BTW, learn to use the “reply to this comment link,” it makes your comments slightly easier to follow.

If anything you’re being hypocritical by complaining about the posting of public information on the internet and then doing the very same thing.

Why do you care so much about Gennady Filimonov’s car anyways? Perhaps it was you who was actually driving it?

Last time I checked neither license plates nor driving records were private information, so what’s the problem? How is witnessing someone driving poorly in a video any different than witnessing it in person on a public street? Isn’t it logical to conclude that the registered owner of the car is more than likely the person who is driving it? And even if they aren’t, the owner is still responsible for loaning their car to someone who is a dangerous driver and should take more care in who they let drive their car, lest an innocent person be killed.

I ask because a friend took a taxi since the walk was so far for the bus; not to mention the wait.

You eventually get beyond the fireworks opening this!

Washington State essentially has what I would call a ‘weak’ executive because so many of the officials around her are similarly elected independently of the governor. Heck she can’t even choose her running mate, let alone her attorney general and other positions. Thus the leadership one might wish for from the governor – and yes, it would be very nice to get more – is more constrained than it might be in stronger executive states.

Part of Governor Gregoire’s problems during this awful recession I think also stem from the fact that she doesn’t appear to get out much. From the evidence of the media in Seattle, she barely comes here let alone Eastern Washington where she is probably as remote as expecting a visit here from say the governor of North Dakota – i.e. highly unlikely. She definitely she needs to take a tour and then she might realize that there is more truth to her oft quote references to the ‘Great State of Washington’ than she realizes. Of course, I am not privy to her daily calendar but it seems like the press would report a major ‘fact finding’ tour if she took one. And if she did, she might see the truth of our transit angst up here in Seattle and Tacoma and Everett.

However, coming back to the Columbia Bridge Crossing project, the link you put up above was to a bike enthusiast site and so while I would expect them to be hostile to cars crossing the Columbia, their hostility has no relevance at all to the reality that the I-5 is a major economic and tourist engine between Seattle and Portland and that a new bridge is an integral part of that. I don’t blame the two governors for pointing this out to Portland and Vancouver in their letter.

By the way, my email inbox included this new revamping of Vancouver, Wash.’s website. Seemingly affronted by all of the attention given to Canada’s Vancouver, they want more tourists to visit our one. Hopefully, those tourists will arrive by Amtrak, but we have to accept that a good proportion of them perhaps going on to Portland or Columbia Gorge destinations will need a car and if they travel the faster Oregon side of the river, they will be needing a nice new bridge to get there if it is as necessary as the two governors believe it to be.

There are obviously many transit priorities (extending the SLU streetcar, extending the First Hill streetcar to Aloha, building the rest of the streetcar network, building light rail to West Seattle) to address before looking at anything like this, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to talk about while avoiding real work.

This is not true. However, for people who think they are too good to ride a bus, they are perfectly free to provide their own transportation, including walking.

“The #2 comes every half hour between 6:30 and 9pm, when we’d see a lot of pedestrian traffic. The bus system is designed for commuters, not for communities.” The #13 also goes up and down the counterbalance every 30 mintues between 6:30 and 9pm, meaning a bus up or down the counterbalance every 15 minutes in off-peak hours.

“Imagine being able to take this to the Seattle Center, enjoy a very walkable area to the QA Funicular, and wait less than 5 minutes to ride up to the next very walkable area.” If you value walking so much, why not walk the entire distance, instead of taking two separate rides with a walk in between? If you can walk from the Center monorail station to the bottom of the Counterbalance, you can surely walk from Westlake Center to Seattle Center, also.

Face it, there is not going to be a Queen Anne fernicular. It makes zero sense. If you love walking so much, walk up and down the counterbalance. I do that occasionally. Good exercise.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/01/jobs-for-main-street-act/

Metro, Community Transit, and Sound Transit are absolutely tapped out with respect to taxing authority, and only the State can fix that. I’m not sure how you can possibly conclude that they’re somehow out of the governor’s “sphere of influence”.

“There is absolutely no point to having a monorail down 5th avenue.” Yet enough people do, paying $2 a trip, to make a profit. Maybe they see a point that you don’t see. As a non-tourist I often take the monorail. Why? It comes every 10 minutes and is much faster than the city bus. Imagine being able to take this to the Seattle Center, enjoy a very walkable area to the QA Funicular, and wait less than 5 minutes to ride up to the next very walkable area.

Yes, buses will functionally move people around. But making transportation convenient and fun greatly increases ridership.

Our governor is not great on mass transit and I don’t disagree with you there, but Metro is not really in her sphere of influence and I am sure that right now, she is more interested in the construction jobs she wants to see flowing into the state.