Like I said – elitism like this turns my stomach, and is an argument AGAINT funding rail.

If affluent, car owning white folks need to spend MY tax dollars just to pull a stick out of their ass long enough to ride public transportation, that isn’t money worth spending.

Link doesn’t need any tie downs or ramps. The ride is stable and predictable enough not to require them. It’s roll on and roll off. I’ve seen senior citizens, people in wheelchairs, power chairs, crutches, and walkers use the Link with ease, by themselves and within the 20-second dwell time. I asked a lady in a power chair who tried Link and she really liked the ease of boarding/deboarding. I suppose you could call that neato. Try that on most buses. SWIFT BRT will have the option of not securing with a back-facing position but it still needs to deploy the ramp.

I don’t believe the best transit system for the population at large is one designed primarily for their needs.

I’m not sure what you mean by that. I’m certainly not suggesting that any transit system be designed “primarily” for any one group’s needs – however, this being a pluralistic society I damn well do expect everyone’s needs to be taken into EQUAL consideration, and when the needs of the least enfranchised in our society take a back seat (almost literally) to the majority, I get real concerned.

I spent 20 years as a social worker supporting people with disabilities and their families – I’m aware of the issues (more than most). No, rail is NOT “much more empowering” than buses – and high-floor buses aren’t the only thing out there. You know that, right?

I will also note that while I regularly see people using wheelchairs (which again – nobody is on board the link to help secure) and other mobility issues on buses – I have yet to see a single mobility impaired person using the Link.

Have you?

Putting elevated LR across the WSB doesn’t pass the old engineering “smell test.” I don’t believe it would be possible, and it would probably be cheaper to just step up to the plate and build a parallel LR structure anyhow. Tie into the WSB for additional lateral support (would probably reduce costs – TBV) and call it good.

By attracting choice riders you are in no way saying the poor, elderly, mobility challenged, or other transit-dependent riders aren’t welcome on rail. Why should public transit be limited only to those who have no other choice? If anything you should welcome broadening the transit riding demographic as it means it is much easier to get political support for expanding transit service or at least maintaining the service levels. There is a reason police and fire services are last on the chopping block when local governments face budget crises, it is in no small part due to people across all segments of society perceiving these services as useful to them and important.

While some disabled people may need more assistance than they get on Link or the SLUT for many rail is actually easier to board and exit from. Level boarding with lots of nice big doors is all many disabled people need. Most people I know with mobility issues prefer to do as much as they can themselves without assistance. Rail is much more empowering to them than a high-floor bus.

OK, buses have on-board assistance, so can trains (like Sounder) but it is not necessary. You can design systems to be self-service that’s just as accessible. If I’m in a wheelchair, how liberating it is to not rely on the driver to strap me in? If I need more time I can push the red button and talk to the operator. Why does the operator have to do that job? What ever happened to people giving others a hand?

As for density and transit, well know you know. It is a fact that’s taught in planning classes and supported by real-world data. That’s an important factor in how ridership is derived. If you want to ignore that reality then fine with me.

I won’t dive into the budget issues as it has been discussed on this blog so many times but rail is not the reason why bus service is facing severe cuts.

Rail, be it light rail or streetcars, is inherently less accessible than buses to people with disabilities for a variety of reasons. 2 big ones: distance between stations and lack of on-board assistance.

Saying that rail is as accessible as buses ignores those two fundamental realities.

No, we all do NOT know that “density is necessary for transit to function well”. And building rail “far into the suburbs” is exactly what’s happening now – while bus service faces cuts.

With regards to transit, we all know we need density for transit to function well. It seems that you’re arguing against the very thing that makes transit in Seattle work so well relative to its suburbs. We can do better. It doesn’t matter whether it’s buses or neato rail, compact neighborhoods allows transit to serve more people with the same resources, thus increasing accessibility without resorting to running buses all over the place or building rail far into the suburbs.

Less than what? Not any more than buses. Though certainly much less than the private automobile. If I live more than a mile from a bus stop then it’s inaccessible to me. A lot of transportation disadvantaged people can’t even access regular bus service and have to depend on Access or on private services if they live beyond the Access service radius (3/4 mile from a fixed local transit route per ADA). And yes, Sound Transit is required to provide paratransit service for Link light rail as well.

You really didn’t define what the “needs of the community” are and each community’s needs are different. Or is it actually your personal or family needs, taken to represent the entire community? Within the same community, people have particular views of what they think the community needs. I know I am in the minority in my suburban neighborhood with regards to “land use” arguments. Similarly, your vision is one of them, a sample of voices. Taken as a whole it seems that most people in the regional community think that rail transit is needed, hence the overwhelmingly successful vote to expand light rail.

Bingo.

I actually voted for the monorail before I voted against it. When it was initially proposed to extend the existing monorail line southward to the airport – possibly running more or less parallel to I-5, I thought the idea was worth exploring. When they started buying up $100 million worth of property between Ballard and West Seattle for an ever-shrinking, one-track line that would have been pretty much completely inaccessible to people with disabilities – they lost me completely.

I see many of the same arguments for light rail and streetcar redevelopment as a rehash of monorail arguments. While I do love the darn things (my ‘neato’ word that seems to push people’s buttons), when examined objectively (as you have done an excellent job of here and on other threads), “light-rail/streetcar” is really code at this point for “bi-rail” (vs. monorail).

A decent analysis, though a bit oversimplified. No, I’m not a fan of knocking down a single family home and tossing up 4 vertically stacked ones on the same lot as has happened a lot here in Ballard (along with larger condo developments that among other things, took away our bowling alley).

Rail transportation is also inherently inaccessble – or at the very minimum substantially less accessible – to people with mobility issues and other disabilities. It forces the community to meet the needs of transportation – rather than the other way around.

But yes, I’m not a big supporter of the “land use” arguments as those aren’t priority issues with me in the same way that they appear to be with more ardent rail redevelopment advocates.

As to rail attracting a “different kind of rider”, I guess I can add to my list of reasons why I have a hard time supporting massive rail redevelopment statements like this that smack of elitism and frankly turn my stomach.

The motors do last a long time – that’s why the current batch of Gilligs have the very power plants in them that powered their predecessors. Metro bought empty cabs, refurbished the motors that needed it and put them in the new bodies.

I don’t know that we’ll ever see A/C in the ETB’s. Not sure that the amps are available for pushing the coach and cooling the air both.

According to Metro’s original announcement (http://j.mp/2MYPLF) the electric motors can last “a long time” (They use the example of the waterfront streetcars which had 70 year old motors in 2001)

Assuming the Gilligs are working out, kudos to Metro for coming up with a solution that saved $200,000 per coach. Although A/C would have been nice, New Flyer doesn’t offer it in their new Trolley coaches either.

As you have already discussed, the Bredas are another story. They have always been temperamental and don’t appear to be much better since their conversion. It’ll be interesting to see what happens there.

In any case it may prove practical to take a similar approach with a future Link line serving West Seattle. I’m envisioning something similar to the current elevated Link support structures but in the median of the WS Bridge. As I said elsewhere even if that is practical the cost or other considerations might make a new bridge or a tunnel a more practical option. We likely won’t know for certain until screening for potential WS Link alignments starts.

We will never know for sure how well monorail would have worked on the WS Bridge because the SMP never got deep enough into the detailed design to fully flush out all the issues. But even at that the SMP was only proposing a single track monorail across the WSB with the resultant fairly pathetic functionality.

If we build LR to WS in Phase III we should build it to ST design standards and not SMP design standards to ensure full functionality. This would probably mean a new structure as putting LR on the existing structure (if possible) would at the very least require taking a lane or two from general traffic – and that would be extremely unpopular politically.

But we’re not going to get to a Phase III for many years anyhow so we have plenty of time to study it and get it right.