The only thing he could probably succeed at is delay, which would simply drive up costs and divert the civic discourse into another round of wasteful dither.

Don’t we need a Mayor who is focused on what’s next? Is opposition to the tunnel really what we want the City of Seattle to focus on for the next four years?

This City will continue to grow. We’ll need a much better transit system to get around, not just in Seattle but across the entire county and beyond. That will be a big lift that will require leadership within the City, working with the County, and support from Olympia powers.

Why elect someone who starts this necessary work on a losing battle that launching a new City administration committed to launching into a losing battle that alienates everyone who we’ll need to do something real?

If McGinn wins, does Frank Chopp emerge again with his Viaduct proposal? Do the people who have passion for retrofit re-engage? Do we get more drawings of bridging Elliott Bay? Do we get the old tunnel ideas back? Do businesses along the waterfront live in more fear of ruin for more years? Does the waterfront become vacant while we wait for the dithering to end?

We won’t get the surface option McGinn advocates. The only thing we get, for sure, is a big ugly barrier between the City and the waterfront for more of our lives. Along with a silly sideshow that diverts time and resources from doing more important things.

I have a hard time believing McGinn could do any worse for KC Metro, and he’s at least proposed to have SDOT find ways to help Metro buses (as Nickels is doing for the streetcar by closing a couple blocks of Westlake to auto traffic).

There is no big ‘bus plan’. We’ve all known for years that some buses are full and some are empty. In fact, adding bus service just destabilizes a transit agency, and the more you add, the less stable the agency becomes. This has happened since the development of the bus, and the exceptions are so rare as to definitely prove the rule.

McGinn has simply never thought seriously about transportation policy. Watching him interface with the industry and policy makers would be, how else can I say it, a trainwreck.

Also, throwing more buses at city streets while disabling their ability to get around will likely negatively affect ridership. Northwest and West Seattle will find it takes much longer to get to work via bus, but of course they aren’t as voter-dense as Capitol Hill and Queen Anne. And without an advocate for transit other than buses, people living outside those nearby neighborhoods will find themselves high and dry.

The fact that no one has recognized this (or chooses to ignore it due to an irrational hatred for tunnels or the ingrained, automatic Seattle response of “no” to large capital projects) makes me seriously question the credibility of anyone who has endorsed him.

In fact, the ONLY winners in McGinn’s one-note platform are bike riders. However, I would not predict that this will turn us into a city of cyclists, and DO predict that there would be a long, long hangover after a “let’s kill the viaduct” party.

And making this a “will of the people vs. mean overlords” issue is kind of petulant. Feeling like you’ve won something doesn’t help people move around the city. Our founding fathers created a REPRESENTATIVE democracy, and griping about exactly what a semi-related vote meant (“we were against the theory of putting things under the ground”??) is IMO sour grapes.

We know that Metro is ran by the county and its funding sources come from the county tax base. There is a difference between investing $135 million of city money into a streetcar and investing that same amount in bus service. The difference is that after a few years that “investment” disappears for bus service — it mostly goes into operations & vehicle maintenance. You’re going to have to fund it on an on-going basis or face service cuts in a handful of years. So what on-going revenue source have we identified for picking up the county’s shortfalls?

Buses are necessary and a great alternative to driving, I agree. I use buses to get almost everywhere. But let’s look at the long-term picture. Rail is cheaper to operate, has higher capacity, drives density, is more comfortable ride, is easier to rider, and is emissions free. (And remember the first hints of Metro’s budget shortfall came not from sales tax revenue problems, but from skyrocketing diesel prices.)

Light rail cannot function to its best purpose if you don’t have good bus service available to get people to/from your rail spines. Especially when the density is not yet here to serve it.

Are you planning on building parking lots next to every new station?

For example, work needs to be done on I-5 in the next 10 years or so, no matter what. If it’s included as part of a surface option, then it’s already covered. If not, then that’s one more project out there in search of funding post-tunnel.

And, as I have said before, the Bored Tunnel proposal is less than 5% engineered so far. The opportunity for cost overruns is huge, while the risks for overruns on projects that are mostly occurring at-grade is much, much lower.

That doesn’t even address the issue that the tunnel fails to solve a number of problems with moving people and goods through the corridor.

If it comes down to McGinn vs. Mallahan who is really going to be better from a transit and land use perspective?

The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.

There it is, confirmed repeatedly over almost 40 years by the State Supreme Court: The people do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them.

In other words, the debate will be over when the debate ends of its own, not before.

“When does the debate end?”

When something that was denounced by 70% of the voting citizens is still moving foward, then the debate will not end.

I agree, if a minority is against something happenening, there is a time eventually to allow a process to move forward, but when not just a majority, but a MAJOR majority is against something, the debate must continue.

I won’t support any further streetcar or light rail expansion while bus agencies in the region are losing revenue and making service cuts.

Then you’re not going to support streetcars or light rail for a least another dozen years.

Which is a shame, since building efficient LRT trunk lines is really the only way to free service hours for new routes.