It is so interesting that a lot of these people believe that continued investment in buses and freeways are viable solutions to this region’s congestion, even though these are the policies we have been investing in for the last four decades and we aren’t moving towrads solving these problems as a result. I guess I can’t blame these people, there is a lot of ignorance and misinformation floating around about tranis-related issues.

To me, investing in mass transit shouldn’t be such a polarizing issue for a metropolitain area with our population. This should really be a no-brainer, but many people insist that more buses and larger freeways are the way to go.

We need to invest in a system now if we are ever going to expect to meet the needs of an ever-growing region.

It’s interesting to note that Sound Transit will move as many people as Metro with a lower associated cost. My rationale behind that is that Transit Now! seems heavily dependent upon partnerships to carry up the costs of certain routes. Further to that, it also seems that the intent of Transit Now! was not to boost ridership but increase convenience and comfort.

That the three (ridership, convenience and comfort) have no acknowledged relation in Transit Now! is somewhat telling to me. It’s stating that the intent of Transit Now! was to increase the cost-per-rider of the service.

Interesting.

Last thought on Transit Now: as I remember it there were two main promises/objectives. The first was to increase Metro service by 20 percent over a ten year period (probably not going to happen). The second was to add 50k riders over that same period (achieved in two years, in spite of themselves).

Sound Transit actually does have the capacity at bases to bring on half of their new service next year. That’s something they discussed at the board meeting yesterday – so you will see improvements. They’ve been limited lately by service hour funding much less than the availability of equipment.

The rest will be dependent upon capacity increases at bases that are already planned. Remember, all this was planned out last year – the agency’s just had an extra year to put the dominoes in a row for making things happen after this vote.

Unfortunately, like we’ll see with the ST Express next year, when you push too much new bus service out the door and purchase too many new coaches too quickly, you end up causing space and storage issues which are completely independent of how much money you have if you don’t have the time to build a place to put these extra coaches.

Or, like Sims, you could promise something and have its costs completely eaten up by fuel prices.

I voted for Transit Now, but I didn’t really ’support’ it – certainly not like I do light rail – as there was never an explanation of exactly what improvements would occur. The documents say “more” service, and talk about several things that are essentially gimmicks.

I am not giving him credit for providing something so essential, especially given his fondness for providing the unessential out in far east King, running empty buses and eating up service hours.

I am disappointed with Sims, too. I supported his primary bid for governor and had admired him for a while. However, I just can’t understand what motivated him to one day, nearly out of the blue, turn against ST expansion (beyond Northgate). It was shocking to hear him come out against prop. 1 last year, mostly arguing against light rail.

However, to Sims’ credit he has been excellent at advocating for and running his bus agency. I will consider alternatives to Sims next year because I don’t like his position on light rail, but he runs the system that gets me to work every day.