- WSDOT and the BC provincial government are back in talks about a second daily Amtrak Cascades run from Seattle to Vancouver. The sticking point is still who’s going to pay the CAD 1500 per day for border services in Canada.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke in Seattle Friday about a “green future” for the economy. He praised Mayor Nickels, saying “His leadership is unequalled among mayors across the country.” The article’s an interesting read, and even global warming deniers must admit that we’d be better off spending the $16 billion a year we psend on petroleum in this state on other things.
- This awesome opinion piece praises President Obama for his investment in intercity rail and echos something I’ve been saying for a while, that transit makes great stimulus. I have been happy with President Obama on transit so far, though I think we need more long-term investment in both transit and intercity rail.
- I don’t have much to add to this story about the attempts to build a transit center in Downtown Boise, but I think the way small cities like Boise deal with transit is going to have a huge effect on their long-term desirability: gas isn’t going to stay cheap forever.
Also, I had no idea that Boise was planning a streetcar… It’s good to see that even cities as small and as isolated as that are considering rail transit.
I went to Boise State so I am familiar with Boise even though I live in the Puget Sound now. It frustrates me no end to see Boise and Idaho politicians pontificate on transit having to pay for itself! They are still stuck in the 1970s when Boise was a small town. Nowadays, the Boise metropolitan area is about 500,000! Welcome to the big leagues. I hope they can get the streetcart going. It would be a start!
Being a person in the rail and transit community (transportation/civil engineer), I haven’t been too thrilled with Obamas work so far. $8+5 billion isn’t much considering Californias basic system will cost $20 billion, Link costs ~$18 billion so far, Las Vegas to Los Angles $10 billion, Amtrak NEC upgrades probably $5-10 billion, Chicago upgrades many billion, etc. And with the FRA having the most ridiculous rules for LRVs, DMU’s, and other passenger equipment (effectively forcing out international competitors that have cheaper, proven rail equipment used all over the world). Take TriMet for example. They HAD to use those Colorado Railcar DMU’s because nothing else is approved to run in that sort of environment. Now CR is dead and TriMet is stuck footing a massive bill for equipment they cannot upgrade or expand upon. Its not for our safety either. TGV trainsets can’t be used in the US because of FRA rules. Its hard to argue that TGV’s aren’t safe. Same with Eurostar equipment. Or ICE. Or AGV. The Talgo stuff barley makes it. Maybe Obama will force the FRA to change its way.
Honestly, I feel that after all Obama said about rail and transit during his campaign, the $8+5 billion that was thrown in at the last minute was more of an after thought to fulfill a campaign promise than real substance. Though, hes been here only a few weeks. Maybe in a year?
agreed it’s not enough, but for us ‘toughing out’ the Bush years, hoping Amtrak wouldn’t get gutted to the point of no return, President Obama is a breath of fresh air.
Sometimes pendulums take a bit of time to reverse direction, then gain some momemtum.
at least us americans can take comfort in the fact that the canadians may very well have a worse public policy for intercity passenger rail than us.
mike b, lets just wait until the second stimulus comes out, i wouldnt be surprised if it was very heavy in infrastructure spending particularly HSR. hsr is just the thing that is needed for stimulus… lots of jobs now, future infrastructure, green, ambitious and a something that gives visability to the stimulus spending sort of a your tax dollars at work, and it appears to have wide support.
As somebody who grew up in Boise, I can tell you that transit will never catch on there. If people are attached to their cars here in the PNW, it’s waaaaay worse in Boise. I wish it were otherwise but people in Boise just won’t use transit if their lives depended on it.
Making parking in downtown Boise expensive will go a long way to making transit more popular.
Unfortunately, by the time the allmighty Market makes parking in downtown Boise too expensive, it’ll be too late to get the infrastructure going that will be needed by that time. Right now, parking in Boise can be had for $5/day. No joke. There’s a ton of it. And Shawn is right, the uber-Republican majority in the state thinks Transit should not be subsidized.
*sigh*
Olympia has a similar problem, but it is amplified because the areas with plentiful “free” parking are relatively close by.
The sea of inexpensive parking in downtown does much to make the area pedestrian unfriendly. But most locals won’t go downtown because they are unwilling to pay even a little bit for parking or to walk even a block from a parking space to their destination.
There are some state workers who ride transit, but they are the exception rather than the rule. The state hasn’t helped matters by building new offices out on the edge of the urban area rather than in the downtown core near the Capitol Campus.