In other words, if you’re willing to take a couple of lanes from cars, it’s cheap, but nobody is willing to?

Yeah, sounds about right.

If McGinn manages to take away any car lanes for exclusive transit lanes, my hat will be off to him.

How often *are* there ships requiring openings?

I will note that in the Northeast Corridor, there are unimaginable numbers of moveable bridges which must open on demand. They have ‘em in the NYC Subway (Harlem River) too. It’s not inherently a problem unless there’s a *lot* of shipping traffic.

*Truly* cheap — paint — and it would cause the buses to run on time.

Not if it has exclusive lanes. Can’t people tell the difference between MLK and the SLUT?

Your blocks are only the length of two-car trains? Those are very frequent blocks.

Well, shut every other street crossing the train line (dead-ending on both sides). Next question?

A light rail line with exclusive lanes and signal pre-emption, as on MLK, can in fact offer speedier travel than a bus in shared lanes on the same road.

(Yes, a bus in exclusive lanes with signal pre-emption can offer nearly the same speed — rail accelerates slightly faster but not much. However, rail can also offer higher capacity, and it attracts more riders.)

Sounds like he’s planning to do exactly that. I wish him luck. He may actually succeed, as the winds of change are on his side. Or he may not.

For example, I think it would be cool to extend Rapid Ride Line C (so that it doesn’t end in the middle of nowhere, er, White Center) further along Roxbury, to the Olsen/Meyer Park&Ride (a topic of future consternation), continuing down Cloverdale through South Park, and then exit the city limits down 14th Ave S, either entering Hwy 99 to head to Marginal Way, or generally following the current path of the 128 through Boulevard Park, either way ending at a real destination: Tukwila International Boulevard Station. This could be West Seattle’s rapid ride to connect to the Link spine headed south to Tacoma some day… unless West Link happens.

I think having the Line C go from somewhere to somewhere, rather than just somewhere to various neighborhoods, will help increase ridership and justify better headway, and better dedicated right-of-way. No, I don’t expect that people would ride the C between downtown and TIBS. But I do expect that people in the neighborhoods in between would ride to the destinations in two directions, instead of all just heading downtown. It would keep a steady flow of fullness on the bus all the way along instead of working its way from emptiness (which transit-hating car drivers take note of) to crushload.

The major problem is political boundaries. The City of Seattle isn’t going to subsidize extending the Line C to TIBS, since that extension is outside the city limits. The county has no budget, much less a plan, for additional bus service any time soon, outside of what was promised in the Transit Now bond package.

Extending the Line C would provide South Park Boeing employees the fastest path to connecting to the 124, which they could take north to the facilities they used to be able to walk to across the South Park Bridge.

Extending the Line C, doubling frequency on the 124 (which we’ve seen become the bypass for light rail blockages twice already) and building a high footbridge near the soon-to-be-removed South Park Bridge, would be far less expensive than replacing the bridge. I’m not holding my breath for this to happen, though.

We’re able to get help from the city on increasing service on the 60 for one reason: The 60 never leaves the city limits. So, we have an odd situation. Twelve buses pass through South Park during rush hour. Only two of them head downtown. We can’t get help from the city for better headway downtown because … those routes start from outside the city limits.

He doesn’t need authorization from the state, where’d you get that idea?

McGinn has no plan, no design, no process, and no authorization from the state to do this.