There’s an existing political and constitutional/statutory structure, though, that shapes the transportation/mobility debate at least as much as the “power players” in downtown Seattle. And I wish that backdrop was further to the fore in your conversations (e.g., role of the gas tax and the 18th Amendment, or the fact that GMA accountability is directed at individual CITIES, whether it’s big Seattle or tiny Normandy Park, scope of statutory funding authority for transit).

We have and for the foreseeable future will lack any mechanism in the Puget Sound region that allows a group of people like you to debate the pros/cons of THE REGIONAL SYSTEM and to make firm decisions about it. Bruce Katz at Brookings has been telling us this for years. But we have such entrenched turf (Katz calls it a “farrago of agencies”) that we can’t risk the disequilibrium for a political debate as nuanced as the one you have here, with the decisions being enforced/enforceable. Knute/Crosscut thinks this fragmentation has worked well for us. I’m not so sure. But I’ve shelved any attempt to change it.

And, in any event, my point was to let you know that I really enjoy reading your debates, especially this one.

Furthermore, there is a lot of undeveloped land in south Snohomish County. If we define sprawl and new greenfield development at the edge of the contiguous urbanized area, south Snohomish fits the bill. Because the Link will serve these as yet undeveloped areas with its park-and-rides, Link’s presense will make these areas more attractive and thus increase the likelihood of new development in the adjacent greenfields. The key to stopping sprawl, defined as development at the fringe, is to stop building infrastructure that serves the fringe. Build infrastructure that serves the inner city, including this tunnel, and you attract growth to the inner city. (Ballard, Fremont, U-district, West Seattle being included in the definition of “inner city” in comparison to Snohomish County)

Sub-area equity completely undermines the argument that we have to throw a sprawl inducing bone to the suburbs to get their support. By definition all of Seattle’s portion of the Light Rail is being built with Seattle’s money, we could have lopped Snohomish County off of the district and it would have had zero effect on rail in Seattle. We wouldn’t get their money and we wouldn’t have the expense of building rail to nowhere. It’s a complete wash financially.

As for going North of Northgate, there are centers between Northgate and Everett (not to mention Everett itself) that are every bit as “active” as many on the Eastside or between Seattle and Tacoma.

If nothing else it is worth building light rail to Everett in order to serve the already high volume of transit ridership North of Northgate.

To the extent that building P&R lots at rail stations is necessary to get support for the rail line in the first place I’ll take that over no rail line at all (or an expensive road project).

Subcenters are good, they take some of the pressure of of the major center which helps keep the major center from choking on itself.

Imagine if every grocery store in the puget sound region were located in downtown Seattle. What kind of a transportation nightmare would that be, even if we did have NYC’s subway system?

The key is to keep all of these subcenters connected via rapid transit so that they can support each other synergistically, causing them all to benefit, which is one of the reasons east link is such a good idea. I happen to also like North Link UP TO NORTHGATE ONLY, because Northgate and the University are urban centers that I believe in time will rival Bellevue and Redmond. Beyond that, you’re no longer connecting centers, you’re just serving sprawl.

Your point about the recession is bizarre. Why on earth would you want to punish every business except those in downtown in a recession? Imagine if you actually succeed in your vision of squashing every commercial location within 30 miles and force everyone into downtown Seattle. That would simply result in an incredible scarcity of space for business and require the construction of dozens, if not hundreds of very tall very, very expensive skyscrapers. Most businesses cannot afford rent in these kinds of very expensive buildings, thus they will fold. Those that do succeed will have to pay a much larger portion of their revenues for rent, leaving less available for wages. The whole thing results in lower wages, fewer jobs and a huge transfer of wealth to a tiny group of individuals who own land in downtown.

That “glut” of downtown office space is a good thing in a recession (assuming it’s jobs and businesses that you care about rather than landlord’s pocketbooks). High vacancy rates mean lower rents. Lower rents means lower costs for businesses which keeps them competitive during tough economic times. Lower rents also makes land owners more willing to sell (since their land is less valuable), which increases the potential for developers to buy up properties for the next upswing.

Very interesting comment, that gives me a lot to think about.

I might point out that virtually all of those NY Metro area commuter rail stations have park and rides.

As a thought experiment, here are some ways you could design an infrastructure:

1) No infrastructure. Everyone has to walk to work, resulting in extremely dense living conditions, huge economic inefficiencies, and lots of human misery.

2) Rail-only infrastructure. Still, very dense housing, but some ability to move around, making the economy operate more efficiently. You have to live very close to a rail station, but have a bit more choice on where to live.

3) Rail/P&R infrastructure/local arterial/infrastructure, no freeways. Development is still somewhat restricted to the rail corridors, but there are options for less dense development for those who strongly desire it.

4) Rail/freeway. Development everywhere. Significant segments of population not accessible by efficient transit.

5) Freeway only. We know what this looks like. VMT goes through the roof as virtually all trips have no alternative but the car.

YMMV, but in my opinion (3) is pretty close to the ideal in terms of providing people maximum latitude in how to live their lives. In practice, it would be the work of 50-100 years to get Seattle from (5) to (4), so it’s not worth speculating about the relative merits of 1-3.

The problem with this definition, and the reason it makes LA look really dense, is that you only stop counting metro areas when you hit a physical boundary. LA looks great because it’s surrounded by national and state parks. Never mind that on the other side of those state parks are places where people commute into LA proper from.

And since that NY area has no physical boundaries one city’s metro area bleeds into another, and you get the silly definition that you’ve shown. Why is New Haven part of New York and not Hartford, when it’s much closer to Hartford? because you’ve defined it that way, and not for any other reason.

It’s also ridiculous to include the NYC has some part of that sprawl. The area served by the NYC subway is the most dense area in the United States plus Canada. The low-density Mid-Atlantic seaboard that you say is sprawl is very very far away from the last Subway stations.

This is on top of the fact that the way metro areas are measured artificially inflates the actual area ( and decreases the density) of the LA metro area in comparison.

New York Metro has more than its fair share of sprawl, and average commute times are longer in NYC than they are in LA. NYC proper may be very dense, much denser than LA, but if you look at the overall economic region, as defined by the number of people that commute, NYC metro is as sprawling as anything else in this country. The difference? The vast majority of NYC’s sprawl is RAIL INDUCED. Mostly through the commuter rail. Whether people park and ride or take a feeder bus, the fact that long distance commuter rail exists, makes possible long distance commuters, and the land use and commuting patters observed on the ground show this.

A little bit of history here:

The original purpose of the NYC subway was to CREATE sprawl. Prior to the creation of the subway, the vast majority of workers in NYC had to live within walking distance of the lower Manhattan business district. This resulted in the densest concentration of human population in the history of time in the lower east side of Manhattan. The Subway was created specifically to spread people out and avoid the misery that overcrowding creates.

You might be able to make the case that building a rail line INSTEAD of a freeway might result in less sprawl, but it’s not building the rail line that reduced it, it’s the NOT building of the freeway that reduces sprawl.

But where you build is just as important as what you build. This viaduct will produce far less sprawl than Link will. Why? Because the Tunnel is in central Seattle while Link spreads out the far suburbs. The Tunnel eases traffic congestion within the city, making the city more attractive and pulling people in. The periphery of Link serves the distant suburbs, making it possible to commute long distances at relatively low cost, subsidized by the tax payers. This makes the suburbs more attractive.

Working in Bellevue or Seattle or Redmond is fine, these are focused cores. Working in many other areas within a few miles of these cores causes problems, both for local residents, and for those who need to get to work (and of course, offering transit options that don’t solve problems so much as create them. The direct W. Seattle to Ballard comment is on point).

Building I-5 in Seattle DID decrease mobility. You’re qualifying your analysis with ‘short-term’ – sure, it increases mobility in the short term. But today, 40 years later, I-5′s construction has left us with a reality that’s very congested with no alternatives, largely because of the built investment that I-5 represents.

I know it’s easy to say that throughput=mobility, but that has never been the case. Adding cars to surface streets faster means that those surface streets become more congested – an individual trip would likely lose more time on the adjacent streets than it gained on a bypass. It’s like pouring water into a drain too fast and having it bubble instead of flow smoothly.

The real issue here, the really big issue, is that this tunnel subsidizes non-downtown business locations. Bypassing downtown makes downtown less competitive as a destination, which is exactly what we *don’t* want during a recession when we suddenly have a glut of downtown office space.