Month: June 2007

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Via my inbox, a meeting coming up on the design of the Capitol Hill light rail station. The station will be a major, major change for the neighborhood. So all you hipsters who plan to still be living there in 2016 or so — make sure your voice is heard!

Between the streetcar down Broadway and this, expect the neighborhood to resemble a war zone for the next few years. (Though residents of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way will no doubt tell you that yer gettin’ off easy.)

COMMUNITY MEETING

Tuesday, June 12, 2007
6:00 – 8:00 PM

Seattle Central Community College Room 1110

SOUND TRANSIT CAPITOL HILL STATION UPDATE

The Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce and the Capitol Hill Neighborhood
Plan Stewardship Council are hosting a meeting regarding the planned
Capitol Hill station for Sound Transit’s regional light rail. Sound
Transit will present its current plans for the station entrances,
property acquisition and relocation, and construction timeline. The
Chamber and Stewardship Council will outline community driven
principles for the station, related construction impacts, and
subsequent redevelopment.

In late 2006, the Sound Transit Board authorized work to design and
construct the “University Link” which extends light rail from Downtown
to the University of Washington including a station in the heart of
Capitol Hill. This station, located on the east side of Broadway
between John and Denny, is projected to have 12,000 boardings a day.
Since the first of the year Sound Transit has been working on their
plans for the Capitol Hill station and has initiated land acquisition
and relocation. Their current timeframe calls for a seven year
construction period.

Sound Transit is now coming. The Chamber and the Stewardship Council
recognize the benefits to the neighborhood and Broadway of improving
connections to Downtown, the UW and the region as well as the
potential for regional light rail to improve transportation mobility.
However, it is also recognized that the station and subsequent
redevelopment on Sound Transit land is a “hundred year” decision for
the Capitol Hill community. From a neighborhood perspective it is
critical the station entrances are appropriately designed and located,
construction period impacts are addressed, and subsequent
redevelopment supports mixed use buildings with strong retail on
Broadway and housing that serves a mix of incomes. This is the
critical decision making period.

The meeting will have a short presentation, question and answer
period, and an open house component for your questions and comments.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Flickr User Mac_Photography has some great photos of light rail testing in SoDo. It’s worth a click. Note, though, that they’re only testing single cars. Once in operation, the line will have several cars strung together.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Stefan Sharkansky derides the mortgage analogy:

The analogy to a home mortgage is absurd. Owning a home is a voluntary proposition and you can sell the home when you choose to. With the Sound Transit boondoggle, many of the people who vote for it won’t be paying for it and vice versa. And if it doesn’t suit our needs? Then it’s a moneypit, from which there’s no escape.

Mr. Sharkansky seems to take the analogy too far. Of course financing a light rail system is not at all like owning a home. The point of the analogy is simply to put the numbers in perspective. Most all major purchases in life –from trains to cars to houses to big-screen TVs — require some form of credit. But rarely do we include the finance charges when we talk about the overall costs.

Sound Politics being a conservative blog, the conservative case for transit is worth repeating in this context.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Bus Chick is in awe by New York transit riders, who get to buy a cocktail before starting their evening commute. The MTA (New York’s transit authority) threatened to ban the practice, citing concerns about commuters drinking and then getting in their cars when they got to their station.

This is one of the great pleasures of the Long Island (and Metro North) Rail Road. There’s a transit employee working the bar right on the platform where, during the evening rush hour, you can order a drink and step into your train. It’s brilliant. Especially if you’re about to board a 2-hour train to the Hamptons on a Friday night.

I fondly remember brown-bagging a six pack on my way in to Madison Square Garden to see a show. The train conducters tolerated it, so long as you didn’t get rowdy (or put your feet on up on the seats).

If you recall, the Campbell Scott’s character in Singles was trying to build a “supertrain” in Seattle that served drinks.

“People like their cars,” the fictional mayor (Tom Skerritt) told him, dismissing the idea.

Sad, but true. Maybe if they got used to the idea of cocktails on the train, they’d change their mind. As Josh Feit noted this weekend, public transit improves ones ability to party without worrying about getting behind the wheel. That’s something we should all be able to get behind.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Mike Lindblom has a piece with some pretty solid reporting on Sound Transit’s financing plan, one that puts to rest the questions we raised in April about the way in which the costs of the rail line were being reported. I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

As a bonus, either Lindblom or Sound Transit’s Ric Ilgenfritz has adopted our home mortgage analogy:

By then, Sound Transit’s spending would exceed $37 billion, counting inflation and interest charges.

Agency leaders say a more accurate number is $10.8 billion, representing the cost of construction and trains in 2006 dollars.

As with a home mortgage, it makes sense for voters to focus on the current sales price, said spokesman Ric Ilgenfritz. People who cite the long-term, inflated numbers “make the cost seem misleadingly high,” Sound Transit says.

Indeed. Citing the full costs only makes sense if you think in 2027 dollars, which most people don’t.

Update:Bradley Meacham adds, “[t]he true cost isn’t the debt to pay for the projects, which may still be less than perfect. It’s the crippling cost of — yet again — doing nothing.”