Based on this overheated rhetoric, you’ve got to hand it to Snohomish County leaders for petty sub-regionalism.
Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and Edmonds City Councilwoman Deanna Dawson, who both serve on the transit board, said they oppose the 12-year plan, partly because it doesn’t bring light rail to Snohomish County.
“I will vote no on it,” Reardon said. “I will actively campaign against it.“
I don’t blame them for wanting to get light rail to their county as quickly as possible; indeed, in their place I would insist on a longer plan. Maybe Reardon is just bluffing, but I’m not sure how actively working to defeat a smaller plan gets the train up there any sooner. At best, it kicks the can down the road a few years, so that it’ll cost more to get the same service later; at worst, a second defeat for Sound Transit leads to reorganization, years to decades of navel-gazing, and not much done, ever.
Reardon and Dawson said they won’t support the 15-year plan, either, unless it brings light rail to Lynnwood, quickly creates a better bus service for Snohomish County and assures local taxes will be used for local projects. Snohomish County residents need transit options, Dawson said.
Of course, informed readers know that sub-area equity requires that taxes collected in a sub-area are used on projects that directly benefit that sub-area. What I take this to mean is that they will not interpret any project in King County as benefiting Snohomish County residents, which is incredibly obtuse. At its most extreme, this can be read as a rejection of the practice of borrowing from Snohomish County funds to build in King County, which is the only sensible way I can think of to build a capital-intensive line that starts in King and goes to Snohomish.
“I’ve grown tired of waiting,” Reardon said. “It’s moving too slow.”
Ah, the constant refrain of those who wish to slow down light rail.
Sound Transit Board member Paul Roberts, an Everett City Councilman, said he opposes the two plans.
They don’t bring light rail to Everett, the largest city in Snohomish County with the county’s largest employer — the Boeing manufacturing plant, Roberts said. They don’t aim to provide much-needed bus service for people over the next few years.
This statement is disconnected from any actual feasible plan. Assuming Roberts isn’t talking about the Everett Streetcar, there just isn’t the money to get anywhere near Everett. If he wants more bus service, perhaps he can talk to his colleagues Reardon and Lawson and drop the light rail demands to pay for buses. If he wants to get the train all the way up there, I guess he’d prefer to sit around and wait for the legislature to go up to authorize another .5% or so, so we can pass a massive tax measure later. Yeah, that’d be much better than getting started now.
What I fear is that the statements of these three politicians both reflect and enable the attitude of the voters: get more rail, faster, for less money. If they’re waiting for that plan, they’ll be waiting a long time. See you on the bus in 2025!
In retrospect, it was a mistake to include parts of Snohomish County in the Sound Transit district. Their tax base is tiny, so it’s hard to deliver anything capital-intensive. Unlike Pierce County, their leaders unwilling to recognize that improvements in Seattle — where many of their residents work — are of benefit to them. Because of that attitude and sub-area equity, they don’t contribute anything and instead drag the agency down by creating planning problems and providing lots of tax-averse voters. At the same time, BNSF has been a much worse partner on the North Sounder than South, limiting service. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that we can do about that now.
People that want to get Sounder out to Marysville or Arlington, take note.
Although I don’t think this rhetoric at all helpful, if it’s an accurate reflection of voter sentiment that a 15-year plan that gets to Lynnwood will do better at the ballot box, then by all means, let’s do the 15-year plan. I’m still curious what’s been cut to shorten the completion time from Proposition 1 by 5 years while still getting to Lynnwood. Bus service? Sounder? Parking spaces? A different definition of “Lynnwood”?
Sometimes I just don’t get all the angst toward Sound Transit. Everyone supports transit but if it’s Sound Transit’s flavor or transit, everyone comes out angered. Sure Sound Transit doesnt have the best track record, but I’d say they are on par if not better then just about every other governmental agency. The Port of Seattle, aka POS, can throw away millions of taxpayer dollars and they get little more than a slap on the wrist and a fine… a fine also paid for by taxpayers whether directly or by higher airport ticket surcharges. People act surpised with Sound Transit’s construction costs unexpectantly rise or Link is behind schedule; but those same people sit idly by when politicians from both sides lie and waste millions of dollars on pet projects. Someone remind me who the bad guy is here? The group that gives you mass transit for pennies on the dollar of what it would cost you to drive or the folks who campaign against infrastructure development which jacks up the price.
the 14 miles or so of LINK that is almost ready … I get why it took so long … considering that they had to tunnel under Beacon hill, redo portions of SODO and MLK.
However, once it is North of the U District won’t it just run down I-5? that has got to be relatively cheap and quick to build … there are no waterways to cross … and the ROW is already there… they just need to build the elevated track and stations (stations can also be added later).
Politically, no, stations can’t be added later. You’d have to buy the land in the first place anyway, and you’d have to space other stations farther apart to justify it, angering local residents.
And it likely won’t just run down 5. That’s the worst place for transit – you eliminate any possibility of TOD. It’d be kept off the highway as much as financially feasible.
I’ve started to think that acceptance of the sub-area model of investment is weakened by Sound Transit’s model for capital improvement. Basically, building from the inside out. This is a logical way of doing things but it really leaves the major non-Seattle job and population centers and termini waiting a long bloody time for rail (i.e. Everett, Tacoma (minus the streetcar) and Bellevue/Redmond to a much lesser extent) in order to serve residential communities that feed directly into Seattle proper.
I know people will sniff about broken backbones and lower ridership but what if we built from Everett out, from Tacoma out and from Bellevue to Kikland to Redmond (or something like that)? This will bring local commuters into the network and then furnish a connection to the main trunk lines over time. This seems to fit much more in the ideal of subarea equity and has the benefit of serving commuters throughout the system more immediately.
Of course, the time for comment has passed and ST will go to the ballot with their vision which will still, of course, be acceptable to me as a commuter and voter but I can’t help but think that we’ve got things from the wrong end when dealing with the other “real” cities in the metro area.
They wouldn’t be waiting nearly as long if they’d support the system. They’re only shooting themselves in the feet.
Yes, but I think you’ll find that’s not a very convincing line of argument for people on the fence.
You’re right. The real issue is letting them know what the path to getting what they want is – when it might come, and how.
It’s all incremental – it doesn’t actually matter if you get a big slow plan now and an acceleration, or two small fast plans. Things will happen in about the same timeframe.
Of course. We end up with a completed system in more or less the same timeframe.
I was really just kicking the idea around since those three urban areas are commercial and cultural centers in their own right while places like Shoreline, Lynnwood and Edmonds (up north) and Tukwila/Burien, Des Moines and Federal Way (down south) are not – but guess who gets connected to Link first?
An Everett to Lynnwood route wouldn’t be a disaster (for instance) even if ridership would almost certainly be lower than Lynnwood to King County. In fact, it could do quite well if the SnoCo municipalities engaged in actively upzoning around the route (something that Lynnwood seemingly has wanted to do for ages). The same with Tacoma to Puyallup (or Lakewood in the opposite direction).
I’d love to look at commute patterns and see where this sort of thing might be possible.
Now I’m beginning to wish that SnoCo isn’t in the ST taxing district. We’re pretty much fine without ST. If you want to ride a bus from SnoCo to Seattle, then take Community Transit buses. If you want to ride a bus from SnoCo to Bellevue, then take Community Transit buses. The service provided by Community Transit basically mirrors what ST is doing. As for Sounder, I don’t think very many people ride it, and if they did, they could always take Amtrak. ST only serves places like Everett, Canyon Park (Bothell), Lynnwood, Mukilteo (waterfront), Edmonds (waterfront), and that’s pretty much it. What about Mill Creek, Mountlake Terrace, the rest of Edmonds, the rest of Lynnwood, the rest of Mukilteo, and so forth? ST still hasn’t provided what I believe to be adequate bus service (or any mass transit services) to these areas. People I know are always complaining how they’re paying an RTA tax and getting absolutely nothing in return (they don’t utilize ST services that much).
Is it possible for ST to remove Snohomish County from their taxing district (cause it really seems like a good idea now)?
Do they park at Ash Way P&R? ST funded.
Do they park at Lynnwood P&R? The expansion was ST funded.
Do they transfer between local buses at Lynnwood? That was ST funded.
Do they catch Amtrak or change buses at Everett Station? ST funded.
Do they drive on or use buses on Highway 99? The BAT lanes were ST funded.
As mentioned in another post and as I recall, the original elected officials way back in 1995/6 working on Sound Move specifically chose to invest Sound Transit dollars in transit facilities rather than invest in service.
Max, the above comment is dead on – Snohomish benefits dramatically from Sound Transit investments.
On Sounder – we just got the fourth train running. Ridership is low because you haven’t got your Mukilteo and Edmonds ferry terminals, and you only have half your Everett Station parking. Sounder ridership on the north line will go up dramatically in the next few years, especially as the mudslide kinks are being worked out and bypass tracks are making it more reliable.
Sounder already takes about half a lane of peak hour traffic off I-5 between Everett and Seattle. 5 would be a lot worse without it. You can expect that to go up in the next few years with Mukilteo and the expanded Everett parking.
The mayor of Everett is practically begging for light rail. Help him out by getting us closer!
What we’re looking for in Snohomish County is an assurance that Link will reach us. It is not that we don’t realize the benefit of an improved infrastructure in Seattle as benefiting us, and I can agree that politicians who espouse this are pandering, it is that we need to see that Link will come to us and have a timeline for when to expect it.
We also need the political support from King County that will come with a larger ballot proposal. Supporters in King County will spend more money to pass our section of the proposal only if it is attached to their section, what is the incentive for Pro-Rail King County residents to support expansion in Snohomish County if King County expansions are not part of the deal?
Finally I think that I need to explain why some of us up here are so adamant about blocking expansion if Snoho is not included. The main goal is to show ST that our concerns need to be addressed, that simply dropping our entire expansion of Link without our input or a plan for its future inclusion will not be acceptable. We feel jerked around by ST as regards the Link and we want to prevent that in the future. You can call that petty sub-regionalism if you want, but that is what happens when an entire sub-region is left out.
They should start building the elevated guideway south … to meet up with KingCo going north
Then you can’t open guideway as it’s built, so you end up taking longer and costing more (less farebox recovery).
Scott, there are NO King County projects tied to “how far” light rail goes in Snohomish. That’s what subarea equity assures.
Snohomish County can only get rail when the line gets there. When that happens is directly tied to how fast we build – no matter what, Link has to get to the county line before it can be extended into Snohomish.
Here’s the fundamental issue: Saying no doesn’t get you rail. Saying yes gets you closer. If we keep construction going, we can come back in a few years with more. If we don’t keep construction going, we can’t.
Even hitting the county line is at least ten years out. That’s a long time in which we can come back with more, but voting no now means we have to keep fighting just to get north of the UW, which means resources like me and the blog have to waste our time fighting you instead of fighting for you.
Scott, I understand your point of view, and I personally would probably have the same sentiment if I lived there. Maybe it would be better to drop SnohoCo out of the ST taxation and service district as others have suggested. The one thing I don’t understand is the feeling about being “jerked” around by a public transit agency. If anything, I think thats more of an issue with SnohoCo’s elected officials and their apparent innability to effectively judge their constituents needs and negotiate appropriately.
It’s not also an issue with SnoCo’s elected leaders, but it’s what the people want. Many who pay the RTA tax in SnoCo don’t understand that their taxes are going to services in their county. For example, my friend has always been pissed at how he thinks the RTA tax collected throughout the region is going to a light rail project that (was once) delayed and over-budget. But as I explained to him about subarea equity (as Ben has said many times), he finally got the idea that the tax he’s paying in SnoCo is not going to KingCo’s light rail line. However, he now has become disgusted at the lack of services ST provides with the taxes he’s paying.
I myself have written many, if not thousands of times, asking ST to consider light rail in SnoCo on the ballot. I even suggested that they build a line in SnoCo, and once the line reaches KingCo, people can switch to buses if taxpayers in KingCo don’t want light rail extended to the county line or something, but I don’t think I got through to them. One light rail line through the county has got to be better than more buses along the same alignment, right?
Didn’t Sound Transit pour a whole lot of money into facilities instead of working on actual service in Snohomish?
How much faster could light rail transit reach Snohomish County if Snohomish County $$$ could be shipped to King County first? Send suburban dollars to the central city, to build out the more expensive core system, then follow up by sending city dollars outward to help build the extensions into the burbs.
This is the way rail transit is usually done. It’s called regionalism. And it’s not some shortsighted, nearterm “subarea equity” scheme that works to delay getting the job done.
Transit guy, subarea equity is far better in the long run, for very fundamental reasons.
Here’s the prime example. North King subarea (including Seattle) is going to be pretty much built out in ST2. That means Snohomish will build as fast as they can pay for in the future, which is great – it stops making them dependent on King County projects.
So what happens in ST3? Snohomish will build to Everett, and there’ll be all this North King money for a new line in Seattle, where we NEED another line. Subarea equity is best for Seattle in the long term because once the network starts to mature, it actually ensures that new lines go where they’re most cost effective.
Well I guess I didn’t explain myself enough, Ben. Regionalism — all subareas contributing to building the expensive core system in early phase, and all areas contributing to building the extensions into the burbs in later phase — also achieves Subarea Equity, just over a longer term.
Insisting on Subarea Equity on a year-by-year basis is what’s killing us, complicating the equation immensely and giving narrow-minded self-interested pols an excuse to reject this golden opportunity to expand rail transit in the region.
Transit Guy, look at the proportions of the original Sound Move vote by subarea. If we hadn’t spent Pierce and Snohomish’s contributions on Sounder and ST express projects, they would have killed Sound Move, and we wouldn’t even be here.
The 1996 vote passed with over 56% Yes vote. The equity argument could’ve been just as easily framed the way I frame it, and it still would’ve passed.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, Subarea Equity was put in the plan to gather votes from visionless, parochial boardmembers; nothing more. I personally worked on the 1996 campaign and S.E. as we’ve come to know it, was a minor factor in the public campaign discussion.
I understand the plan was to garner votes from boardmembers – but I think that those boardmembers’ views on the measure had a real impact on the vote decisions of their constituents. Would it even have gone to a vote without the boardmembers who wanted subarea equity?
Runnerodb83, the key point is “feeling” not “jerked.” I know that ST has done a lot of good for Snoho, I’ve used the new on-ramps, and ridden their busses, I used to go from Parkland (Pierce Co.) to Lynnwood twice a month. I really do appreciate what they have done and I fully support any expansion of Link over nothing. I feel jerked around on Link because it dropped us out of any definite plan and Snoho needs Link if we are going to continue to grow and stay competitive in the region. The tax base will come to help support ST more if we have the same kind access to the major metropolitan downtowns as the other counties.
So, okay, I know that feeling is a horrible basis for argument, but you’re going to run into this with Snohos. We need something definite from ST like ST 3, with a timeline, and our elected officials need to accept that if we can’t push through inclusion on ST 2.
Ok, well I haven’t really poured over the figures for Snoho, but do the future growth estimates warrant 18-20 hr per day HCT in Snoho within the next 30 years? It would be nice if everywhere had Link right now, but its a matter of priorities based on density and urban area growth. I can understand Northgate Link as that area currently has dense development and can serve as a north terminal for peak express busses from Snoho and would likely have adequate ridership in the midday hours to justify it. The same goes for the East Link to Overlake. Personally, I think the line to Northgate and the U should have been built before Central link to Seatac given that a greater percentage of Seattle population would be inclined to utilize the service. I’m not trying to belittle the feelings and needs for SnohoCo residents, I’m just pointing out that currently, SnohoCo doesn’t appear to have the density to support Link north of Lynnwood. Maybe I’m wrong?
You’re right that Snohomish County doesn’t really meet the bar overall – but they’re part of the district, and we can’t spend their money somewhere else – and it IS worth it once we hit Lynnwood or Everett. There are a lot of cities along the route holding their breath so they can build TOD.
There’s something more important in your comment that I want to address.
We would have lost Sound Transit if we had tried to build North Link before Central Link. Those costs were far more inflexible – Sound Transit postponed them because it couldn’t accurately predict them and it didn’t have experienced staff to manage large construction projects. Central Link got us that experience. I can’t stress this enough – sure, there are more riders up there, but there’s three times the risk. Sound Transit made the right choice in going south first.
I’d say everyone involved should bring up these points with their friends in SnohoCo, regardless of who you are, unless they still/already support Sound Transit. And for those of you who live in SnohoCo, you might want to send a link to this page, or a summary of some of the main points of the post and the comments (especially if you support ST2), to your elected officials.
I still don’t know why it takes about 15-20 years to build all these miles of track. Since the projects are linear and most are at-grade/elevated, can’t they subcontract all the lines so it’s all built in 5 years? That’s what Madrid does.
Madrid has several times the people – and several times the money. The issue is paying the contractors – we only pull about 300 million a year in tax revenue, and we spend about half that on operating the services we’ve got. We only have so much bonding capacity, so we can only issue new bonds when our tax revenue grows or we pay off old bonds.
That’s what ST2 is about – increasing the taxing authority to issue new bonds for new projects. Our current taxes are paying off the bonds for light rail we’re building now.
The reason it takes so long is the tunneling end of things. Everett to Roosevelt could be done in 3 years, easily. Tunneling unfortunately takes time, precision, patience, and skill. It is not easy to bore tunnels, even though there is a lot of technology out for it.
It would make no sense however to build Everett to Roosevelt light-rail, transfer 800 people from the 4 car train to 12 or so buses for the rest of the trip.
Yes it would get the system done and completed that much faster but we all know how traffic is getting from Roosevelt to I-5 then through the Downtown Corridor..
We all need to remember also that we are Americans… we don’t know Transportation unlike other countries.. at one point, we knew a great deal but rail is bad and rubber is good.
Don’t mis-take that as a “I love rail and buses suck” cause I do love my buses, but only if they are used as a means to connect to a rail network. Sorry I got spoiled with Tri-Met in Portland since they are revamping their routes with MAX, Streetcar, and WES.
Obviously you don’t know how to build a transportation network either.
Grade separated rail is simply high capacity. Streetcars are lower capacity. Buses are lower capacity still. Vanpools are lowest. That’s it. It’s very similar with roads – freeways, arterials, collector/distributors, local routes. If you design a strict transit or street hierarchy, it looks AWESOME on paper but actually creates bottlenecks and is less efficient than a system with redundancy and overlap.
If you scoff, just look at any European (or New York’s) intraurban transit network. Prague, Rome, Paris, Berlin, London – in all of them most bus routes act as more than a means of connecting to the rail routes, they go places on their own even though they intersect with the rapid transit system and, if they have them, streetcar systems. Some bus routes even duplicate rail routes quite closely!
Indeed, bus routes connect local centers and lower need routes.
The key difference, and where I think the idea that they connect rail lines comes from, is that they nearly always do connect to a rail line. Bus to bus transfers are largely unheard of. That’s where most of the inconsistency in bus systems comes from – where they are used in place of rail, they introduce unreliability. They are still a necessary part of a system.
Uh, no, I don’t need you to talk down to me about using them in place of rail. In case it escaped your steel trap of a mind, my implication was that grade separated rail is the thing that replaces existing routes (of whatever form) that have reached their absolute capacity.
Anyhow, maybe as a certain kind of tourist they aren’t common, but depending on where you live or work or where you are going, bus-to-bus transfers remain a normal part of using a transit network even in Paris or Greater London or Prague (to talk about the systems that I’ve used). Perhaps not ONLY bus to bus transfers but how many people drive or walk or ride only on local routes and never on a four lane city street or limited access highway (where applicable)?
What I am driving at is that one absolutely cannot think of bus lines (or streetcar lines or vanpools/minibuses/DART) as primarily feeders to the rapid transit system as that leads to a transit reproduction of the suburban street hierarchy and reinforces forms that perpetuate the urban-suburban divide (no matter how high-density those suburbs happen to be).
When I’m in Strasbourg or Paris, Kyoto or Tokyo, I use buses for one seat rides on trips that I would otherwise need one or two rail transfers to reach.
Now, I know I said “unheard of”, and that isn’t really accurate. What I should have said is that here in Seattle, bus to bus transfers account for an order of magnitude larger percentage of bus-based trips than they do in cities with major rail presence. Things here in Seattle like the 31/68 are not likely to be replaced with rail ever, but few people would transfer from another bus to those routes – the primary users of a route like that are using it for a one seat ride.
And I agree with you that they can’t be viewed hierarchically – especially by trip length. I also don’t mean to talk down to you – I’m sorry if I’m coming across that way.
What’s the estimated cost of building the Shoreline-Lynnwood stations and guideways? Would it be possible for Sound Transit to build “rail-convertible BRT” (i.e. the elevated guideway, platforms, parking, etc.) for the Shoreline-Lynnwood section in ST2 and then convert it to light rail in ST3 when the Northgate-Shoreline Link section is complete?
Two words for you Steve, BUS TUNNEL
Tracks were laid in the tunnel, technology changed, and the tunnel had to be revamped to accomodate light rail. BRT to LRT conversion is not as simple as it seems. Besides, with the cost of asphalt conc, it might actually be cheaper to just put rail down in the first place. Building BRT guideways to LRT standards require much lower grades and wider turns.
rail-convertible BRT would be 90% of the cost of light rail in those corridors. The ONLY reason it looked any cheaper than that for East Link is because the separated express lanes were already built – you were riding on existing infrastructure for a good half the distance.
Ben, let me clarify: I agree that rail-convertible BRT would be 90% of the cost and not nearly as desirable — clearly light rail is what we want long-term.
But as you point out above, Snohomish County can’t start on light rail until North Link gets to the county line. So what I’m getting at is: is it possible to get started in this timeframe such that Snohomish County both gets something now (since buses interop with the existing corridor infrastructure) and gets a quicker, cheaper light rail hookup in ST3 (since some of the work was done in ST2)? And if so, would that satisfy Snohomish County pols? Or, by contrast, is what we’d build for light rail and what we’d build for a convertible BRT too different to assist much in the ST3 timeframe? (Because of the wide turns & shallow grades runnerodb83 mentions)
It’s not possible to build anything now that would help Snohomish later, no. They’re more limited by their own tax revenues than they are by King County construction. The one thing we could do would be to buy the land now – but even that isn’t a great idea, because by the time we’re ready to build, that land is likely to be worth less (remember, it’s suburban land, not city core – we’re seeing dramatic drops in suburban land prices).
“rail convertible brt” would serve no purpose unless you built on and off ramps, which would cost tens of millions and then cost millions again to tear up later, and tens of millions more to electrify and lay rails on. You’d delay light rail further by spending all of Snohomish County’s money on temporary stuff that wouldn’t garner any riders – the people in the 5 corridor who would be willing to park at a park and ride are going to Seattle.
The 15 year plan is probably going to go to ballot, as it helps Snohomish most surely.
The only real locations in the region that have rail convertable BRT infrastucture right now would be the I90 express lanes, which are in the process of being converted to BRT as we speak and the I5 express lanes which I believe were originally designed to be upgraded to unspecified High Capcity Transit, whether that be HRT (heavy rail ie BART), LRT, or BRT I don’t know and don’t think was ever determined.
Here’s the crux of the matter:
The wonks here want to build LRT to Northgate and then tell Snoho express bus riders that they want to cut those routes because a perfectly fine alternative is for them to transfer off the bus, which they’ve been riding for years, to a LRT. It’s not acceptable.
Same is true for the Overlake boondoggle.
CJH is exactly right. The wonks want to build the system from the inside out. But with 4 of the 5 sub-area equity zones laying outside of the “inside”, it will never reach general consensus.
The Overlake link is useless to the Eastside region because there is no access to buses here unless you live on the bus line already. And really, how many ways do the washed need to be washed? Isn’t the goal of transit to get more people out of cars ?
Don’t think Reardon and Dawson will campaign against ST2? I bet that’s what you said about Ron Sims last time too?
I think you may have some bad information.
Express buses from the north and from Overlake would continue operating. The ONLY situation in which buses would be halted would be in reverse peak direction to and from Everett – when the express lanes aren’t available for buses between Northgate and Downtown, light rail would be consistently faster than staying on the general purpose I-5 lanes south of Northgate.
The 545 would continue as it is today, but with less congestion as many downtown riders would have the light rail option, and we’ll have 520 HOV by then.
No one is suggesting that we remove these routes.
On the “washed needing to be washed”, every transportation model shows that well over half of Link riders on both North and East Link will be new to transit. That’s a hundred thousand daily riders in 2030. Because of the development aspect, you also see currently underserved people move to new development near stations.
We can’t serve people who live far apart. It would waste more fuel to run empty buses than to have those people drive. Being angry and disillusioned doesn’t help – pick your battles and help us help the people we can.
Ben- you are wrong on route changes post-LRT. Using the 5XX implementation as a model, the pre-5XX routes (in my area the 311, 251, 255, 254 etc) were drastically curtailed or eliminated altogether.
You cannot possibly expect anyone to believe that the level of express bus service to remain the same post-LRT on ‘competing’ routes. Even you guys here keep harping on getting the Snoho people to Northgate and the Eastside people to Overlake.
Nice logo change too. Buses, bikes, planes no longer exist in the new transit model? Interesting.
You want anger and disillusionment? Re-read the first sentence of the original post: “overheated rhetoric”? Yeah, that’s the stuff of consensus building. For sure.
You guys are about as passive-aggressive as they come.
Actually, I’m right on route changes, as far as Sound Transit is concerned. Why don’t you try emailing Sound Transit and asking? I have.
You brought up Snoho express buses, and now you’re bait and switching with Metro routes.
No reasonable person would assume that a new LRT system would come on line AND the existing bus service along those same corridors would remain unaffected. Even if the bus routes stay the same, the frequency will change.
They can say whatever they want. Past history has shown otherwise. What do you expect them to say?
And accusing someone of ‘bait-and-switching’ is not really the stuff of consensus building either. I’m entitled to my opinion.
Past history shows that buses stick around when light rail comes online…