If you mean “quantum leap in bus funding,” I agree that most people willing to swallow a huge tax hike are probably looking to spend it on rail.

You’re absolutely right; we’ve gotten lazy, and we’ll try to do better in future.

Feel free to permit Mike to answer for himself. I’d guess that he believes he’s speaking for a wider constituency, otherwise he would have added those verbose two words “to me”.

Bullshit.

I’d like to see the US treat its transportation systems more like cities in Europe and Asia. While that means a lot more investment in rail it also means a substantial improvement in bus service from what is currently considered acceptable in the US.

I’m for better transit generally, but I’m all for picking the appropriate transit solution for the problem at hand. Sometimes that means some level of bus service from a DART van to a full BRT line or HOV express route. Sometimes that means rail anywhere from a streetcar to a underground metro or an intercity HSR line.

I don’t consider any expression of view a “waste of time”. Your mileage may vary. Your suggestion that I shut up and serve on a board is unwelcome – and back atcha.

As for rail lines offering “more freedom and choice” than cars, once again you’re missing the point (as well as making one that while debatable, I don’t care to debate). Utopianists aren’t interested in supporting or expanding choice – but eliminating choices (like bus and cars) so that people will HAVE to use rail. Not sure how eliminating or limiting one choice in favor of another offers “more choice”, but that’s your logic model, not mine.

This isn’t really that important, and maybe not the best topic for my first comment on the site…but could you do me a favor and try to be more careful about using non-informative photos to illustrate articles? I initially thought that parking lot was actually in the Rainier Valley, and that you were trying to show that lots there are well-utilized or something, but after looking at it a little bit closer (and checking the URL) I figured out that it’s in Tel Aviv. I just find it a little bit unfriendly that I had to spend a minute or whatever to determine that I shouldn’t draw any conclusions about parking in the Rainier Valley from that photo.

Similarly, when you posted about this topic a few days ago, you used a photo of a Diamond Parking sign (with the daily rate photoshopped out), and that initially confused me as well as at least one person in the comment thread, who thought that that was showing the actual pricing at a lot in the RV. (Turned out it’s a lot lower, which would have made sense if I had thought about it.)

Sometimes when you’ve used irrelevant photos in the past, you do point that out in the article body (or, less commonly I think, in the caption), but if someone is skimming the article they might not see that–but they’ll *definitely* see the photo itself, probably before they even look at the rest of the article.

So my suggestion would be to make a habit out of adding descriptive captions on every image, and making it clear directly in the caption if the image is purely aesthetic as opposed to informative. I guess that does feel a little bit formal, but as your audience continues to grow, and grow broader, that kind of thing becomes more important.

Anyway, now that I’ve attempted to tell you how to do your jobs that you actually do for free, I’d like to say that I find this blog completely invaluable, not just for the ever-informative and insightful posts but also for the generally high SNR in the comments (which I know takes a fair amount of effort on your part to maintain!), and the fact that you’re willing to address comments directly and engage commenters in extended and substantive debates, unlike a lot of actual professional journalists. Plus it’s virtually ad-free!

And I also want to mention that I find your coverage a lot more even-handed than certain commenters *cough* seem to give you credit for. Although maybe that’s just because I tend to agree with it. :-)

So basically, keep up the good work, but I hope you consider my little suggestion (which shouldn’t be too onerous to implement, I think). I’ll try to make my next comment a better contribution to the discussion.

Tim, I think the point some are trying to make is that it isn’t “we” who develops on this land, it’s private real estate development companies. Since they don’t have capital, and it’s hard to argue if there’s much demand right now, things aren’t being built.

In other words, are they from local neighborhoods that are just a tad too far, or outside of convenient bus service, but still want to make use of Link, or are they long distance commuters, using these lots as low cost ‘satellite’ parking, with Link as their downtown shuttle?

In what way, has Issaquah boomed at the expense of the Rainier Valley or anywhere else? It is a residential community, not industrial.

What is Pe Ell?

We are supposed to be filling in these empty lots with transit-oriented-development – at least that is partly the point of our supporting Link through the Rainier Valley. It is supposed to be a game changer in this respect and buying up or using vacant land for parking vehicles is not part of this. I seem to remember that there was a time when everyone was supposed to walk to the stations.

Just a little reality check here: “all of those empty lots” are “there” because large portions of the Rainier Valley have suffered economic dislocations while Issaquah boomed. They didn’t get trucked in from some repository of weed filled lots down near Pe Ell.

And the freedom and choice stuff – you get more freedom and choice from rail lines than you do cars.