I think most rational people would read this serial catowner paragraph as suggesting that Ron Sims was using RapidRide as a stalking horse to kill transit:
“In terms of the future the bus is the vaporware of the transit world. And this business about Sims being pro-transit, except, you know, just not now- that’s just stupid. If you wondered why some of us don’t like BRT, could there be a better answer than Sims proposing RapidRide as an alternative to Link extensions but actually, apparently, not intending to implement the RapidRide?”

Do you have a differing interpretation? How is saying that’s bullshit building a strawman?

Or do you mean the bit about the trolleys? Well, serial catowner’s support for them is well-known. I wanted to attack the “historical artifact” nonsense because my point is actually rather closer to joshuadf’s – even things you like are historical artifacts. And the “historical artifact” crap gets thrown at fixed-guideway transit so much (and believed by people!) that flipping the script is something that just makes zero sense unless you’re a masochist.

I am talking about the argument that we don’t need or want light rail because BRT is cheaper. What does that have to do with Rapid ride? Obviously if rapid ride were cheap, we would be getting it. The fact that we won’t get it is proof that it’s not cheap.

I think the comparison of that to contractors or City Light trucks is just insincere. Obviously buses move much further daily and are far more dependent on fuel to accomplish their job. Electric buses do not travel more than 30 mph.

The bus system we knew was built to serve a low density city with declining levels of walking and bicycle riding.

The bus system we are promised is imagined to be *cough* ‘like a train’, but cheaper.

In the meantime, the face of Seattle has changed entirely. Still, we hardly approach cities like Copenhagen or Amsterdam with very high levels of walking and bicycle riding.

So, call me a crazy visionary, or a stick-in-the-mud (but seriously, can it really be both?), the bus is neither something that has been here forever, nor something that everyone will need forever. It’s an artifact, of a half century in which America quaffed the world’s oil in huge gulps, rebuilt the landscape in indecent haste to put everyone in cars, and never imagined that this might not go on forever.

Stick a fork in it, it’s done.

Exogenous one may cry! Hah! That’s what Dino Rossi says about human activity in light of climate change.

You may say that all the vehicles mentioned above will be electric someday. If it were possible to have electric semi trucks and plug-in everything, then electric buses would be just as feasible. Oh wait, we already have electric buses. They just don’t travel off their guideway like a car. Oh wait, neither can light rail.

I too am concerned about reliance on oil. But I have enough sense to recognize that a $17 billion capital project cannot be fueled by hydro power alone and that Link is a far cry from sustainability.

The “non-polluting rail” card is a poor one to play if you want to dismiss buses. Focus on tangibles, please.

If Prop. 1 passes, I don’t think anyone will doubt whether the cost was justified or not. Development in Bellevue, for example, around train stations has the potential to shape our region for quite some time.

I don’t think that BRT is an alternative to rail, as you imply and Ron Sims says explicitly. However, if there look at a place like West Seattle or Kirkland < -> Redmond that aren’t getting rail for a while then, of course, improve bus service and focus on making the route fast.

But can BRT do what East link can without right of way? No. Connecting Downtown Seattle to Downtown Bellevue to Bel-Red to Overlake with BRT is going to require lanes, light synchronization, and a dependence on oil.

The closest a major, modern, very dense city comes to being bus-free (on a rides per capita basis) is probably Tokyo. Even there, Toei Bus, the government-run service, has a rolling stock a bit over half the size of Metro’s covering about the same number of route miles. There are also the many commuter buses run by the train companies to and from neighborhoods and their stations but I haven’t been able to find a good number for them.

Of course buses are a historical artifcats, but so are non-reserved right-of-way trams. Basically no one who has kept their fixed-guideway transit is building trolleys that go down the middle of the street without seperating them from most if not all traffic. Here in the United States, however, we seemingly want to revivify the romantic urban life at the exact moment before the destruction of fixed-guideway in most of our major cities, ignoring the technological and planning advances of the last 60+ years that have been going on in the rest of the world. I suppose it is true that nostalgia for the recent past is a particularly American phenomenon.

Also yes, yes, Sims is intentionally scuppering his own transit agency because of his hatred of light rail. That makes perfect sense.

Why are so many engineers conspiratorial half-wits?

The bus as we have known it, in fact, is just a kludge adopted by a city being drained by the suburbs, c. 1940-1970. It has less and less relevance to the new Seattle with high densities and citizens who are healthier and more active.

So that is one problem with the bus. It is not, in fact, our trusted friend. It’s a historical artifact, like the wood-share plow or horse-drawn reaper.

In terms of the future the bus is the vaporware of the transit world. And this business about Sims being pro-transit, except, you know, just not now- that’s just stupid. If you wondered why some of us don’t like BRT, could there be a better answer than Sims proposing RapidRide as an alternative to Link extensions but actually, apparently, not intending to implement the RapidRide?

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice- can’t fool me twice.

I think we should remember that he is a bonafide progressive who actually suggested the one tax that would probably be helpful in solving our current infrastructure issues (an income tax) when he ran for governor. The Transit Now stuff is a baby step but would actually bring some high-capacity lines up to about the standard of non-North American bus lines (off-bus ticketing! greater distance between stops! reserved rights of way!). That he is opposed to Sound Transit’s light rail plan is his mistake but he’s no right-winger beholden to Kemper Freeman and the eastern suburbs.