Sounder on the Milwaukee Road – Photo by the Author

“Nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return,” Milan Kundera, Ignorance

Pick up an American op-ed hostile to rail and somewhere along the way you are likely to read that rail boosters are either technological reactionaries (they want a return to 19th-century technology!), or that they are clouded by nostalgia for a supposed golden age of travel.  These criticisms are deceptively powerful, and frequently true.  This mentality surely motivates much rail support, especially among the baby-boomer set.

Photo by the Author

I too have a great personal love for trains.  My handy copy of the 1,200-page Complete Guide to the Railways (1954) fills me with something approaching awe.  (You mean there used to be service from St. Louis to Mexico City, with connections to Oaxaca?!? Or for that matter, an electrified ride through the Cascades?)  The scale of service we have lost in the past 60 years is truly incredible.  But it is critically important that as rail advocates we carefully differentiate the sentimental from the sensible.

More after the jump…

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Image from the Rainier Valley Post

[UPDATE: Opening has been delayed till April 8th, so don't go down there this weekend.]

Bring cash and ride Link (or 8, 36, 39) on Saturday for the 10am grand opening of the Othello Public Market. Located adjacent to Othello Station at the NE corner of Othello and MLK, organizers promise that the year-round, indoor market will feature an extraordinarily diverse array of vendors.  A sampling of the vendors includes everything from silversmiths and soccer apparel to BBQ, exotic produce, and “European Hot Dogs.”  Now if only their website included Link on the Directions page.  Grr.

The Seattle Times reports that McGinn wants to ask voters for $10 million to do 15 percent design on an 8 mile potential light rail line. This is a good first step – it would do enough work to design a real ballot measure for construction, and to start looking for federal money.

I would be concerned about putting even a small measure on the ballot in 2011, but with West Seattle and Ballard residents still looking for solutions since the monorail project and light rail under way to other parts of the city, now is always the best time.

I think it’s important for the city to work with Sound Transit to prevent duplication of effort with the agency’s planning in the same corridor, but with Sound Transit’s work not planned for several years, I don’t see much risk there – Sound Transit can scope their future work to avoid overlap if they feel they can use some of the city findings.

This is encouraging – we haven’t seen any movement in this corridor since funding ST2. Any news is good news!

There’s a new state initiative currently in the signature gathering phase that would tie property tax rates to density in an effort to reduce sprawl. Opposition, led by the Single Family Housing Building Association, is already gathering to fight the initiative. Below the fold I’ll explain the initiative in detail, and why it’s a good idea.

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