Lets be perfectly clear, the tunnel does not “invest in transit”. Argue all you want about the other claims, but there are no ifs, ands or buts about it, the tunnel does not “invest in transit”. I expect more from our LGBT electeds who certainly know better.
The pro-tunnel campaign loves this talking point, even though it is a complete lie. Seattle loves transit, and tunnel advocates have tried this before with the whole “Tunnel + Transit” campaign.
I contacted the Approve Ref 1 campaign for clarification on Saturday but got no response.
The pictures of the bus and the cyclist in the ad are a nice touch since neither will be able to use the tunnel.
Given The Stranger’s position on the tunnel, I’m surprised they ran an ad that contains these falsehoods. They would obviously be justified in refusing to run it.
Why would buses not be able to use the tunnel?
This ad brought in some revenue for The Stranger. Publications like The Stranger don’t turn down ad money like that too often these days.
Would this blog refuse to run that ad, if the money for running it were significant?
It’s all about the money, from The Stranger’s viewpoint, obviously.
Norman, it’s incredibly dishonest to ask that question again, and you know it.
No bus route will EVER bypass downtown, it would be idiocy to route around your largest and densest destination. No bus will use the tunnel because the tunnel doesn’t go where people want to go.
Buses using the tunnel is not the same as investing in transit.
And Zed – buses won’t use the tunnel.
Is there any reason why buses to events at the stadiums from neighborhoods north of Mercer St. could not use the tunnel to and from those events and places like Ballard, Queen Anne, and even the U. District and park-and-ride lots north of downtown to bypass the surface street traffic through downtown? I thought Metro was again being allowed to operate special buses to events at the stadiums in SODO.
Big events at the stadiums are one of the primary causes of terrible traffic on I-5 and downtown surface streets. Letting buses serving those stadiums would certainly help, don’t you think?
But, even if buses did not actually use the tunnel, taking tens of thousands of vehicles off of surface streets every day certainly benefits all buses using those surface streets, as Down Constantine says.
Ben,
I think it’s idiocy that there isn’t even one north-south route that bypasses downtown entirely. The fact that downtown is the densest area means that most buses should stop there, of course, but if you have dozens of routes that already make frequent stops downtown why can’t there be one that doesn’t?
Right now a trip from lower Queen Anne to Sodo Station by transit takes almost 30 minutes because every single route makes frequent stops downtown. Driving the same distance via the current SR-99 viaduct takes 12 minutes. Thus a bus route that bypassed downtown would have the potential to cut more than 15 minutes off of the commute of everyone who lives north of downtown and works south of it, or vice versa.
I know Metro isn’t in a financial position to add any new routes at this time, but I think a downtown bypass could really attract a number of riders who currently choose to drive.
Eric, a bus trip to SODO gets you a tiny number of passengers. It’s the other stops that get you all the riders. Running a mostly empty bus through downtown just to get that small number to SODO is a bad idea.
It is an interesting point that special event service could use the tunnel – but that’s private, not public transit. Even when it’s Metro – the Mariners pay for it, not the taxpayers.
It is not ok to justify a multibillion dollar project on enriching the Mariners further. Granted, I like them, but still.
Ben,
I think your reply to Eric misses the point just a bit. There are people who commute or travel north to south, through the city. Eric’s point is that for those people they almost always have to go through downtown, which adds significant time.
If I live in Ballard (or Magnolia…or anywhere else north) and I want to go to West Seattle (or someplace similar), I’m going to get into my car and drive because it’s so much faster than any bus. I can drive from my house to the Stadiums for a game in 15 minutes using 99. There isn’t a bus around that can do that. Perhaps there doesn’t have to be a bus that completely avoids downtown, but do all of them have to make stop after stop when they are there?
North/South mobility is a key benefit of the viaduct, and it’s why many people who live in Ballard or Magnolia find the surface option to be the worst solution.
Yeah, I’m not suggesting there’s a large number of people who specifically want to go from Lower Queen Anne to Sodo. I just mentioned those as two possible end points for a bypass route because they’re not very far from downtown, offer fairly easy access to 99, and there are a decent number of transfer options for people who start their trips farther away from the downtown core.
My wife’s commute from north Seattle to south of the city takes about an hour longer each way by transit than by driving. If a downtown bypass route could cut that difference down to 45 minutes, she would probably use transit once in a while. I doubt she’s the only one.
Let’s be clear that we are talking about bypassing downtown through the new tunnel. Many buses bypass downtown on I-5 (e.g. 133, 197, 586). However they are going to the U. District and the tunnel is not a viable option (although at one time the 133 did use 99 to get to the U. District).
Whether buses could or should use the tunnel is irrelevant to the point here, which is that the tunnel is not *investing* in transit. It could (questionably) *enable* some new transit routes, but the project is not providing any funding (capital or operating) to support new or existing routes.
The Stranger has never shied away from running ads that their editorial board disagrees with. If someone is willing to buy the space, knowing full well that the editorial section of the paper will likely contradict the ad, they’ll sell it.
Last year, in the Pride issue, they ran a full-page anti-gay ad from megachurch pastor Ken Hutcherson on a low-number page.
For the record, the cost of a full page ad in the Stranger is only about $2000, so it’s not exactly a cash cow for them.
They also have a habit of donating the proceeds from ads they disagree with to the opposing political campaign.
Eric, last I checked the 48 was a North/South bus route and it doesn’t go downtown.
Are you implying the 48 would use the tunnel? Because DAMN that would add to my CD-Green Lake trip times (as if they could get worse).
Metro operates a hub-and-spoke system. Downtown, aside from being a popular destination, is the single largest hub in the system. Every bus for which it is practical will stop downtown – the transfer opportunities are just too valuable to skip.
The 48 does not serve downtown because it serves the east side of the city. The hubs on that route are Mt Baker TC and the UW. However, every possible 48 trip can be duplicated with a 2 seat ride transferring downtown.
MOST of the riders are getting off downtown or transferring downtown. Metro’s through-routing is for the convenience of the agency, not the convenience of the passengers. Only a very few people are going from Rainier Valley to Broadway (7/49), or Ballard to Alki (15/56), or Madison to 16th SW (11/125). Why should Rainier-to-Broadway be privileged over Rainier-to-Queen Anne except for the fact that people have gotten used to it?
It does take a long time to go through downtown on a through-routed bus. That may or may not be worth adjusting. One solution would be to eliminate all downtown stops except one. That would make it into a different kind of route, and it may contradict one of the route’s primary purposes (to get people to those other downtown stops). That would require a decision: who is the route primarily intended to serve, and which stops do they use? It can’t be addressed by one-size-fits-all approaches.
The Deeply Boring Tunnel is like this one-stop-downtown transfer scenario, except that there is no stop downtown. So either you’d have parallel routes that do or don’t stop downtown, or it’s impossible because most passengers need to get off downtown.
If you do have parallel routes, how many would you need? One route from Aurora SeaTac won’t cover it. Should there be another route from Aurora to West Seattle, and Aurora to Rainier? Should there be a fourth route from Rainier to Ballard, and West Seattle to Greenlake? When does it end? And how do you afford all these extra buses?
Parallel routes extending north and south along existing routes would require a lot of extra buses, and probably wouldn’t get enough riders to be worthwhile.
How about this hypothetical route: an express shuttle between Aurora/Mercer and Sodo Link station via SR-99, with no stops in between. On the north end, riders could transfer directly to/from the 5, 16, 26X, 28X, and 358 routes. On the south end, transfers could be made to Link and also all the buses that travel on the Sodo busway (39, 101, 102, 106, 150, 177, 190, 196, 590, 592, 593, 594, 595).
Google Maps estimates nine minutes to drive this trip each way. Allot six minutes at either end to unload the bus, load it up again, and turn it around for the return trip and you could achieve 30 minute frequencies with a single bus, 15 minute frequencies with two buses, and 10 minute frequencies with three.
I don’t know if such a bus would attract enough riders to be worthwhile. Metro would have to study the situation, and even if the route would be popular I’m well aware the budget situation really doesn’t allow for adding any service at all right now. I’m just putting the idea out there as a way of making public transit a reasonable option for north-south through commuters whose trip could be as much as 15 minutes faster each way if the downtown stops were eliminated.
The time penalty of having to go through downtown to pass from north to south is definitely a concern. However, running buses that bypass downtown is not a good long-term solution. In order for it to work, you’d have to enumerate all the places people are coming from and going to, leading to n^2 routes to connect n neighborhoods.
A better solution is to continue to have north-south buses stop downtown, but make the necessary investments to make the travel through downtown quicker. For example, when Link extends northward and buses are kicked out of the tunnel, travel through downtown will speed up significantly, with the transfer eliminated. Transit signal priority on 3rd or 2nd Ave. would also help too, as would operating buses with more doors and using a POP system so that the ride-free area doesn’t slow buses to a crawl once they leave it.
The SR-99 tunnel, by bypassing downtown completely, utterly fails in this approach. At best, the tunnel might be used by a few vanpools or event shuttles to Mariner’s games, but I find it difficult to imagine any fixed bus route using it, and even more difficult to imagine any fixed-route bus route better than single-direction-peak-only service using it.
That’s why they built the “bus tunnel” in the first place. Anybody have stats on how many people used the bus tunnel before it was converted? I’m guessing from the peak number of buses that used it prior to Link that it may have been around 13,000 people an hour during peak period which would put daily use up close to the current viaduct. If for a similar investment as the DBT a new transit tunnel could be built then removal of a large percentage of the buses would allow free flowing BAT lanes to be added on surface streets. Make the new Alaska Parkway HOT lanes (the tunnel is going to be tolled anyway) and it’s a win, win, win.
Not to pick nits, Ben, but the Metro 113 and ST 586 bypass downtown to head to the U. Still, there is zero chance either of those routes would use the Hwy 99 tunnel, if for no other reason than that those routes won’t be around after U-Link opens.
Eric, that may be the best suggestion for a bus route in the tunnel, if it transfers to several routes at each end.
There’s also the possibility of buses going through the tunnel and backtracking into downtown. It’d take an analysis to see whether that would be feasable for any routes. (I.e., would it increase travel time to go to the tunnel entrance?)
I don’t understand what this means: “When Link extends northward and buses are kicked out of the tunnel, travel through downtown will speed up significantly, with the transfer eliminated.” Travel on Link will speed up somewhat. Travel on the buses that move upstairs would worsen; it would take almost twice as long. I don’t know what you mean by “eliminating the transfer”: transferring from what to what?
The DSTT does just what it’s intended to do: provide a faster path through downtown. But it’s L-shaped nature prevents it from serving Belltown and north/northwest routes. That was a decision they made in the 80s, to facilitate routes to I-5/Eastlake rather than the north/northwest routes. A second DSTT tunnel would certainly be a way to address that.
Seattle and Metro could certainly do things speed up surface transit downtown, but I doubt it can ever reach the speed of the DSTT. it has little to do with whether the tunnel buses are kicked upstairs. Surface travel is bad with the buses in the tunnel; it’s also bad when the buses are out of the tunnel (as they were when the tunnel was reconstructed); there’s not enough tunnel buses to make much difference on the surface.
The
caketransit is a lie!Nerd…
Look who’s talking! :)
:D
You say “nerd” like it’s a bad thing.
So.. Are all those officials gay? Learn something new everyday.
I’m more confused by the attempted connection between LGBT status and major transportation projects. If this is the pro-tunnel campain’s best selling point, I’m encouraged by what that says about their lowly prospects in winning this tunnel vote…
I agree, it’s a bizarre connection. Maybe this was a special PRIDE edition of the Stranger?
Yup. It was indeed a special edition, for Pride week.
That still doesn’t mean the connection makes any sense, though.
The LGTB community is often viewed as well-informed, well-organized, tight-kint, progressive, politically active, and choosy in making decisions. If the LGBT community appears to be on board, then many others may follow. Think of It like a union, NRA, or firefighters endorcement. Recently, AT&T has been trying to sway/bribe the LGTB community to support their takeover of T-Mobile for the same reasons. It’s become an increasingly powerful demographic with major liberal cities.
Without thinking that some money changed hands, it’s hard to figure why the LGTB’s have any stake or concern in the Tunnel Project.
I don’t think thats it. To me the implication is that gay people will support the tunnel if they learn that their gay elected official does too? Weird.
What have these electeds done to give you reason to expect better than this ad? It seems to me to be about par for the course.
Ed has worked for transit funding in the past, quite a bit in fact. None of them want to have their names on this, though. This is a huge fuckup on the pro-tunnel campaign’s part.
I wasn’t questioning their support for transit (now or in the past). I was questioning when these five has shown anything other than slavish dedication to the tunnel. Given their past behavior this ad doesn’t surprise me in the least. I would be surprised if any of them distance themselves from this ad. Time will tell.
If they don’t, I will never, ever support them in the future. Ed Murray, at least, has had my help in the past.
Ed Murray was a leader in scuttling the funding for the monorail.
Actually, it’s not a lie. If you understand what the word transit actually means, you realize that transit doesn’t necessarily mean multiple modes of transportation, nor does it mean public transportation. Transit is the system or vehicles used in the conveyance of people or goods from one place to another.
You don’t even seem to be rational in your opinions, you just oppose whatever transit advocates like. It really undermines your position.
Opposing this project, when every single study shows it doesn’t provide a benefit to traffic, is a conservative position. Use your brain and realize we’re on the same side.
There are studies showing the tunnel provides large benefits to traffic compared to replacing the viaduct with nothing. Why do you think Dow Constantine supports the tunnel? Constantine says that without the tunnel, traffic in downtown Seattle would be much worse, slowing buses and all vehicles. You think Constantine just made that up, or you think he can quote studies to back that up?
The tunnel does not provide the benefit to traffic that the viaduct does, however, which is why I oppose the tunnel, and support a new or retrofitted viaduct.
Really, Norman? Where are those studies? The two studies I’m aware of – the ones that actually take the toll diversion into account – actually show that the tunnel does nothing for downtown traffic. A third, from WSDOT, hasn’t been released yet but shows the same thing.
I think Dow was told to support the tunnel, and I’m ashamed of him for continuing to do so now that he knows it goes against his values and does none of the things supporters say it will. He’ll be lucky if he gets re-elected.
My only point is if one defines transit as public transportation, they are mistaken. That’s not what transit means. So yes, the tunnel does invest in transit.
http://www.westseattleherald.com/2011/04/04/news/dow-constantine-governor-dismiss-57000-signatures
“I need to be able to assure that our Metro buses and new RapidRide bus rapid transit – already serving communities south of us, and moving quickly into Ballard and West Seattle – will not be stuck in gridlock through downtown,” Constantine said. “The tunnel is an approved solution that has state funding, and building it is the best way to deliver transit dollars today and in the future.”
Sam, the fact that you have to make up a new definition of “transit” to pretend the pro-tunnel campaign isn’t lying tells you that they’re lying. Stop being dishonest.
Norman, spewing a quote just reinforces the idea that Dow is wrong. It sucks to accept, but it’s true. He’s holding a course he knows is false because it’s politically expedient to do so.
The smallest number of vehicles that the tunnel takes off surface streets is reportedly 45,000 per day, with tolls.
How can anyone claim that taking 45,000 vehicles per day off city streets — many of them during peak hours — does nothing for downtown traffic? lol
That is simple enough for even you to understand, I would hope.
And, it obviously saves a lot of time for the people in those 45,000 vehicles per day which are predicted to use it. You deny that? The people who use the tunnel will not benefit from it? Or, you just don’t care about them, because they are not in trains?
How can anyone claim that adding 60,000 cars a day to downtown streets without proper mitigation reduces congestion?
Nobody is saying that the tunnel reduces congestion compared to the viaduct. It does not, which is why I am opposed to the tunnel. The tunnel will make traffic worse than it is today, of course.
But, the tunnel would be better than no viaduct, and no tunnel, as Dow Constantine repeatedly points out.
This seems to be obvious to the great majority of people in Seattle.
Only dreamers think you can “mitigate” eliminating the viaduct and not replacing it with some sort of highway. Everyone else — including Dow Constantine — knows the “surface/transit” option is a load of crap.
But a 6-lane viaduct is far superior to the tunnel, that is for sure.
Ah Norman, I think you got that backwards. The tunnel will ADD 45,000 vehicles to the surface streets because of toll aversion AND no downtown exits. What’s the old adage? Figures never lie but…
Norman, actually, the tolled number is down in the 30,000 range – lower than any downtown surface street today. These are pathetic numbers for a multi billion dollar tunnel. 405 carries some 700,000 trips a day.
Norman, the surface option makes a third lane of I-5 a through lane – which accounts for most of the traffic the tunnel would carry. Just improving downtown surface streets handles more than the rest.
There are better solutions on the table for a lot less money. They were the obvious frontrunners before lobbyists bought Gregoire!
The workhorse of the tunnel plan is not the tunnel itself. The new Alaskan/Western surface couplet will actually take far more of the current Viaduct trips than the SR-99 tunnel.
The Western/Alaskan couplet will improve rush-hour congestion and travel times versus the current viaduct (which has an 18 MPH average speed at rush hour). In the off-peak, trip times will be longer because of the stop lights, but we are rightly planning around the peak load.
The tunnel itself is oversized, given the current through-traffic. I’ve commented on this extensively before, but to summarize, a smaller and cheaper 2 lane tunnel would be adequate to deal with the existing through-traffic. By bulking it up to 4 lanes, I can only assume they’re adding capacity on 99 to divert traffic from I-5, because they haven’t come up with money to actually fix I-5 downtown.
And, as always, the whole project sucks for walkabilty.
Everyone here seems to be entitled to a completely different, constantly-changing, unreferenced set of studies…
Someone said figures never lie. Yeah, because the Link readership figures were spot on. We can only estimate so much here folks. Anything we build could be a massive success or massive failure.
@Ben. Yes, an additional lane of freeway can add about 40,000 vehicles/day. However, in reality, this number is nearly impossible to obtain and all that traffic still has to GET to I5. It just doesn’t magically teleport there; it goes by Mercer, 45th, 85th, and the Spokane Street Viaduct. All those major corridors are already congested. 45th gets worse, and so does the Ship Canal Bridge (b/c it cannot be widened cheaply). Or Mercer gets even worse with new 40,000 vehicles/day. Build me a highway linking SR99 to I5 via Mercer and then we can talk equivalent capacities without screwing up more things. And the proposed un-grade separated public transit in the surface/transit option will only get stuck in this mess.
The words “studies show” are weasel words. If you don’t provide a reference to the study in question, then you haven’t shown anything.
As far as freeway closures, I simply cite induced demand, and the multiple cases of torn-down freeways that had a positive effect.
Lack Thereof – the couplet was changed to the 2-lane each way surface street by ordinance over a year ago.
C’mon with the word games, Sam. In the language of the people around here, “transit” means public transit in the form of buses and/or trains. Period.
And the authors of the ad know that full well (and I suspect you do too).
Actually, Sam, “transit” refers to the visible motion of a planet in the night sky. Do you have any other totally irrelevant definitions to supply?
The ad has pictures of a bus and bike. It’s pretty clear that they mean for the word “transit” includes those modes.
The ad uses the phrase “invest in transit” along with a picture of a bus.
Interpret that however you want.
If buses and cars are transit all the same then Kemper should drop his campaign against light rail. Because now, according to Sam, Light Rail, buses, trains and cars are all one and the same.
I guess that means we can use the gas tax for Link expansion now too, right?
Sam, I think you are being a tad pedantic on defending use of the word “transit”. I am not going to argue your definition, because I do not think it’s incorrect. However, that is not at all how the ad is using the word transit.
[ot]
Here is a great opinion piece from NYT on that came out recently on exactly how “transit” is being crafted by the Pro-Tunnel folks:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/the-ways-of-silencing/?scp=5&sq=speech&st=cse
Presumably coming next: A list of female politicians with the tagline “hey girls! let’s build a tunnel!”
Or, “math is hard! let’s build a tunnel for the boys”
No, wait, that doesn’t add up.
Looking forward to a viaduct and tunnel free downtown Seattle! Bonus: they can then use the spare funds to roof over I-5.
Wow, as a member of the LGBT community, I am both embarrassed and offended by this ad. Embarrassed that it’s written so poorly, and offended that this connection between ‘LGBT leaders’ and ‘the tunnel’ is supposed to sway me. I’ll be embarrassed for Seattle if this tunnel is built.
If you donate to the Reject Ref 1 campaign, you can help avoid embarrassment. :)
By the Reject Ref 1 campaign, you mean Protect Seattle Now right?
I do! :)
currently WSDOT is funding additional bus service as part of AWV mitigation… if the tunnel doesn’t get built, WSDOT money goes away… aka the 45 tripd and over $30 million in ADDITIONAL TRANSIT SERVICE from West Seattle and the south end goes away with WSDOT’s funding. That sounds like an investment to me…
Mitigation funding is NOT new transit service. They’re trying to pretend the unfunded $200 million in new service is actually funded.
it’s being funded right now… new serivece from west seattle from WSDOT dollars…
And when construction is done, the WSDOT money goes away. Just like what they did during I-405 construction.
And when construction is done, the WSDOT money goes away. Just like what they did during I-405 construction a few years ago.
What buses did WSDOT temporarily fund on 405?
Extended 8 peak-period Route 255 trips that ended at Kirkland TC to Brickyard P&R and created a new Route 644 Kenmore/Kingsgate/Overlake with 18 trips. Service operated from June 2006 to May 2008.
Route 644 was so successful Microsoft decided to pay Metro to continue the service as Route 244. Kirkland wanted to keep the service but couldn’t and people complained about losing the new service. Only until this year with designated 520 partnership funds that Rt 255 service was increased (but only to Totem Lake).
That money was approved in 2008 for mitigation before the tunnel was selected and will be there no matter what option the state chooses. Moving forward with the tunnel does not add any transit service.
http://your.kingcounty.gov/exec/news/2008/0902metro.aspx
The Deeply Tolled Tunnel is both the most anti-transit and the most anti-car option of all the Viaduct replacement options.
It literally forces 30,000 to 45,000 additional cars onto surface streets – Before Toll Avoidance.
It literally has ZERO transit – and replaces existing transit which makes it a Net Negative.
Period.
Read the appendices … It’s all in there.
I really do want to know which construction companies are bribing or blackmailing people to get the DBT. They’ve bought a *lot* of politicians. It’s a brain-dead option. Surface/I-5/Transit was plausible, rebuild was plausible, shallow tunnel was plausible, Deep Bore Tunnel was “fatally flawed”, as the original alternatives analysis said. And then someone went into smoky back rooms and bribed or blackmailed politicians into supporting it.
I am unfair. The back rooms may not have been smoky.
My reaction when I saw that ad was it was patronizing and untrue. And, that the Pro side is well funded and will stop at nothing to spread lies. So far, I’ve only seen a series of sarcastic tweets from the “Protect Seattle” campaign which I’m sure the vast majority of Seattleites have not seen. If there isn’t an effective media strategy or some dollars to back it up, then changing the momentum of this endeavor is doomed and Seattle will have a $4Billion dollar albatross to contend with. What’s the plan?
Well, everyone who saw that ad already knows the Stranger doesn’t support the tunnel.
But part of the plan is having the plan not public, so that when things happen, the other side isn’t ready for them.
Charles, there is also a FB page. Like it and share with all your friends.
http://www.facebook.com/protectseattlenow
Who are those LGBT ‘leaders’ (is there an election to some LGBT co council I didn’t know about)? And since when is a road tunnel a LGBT issue? A gay tunnel (insert inappropriate jokes)? Using ‘PRIDE’ for that issue (pro/anti) brings me back to the old adage “every movement starts as a cause, turns into business, and finally degenerates to a racket.”
The reference to pride is because last weekend was pride and the Stranger was essentially devoted to just that issue.
When did this particular issue of The Stranger come out? I’m surprised I haven’t seen anything about it on the SLOG, unless it was sometime last week. Or maybe The Stranger has a policy where the can’t address advertisements in their own paper?
June 22-28; black cover with white & red text: Queer Issue 2011 You’re Doing It Wrong. Page 25.
I just talked to Tom Rasmussen about the ad. Of course he didn’t condemn the ad as harshly as Adam but he didn’t really defend it either.
Thanks for talking to him and reporting back. I don’t resort to calling something a lie lightly, I sat on it for a few days, but I want to put a stop to this nonsense once and for all. Everyone knows there isn’t a shred of truth to it and I don’t want politicians or the pro-tunnel campaign thinking they can get away with saying stuff like that.
They’ll probably still say the tunnel is good for freight, maps and travel-time analysis to the contrary. There has been too little focus on what little good the tunnel does for freight, so the Pro campaign has been getting a free pass on that issue.
If the tunnel is construed as a transit investment, I have trouble imagining any conceivable highway project that wouldn’t be.
But the state supreme court has already said transit isn’t a highway investment, so I won’t take this one. :)
What I want to know is what’s my wallet doing on your desk?
It’s actually the bar at Lindas. I was having a very enjoyable and good brunch and saw it.
Say anything that gets people who only read headlines, skim the body of the article(if at all), do no investigation of any facts- then start digging and slowly admit the truth. By then the project has a foothold. No turning back.
Sound familiar?
They take pride in a tunnel that doesn’t even exist? That’s a bizarre cooptation of the “pride” theme. What would one call that… Gaywashing? Pinkwashing?
The tunnel will have a special lane for people on U-Scoots.
And if you don’t vote for it, then you hate old people.
That’s a fact!
I’ll let you folks get on with your argument about whether buses could or will ever use the tunnel (I’m pretty sure they won’t), but the real fact here is that the tunnel IS NOT “investing in transit”. Not by the remotest stretch of the imagination. It’s the exact opposite of investing in transit. It’s like saying that buying a gun is “investing in health care”. It does not follow. Non sequitur.
I hope the cigars were good …
Slog has linked to this post
I ride the bus and this did not piss me off. I want the tunnel and am sick of the Seattle way of dithering and hem hawing as costs go up.
What I love about this ad is that because the tunnel supporters haven’t been able to convince everyone to support it in 10 years, that there is some clock that has run out.
Secondly the linking of things like “Mom and Apple Pie” with vote for Tunnels. Who isn’t for “Protecting your neighborhood.”, “Reducing congestion” (Even though the only way to do that is to reduce the population that needs to move around for work.) Maybe this is really a jobs killing plan?
I suspect that if there was a ranked vote:
1) tunnel
2) replace viaduct
3) tear down viaduct -> surface option
4) repair viaduct
That #4, repair the viaduct would get picked. Where the tunnel fails to get a majority, the replace viaduct fails to get a majority and the surface option fails to get a majority, but that everyone’s second choice is to repair the existing structure.
I hate to bring this up, but had the Monorail been built, it would be finished about now, and we’d have the people moving capacity to just do the surface option. And it wouldn’t have to be Aurora Ave moved to the waterfront.
I can’t vote, as I don’t live in Seattle, but long term, some sort of rapid transit is going to be built to serve Ballard and West Seattle. I’d rather we spent the big bucks on that. (Light Rail extensions or whatever.)
The old, people want change, as long as everything stays the same.