Comments on: Liveblog: The Vote (discussion)

By: AJ

AJ — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:37:31 +0000

Transit planners are notorious for taking the conservative stripe when the know exactly how close they can get to actual ridership numbers.

They know that any projection is a big number and they generally pick as low a number as possible so they can exceed that value as quickly as possible.

By: vanderleun

vanderleun — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:24:06 +0000

Numbers. Anything, absolutely anything, that’s pulling numbers out of 2030 is going to be bogus no matter which way you side.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:10:22 +0000

Yes, it’s part of why light rail pans out to be cheaper. The cost of adding a bus right now is increasing dramatically.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:09:16 +0000

No, no, I was just not adding very well.

By: Dwong

Dwong — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:40:00 +0000

I didn’t realize that the capacity of the bus maintenance bases in the Sound Transit Area was nearly tapped out. That’s an interesting point about the ability of any transit agency around here to increase bus service…

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:35:13 +0000

Ron Sims has completely incriminated his own county government in its involvement in the arena of inadequate bus service.

I’m hoping all of you are catching this here and now: both the state and county agree that, as funded, King County Metro is failing to meet this area’s transit needs.

If it’s $69 a year for my share of ST2.1, I’ll gladly front $138 extra a year for local Seattle service if we kick Metro out.

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:32:32 +0000

With Hammond’s involvement, it sounds like they’re creating a deliberately illegal measure that will be overturned if amended. Through that route, I’m certain it will be either one of them to do the work of overturning it.

It violates sub-area equity rules, oversteps ST’s taxing authority, creates a dangerous precedent and more or less makes this an illegal proposition if amended.

I hope someone points that out.

I really wish one of them was reading the liveblog.

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:30:13 +0000

Okay, with Sims’ comments I feel my current approach of pointing out that Metro has dropped the ball on local service is the best Anti-Sims argument possible.

I’m quite honestly perplexed with why he’s fishing for something that is clearly against the current Revised Code of Washington. I think if we make it clear that Sound Transit is doing nothing wrong in its approach we can make an awesome case.

I will print out the relevant state codes tomorrow and bring them if I am heading up to the meet-up.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:26:37 +0000

Ron Sims is trying to shut down ST2~!

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:17:09 +0000

Uh, all “acceptable” plain-english numbers are self-serving. “How much will it cost?” “How many cars will it take out of my way?” “How fast will it get me from point A to point B?”

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:15:47 +0000

Yeah, it’s pretty amusing. The only negative things we’re hearing are Brad complaining that I’m attacking the crazies, and Pajamas Media calling me out on a typo.

With this kind of bungling, we’re totally winning.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:13:18 +0000

Sorry, sorry, one billion passenger miles per year. I just miscounted zeros.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:12:47 +0000

Sorry, sorry, one billion. My typo.

By: runnerodb83

runnerodb83 — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:12:08 +0000

Ironic, any numbers that come out anti-transit folks will call “self-serving” and “rediculous” but its difficult for the average joe to find relative ground for these numbers. On the other hand, ST could give no ridership numbers and the anti-transit folks would get upset and say that ST’s statements about decreased congestion and increased transit use are unfounded without any real numbers or data to back the claims up.

That would kind of make all the arguments by anti-transit folks to be self-serving since nothing will be acceptable to them…

By: Matt the Engineer

Matt the Engineer — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:03:42 +0000

I expect rational, informed numbers as usual from this blog. I’ve challenged numbers here before, and they’re always sourced to credible origins with reasonable assumptions.

If your opinion differs, can you cite anywhere on this blogs where numbers were less than credible? Or was that a baseless attack?

By: vanderleun

vanderleun — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:53:11 +0000

Don’t expect anything other than self-serving numbers when it comes to this argument.

By: Matt the Engineer

Matt the Engineer — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:51:22 +0000

Oh, unless you’re using the whole 1 rail mile replaces 4 VMT thing, which would make some sense (though then you should word it that ST2 would replace 10B miles of driving a year).

By: Matt the Engineer

Matt the Engineer — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:42:20 +0000

10,000,000,000 passenger miles a year = every single man woman and child in the Seattle metro area (4M) riding 2,500 miles a year!? Are you sure about that? Even doubling our population it seems high.

Now the 109 million trips a year = 27 trips per person. I’d believe that.