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Both Crosscut’s Skip Berger and HA’s Carl Ballard took advantage of light rail to explore South Seattle. Both got off at Othello Station, both walked around the surprisingly active and distinctive neighborhood (surprising, at least, to outsiders), and both stopped for a bite to eat at one of the many Asian restaurants that dot the area.

And both came away with the same impression of how light rail will open up the once hidden neighborhoods along its path to the rest of the city.  First Carl:

The point of this (admittedly overindulgent) post is that light rail opens up a piece of the city for those of us without roots there and who make most of our trips without a car. Sure, this is something I could do yesterday if I’d wanted to. But it’s much easier to just get on a train than it is to figure out the bus schedule or to find parking if I’d wanted to drive. And I know exactly how to get home: hop on one of the trains that come every few minutes.

And then Skip:

For Seattleites who rarely get down to this part of the Rainier Valley, I predict Othello become a destination, even a place for a quick lunch for downtown workers who need a break. You can get there, have lunch, and be back downtown in less than an hour. I got off here and popped into the Huong Viet Cafe and bought a delicious pork sandwich. If I worked downtown, I might do that regularly.

[…] That’s one of the intriguing social prospects of the light rail line: it makes visible parts of the city that are often ignored. The trek down MLK, passing the new housing development, the old junkyards, the heavy machinery, the chain-link fence neighborhoods with “beware of the dog” signs and cars parked in the yard, the immigrant enclaves, the strange ethnic churches, the decaying strip malls — it helps put a big chunk of Seattle onto the visible map, at the very least for the tens of thousands of folks who will be taking light rail to the airport and might never otherwise see this part of the city.

As for me, I had the opposite experience, embarking from Othello Station, and suddenly finding myself in the middle of a bustling downtown Seattle street scene…a trip I am likely to take more often, now freed from the irritation and inconvenience of traffic (by car or by bus) and the hassle and/or expense of downtown parking. And at either end of the line, local merchants will benefit from the traffic of folks like Skip, Carl and me.

I was tempted to describe our explorations as intra-city tourism, but in fact, it is much more than that. Tourism implies a visit from outside, whereas light rail will ultimately serve to tie our city (and our region) closer together in a way that freeways and buses never have. Light rail, through its speed, comfort, reliability and permanence contracts the landscape, changing the dimension by which we experience distance from space to time, much in the same way as a high-rise elevator: nobody thinks of the fifth and fifty-fifth floors as being separated by fifty flights of stairs, and nobody plans their travel within the building accordingly. Likewise, when downtown Seattle, or any other stop along the way is always, say, 20 minutes away—not sometimes less, sometimes much, much more, depending on traffic—the boundaries between our neighborhoods will begin to blur, not in distinctiveness, but in distance.

The debate over light rail has largely focused on whether or not it is an efficient means of moving commuters, and no doubt commuters will always comprise the bulk of its ridership, but its impact on our region will be much greater that which could be achieved simply by giving commuters a better bus. Because it changes the way we view our region and use our various neighborhoods, light rail will make Greater Seattle both larger and smaller at the same time, an apparent paradox future generations will come to take for granted.

From an editorial in today’s Seattle Times (the emphasis is mine):

California’s tax structure is more aggressive. In addition to a sales tax it has a personal income tax. California designed its income tax to lay heavily on the wealthy, so that in good times it had a bountiful harvest of capital gains.

I think the the word they were looking for was “progressive,” but even an accidental description of an income tax as “aggressive,” because, unlike our system, it taxes the wealthy at higher rates than the poor, speaks volumes about the Times’ attitude toward tax fairness.

Join us tonight at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

Author Mike Lux will stop by Drinking Liberally tonight (around 8:30) to discuss his new book The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came To Be.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n0AqdxstI0[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 332 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to get lost at.

So I make a tiny change in my template today to facilitate an ad. It works in Safari. It works in Firefox. It works in Opera. So I didn’t bother launching Parallels to check it out in the latest version of IE for Windows.

Of course, IE chokes on it. And that’s why IE users couldn’t read HA for a couple hours today.

It was a coding error, sure (a missing closing tag), but still, IE can be such a temperamental little baby.

UPDATE:
Speaking of goddamn Microsoft, Apple announced record non-holiday quarter revenue, profit and unit sales today for the second quarter in a row, despite the Great Recession. Looks like all those Microsoft ads touting how expensive Macs are, aren’t making much of a difference.

At the risk of setting off an even larger partisan tiff, I suppose you could say that a Mac is light rail, while a Windows PC is a smelly old bus.

Mike Lux of OpenLeft and many other progressive organizations will be at Drinking Liberally tonight, chatting it up with the locals, and plugging his new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be. From the inside flap:

The next time you hear a conservative accusing progressives (a.k.a. liberals) of being unpatriotic and anti-American, tell them this: “Progressives invented the American ideal and inspired the American Revolution. Conservatives, then known as Tories, opposed it. Since then, every major advancement in American freedom, democracy, social justice, and economic opportunity has been fostered, fought for, and won by progressives against conservative resistance. Now who’s anti-American?”

That’s my kinda rhetoric.

Join us at the Montlake Alehouse, 8PM onwards.

UPDATE:
You can listen to Mike on the third hour of today’s Dave Ross Show:

[audio:http://icestream.bonnint.net/seattle/kiro/2009/07/p_Dave_Ross_Show_20090721_11am.mp3]

Crosscut’s David Brewster punks Seattle, giving 13 reasons for our “slug’s pace” at making tough decisions like building light rail. And you know what? I can’t really disagree with him.  For example:

7. Complacency. Seattle really is (was?) a favored city, so it’s not easy to feel a compelling need to make tough decisions, even if we feel some embarrassment about our procrastination. Our politicians reflect this by becoming “garden-tenders,” comforting the constituencies that elect them without having to make hard decisions that might alienate them. And, with only Democrats in office, there’s little fear of losing a job, once elected.

I’ve got a few quibbles here and there, but it’s worth the read.

I’ve had trains on the brain recently, what with the triumphal opening of the Link light rail (and given Seattle’s history, it was a triumph), which may help explain why I just booked a 7 hour and 20 minute train reservation from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

Now, at first glance, that might seem a little crazy, considering a non-stop flight on US Airways clocks in at under 1 hour and 20 minutes gate to gate. But on closer examination it’s not as nutty as you might think, an examination that speaks to the many competitive advantages of intercity rail… advantages, alas, that most American cities aren’t able to enjoy.

The cost comparison is fairly easy. For example, the airfare (with tax and fees) would come to $133 round trip, plus $15 each way to check my bag, and $20 each way for the airport shuttle in Pittsburgh. That’s $203 to fly, versus the $91 I just payed to book on Amtrak.

But is a $112 savings really worth 12 hours extra traveling time round trip? No, probably not. But then, what with all the time spent wandering around the airport, flying doesn’t really save me 12 hours, does it? After all, with frequent logjams at the TSA checkpoints, most airlines recommend arriving an hour and a half before a domestic flight, so subtract three hours there. And, of course, while flight time is measured gate to gate, you still have to account for deplaning, walking to baggage claim, waiting for your baggage, and then getting to (and on) ground transportation, so subtract another hour of airport time at either destination, and we’re down to a seven hour advantage.

Then there’s the airport shuttle to and from the hotel in Pittsburgh, maybe a half an hour each way to cover the 20 miles, depending on traffic, plus additional time if we’re not the only stop. Throw in the wait for the shuttle at both ends of the line, and that shaves another hour and a half from our total, bringing the air travel advantage down to five and a half hours, because oh yeah, rather than being on the outskirts of town, Pittsburgh’s Amtrak station is right across the street from my hotel.

On this particular trip, getting to 30th Station in Philadelphia will be just as much a hassle as getting to the airport, as I’m coming from the Jersey shore, so there’s no time saved there due to its central location, but on the way home, the train stops in Ardmore, PA, just a 10 minute drive from my sister’s house, whereas the flight would leave me inconveniently at the airport. So I save at least another 30 minutes travel time by rail.

So… is $112 in savings really worth twelve five hours of my time? Well, it is for me when you consider that instead of going through the hassle and stress of getting to and from two airports and on and off two flights, I get to sit on a train with ample leg, elbow and head room, walkable aisles and a convenient cafe car… all the while knowing that when I get to my final destination I’ll actually be at my final destination. Yeah, its an extra two and a half hours traveling each way, but I spend much more time than that writing each day, and with power outlets liberally scattered throughout each car, I’ve got no concern about draining the batteries on my laptop or iPhone.

And then, of course, there’s the added bonus of not having to hand even more of my money over to the despicable US Airways, which on my last flight set a new record for poor customer service by actually threatening to have me arrested. (It’s a long story.) I know, I know… at least my daughter and I arrived safely, eventually… but should the bar really be set so low that the standard for acceptable service is a flight that doesn’t end with you standing hip deep in water on the wing of a plane floating in the middle of river?

Of course, not everybody holds the same visceral hatred for US Airways, unfortunately the only airline to fly nonstop between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh or Seattle, so perhaps your calculus would be different from mine, and perhaps the bizarrely slow train between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (7 hours, 20 minutes to travel only 300 miles? Really?) isn’t the best example of intercity rail’s inherent advantages. I mean, why would anybody fly the shuttle from DC to NY when even the non-Acela trains can get you downtown to downtown in less total time, and at two-thirds the cost?

Yeah I know, we’re different out West, where the distances are longer and the right to a single occupancy vehicle is written into our state constitutions. But the distance between Seattle and both Portland OR and Vancouver BC is actually less than the distance between Philadelphia and DC, so imagine a Cascade route upgraded to mere NE Corridor speeds (which is itself, substantially less than European standards) cutting up to two hours off the current three and a half hour trip in either direction. Yeah, at current gas prices you could drive for less… but would you really want to?

One of the stupidest arguments against rail—light, heavy or otherwise—is that it is an antiquated, 19th Century technology, whereas the automobile, itself more than a century old, is the transportation of the future. Puh-lease. Different technologies make sense for different purposes and in different circumstances. For short and medium intercity trips from downtown to downtown, nothing beats heavy rail (at least rail done right), whereas even a bullet train wouldn’t make sense coast to coast compared to modern air travel. And as much as I love the new Link light rail, and plan to use it extensively between my neighborhood and downtown Seattle, I’m the first to admit that I’m not ready to give up the convenience of owning a car.

Our nation has been on an airport and road building binge over the past half-century while neglecting or even tearing up our aging rail infrastructure, and the persistent anti-rail bias is based on little more than ideology… a lazy, free market tirade against government subsidies. But government has long subsidized transportation, from canals to railroad right of ways to the interstate highway system. You think the airlines picked up the cost of building SeaTac? Think again. Those are your tax dollars at work.

So if heavy rail between cities and light rail within them can efficiently divert traffic from the roads and the air, doesn’t it make sense to spend some of our tax dollars providing travelers with more choice, not less? And should it really require “trains on the brain” to recognize the value of such investments?

A lot of folks, both online and off, have been eulogizing Walter Cronkite over the past week, but undoubtedly one of my favorites comes from our friend Carla at Blue Oregon, whose own unique relationship to the CBS newscaster apparently dates back to her toddler years:

Every week night at 5PM, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite would come on our television. This happened to coincide with my father getting off work and making the quick journey to our home. Dad would walk through the door each night like clockwork, just after Mr. Cronkite would begin reading the news.

Back then, which was the mid-60s, many parents plopped their kids in baby walkers, I suspect with the fine intent of helping kids get mobile without being so frustrated. My mother was no exception.

No matter where I was in our house, as soon as I heard the music and the announcer for the news, my mother says I’d come tearing through the house in the walker yelling “Con-KITE! Con-KITE!”, waiting at the door for my father.

It was my first word.

And thus the genesis of a news geek.

Personally, I associate Cronkite more with the space program and young men dying in Vietnam, but I prefer Carla’s sentimental memories over my own.

In North Carolina, an undercover Iridell County Sheriff’s deputy successfully buys a small amount of pot. Who did he bust? An undercover officer from the town of Statesville.

Apparently, the Party of ‘No’ is also the Party of ‘Doesn’t Know’:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUu-_QOOoO4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFH390hvKAI[/youtube]

Yeah…I mean, why bother “doing policy” when you don’t believe in government?

Over at Publicola, Josh goes out of his way to say “Thank You Rob McKenna” for saving light rail from implosion during Sound Transit’s troubled early years:

[H]ad the crisis in 2000 gone undetected, stand up leaders like Joni Earl would never have been asked to step in. The project would have quietly failed, and the agency would have simply dissolved around 2003 or so. It took a loud crisis, to wake everyone up and get the project back on track.

And while the press (and I’m proud to have played a role ) deserves some of the credit for spotlighting the agency’s financial disasters, it was dissident Sound Transit board member Rob McKenna (the others were party line cheer leaders) who nudged the press to take the closer look. He already had taken a closer look—and his spread sheets were more than compelling. […] I’d say Rob McKenna (ironically, given that his agenda was to bring the project down) was one of the most important Sound Transit board members there has been.

Yeah, well, I suppose, maybe, but it’s worth pointing out that just because McKenna worked as hard as he could to discredit Sound Transit and its early leadership, doesn’t mean that’s its management woes wouldn’t have otherwise been uncovered and corrected. I mean, its not like Sound Transit didn’t (and doesn’t) still have plenty of powerful enemies without him.

So while it sure is amusing to give McKenna ironic credit for unintentionally saving the rail line he tried to destroy, in truth, he was merely a conduit and public voice for a cabal of anti-rail partisans (you think he actually compiled those spreadsheets himself?), so I think Josh overstates his case.

At least when it comes to Sound Transit Phase I.

Phase II on the other hand, and the East Link extension that will comprise the bulk of the project… now that will be McKenna’s bastard child without a doubt. For if not for McKenna’s insistence on mandating the onerous “subarea equity” provisions into Sound Transit’s financing scheme, the agency would never have had the revenue stream available to make East Link light rail possible.

At McKenna’s insistence the Sound Transit taxing district was divided into five subareas, with an equity provision requiring that taxes raised in each subarea be spent on projects directly benefiting its residents. With the bulk of the Central Link line running through Seattle, revenues generated in the North King subarea have already been fully bonded for years to come to pay for construction, maintenance and operation of the recently opened line.

But the relatively minor improvements thus far constructed on the Eastside—mostly park and rides, bus ramps and expanded bus service—have been much less capital intensive. This leaves oodles of East King subarea Phase I tax revenue still coming in, unencumbered by existing debt, and available to bond a billion or two of the several billion dollars needed to cross I-90 and build out through Bellevue to Redmond in Phase II’s East Link plan.

Subarea equity was meant to cripple Sound Transit, and it has; financial constraints are one of the reasons it takes Sound Transit so long to complete construction. Indeed, without the billion or so of federal grants—money McKenna went to DC to lobby to block—the existing line and the University District extension might not have been possible.

But now that Sound Transit has survived to open the first segment and convince voters to expand its revenues to pay for Phase II, the subarea equity provision has come back to bite the anti-rail schemers in the ass, enabling Sound Transit to deliver to voters a much more ambitious East Link line than Phase II revenues alone could afford. That is, through the magic of subarea equity, East King Phase I taxing authority is now subsidizing Phase II construction.

So, yeah, thank you Rob McKenna, for making East Link possible… and so much more difficult for you and your anti-rail buddies to kill off.

Lost in the hoo-hah over the opening of light rail this weekend, was a bit of tangentially transit related news that will have a huge impact on the quality of life for thousands of South Seattle residents: Safeway’s reversal of plans to shutter their aging Othello ST store, and instead invest $3 million in a long needed remodel.

In a saga that has long been chronicled on the Rainier Valley Post, Safeway had not only planned to close the store, but had put the property up for sale with a deed restriction that would have prevented future owners from bringing in a grocer, pharmacy or gas station. This was not only a cynical and self-serving effort to push customers to Safeway’s two other, much newer and much larger South Seattle locations, it would have been a devastating blow to a community whose redevelopment had focused on making it a walkable neighborhood.

The Othello Safeway is part of a retail complex located at the NW corner of MLK Jr. Way and S. Othello ST, just across the street from Link’s Othello ST Station. It is also conveniently nestled at the foot of the hill leading up Othello to the New Holly development, and just to the north of the not yet completed Othello Station residential development along MLK Jr. Way. This makes the Othello ST Safeway not just the only supermarket within walking distance of thousands of new, mixed income houses, townhouses and apartments, but also the closest supermarket to any of the stations on Sound Transit’s new Link light rail. And with proximity to a full-service grocery store one the most crucial factors in determining the ability of low income households to maintain a healthy diet, Safeway’s remodel, including expanded meat, seafood, produce and organics sections, will prove a boon to the entire community.

To its credit, Safeway apparently heard community complaints, and set up a booth at Saturday’s Othello street fair to trumpet the remodel to the crowds showing up to celebrate the opening of light rail. The $3 million refurbishment is perhaps less than Safeway has invested in other neighborhoods, and the store will still remain one of the chain’s smaller and more cramped local outlets in this age of modern megastores (certainly compared to its roomy, Rainier Ave. cousins), but it is welcome nonetheless. Whatever the motives and economics (such as the two, large developments planned for the Eastern side of the intersection, which might have included a competitor’s store had Safeway moved out), Safeway’s remodel can only be considered an act of responsible corporate citizenship, whereas its prior plans to sell the property with a deed restriction would have epitomized the opposite.

Those who judge light rail by mere ridership numbers miss the point; rather than just getting commuters from home to work and back, the goal is ultimately to help create a more walkable city where residents drive less, not because they have to, but because they are simply less dependent on their cars. And no neighborhood is truly walkable without easy access to healthy and affordable fresh groceries and produce.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Dublin, Ireland. Wes also found that the building on the corner was Slattery’s Pub, which is filled with rugby fans in this YouTube video.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

One of the most thoughtful and insightful people in the blogosphere has decided to hang it up. Hilzoy from Obsidian Wings wrote her last post here.

The Imperial College in London is right on the Circle Line a tube route that, as the name implies, is a circle around Central London and Westminster. I studied at Imperial College for a quarter, and after school would take the reading assignment or a newspaper and sit for a while, and when I came to a good stopping point in the reading would get off the train and explore whatever part of the city was around the next stop. I still remember a chip shop where one of the locals I talked to complained that you have to bring your own vinegar because they don’t provide it in this part of town anymore and some gloriously spicy Indian food.

Well today, on the first day of light rail service, I went out and explored Othello, a neighborhood that previously might have been Mars for how infrequently I got down there.

The station is great. Beautiful itself and right across from King Plaza, a two story strip mall that was doing a brisk business on this weekend day. Beyond that, past a couple blocks of London plane trees was a very nice little park (I’m not sure it was a city park; I didn’t notice any signage), a perfect place to sit under a gigantic willow and read with a scent of lavender planted nearby mingled with that of some burgers a family was grilling.

I walked back to, and then down MLK, parallel to the tracks. A few businesses that may benefit from having light rail eventually were pretty empty when I looked into the windows. I stopped in and had a late lunch at a Thai place a few blocks from the station. It was empty except for me at about 2:30, and a bit fuller when I left, but hopefully it and places like it will get more business as people see what’s out from the stations.

After lunch back at the station, Sound Transit did a great job with a little fair. There was music and some booths. I got my undriver’s license and took in some music, and then back home to downtown.

The line wasn’t as bad as I had feared but it was about a half hour before the ST people let me on a train (going there from University Street Station there was almost no line at all).

The point of this (admittedly overindulgent) post is that light rail opens up a piece of the city for those of us without roots there and who make most of our trips without a car. Sure, this is something I could do yesterday if I’d wanted to. But it’s much easier to just get on a train than it is to figure out the bus schedule or to find parking if I’d wanted to drive. And I know exactly how to get home: hop on one of the trains that come every few minutes.

In the coming weeks, I hope to explore other neighborhoods that I normally wouldn’t get to. I’ll probably wander around another station tomorrow. Perhaps after work some time before it starts getting dark early, I’ll take a bike to one of the stations and ride it home. Given that the trains were stuffed, I doubt I’ll be the only one.