You know, you take away the cross-base highway, and RTID starts to look pretty good:
South Spokane Street Viaduct: Increases capacity by widening viaduct structure, adding one lane between I-5 and 1st Avenue South, building transit-only lanes and an off-ramp at 4th Avenue South. Adds shoulders and installs a permanent median barrier. Improves safety, freight mobility and traffic flow on the major east/west connection between I-5 and SR 99, Port of Seattle and West Seattle.
Sounds like good start of BRT to me. Let’s face it, with the monorail cancelled, West Seattle won’t be getting rail anytime soon and BRT is an important stop-gap in the mean time. I take what is a sort of BRT to work everyday.
The other big beef against RTID is that it doesn’t fix 520, but the plan they have includes a fix with a toll. Now that the narrows has a toll, there’s a precence for tolling roads in the region. Also the addition of HOV lanes and an elevated ramp to ease the 405-520 interchange will allow for better bus transit across 520. This is dear to me because I cross 520 on my commute everyday, and on the bridge the bus is with normal traffic in the same two lanes.
And as Sam pointed out in the comments, the money for the replacement of South Park Bridge is included. I guess that makes Seattle’s annexation bid for North Highline a pretty serious one.
In all, I think RTID is as good a roads proposal as is possible for Seattle-area transit.