In his “Prop. 1 no cure for commute”, Gregory Roberts has a chart that shows the wrong times. The bottom bar is actually Light Rail times, not bus times.
The article is mildly well reasoned for a local paper piece on Prop. 1 with sections like this:
Light rail’s biggest payoff will come at rush hour, Patrick said. Sound Transit projects that in 2030, its light rail trains will carry 8,800 people per hour across the Ship Canal during peak commuting times, compared to the 14,000 now crossing the canal on Interstate 5. It would be nearly impossible, Patrick said, to match light rail’s added capacity in that corridor by other means.
It does still quote Nutty John Niles, who is the world’s largest blowhard. And the piece still has a bunch of misleading numbers (in addition to the crap chart already mentioned).
The region’s drivers collectively lose about 260,000 hours per workday to traffic delays, compared with travel at the speed limit, according to a recent state transportation audit. If the Nov. 6 ballot proposal fails, that is expected to increase to more than 600,000 hours per day over 20 years. But even if Proposition 1 passes, the total is still expected to nearly double, to more than 500,000 hours.
Uh, we are expecting a huge increase in population over the time period. So how much of that above figure is simply caused by increased population? What is the per capita number hours lost number? I am sure it’ll be a lot less than doubled, probably an increase of barely over 10~15%. The per person number is what people care about. I don’t care how long other people sit in traffic, I want my commute shorter.
Update:
I guess they have removed the chart from the online edition, though you can still see it in the morning edition.
I felt that article was still pretty bad. John Niles isn’t a part of the pour-more-concrete crowd? His buddy Kemper Freeman sure as hell is.
Now it says “transit” times.