TV Washington’s The Impact covered several of the transportation bills that were considered by this year’s legislative session. Watch it on their website if the above video does not work.

This is an open thread.

11 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: Legislature on Transportation”

  1. I am enjoying seeing you commenters turning rabid over Seattle officials interfering with Sound Transit in West Seattle and Ballard. You used to bash Bellevue officials for meddling with ST. Now your own officials are doing the same. It’s called karma.

      1. Not a troll. As an eastsider, I remember all the Seattle commenters screaming about how outrageous it is that the “In the pocket of Kemper Freeman” Bellevue City Council was meddling with ST. Now that the Seattle City Council is doing the same thing, it’s funny to me.

      2. It’s funny when stakeholders provide input in light rail alignment issues? You and I have a very different sense of humor.

    2. I don’t know whether to call this a troll or a profound statement. I tried to rebut it but then… there are several similarities. The main difference is there was significant momentum to block Link entirely or send it to 405 with a station on 405. In Seattle everybody wants Link and they want stations near the arterials, but they still want the track away from existing houses. But they’re pushing for a tunnel rather than moving the track and stations away. Still, you can see the arguments in Seattle as similar to Surrey Downs, and the mayor is pushing for all the alternatives to be studied, and in ID she doesn’t like any of the alternatives and wants ST to come up with more. The latter may be without Bellevue precedent.

      1. I would never call Sam “profound,” but he’s still correct that Seattle outside of the urban core is pretty interchangeable with the surrounding cities. As a fellow non-Seattle who tires of Seattle’s exceptionalism, I acknowledge the schadenfreude whenever Seattle’s suburban neighborhoods act like suburbs. People & politicians don’t magically change at the city line.

    3. So you are upset/gloating that commentators consistently didn’t appreciate officials meddling with the preferred alternative for dubious reasons whether they were from Bellevue or Seattle?

      It’s an odd troll. It seems like you are trying to drive a Seattle vs. East Side stake but your ‘gotcha’ is that the (Seattle) commentators treated a similar situation similarly even though they were on different sides of the lake. An observation antithetical to your ‘point’ that the former opinions were somehow influenced by irrational hatred for Kemper Freeman and eastsiders in general. What part is funny?

      I think most commentators here are honest and above board about their intentions – they want to see our transit dollars spent in an efficient, equitable (whatever that means) manner.

  2. That’s what makes it so great living in the State Capitol during this next historic period, Sam. After five years here, I think Olympia is long overdue for Route 574 service at decent headway between the Capitol and points north, starting immediately with major northbound connections with LINK at Sea-Tac.

    However, I think both Ballard and West Seattle will be justified resisting a brand new Greyhound Station at projected transit centers in both those neighborhoods just because Olympia is moving its own Greyhound Station to the Transit Center before these pixels dry. Eternal vigilance, Sam. Good to see somebody lay down the law on future power grabs.

    Mark

  3. An Ontario town tries Uber instead of transit. Fares are $4-6 for trips to “community hubs”, and a $4 discount on other trips. It got so many riders the city had to raise fares and cap the number of trips to fit the budget. A person gets 30 trips per month and can apply for 20 more.

    ‘“I would never get on a bus in Toronto and hear the driver say, ‘Sorry, but you’ve hit your cap,’” Hudson said. “Uber was supposed to be our bus.”

    1. ‘Sorry, but you’ve hit your cap,’ … many agencies sell transit passes for a certain number of trips, particularly commuter services like rail or ferry. If you use all of your trips, you have to buy a new pass. Some tickets are unlimited, others are not.

      Here – Metra as a 10-trip pass.
      https://metrarail.com/tickets/ticket-options

    2. A 10-ride ticket is just a prepaid fare. When it runs out you buy another one. This case is like if you paid your Metro fare with an app and once you’ve ridden a handful of times that month you can’t ride at all until the beginning of the next month. How is that going to work for somebody who commutes five days a week and goes somewhere on Saturdays?

Comments are closed.