Evan Edinger tries the buses in suburban southern New Jersey.
That video got a lot of comments saying why public transit can’t work in the US. So Evan made another video refuting these claims. It’s a comedy.
The second video also refers to his walking to school video, which we covered in September
This is an open thread.
I took link 2 hrs before the Seahawks game from Capitol Hill southbound and it was the tightest crush capacity I’ve ever seen in USA.
Only other time I experienced something similar was when leaving Camp Nou after a FC Barcelona game.
Really looking forward to 2x capacity although I wonder how many inexperienced riders will accidentally ride to judkins on the 2 line.
I didn’t go to the Seahawks game. Me and my friend just watched it from home. Though I feel lucky that I didn’t go because of what you just said.
Metro Studying Transit Improvements on Route 60: https://kingcountymetro.blog/2026/01/16/metro-studying-transit-improvements-on-route-60/
Thanks for pointing that out!
My first suggestion to improve ridership is to realize route 60 serves hospitals, hospitals have graveyard shifts, and employees need to be able to ride a bus both to and from their job in order to partake of public transit.
Route 60 needs night-owl service, preferably at least half-hourly in order to be useful.
Every other improvement is nice to have, but 24-hour service is sine qua non for a chunk of potential riders.
When we are in a period of not having to throw all new platform and service hours into reducing peak overcrowding, that is about the only time we will see investment in the night-owl network.
I would love to see one of the legacies of the Wilson administration be a very useful night owl network with twice-hourly minimum frequency throughout, that people will take whether they are going to their jobs in the middle of the night or going home in the middle of the night.
When my ex was a medical student and resident living near Northgate (pre Link) transit to most Seattle hospitals was rarely an reasonable option if the shift had an early start or uncertain ending time. She, like many trainees in her cohort, had a collision during her SOV commute since they were de-facto required to drive in a fatigued state to pass their training.
There’s a huge amount of low wage support staff at hospitals who’d also get an instant raise if they could suddenly take reliable transit for their commute that included some amount of non-peak coverage.
I think that’s more of hospital’s responsibility either to provide some form of commute support for night-shift employees. Running 60 overnight can merely solve this challenge.
It is surprising the 60 isn’t part of the Night Owl system. To be fair, the main loss of coverage is between Georgetown and Westwood Village (mostly South Park). The 49, G and 3 cover First Hill. This means riders can still get places — they just go a different direction. The 36 covers the north end of Beacon Hill while the 107 covers the south. By its very nature a Night Owl system is bound to be bare bones. Frequency is poor. Trips are indirect to save money. It would be great to have a Night Owl 60 but I understand why there isn’t one.
Thanks for the link. I’m glad Metro is considering these. One thing not present is rerouting the 60 to stay on Broadway rather than 9th. If these enhancements go through, it will be harder to ever get that later.
There are three objections to the Madison-9th routing:
– Travel time. The detour makes trips from the Broadway retail district to Beacon Hill slow, and you can feel the stop-and-go in the Madison Street segment. Of course, if Metro’s proposals speed it up, that would lessen the impact of the detour. Although nothing seems proposed for Madison Street or the turns to/from it. Did that get faster in the RapidRide G renovation?
– No frequent north-south route spanning lower Broadway. The 9 is infrequent or peak only over the years. The 60 detours to 9th. The streetcar turns to Jackson and terminates at Denny. Attempts to extend the streetcar north to Mercer Street or Aloha Street got quashed in merchant objections and budget limitations. Route 43 base runs only serve this corridor a few irregular times a day.
I’ve forgotten the third objection now.
I would suggest that the third objection is that there are several destinations on 9th as well as near Madison and Boren that are served by Route 60 that deserve some frequent service to near their front doors. Moving the route to Broadway would make these destinations a much further walk away.
Going between Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill stations on Link takes 17 minutes plus time getting to the platform whereas Route 60 takes about 22. With Link available as a fast option for longer trips, Route 60 thus needs to function more as a feeder bus for those shorter trips to First Hill destinations than operate as a slightly faster way to get from one Link station to another because there’s a high frequency train for that.
@Al S., I agree. We need both a 9th and a Broadway route, the 9th route preferably continuing to SLU.
When I said “to Beacon Hill” I meant to parts of the hill north and south of the station.
The 9th Ave detour connects residents with shopping in Capitol Hill. There are no grocery stores in First Hill, other than an expensive corner store on James. It serves Yesler Terrace, Jefferson Terrace and Harborview. At one time, the north extension of the 60 was going to be terminated. The route would end at Beacon Hill. Residents and employees spoke out and that plan was dropped. That was when they increased the frequency to 12 minutes.
I ride the 60 several times a week during commute hours between Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill. As frustrating as the 9th Avenue routing can seem, it’s clear that it serves the needs of a lot of transit dependent riders. Instead of asking for deleting the 9th Avenue routing, I would suggest improving the stop locations on Madison and 9th to allow faster run times. Westbound, there is a queue jump at Boren for the G-Line that the 60 can’t use during busy times. Move the 60’s westbound stop on Madison so that the 60 can use the queue jump. Consolidate the 3-4 stops on 9th to 2 stops. Between Harborview and Yesler Terrace, consider moving the routing to 9th Avenue/Jefferson/Boren/Broadway/Yesler. Those are all major arterials instead of dinky side streets.
Also, the 60 seems like 2 or 3 different routes with different missions stitched together into one, long, over-extended route. Twenty or thirty years ago when 30-minute service was sufficient to serve the ridership, the Roxbury to Capitol Hill routing might have been efficient. But today, it may be time to look at breaking the 60 into smaller, more targeted and efficient routes.
I don’t ride the 60 to West Seattle, so I won’t comment on that segment. But, how about eliminating the 11 and starting the 60 in Madison Park, follow the 11 routing to Broadway and John, turn onto Broadway and follow the 60 routing to Beacon Hill Station or Georgetown and terminate there? Sure, Madison Park will likely object to loss of direct service to downtown Seattle, but it will get more frequent service. And with 12-minute headways on the 60(ex-11) and 6-minute headways on the G-Line, the transit network will offer more destinations and opportunities compared to an 11 with 20-minute headways.
” the 60 seems like 2 or 3 different routes with different missions stitched together into one, long, over-extended route. ”
That’s because it is. In the 80s it was a Broadway-Georgetown route. Then I think it was extended in two steps to South Park and Westwood Village. It basically took one of Seattle’s few crosstown routes and adding to it. I don’t know if there’s a clear place in the middle it can be split without harming a lot of overlapping trips, or if a lot of people in Westwood Village or South Park are specifically going to First Hill or the Broadway retail district because they don’t have those kinds of destinations. The 62 has SLU to Greenlake, Fremont to Sand Point, etc, so splitting it would break a lot of trips. I don’t know if the 60 is similar or if there’s a clear splitting point that most riders don’t cross.
I didn’t see a “Ridership Pattern…” post for the 60 in the archives, but I doubt there are very many riders going from Westwood Village to Beacon Hill on a daily basis.
I count 14 coaches needed to serve the current version of the 60 and 4 required to serve the 11. The revisions I suggested would require 12 coaches to serve the 11+60 (Madison Park to Georgetown) at 12-minute headways. The Westwood Village to Georgetown to either Othello or SODO would need 6 coaches to provide 15-minute headways. So, the changes I suggested wouldn’t require an extra service hour investment.
Here is the Route 60 ridership data from March – September 2024: https://seattletransitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/DailyRidership-3.png
Arrowhead Gardens is the largest spot of TOD on the 60 between Beacon Hill Station and Westwood. Without the 60, it is isolated.
The White Center eastbound stop on Roxbury & 15th always got good ridership, but with Eckerds shutting down there, nobody has kept light on that bus stop, chasing away a chunk of the riders. It was one of the well-used.
The Georgetown historic downtown stop got some pricey widened sidewalks that might be invoked as sunk-cost fallacy against straightening route 107.
Cleveland High School has lots of cars blocking the only lane to drop students off before school and pick them up after school. The buses are stuffed, but they get no priority.
The redo of the block in front of Beacon Hill Station is fabulous! The only thing I would change is getting rid of the traffic light at the festival street. Replace it with pavement lights activated immediately by a no-begging button. Cars ought to be stopping for any and all pedestrians at that intersection.
I still say the ideal improvement on Broadway would be more streetcars. Can’t we invoke the sink-cost fallacy to build a larger barn and buy more streetcars?
“There are no grocery stores in First Hill”
If only they would open something in the relatively newer part of Yesler Terrace neighborhood. many apartment buildings only feature smaller retail space. I guess that’s because they are easy to lease out and manage for business like coffee shops.
Isn’t First Hill Streetcar running on lower part of Broadway?
If running another north-south all-day bus service through First Hill is in need, I would very much hope that service would continue through Roy and take Lakeview Blvd to service SLU. It can run on any street except Mercer and end at Uptown.
This is not a very straight routes but I think people would find it not worse than Route 8.
Thanks for posting the ridership chart for the 60. It’s clear that most of the ridership is generated on the Beacon Hill Station to Broadway section, but West Seattle generates enough ridership to deserve 15-minute headways. Also clear is the fact that 9th Avenue generates a significant number of riders and that moving the 60 to Broadway is probably a non-starter.
The astonishing number of on/offs at Beacon Hill Station has me wondering if there are a lot of riders along Roxbury, and in South Park and Georgetown using the 60 as a connector to Link.
Proposal #1: Route 59 from Westwood Village to Georgetown and then to Othello Station via Swift Avenue with 15-minute headways.
Proposal #2: a new Route 60 that combines the north end of the 60 (Georgetown to Broadway) and the 11 Madison Park at Broadway and John with 12-minute headways. Northbound from a terminal in Georgetown, the new 60 follows the existing route path to Broadway and John (perhaps with some modifications between Yesler Terrace and Harborview). At Broadway and John, the new 60 turns onto the 11 Madison route path and terminates in Madison Park.
The 59 and 60 would use the same number of buses (18) as the current 11 and 60. (There might need to be some extra runs on Route 3 at night, however.)
Trade-offs: Madison Park gets more service (5 buses per hour instead of 3) but loses one-seat rides to the CBD. Georgetown and South Park lose one-seat rides to Beacon Hill but get one-seat rides to Othello Station, but with a frequency drop from 12 minutes to 15 minutes. Olive Way and Bellevue Avenue lose 3 buses per hour and only receive service from Route 3.
@Brent White
I like the streetcar too. More sunk cost: the Aloha extension already has plans drawn up and just needs funding
@GuyonBeacohill: I would rather merge the 60 with the 49, which would the route straight, and allow Articulated buses on the route.
I would propose this restructure, tied to the opening of Graham Station.
Route 49: U District Station to Georgetown via the 49 and 60 routes, operating at 10-minute headways.
Route 59: Seward Park Westwood Village via Seward Park Blvd, Graham st, Swift Ave, and the Southern part of Route 60, operating at 10-minute headways.
The 60 should stay on Broadway. This would provide several benefits:
1) It would be faster.
2) By being faster it would save service time. This means the bus (or some other bus) could run more often.
3) It could combine with the streetcar for more frequent service on Broadway (typically 5-6 minutes).
4) It is a step towards a better network.
We’ve gotten so used to the detour that we don’t realize how strange it is. Consider the 8 on Denny. It is infamous for being late. While there are destinations on Denny, there are also plenty of destinations just a few blocks north and south. Should the bus deviate to serve them like this: or this? No! It is just a bad idea that ends up creating a bad network. This means that riders can’t always get a bus directly from where they are to where they want to go. They have to transfer or walk a few blocks. That is normal for a city like ours, which doesn’t have that much money to spend on bus service. Even if we did have money, routes like that should be in addition to the core route that doesn’t deviate. You want to run a bus like this every fifteen minutes? Fine. First run the 8 frequently and then we can talk about it.
Better yet, serve the area with a route that is also straightforward and better complements the network. For example, this sort of thing. But again, we can’t afford that right now. Right now we should have the 60 follow a straightforward path, complementing the streetcar (thus providing frequent service along one of the key corridors in our system). Don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. Focus on the network.
Can’t we invoke the sink-cost fallacy to build a larger barn and buy more streetcars?
It would be much cheaper to just run a similar route as a bus. But it still doesn’t solve the problem. You have to get money to run the buses. It begs the question — what buses would you run less often so that the streetcar (or bus equivalent) could run more often?
In contrast if you straightened out the 60 it would save money. In other words, what buses would you run more often once you move the 60? More to the point, it makes for a very good pairing. You double up service on Broadway while branching at Jackson. Increasing frequency along the section that needs it (Broadway) while also saving money is itself a really good thing. But it also means matching the frequency with the length of the trip (which is what you want). All other things being equal, you want higher frequency on shorter trips. (In this case they aren’t equal — Broadway is one of the more urban areas of the state, easily justifying more frequency.) It is the same idea that led to a “ride free area” downtown and a spine. You can easily catch a bus from the one end of downtown to the other. But for longer trips it means more waiting.
In this case it would mean that a relatively short trip on Broadway (e. g. Pine to Yesler) would be very frequent. A longer trip on the streetcar (e. g. Capitol Hill to CID) or the 60 (Broadway & Pine to the Pacific Tower) would still have decent frequency. Not only that, but if you are trying to take the streetcar to CID from First Hill and you just miss it you can take the 60 and then take a bus along Jackson to downtown. It is a very elegant pairing given the limitations of the streetcar.
Also clear is the fact that 9th Avenue generates a significant number of riders and that moving the 60 to Broadway is probably a non-starter.
That sounds very cynical. Of course there would be people that object but you should consider the overall riding population as a whole and not focus on those that are worse off. Overall the ridership on 9th is nothing special. Go back to those proposals for the 8 (this and this). Now consider the ridership off of Denny. It would be huge. But that doesn’t make it a good route.
Furthermore, ridership is not particularly great with the detour. 9th & Alder has a lot of riders but that stop is quite close to Broadway (less than a five minute walk). Furthermore, there is nothing to the other side of Harborview. In contrast there is plenty of density to the east of Broadway at Alder. Thus the number of people that could reach the bus stop would with a five minute walk would likely increase. At 9th & James the bus is now considerably farther away from Broadway. But it also has low ridership. It is the only stop north of Weller with less than 100 riders. Ninth & Columbia does better while Boren & Madison does even better.
But of course, Madison also has the RapidRide G. Which brings me back to the main point. These areas should definitely have bus service. But not by the 60. Riders can either walk or take a different bus. Having routes zig-zag all over the place so that riders don’t have to transfer is a terrible idea. It leads to a network with infrequent and very slow buses. It is one of the big reasons why our transit system is so bad, even in this very urban area.
This isn’t even the worst area. I would say the area around Kaiser is. Think about that for a second. In the middle of the day you have nine buses an hour very close to the hospital all heading downtown. That is very close to a bus every six minutes. There is also the 8, which connects to Link, but it runs every fifteen minutes. Then there is the 43 which runs every so often (and also connects to Link). Even with all of those buses you still have times when you have to wait a long time just to go downtown. That is just bad routing.
It is also ridiculously inconsistent. Somehow we expect someone at Boren & Madison to have a one-seat ride to Beacon Hill and the Broadway & John but folks in Cherry Hill have buses only heading east-west. What if you want to get from Swedish Cherry Hill to say, Kaiser. Will one of the many buses do that? No, of course not. Overall it is just a big, inconsistent mess. It is neither focused on connectivity nor frequency. It is based on an outdated notion of the greater Central Area — that there are only a handful of places that are worthy of serving and everything else is just single family houses. The reality is that it is the opposite. The area should have a good network but we are wasting our money on poor rooting.
The ridership chart shows that over 1,000 daily trips begin or end on 9th Avenue. I don’t want to be the guy that tries to tell those people that they are going to have to walk or roll 2 or 3 blocks to Broadway to catch the bus that used to stop on 9th just so transit nerds can have a faster trip between Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill. Maybe Broadway would be more convenient for some of those 1000 trips, but the politics of that move would be impossible. And yes, I’ll plead guilty to cynicism.
Now, if someone wants to start a campaign to improve the FHSC with better infrastructure on Broadway and more frequent service, I’ll be one of the first to sign up as part of that campaign. I’ve been on some pretty crowded streetcars lately (don’t tell anyone, but the FHSC is kind of becoming popular). We were even fare checked recently and the half of the car I was standing in was completely compliant. I couldn’t see the results on the other end of the car because there were too many people blocking my view.
Metro’s 2024 System Evaluation Report has a section describing routes and their service hours needed. The top 5 routes needing service expansions were (in order): 372, 165, 240, 11, 160. Allocating more service to Route 11 might be another heavy lift politically, but Metro has identified a need for more service on that corridor.
I liked the both videos. Evan Edinger is a positive, “glass half full” sort of guy that transit needs in its corner.
My one take away from the videos is how stable much of South New Jersey is with its high percentage of home ownership, high property taxes and generational wealth…. and yet it’s still in deficit with public transit. Philly, on the other hand, has great public transit without the property tax base to fund it. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2025/08/septa-service-cuts-philadelphia-transit-crisis-bus-routes-pennsylvania-budget-capitol/
Moving forward I think the US needs housing density-zoning changes-improved transit changes that are largely fueled by a local taxes and focus on building generational wealth for the families that use them. Unfortunately I don’t think this this the plan for much of Great Seattle….
How well are Metro’s night-owl transfers timed now? This came up in the debate on ST Express night owls and the SeaTac-downtown pilot. It also affects anybody who does a 2-3 seat night-owl bus ride. I’m no longer out late night because it throws off my sleep for days, so I don’t have recent experience with this. Does anybody here?
I took the 4 around midnight recently. I didn’t get the impression it was timed with anything, though I wasn’t paying close attention.
Back when I lived in New York and Philadelphia, I used transit to go to the suburbs quite a bit. What was really interesting to me was that the bus service in New Jersey was far more extensive than in the New York City suburbs in New York state and the Philadelphia suburbs in Pennsylvania. You could get almost anywhere in New Jersey by bus. I can say from bitter experience that I don’t think this is true of any other state.
Interesting but not that surprising. According to Wikipedia, New Jersey is the only state where every county is considered “urban”. The density map (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey#/media/File:New_Jersey_population_density_2020.png) shows plenty of areas that are dense. Unlike a lot of places in this country, there is a long history with transit. There are plenty of people that drive and then take the train into Manhattan but that ultimately leads to more of a transit culture. But it also helps explain some of the shortcomings. It is quite possible the wait for the first bus would have been tiny if he was commuting. It wouldn’t surprise me if transit is very strongly oriented towards that.
New Jersey doesn’t really include the rust belt. Both Buffalo and Newark are industrial cities that have lost population since their heyday. But Buffalo has lost a lot more. That means more density which in turn often leads to better transit.
You need to be careful with rural definitions. The most common categorizations, RUCA, claims all of Pierce County is urban. It’s nonsense.
I’ve been in parts of New Jersey (north) where I’m sitting in a house in the woods on a lake, with no other structures visible. If someone is calling that urban, it’s a problem with the categorization.
At 6:04 Evan says the place his parents live now at the southern edge of New Jersey is very rural, and he also mentioned another area that I didn’t understand that may be a park. Statewide density is average, not every square mile. King County is mostly urban. but not east of Issaquah.
Agreed. You can’t categorize whole counties as urban or rural. You need to go at least down to census tract, with blocks being even better, but hard to work with.
And you have to decide what to do with suburbs and exurbs. Towns with density, that abut suburbs or farmland. It’s remarkably complicated, and you won’t please everyone. Summit/Waller is mostly farmland, but it’s a weird area, surrounded by Tacoma, Fife, Sumner and Puyallup, that could all make a case to be considered urban.
Is Evan imitating a movie character in the second video at 1:24? I’ve head that tone of voice before in RobWords at the beginning of the on English as she is spoke episode. Are they imitating a character or is this a British comic-expression manner that Evan has adopted?
“the US needs housing density-zoning changes-improved transit changes that are largely fueled by a local taxes and focus on building generational wealth for the families that use them”
The government shouldn’t be in the business of exacerbating inequality and giving things only to those who are already privileged. It should focus on improving everybody’s lives regardless of whether they’re homeowners or rich or poor. Adding sidewalks or making buses frequent improves the lives of all classes of people, both homeowners and those living paycheck to paycheck. In contrast, the mortgage-interest tax deduction takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
We’re far from the time where somebody could get a unionized roofing job and buy a house two years later (in an article somewhere this morning) or Elizabeth Warren’s mother could pay keep her house on a minimum-wage job. In that environment you could claim that helping homeowners helps everybody. But the price of housing has risen far beyond that, to a luxury for the upper middle class. Until we can get that balanced again, there should be no raising property taxes mainly for homeowner benefits. The government should support housing as a place to live in, not put resources behind using it as a speculative investment or cash cow. If people want that they can invest in a business or start one, not use an essential good for it.
I agree. Two major cost drivers that local governments have some control over are the cost of housing and transportation. Making those cheaper will put money back into people’s pockets, which to tacomee’s point gives them more opportunity to build long-term wealth.
Mike Orr,
Now you’re sounding like a guy ready to repeal ST3! Sound Transit lives or dies on property taxes, right? and sales tax and car tabs. Absolutely none of these are progressive taxes. The poor pay more here. ST3 is absolutely not progressive.
Because 2/3rds of Americans own their own home, or at least part of their home and are paying a mortgage, property taxes are absolutely fair for the majority. The more my house is worth, the higher my tax bill is. Sounds completely fair to me. This isn’t fair to renters however, and many lower income people who haven’t realized the American dream of home ownership. To these poor souls property taxes work like a VAT (value added tax). The land owner isn’t going to pay the taxes, the renter is. So a tax increase equals a rent increase. I’m deeply aware of how unjust this is. This is why owning real property is the highest goal in America. Without a hedge against inflation, it’s hard for Americans with modest incomes to ever save for retirement, let alone pass anything on to the next generation.
Weirdly enough even recent arrivals who don’t really speak English well seem to get the unwritten “Property equals security” clause we, as a nation, have been living by for 400 years. Housing isn’t a right anywhere in the world at any time in history. It’s a silly slogan, not reality. The class of people who don’t seem to understand this are often college educated.
The big problem with urbanism is general is it refuses to acknowledge the economic realities of the US economy. I’m actually “all in” on urbanism, but think fighting uphill against US tax policy is a dead end. So let’s find another way. There’s too much to post here, but I’ll write a short article about how social housing is really the dire enemy of public transit, (due to US tax policy). I’ll email it next week to the STB faithful.
All this is a choice. We choose as a society to shower benefits on homeowners at the expense of renters. Homeowners are more likely to vote, and they are much more likely to contribute to political campaigns.
If we did away with:
– The implicit guarantee of tax-payer backing the GSEs of Fannie and Freddie (which, oddly, Pulte is currently trying to undermine by privatizing),
– Tax breaks on the sale of your house.
– Property tax write-offs
– Hugely unfair step-ups in both cost-basis and depreciation recapture at death
– Limiting artificial inflation of housing value occurring through constriction of supply through zoning and regulations, then…
Owning your house would be a much less lucrative enterprise.
All those things are a choice. And a choice we can (and I feel should) reverse.
Cam Solomon,
How would you feel about having a Republican president for the rest of your life? US Senate? I mean the Democratic Party is just hanging in there by their fingernails nationally right now. Mess with Social security or the benefits of home ownership and you’re opening up a big can of political whoop ass.
Americans have a deep, long time love affair with home ownership, for centuries. This the National DNA. and the system works for two thirds of the public. Right now home ownership is tough for younger people achieve, but most of the political dialog is about making homes affordable, or at least easier to buy. No winning candidate in American said home ownership is bad thing. Even the new wave of socialist candidates are very careful not to publicly bash it. I hope Mayor Wilson doesn’t say something stupid about homeowners! Because I like her and even a single bad sentence about home ownership could sink her politically.
The reason most American urbanists ideas fail is they don’t take homeownership seriously. We absolutely need to play by the rules to win.
“the Democratic Party is just hanging in there by their fingernails nationally right now.”
I would say that about the Republican party. Democrats won most of the special elections in 2025 in congress, governorships, and judges, even in red or reddish areas.The House majority keeps dwindling due to Republicans not running again, retiring mid-term, or dying in office. Some people who voted for Trump are regretting it. The last No Kings protest got 6-8 million people. It’s likely the backlash is larger than that; it’s just not visible yet because most people haven’t had the opportunity to vote on significant races since November 2024. The question is how big is it, and is it enough to restore rule of law, a stable foreign policy, and reign in the burst of corruption. We’ll know more around the summer and November.
“Now you’re sounding like a guy ready to repeal ST3! Sound Transit lives or dies on property taxes, right?”
Property taxes are good. I was arguing against spending it on unspecified things that primarily benefit homeowners. We should spend it on things like infrastructure that benefit everybody. We don’t need to rehash ST3 again.
Mike Orr,
It’s a lot deeper than ST3. It’s property taxes in general. As I’ve posted before, property taxes are reasonable only if you own the property. If you’re renting, property taxes act like a VAT tax. We can’t blame all of Seattle’s runaway rent increases on higher property taxes, but certainly property taxes have played a role in rising rents. So the City and State governments need to own up to pushing housing prices higher.
There’s also a lot of storm clouds on the horizon when you look at the relationship between rent control, social housing and property taxes. I’d even argue that property taxes are the big divide between the USA and our cousins over in Europe. There are solutions to this of course, I mean America is the richest county in history and it’s not like we don’t have the resources. But I think it all starts with honestly looking at where we’ve been and where we want to go.
And by rehashing ST3 I mean I’m not getting into whether ST3 is good for everybody or good for nobody.
“The land owner isn’t going to pay the taxes, the renter is. So a tax increase equals a rent increase.”
In a functioning market place for housing, this isn’t true.
If there is sufficient housing, and we are able to build profitably to fill the need, a landlord can only charge a competitive rent (regardless of their property tax), or his unit sits empty.
Over the last couple generations, our governments have chosen to artificially constrain housing supply with onerous zoning and regulations, but that doesn’t completely remove laws of supply and demand.
The basic taxation challenge is determining what’s equitable given different income and ownership levels.
Our system has become more increasingly favorable to inherited wealth, shielded in corporate ownership. The growing inequity is pervasive. It’s happening worldwide too.
Even all the good urbanism strategies are tainted by this problem. When duplexes that are owned by people dividing their houses in two are banned on one block — but 5 over 1 apartments built by wealthy development corporations are possible a few blocks away are encouraged, that adds density but sets the stage for more wealth inequality.
So rather than people generating modest direct income from tenants or selling off part of a multi-unit house, we are expected to instead invest in a managed fund where the asset gets reduced by the financial sector taking out fees and other things which make their way to the billionaire class and the money is used to build corporate-owned housing.
Our “housing shortage” is in number of units. It’s not in square feet. If much of our existing suburban housing stock, especially the stock built since 1970, could be reimagined and repurposed as smaller units we could house lots of people and not accept how the rent is going more and more to mega corporations.
I’m starting to see several videos (my YouTube feed) on the Créteil aerial gondolas or cable car that opened last month. It’s a suburban Paris line, and Paris is a latitudinal sibling to Seattle. It runs 2.8 miles and takes 18 minutes as the full distance (three intermediate stops). It took 3.7 years to go from groundbreaking to opening day.
Thoughts? Prospective corridors?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gN6gJxQ3BMQ
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WqP4QipFCkc
I see this as a useful technology to conquer some of our region’s topographical rail transit challenges that can’t be easily met by buses. One video says that the line was built for just 150M Euros or . Even if the cost was doubled, we could apparently build three for a billion dollars. Compare that to the $4 billion just to go between Alaska Junction and Delridge in West Seattle (and that doesn’t even include the vehicles or additional OMF space).
I’ve tended to prefer the guided cable systems like the Oakland Airport BART connection ($500M) because they seemed to be faster (9 minutes to go 3.2 miles but with no intermediate stops). They are certainly more expensive and the technology is proprietary (Doppelmayr). Still, the high frequency nature of a gondola system does cut wait time to well less than a minute.
There will be an article tomorrow on a Paris gondola. I’m not sure if it’s the same one.
Cool! I’ll refrain from commenting here.
The article is being held pending clarification of a couple points. Hopefully it will be resolved this morning.
It’s published.
Today I noticed that E John St westbound at Broadway E in Capitol Hill has a left-turn pocket-turned bus-only lane. With sign showing no left-turn except for bus. What is the bus-only left-turn lane even for?
There is no regular service on that movement. Is that just for Link shuttle and 43?
Times article on the ST Express airport night owl pilot.
In it, ST’s Henry Bendon suggests an advantage of serving TIB station: ” Tukwila International Boulevard, which has parking, and a large, covered and well-lit waiting area”.
CEO Constantine says: “While our proposed regional overnight bus network is still in development, adding this pilot now provides expanded flexibility for airport passengers and employees as we prepare to welcome the world during the FIFA World Cup.”