production.
The ugly truth is that, for the first time in human history, oil demand is overreaching production capability. The long-term picture is a mixed bag. High prices allow the exploitation of expensive sources, but it takes a long time to bring new sources on line. The situation would be difficult even if demand stopped growing. But demand isn’t static; it’s projected to increase by 50% over the next 20 years. I don’t believe the producer countries and oil industry will ever again be able to supply as much oil as consumers want to use. That means high prices are structural and permanent.
Better go out and fill up while it’s still cheap at only $3.50 a gallon.
@9 You’re dead wrong about that, Will. Read the article I posted @7, especially the paragraph that says,
“Despite record pump prices above $3 a gallon, there is no let up in robust demand in the world’s top consumer. More motorists than a year ago are expected to hit the roads during the May 26-28 U.S. Memorial Day weekend ….
“‘For a majority of drivers, the thought of driving less is simply out of the question,’ said Edward Meir of Man Financial Energy Group.”
Hell, just look out the window … do you see fewer cars on the street? I have a view of Aurora Avenue from my perch here in the park, and it’s just as congested as ever. So is Green Lake Way, and so are the side streets.
How can gas demand decrease if people don’t stop driving?
11.
They drive more fuel efficient cars.
But that does nothing to solve traffic congestion.
How many people are really being conditioned to think about fuel-efficient vehicles? While Mr. and Mrs. America sit mesmerized in front of their televisions, awaiting the vital news of just how bad Carrie Ann Inaba thinks Billy Ray Cyrus is at doing the cha-cha-cha, their brains are being barraged with images of giant pickup trucks hauling loads over teeter-totters, super-mongo sports sedans going “Zoom-Zoom-Zoom” and how many ways the seats fold up and down in the latest SUV that spends most of its time carrying a single occupant. Oh, yeah…there is one spot that’s running for Mercury’s hybrid version SUV that makes you think that you’re saving a tree with every additional mile you drive in it.
@ 10
I won’t try too hard to explain this to a rodent, but when the price of gas gets high enough, the demand for gas is lessened to a degree. I never said anyting about people not driving anymore.
Very high gasoline costs affects behavior, check out Europe. Our prices are diiiiirt cheap compared to most civilized countries.
The initial light rail line needs to extend further north and south before any line east is considered. An even more productive line would be the proposed spurs to Burien and Renton. From Renton, Link LRT could route along the BNSF railway to serve Bellevue, Kirkland, Bothell and Snohomish inexpensively, but NooOOoooo…, WSDOT is gonna put a big freeway there instead, as soon as they get their oil-stained hands on enough stupid people’s stupid money.
You hear that, Warshingtonians!! YOU ARE STUPID!!! The whole lot of you!! STUPID!!!!!!
Wells: We te ones who think right are not in charge. We got screwed by local donkocraps.
Um, this discussion keeps coming back to the cost of gas. . . I would submit that our esteemed leaders here in Seattle have discovered the real hammer in this entire deal: The cost of parking. They are moving to eliminate all free parking inside metro Seattle.
Let’s face it, rapid transit, just like a car, is among other things, a tool. People who work downtown generally don’t need a car to get their heinies downtown. They may want to use a car, but it is not an absolute need, like the need of a salesman who must travel to his clients. Cars, on the other hand also serve as totems and socio-economic badges.
If you live in the ‘burbs, and work in the ‘burbs, the chances are you will be very resistant to giving up your car. Parking is simply not the same sort of ‘choke point’ in the ‘burbs.
Inside the metro center, it is a choke-point.
I know many people who have cars, but commute by bus into the city to work.
Their cars are useful for shopping, social validation, socio-economic competition, but they simply aren’t the right tool to get their ‘butts’ into an out of the the city.
One of the fallacies in the framing of the entire issue of mass transit is a misperception of “economic utility”.
Mass transit really doesn’t pay for itself, except in the very real sense of serving to stoke the massive economic engine that is a large metropolitan center.
This critical issue was obscured in the past century in some of the discussions about “urban renewal”,”urban blight”, and “urban-flight”. As long as gasoline was rellatively cheap, and the private auto was available to maintain suburban economic models, it almost always required government planning to maintain urban centers. It is now my sense that urban concentrations of economic activity are the only really viable fputure.
I’m not saying that you can’t make a living in the ‘burbs, or that the ‘burbs won’t grow, but I am saying the driving force in the future for national economic growth is going to be in urban concentrations.
The Farmer got it right on that one. At least in terms of local congestion in Seattle proper. It may well be that all the folks driving into Seattle every day will be willing to pay a lot more for parking each year, and that surface street congestion won’t see any relief. But the revenues generated from commercial parking taxes and pay stations could eventually be put to use to improve mobility in the city.
Face it: despite the fact that nearly every single one of us drives one of the damned things, cars have become a blight on Seattle. They aren’t ever going away. But they’ll have to pay their own freight as we go forward.
If we do it right it just might not take longer to travel by bus the four miles from the U.W. to Ballard than it takes to travel the 40 miles from Marysville to downtown.
One thing’s a certainty: we’ll get no help from WSDOT.
I would be the last person to try to take away your SUV, or tell you that you cannot have your rolling bedroom or ego-validation. . .but I would suggest that if we don’t provide for economic people movement to and from the center, just as we are now providing housing inside the center for all those ‘worker bees’, we will choke off our economic future as surely as we will eventually reach the end of the petro-chemical age.
One of my long standing interests has been Restoration London.
OK, you can roll your eyes back in your heads and go back to sleep now. But I would point out, that at that time, London was essentially the only truly massive urban concentration in England, and became the economic engine which drove the creation of the first international Empire in the Modern Era.
A look transportation in Restoration London is revealing.
Despite it’s sprawl, it was not honorous for anyone, plebe or Aristocrat to walk across the breadth of London in under an hour, from Spittal Fields to Westminster. If you were in a great hurry, you could take to the water, and brave ‘shooting the bridge’. The inner city bus system in place right now serves this function now.
“The initial light rail line needs to extend further north and south before any line east is considered.”
Notice how the chronic critics are always the ones who have no idea what they are talking about – and always tend to come up with the dumbest back of the napkin idea?
Wells never ceases to deliver on that count….
“Haha, Phil Talmadge has forgotten more about politics and policy in this state than an ignorant little twit like you could accumulate if you had nine lives like a cat. ”
Right, Ivan – which is why Talmadge was such an avid Monorail booster all the way up until the bitter end.
You sure are sMaRt.
24: Having driven in London, you need a guide or great guesswork. The streets are narrow, the street signs pathetic and the gas ~$7/gallon. I suggest a stick shift to get any worthwhile gas mileage. At least when you get a green light the other lights on the main streets are in concert with yours.
Also there are walking times where all the lights stay red and allow the peds to cross.
Why doesn’t this happen on the cross streets in Seattle.
@12 Nope. Most people don’t run out and buy more fuel efficient cars because gas is more expensive. High gas prices do influence some people who are shopping for a new vehicle anyway to choose a model that gets better mileage. But only some. There are still a lot of buyers driving SUVs and pickups off new car lots. In any case, the vast majority of drivers simply keep driving the vehicle they already own. Gas prices rarely cause anyone to go car shopping.
@14 The U.S. is not Europe. You can go anywhere in Europe on public transportation, and many Europeans don’t even own cars. In addition, they don’t live in a car-crazy culture. You will get resistance against giving up driving in America that you wouldn’t encounter in Europe.
Would European gas prices change American driving habits? Hard to say. Raising the price increases the bitching and conspiracy theories, but doesn’t decrease consumption. It’s what economists call an inflexible demand curve.
I’ll tell you what will reduce driving: Gas shortages. If gas station tanks run dry, they can’t sell it, can they? If nobody responds to price increases, and everyone goes for broke, and something happens to the supply such as a major refinery going offline, you will begin to see “out of service” signs on pump handles. When that happens, then yes, people will drive less. And they’ll also hoard more, topping off their tanks at every station they pass, which will aggravate the supply shortage. Shortages feed on themselves.
@16 Well, some of them, anyway.
@17 Looks like pudwhacker’s work day ended at 4 PM.
Puddy’s work schedule:
6 AM to 9 AM: post on HA
9 AM to 10 AM: commute to work
10 AM to 11 AM: work
11 AM to 2 PM: take 3 hour break to post on HA
2 PM to 3 PM: work
3 PM to 4 PM: commute to home
4 PM to bedtime: post on HA
@18 The way you get commuters out of their cars is not to eliminate FREE parking, but to eliminate ALL parking. You rip up the parking lots and build BRT stations on them. They’ll pay any price for gas, but if they can’t park they won’t drive.
@23 Not necessarily. The city center will become an uninhabited wasteland, yes, while the ‘burbs move ever outward, like a swarm of locusts chewing its way out from the center of a field.
@27 “Why doesn’t this happen on the cross streets in Seattle.”
Because we need the population control our crosswalks provide.
Do any of you moonbats actually ride a bus?
Tell me, how is it sitting next to the 275lb single mother and her screaming chirrens.
Must be great…
How do ya like standing out in the fucking rain waiting for the bus to arrive.
Guess it’s OK if your time isn’t worth anything.
Given the choice who would you rather have sit next to you on the bus:
1) The 275lb single mother and her screaming chirrens.
2) The kid with the tat on his neck and the green hair and hardware store in his face.
3) The bum who hasn’t had a shower in coupla weeks.
4) Some kook who thinks reducing his “carbon footprint” will somehow “save the planet”.
@32 Essentially, that is what is happening. First we had required parking for downtown building projects. Eventually the economics of this will dictate relaxation of these requirements, and fewer parking spaces for retail and living spaces.
#33 We’ve pretty much guaranteed that won’t happen with all the domiciles we have built in the metro center. Pardon the turn of phrase, but Belltown has become a ‘rabbit warren’.
None of those residents will be interested in commuting out from the center to the ‘burbs to work.
In ten years you will see a transformation of the urban work culture making it more akin to Europe than anywhere else.
The higher income types will still cling to having a car and all of the unreasonable expenses of secure parking and insurance in an urban environment for what is essentially a badge of social class. People with lower incomes will make services like FlexCar even more wildly successful than they already are.
If you live downtown, or work downtown, taking the bus just isn’t a problem for getting around inside the urban metro area. They are the most efficient way of schlepping around town.
FlexCar provides designated parking slots throughout the metropolitan center. FlexCar provides the appropriate tool for your need when you need it. . they have Vans,pickup trucks, hybrid sedans and just yesterday I saw a MiniCooper FlexCar.
If a person moves into a condo in the urban center, buys a long term bus pass, uses FlexCar when needed, and uses a rental car for those occasions when you need to travel between cities, you could essentialy give yourself a five thousand dollar or more raise per year by declining personal car ownership.
This is not an inconsiderable sum for ‘X’ers and other’s in the ‘McJob’ generation. And let’s face it, we’ve created their world and are swelling their ranks with our economic ‘choices’.
That five grand will buy a lot of pints, and if we factor in walking to and from the pub and the DUI you won’t get by doing so, it looms even larger.
Probably one of the more astonishing things I have observed downtown is the proliferation of young families with toddlers being raised in the ‘Yuppie Palaces’ doown in the ‘canyons’.
@36 You’re confused again, Mark. That’s the DSHS bus you’re on. Pay your fucking gambling debt!
@37 They oughta get a fire truck and hose down the bus stoop when you’re standing there. Pay your fucking gambling debt, loser!
@38 Any of the above is better than sitting next to you. Pay your fucking gambling debt, welsher!
@41 Anyone who can afford to live downtown could afford to live in the burbs in a house with a 5-car garage and a couple more cars parked out front.
RogerRabbit@47 Uh, Roger, have you looked at what we lovingly call ‘the Midget Condos’ down in Belltown? They’re moderately priced, but tiny. You won’t ‘live’ in them, rather, you would ‘homebase’ out of them. Three hundred of these hummers being built even as we converse, and every one of them already sold.
Ready or not, in ten years we will have a cultural volte face downtown.
Those “Midget Condos” have a couple of fairly extravagant ‘commons’ areas which will be available for parties, receptions, meetings, etc.
Believe it, this presages a change in cultural outlook. Also, these new urb dwellers are going to have a different political agenda from the suburbanites. . .and they are going to have numbers!
It will never happen for one simple reason. The money on Mercer Island likes using open car pool lanes to get in and out of the city. Put them on clogged lanes, and the money will bite you in the butt and find someone to give them their lanes back.
“Cars are the blight of Seattle.”
I don’t go North of Lakewood unless I’m getting paid so don’t try to make me out to be part of this blight and therefore pay some BS tax or fee.
Taxes and parking and OH YEAH….CRIME sucks in Seattle also. Want to keep your car? Don’t park it in Seattle.
The street urchins generally ruin what could be an otherwise pleasant trip.
The “Emerald City” my @ss!
Hey BigD. What does the “D” stand for? DUMBASS?
The initial light rail line cannot achieve its potential with end terminals at Seatac and Husky Stadium, you fricking fascist pig! IMPEACH BUSH!! His followers are becoming Brownshirts.
Oh no, not Art Lewellen again.