Snohomish County Report

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

The Enterprise reports that the Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood City Councils are supporting the Sound Transit measure (which, BTW, needs a real name). Good for them.

At the end, there are some choice quotes from rail dissenter and Lynnwood Councilman Ted Hikel:

“We can’t afford to put in a program that is not fiscally responsible,” Hikel said. “Think of how many lanes of bus-only pavement we could put in . . .”

Mr. Hikel, I have news for you: you don’t need billions of dollars to put in bus-only lanes. You can do it with a few buckets of paint and a day’s worth of time from a road crew. However, in the real world it’s often unpopular to devote potential general purpose lanes to transit, and since it’s just asphalt, it’s easy to come up with a measure like I-985 to open those lanes back up to cars. Hence, no developer will build there under the assumption that the “BRT” will be there forever, even if the operating costs could somehow be brought in line with rail.

If Hikel means that we should build new lanes and somehow keep Tim Eyman away from them, perhaps he should check out this old Danny Westneat column, that compares the cost of a highway project and a comparable transit project. And in doing so, he should note that rail ridership projections are underestimates because they assume that no transit-oriented development takes place.

Transit Could Save over $8000 a year

Posted on by Andrew Smith

According to this American Public Trasportation Association study. The APTA is the most active nation-wide transit advocacy organization. The study calculates the cost of gas compared to transit costs for a person who drives 15,000 miles a year, pays $3.909 per gallon and gets 23.3 miles per gallon. How the transit pass is calculated is not mentioned in the post.

Seattle comes in fourth on the list with $8413 in savings per year, behind only Honolulu, Las Vegas and San Francisco. But of course, we shouldn’t build light rail because that would just let more people save $8413 per year.

Seattle’s Next Infrastructure Downgrade?

Posted on by Matt Gangemi

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Seattle will soon close part of three streets for a few hours, for exactly one day per street this summer. This is not a big deal for many cities, and the town where I went to college would do this once a month on their main street throughout the summer. But can this be the beginning of a positive change?

I’ve long thought that a great idea for a city of any size is to have a few car-free streets. If you build narrow streets this allows for Europe-style density, and if you leave them wide then you have potential for public meeting areas. Noise is dramatically reduced, safety is increased, and the neighborhood becomes much more walkable.

Car-free streets generally have tables set up for outside dining, served by nearby restaurants. You’ll see children playing, and people promenading – window shopping, people watching, eating ice cream. The street becomes a destination, not something in your way to a destination.

But how does car-fixated Seattle react to this small step toward something beautiful? Well, read the comments yourself.