The Seattle-area transportation proposals: a vast waste of money

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 7:46 a.m. inappropriate

gave away my car five years ago...: am my own mule, far less need of health clubs, you see so much more walking, process your thoughts more thoroughly, good for fantasizing, working through, about five miles a day on the average. bus service is adequate, but obviously is inadequate in many neighborhoods: shuttle type small buses would help immensely. rickshaws downtown to employ the homeless and keep them out of rehab. cheers.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 7:57 a.m. inappropriate

The politics don't allow it: Morrill's overall suggestion that the solution is better management of our existing road surface might well be correct though making every arterial an urban freeway – the outcome if you follow his ideas through -- hardly promotes urban livability.

But there are two other issues:

1.The public is not even remotely ready for a comprhensive congestion pricing plan -- even if we knew how to create one.

2. Politicians feel pressure to do something now -- not in five years when the prublic has gotten use to the idea of demand management.

Personally I am not concerned. The do-nothing alternative which we are chosing by default allows congestion to exert its cost and thus for people to take whatever avoidance response which they can. The do-nothing alternative is in fact what we will end up doing and so we'd better figure out how to educate people to it i.e. that they must find their own personal responses/solutions as our govermnet is simply not capable.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 8:10 a.m. inappropriate

btw about the "do nothing alternative.": I want to make it clear that I am not really proposing or favoring or praising the "do nothing alternative."

I am just describing the reality of what we are doing.

i am a coinventional do-good liberal; i voted for the Monorail five times. i am only saying with sadness that for whatever reason we are not capable -- as a city of region -- of taking effective action when it comes to transportation. so i am trying to mkake the best of it.

the only good news on the horizon is the basically private sector South Lake Union Street Car -- that will be ahuge success.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 8:21 a.m. inappropriate

more malarky from Morrill... when will Crosscut bring us intelligent critique: I can't explain why Crosscut continues to solicit more sugar-coated malarky from the way-former Prof. Morrill. Touted as a transportation expert, he is is an isolated and insulated academic with no reputation in transportation matters (except locally, in Oz). Like many of the now disregarded has-beens of the 70s and 80s, he believes that Seattle must only have solutions unique to Oz, because, well, we are so very special. Transporation solutions that have been proven and successful IN EVERY OTHER CITY ON EARTH are not good enough for Morrill, make no sense to him, and are simply tossed out.

Morrill knee-capped transportation planning in Seattle for 20 years. He is almost single handedly responsible for today's mess. This is someone who has obviously never ridden a bus (goods rides... have you ever tried this on a bus!?) More buses for short, in-city trips? Maybe there is reason no other city ON PLANT EARTH is using this modality, because IT DOESN'T WORK!!!

If Morrill took the bus, he would know that Seattle has a terrible bus system. As Councilor Licata's recent Urban Politics Newsletter #236 notes, the local bus system is inconsistent, late, too thin, too slow, not on schedule, and doesn't meet its own performance promises. Morrill's second answer to transportation bottlenecks: hey, don't go anywhere! Stay home! Make it too expensive and inconvenient to travel and people will stay off the road so Morrill can drive his SUV to Issaquah Alps with no traffic, like he did in 1968!

Morrill has never understood the most basic priniciples of transportation planning. He's made mistakes, and this article just another nail in his post-academic reputation. A better use of Crosscut money: paying to send Morrill on a tour of cities that have functioning mass transportation systems: Chicago, Portland, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Stockholm, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Lyon, Madrid, Moscow, Helsinki, Boston, Mexico City, Bogata, Washington DC.

Uncle Mike

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 8:25 a.m. inappropriate

RE: btw about the "do nothing alternative.": I hope David is not speaking tongue in cheek. The streetcar will be a huge success, I predict. It will speak volumes about how people adapt to transport solutions. I expect to see the city restore most of the system before my death.

Uncle Mike

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 8:56 a.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: .
Uncle Mike derisively writes:

Morrill knee-capped transportation planning in Seattle for 20 years. He is almost single handedly responsible for today's mess. (...) Morrill has never understood the most basic principles of transportation planning.
--------

Baloney - and you know it. (Besides, when does personal animus substitute for constructive thought?)

The region's transportation mess is owing to 1) a growing imbalance in land use; and 2) insufficient capacity on many key transportation links.

These are related to one another: the City of Seattle's policy has encouraged, through zoning and other regulatory incentives, the construction of almost 20 million gross square feet of office space in downtown in the '70's and '80's alone (especially the '80's), the two decades following completion of I-5. Those 20 million GSF can accommodate on the order of 100,000 jobs. What percentage of those are held by people who walk to those new downtown office buildings? My guess is that it's less than 5%. Hence, downtown Seattle consumes virtually all the freeway capacity; a little is available for through traffic and commercial movement. ST's light rail and its commuter rail program are designed to add -at considerable additional public expense- more transportation capacity to & from downtown. This will enable even more new downtown office buildings to be constructed for their owners to collect ever more rent. Seattle *assumes* that it will need to accommodate 70,000 more jobs in downtown over the next twenty years; that couldn't be done without new transportation capacity to/from downtown -- and that can't be done without ST, which itself can't be done without hoodwinking the region's taxpayers into thinking subsidizing downtown one more time will be good for them, too.

Speaking of subsidy, if Seattle were to apply impact fees on new commercial office development as suburban communities apply them to residential development so to get growth to pay for the new school capacity needed by that development, the downtown office building transportation impact fee relating to Sound Transit's commuter rail, light rail and express bus projects would be over $100,000 for every single office workspace ('cubicle').

Now, let me ask: can you figure out why Seattle doesn't apply such transportation impact fee? If you can explain that, you win the prize....(Hint: it has something to do with convincing everyone else that it's a civic responsibility for them to bestow this new transportation capacity upon downtown's property owners so everyone can take pride in the skyline they paid for. After all, all those 70,000 new jobs can't locate anywhere else, can they? No, of course not...)

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 9:03 a.m. inappropriate

Street car: I was not speaking tongue-in-cheek at all. I believe that the Lake Union STreet car (LUST) will be wildly successful and will be a model for future, small incremental changes.

1. It required substantial private investment and
2. was capable of being completed in a foreseeable time-frame.
3. it is at a human-scale.

It is not politically-realistic to ask people to vote for improvements which will not be completed for decades. Voters want to see change and the big projects just go on and on. Even the Viaduct -- a mile or so long -- is beyond our political capability because the time-frames presented (remember at first it was a TWELVE year construction project)

We should leave regional transport largely alone so that individuals have to come up with their own solutions such as moving closer to work or moving away completely to another region if they don't like the traffic.

One of the reasons that we are having so much trouble is that we are thinking too big -- on a regional level -- or too complex -- not just tolling a bridge to pay for it but a far more sophisticated "congestion pricing system" for all the highways as part of "demand management." The politics and financial issues are far too enormous for us to handle the big projects. That should be evident. Fifteen years to build the first leg of Sound Transit -- all 15 (?) miles. That speaks volumes.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 9:30 a.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: Are you kidding?

A total of 26.2% of Seattlites either walk, bus, or ride a bike to work -- it would be reasonable to guess that the number is double for downtown workers, since the number in neighborhoods like Magnolia and Laurelhurst is approximately 0%. Downtown/density is not a transportation problem, it's a solution.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 9:46 a.m. inappropriate

Rapid transit is a mistake?: The first major expansion of the NYC subway system planned in 1929 cost $1.13 trillion in 2006 dollars, not even including the cost of land acquisition, which I'm sure might be several trillion more. It took almost 50 years to fully complete. Today, over half of all NYC residents use public transport to get to work and the NYC subway system carries 1.5 billion people annually.

I guess they should have just bought more buses and tolled some bridges in 1929?

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 10:23 a.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: //Hence, downtown Seattle consumes virtually all the freeway capacity//

This is exactly why mass-transit works for cities. Almost everyone is going to the same place. You can either take up 100 sf of space per person on a massive pipeline into the city, or 10 sf of space on a little pipeline. Have you factored into your numbers the cost of expanding the bridges compared to adding rail? Busses help the pipeline capacity issue but unless you have a completely seperate road from start to finish, they take more time than driving and hence have little incentive for people to leave their cars.

As for the hope that the answer lies in sprawling cities - that's just a terrible idea. On a daily basis I walk to clients' and associates' offices. Cities are built for collaboration, and there's a reason companies are willing to pay much higher rent in a city versus the suburbs. I also pay a premium to live in the city, and am happy to do so for improved quality of life - it takes me 10 minutes to bike to work, or 15 on the bus.

The optimal solution is for everyone to live and work in dense areas. This largely removes transportation as an issue. However, as people love their yards, the second best option for a geography-restrained city is a high-density pipeline such as light rail.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 10:47 a.m. inappropriate

A word about Professor Morrill: The claim that Professor Richard Morrill is "almost single-handedly responsible for today's (transportation) mess" is beyond silly. Professor Morrill isn't a transportation expert, nor does he claim to be one. In the last 20 years, he's functioned more as the Charlie Chong of UW planning profs, ever at the ready to poke holes in other people's plans for the amusement of the media and backwards-thinking pensioners (such as the Crosscut writing staff). This article makes some good points about the inevitable demise of car culture, some weak criticisms of light rail, and offers virtually nothing in the way of solutions. OK, he does say "let's get more buses and ride more bikes." Whatever.

Professor Morrill does make one very good point: The planner elite seems convinced that imposing tolls on all limited-access roadways is inevitable and will take place in the near future. Morrill isn't convinced that the public is ready to buy this idea. I think he's right.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 11:07 a.m. inappropriate

Bus service: Like mikerolm in the first message I got rid of my car a few years ago and now rely on my middle-aged feet and the bus system to get around. Th bus system works great if you simply plan ahead a little. Sure it's not as convenient as driving a car, but it's a helluvalot cheaper and better for your health and the environment. I frequently travel around the region to Tacoma, the Eastside, Everett, etc. I fly to San Francisco and take the train to Portland, with no big hassles at all. Give yourself some lead time (the people who complain about the bus are the people who stress themselves out with a tight schedule.)and if you get there a little early get a cup of coffee. You can afford it with all the money you saved on gas. And it's surprising how much extra time you have now that you don't have to maintain a "money pit" car. When I first got rid of my car I thought I would be using the Flexcar parked down the street occasionally, but have never had the need to rent it. The bus system we have with Metro and Sound Transit is often complained about, but is in fact, one of the better systems in the country. Metro has recently ordered 500 new busses to go with their existing fleet of 1300. They will be, presumably, hybrids, as the ones they have now are wotking out well. I think Morrill has it right, it would be far better to put more buses on the street and simply make better use of the roads we have.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 11:55 a.m. inappropriate

There is no Silver Bullet: But a lot of diverse strategies put together are going to be the best we can hope for.
It is inevitable that higher fuel costs will force people to commute less, carpool more, and take more transit.

I dont agree that trains dont work- every working urban rapid transit system in the world uses some combination of trains and bus. And every one of them subsidises the fare, often to the tune of large dollar amounts- because the other costs, the ones that congestion charges, are hidden- lost work time, lost jobs, slow freight delivery, pollution, and so on. You save money in those expenses, and spend money on transit, and its not direct or obvious, but most countries world wide feel its a fair trade, and so they all spend money on light and heavy rail.

The main north south corridor of I-5 is remarkably suited to rail- but currently, I can take TWO trains per day to Downtown Seattle- one in the morning, one at night- so instead, I drive the 90 miles. In Japan, or Europe, or Argentina, there would be a train at least every 30 minutes, from Bellingham to Olympia.
This would not solve in-city Seattle traffic, but it would take a percentage of the load off I-5.

The other thing I never hear suggested is private jitneys- if we really are so poor, and tax averse, that we cannot improve bus service and build light rail (which I believe is nonesense- in reality, we CAN , and MUST, do both) why not allow private minibus service- it works in many freemarket (as opposed to socialist) countries around the world.
Allow insured vehicles to run any route they want, and charge any fare they want.
Group taxis like this are a tried and true solution for over 100 years around the world.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, noon inappropriate

RE: Rapid transit is a mistake?: Jamier, In 1929 NYC didn't spend any $1.13 trillion on transit in today's dollars. You said they took 50 yrs to build it. So was that $1.13 trillion in 1929 dollars or 1979 dollars? So your numbers may be distorted by by a couple of orders of magnitude.

The reason that NYC residents use the subway system to get around is that they've let their road system go to hell. And that happens when you over-build with high-rises and cannot support your downtown with roads. Their density is just too overwhelming. We don't have anything like that density in Seattle, but that's what proponents of ST seem to want.

By the way, in NYC doesn't even pretend to have a real usable road system. I overhead a FedX employee once say that his company budgets $1 million a year to pay for double-parking tickets in Manhattan.

Realize that there are two sides to the Nirvana of Manhattan. Consider these quotes from a piece written by David Owen in 2004:

"The [48-story] Condé Nast Building contains 1.6 million square feet of floor space, and it sits on one acre of land. If you divided it into 48 one-story suburban office buildings, each averaging 33,000 square feet, and spread those one-story buildings around the countryside, and then added parking and some green space around each one, you'd end up consuming at least a 150 acres of land. And then you'd have to provide infrastructure, the highways and everything else." Like many other buildings in Manhattan, 4 Times Square doesn't even have a parking lot, because the vast majority of the six thousand people who work inside it don't need one. In most other parts of the country, big parking lots are not only necessary but are required by law. If my town's zoning regulations applied in Manhattan, 4 Times Square would have needed sixteen thousand parking spaces, one for every hundred square feet of office floor space."

"Of course, living in densely populated urban centers has many drawbacks. Even wealthy New Yorkers live in spaces that would seem cramped to Americans living almost anywhere else. A well-to-do friend of mine who grew up in a town house in Greenwich Village thought of his upbringing as privileged until, in prep school, he visited a classmate from the suburbs and was staggered by the house, the lawn, the cars, and the swimming pool, and thought, with despair, You mean I could live like this? Manhattan is loud and dirty, and the subway is depressing, and the fumes from the cars and cabs and buses can make people sick."


I personally am in favor of homes with backyards AND high rises in cities. Ultimately, mass transit should make economic sense. As Mr. Morrill points out, what we're planning now doesn't make economic sense. That's why he's in favor of buses.

To make our transport infrastructure fiscally rational, we should be doing the following:

1. As much as possible we should be making the user pay. That means tolling, and congestion and demand pricing.

2. As much as possible let tolling pay for construction costs directly. The 520 bridge is the perfect place to start. That means avoiding bonding where the taxpayer pays 1/2 to 2/3 of costs to bondholders for debt service rather than for actual construction.

3. Pass laws that relax (not eliminate) environmental, prevailing wage, and mitigation constraints on construction projects. It's well known and well understood that government capital projects are HUGE PORK BARREL projects upon which many special interest groups feed.

4. Give responsibility and accountability to an engineering and construction entity, whether a Transportation Authority or private concessionaires for toll roads. Get the politicians out of designing systems and bring in competition to get costs down.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 12:02 p.m. inappropriate

Definitions are important: If one goal of transportation investments is to improve "urban livability" it would be helpful to have a definition of that term. Then we could judge whether the benefits of the investment are commensurate with the costs. Anyone want to venture a definition?

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 12:18 p.m. inappropriate

RE: There is no Silver Bullet: There's no silver bullet, but mostly what you're describing is things that have some semblence of economic reality. The free market, if allowed to operate, will build what is needed. Government should sit back and bless what entreprenuers and concessionaires propose to build or implement based on the transportation and financial merits of each scheme.

Instead, we have it backwards. Government insists on building what is needed, and wants taxpayers to bless their hyper-expensive plans through the payment of taxes.

Clearly, if we could build new roads and light rail for no cost, we'd build them. But price is the real issue. What value are we getting for our money and can we afford what we want?

For example, will someone please explain why ANYONE can afford light rail? Why aren't light rail users going to pay for the whole thing at the toll box? Why subsidize high-income commuters working in high-rise offices? Why not charge them $20 a ride each way? That'll help get the taxpayer subsidy way down from where it is now. And if light rail is so great, why in the world do we have to subsidize any of it? (I know, we subsidize auto transportation, so it's not fair. But two wrongs don't make a right. Let's make cars pay directly for infrastructure too. THEN presumably we'll see people clamoring for light rail because it makes economic sense.)

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 12:19 p.m. inappropriate

The Emperor's New Clothes: Professor Morrill is absolutely right. Although we must resign ourselves to the light rail already crawling through town we should commit to no more. New rail in Seattle is not cost effective. As he points out we should expand bus transit and develop new surface lanes for that and congestion priced automobile use.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 12:24 p.m. inappropriate

re urban livability...: It's in the eye of the beholder. From an economic perspective if it increases rents, then it increases livability. This means that it increase property values and property taxes and so property owners and government both benefit. Indeed, they're the ones who should be footing a large part of the transport bill (possibly based on Tax Deferred Financing) not the general taxpayer, many of whom will never set foot in a light rail car. This applies in Spades to the Viaduct, where property owners will be the big winners. Why should the rest of us pay for projects whose primary goals are to increase their property values and NOT to further transportation goals?

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 12:44 p.m. inappropriate

"From an economic perspective if it increases rents, then it increases livability.": "From an economic perspective if it increases rents, then it increases livability."

Explain that please. It is certainly not obvious to me

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 1:04 p.m. inappropriate

How much do roads cost us?: I'd love to see a study of how much cars and busses cost us. Think about the amount of pavement in our world. Add to that the land value for that pavement, the maintenance and replacement every decade or so for the pavement, freeways, overpasses, bridges. Let's look at upper Queen Anne hill alone. It's about a mile wide and a mile long, with about 20 blocks in either direction. Streets are about 35' wide. 5280' x 35' x 20 x 2 = 7,392,000 sf of paved area. Average per sf land cost is around $250 on Queen Anne. That's 1,848,000,000 (1.8 billion).

Wow, Queen Anne roads are worth 1.8 billion dollars for the land alone - forgetting the construction cost, maintenance, and bond interest involved if we built these things now. And that's just for local streets - all of the rest of the infrastructure isn't included. Why on earth would we build such expensive things?

The answer is because their usefulness to us outweighs their immense costs. My point is that you should raise your expectations about what we can/should afford in the interest of improving our quality of life.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 1:14 p.m. inappropriate

RE: re urban livability...: Indeed, it would seem that a general concept such as "urban livability" ultimately must be defined through the eyes of the beholder. But whose eyes do we choose? My property's value has gone up for 20 straight years, so my "livability" has improved considerably according to this definition. In the same period, and especially recently with stagnant wages and increasing mortgage interest rates, increasing numbers of my fellow citizens and neighbors have found it impossible to afford home ownership, and they have less choice regarding residential location and perhaps proximity to employment. Their "livability" standard has been effectively redefined by the marketplace. So how much weight should be given in our transportation policy and investment decisions to their urban livability reality?

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 1:27 p.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: .
jamier claims: "A total of 26.2% of Seattlites either walk, bus, or ride a bike to work" and then concludes: "Downtown/density is not a transportation problem, it's a solution."

That's baloney, too. Don't cite something from The Stranger, go the the real data source: the U.S. DOT's Transportation Census. You'll find transit's market share in the Seattle region is on the order of 8%, somewhat better than that of Portland which already has rail transit. The percentage of Seattle downtown workers who ride transit to work is on the order of 40%. But that doesn't mean they *live* there, too, hence the need for transport capacity to and from downtown. Downtown density is at best only a partial solution. People live in spaces larger than they work in, so to have a jobs-housing balance in downtown, you'd have to have residential capacity approximating *triple* that of commercial office space in downtown. Imagine three Columbia Towers simply for the employees in the Columbia Tower. Then imagine three residential towers for each of all the other downtown office towers -- and you'll come to see how downtown density can only be a partial solution. And you'll realize that downtown commercial office density IS a transportation problem. I'm not kidding...

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 1:31 p.m. inappropriate

Morrill "is almost single-handedly responsible for today's mess"?: .
Uncle Mike derisively writes:

"Morrill knee-capped transportation planning in Seattle for 20 years. He is almost single handedly responsible for today's mess. (...) Morrill has never understood the most basic principles of transportation planning."
--------

Baloney - and you know it. (Besides, when does personal animus substitute for constructive thought?)

The region's transportation mess is owing to 1) a growing imbalance in land use; and 2) insufficient capacity on many key transportation links.

These are related to one another: the City of Seattle's policy has encouraged, through zoning and other regulatory incentives, the construction of almost 20 million gross square feet of office space in downtown in the '70's and '80's alone (especially the '80's), the two decades following completion of I-5. Those 20 million GSF can accommodate on the order of 100,000 jobs. What percentage of those are held by people who walk to those new downtown office buildings? My guess is that it's less than 5%. Hence, downtown Seattle consumes virtually all the freeway capacity; a little is available for through traffic and commercial movement. ST's light rail and its commuter rail program are designed to add -at considerable additional public expense- more transportation capacity to & from downtown. This will enable even more new downtown office buildings to be constructed for their owners to collect ever more rent. Seattle *assumes* that it will need to accommodate 70,000 more jobs in downtown over the next twenty years; that couldn't be done without new transportation capacity to/from downtown -- and that can't be done without ST, which itself can't be done without hoodwinking the region's taxpayers into thinking subsidizing downtown one more time will be good for them, too.

Speaking of subsidy, if Seattle were to apply impact fees on new commercial office development as suburban communities apply them to residential development so to get growth to pay for the new school capacity needed by that development, the downtown office building transportation impact fee relating to Sound Transit's commuter rail, light rail and express bus projects would be over $100,000 for every single office workspace ('cubicle').

Now, let me ask: can you figure out why Seattle doesn't apply such transportation impact fee? If you can explain that, you win the prize....(Hint: it has something to do with convincing everyone else that it's a civic responsibility for them to bestow this new transportation capacity upon downtown's property owners so everyone can take pride in the skyline they paid for. After all, all those 70,000 new jobs can't locate anywhere else, can they? No, of course not...)

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 1:47 p.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: .
Matt explains:

"//Hence, downtown Seattle consumes virtually all the freeway capacity//

This is exactly why mass-transit works for cities. Almost everyone is going to the same place. You can either take up 100 sf of space per person on a massive pipeline into the city, or 10 sf of space on a little pipeline. Have you factored into your numbers the cost of expanding the bridges compared to adding rail? Busses help the pipeline capacity issue but unless you have a completely seperate road from start to finish, they take more time than driving and hence have little incentive for people to leave their cars.
(...)
The optimal solution is for everyone to live and work in dense areas. This largely removes transportation as an issue. However, as people love their yards, the second best option for a geography-restrained city is a high-density pipeline such as light rail."

---
You mistakenly assume "almost everyone is going to the same place". A significant, but still rather small percentage of the region's travel demand is oriented to downtown, that 'same place' you allude to. But your other mistake is that you ignore that 'almost everyone going to the same place' are *coming* from almost every point of the compass. How do you propose to build those "little" multi-billion dollar pipelines in all those directions, in order to equitably serve 'almost everyone' fairly? Or is equity not of concern to you? You're willing to impose a significant tax on 100% of the population simply to serve 1.2%? Whew -- that's breathtaking! And drop the pretension that there's an 'optimal solution' -- that thinking doesn't allow any latitude for personal choice. Besides, it's not the people (the 'ants' as they should be viewed) that need to be harnessed into your solution, it's the downtown property owners who want a big gift at virtually no expense to themselves.

No, I haven't figured in the cost of expanding the bridges. How and why would such be relevant to the true economics of Sound Transit? (If I championed bridges, would you ask if I had factored in the cost of light rail?)

There *is* a role for mass transit in cities. The trick is to size it properly to obtain the greatest effect. I'm not convinced running it across Lake Washington quite measures up.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 1:53 p.m. inappropriate

RE: There is no Silver Bullet: .
Ries remarks:

"..every working urban rapid transit system in the world uses some combination of trains and bus. And every one of them subsidises the fare, often to the tune of large dollar amounts- because the other costs, the ones that congestion charges, are hidden- lost work time, lost jobs, slow freight delivery, pollution, and so on."

---
You may consider those costs to be 'hidden', but they're very apparent to everyone who incurs them. They're not invisible like you suggest.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 2:05 p.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: I know exactly where they're coming from and to when we're talking about any given pipeline. On I-90 about half are coming from the east side of the lake to the west. The rest are coming from the west to the east. You have a point that not everyone going west is going downtown, but a whole lot (I'd say most, but have no numbers) are. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of clogging up our expensive bridges, those that are going downtown parked on their own side of the lake (at a much less expensive parking lot - lucky them) and rode light rail right downtown? Then those people that aren't going downtown wouldn't have to wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The cost of adding capacity to the bridges is directly relevant. We spend a whole lot of money on bridges, for the purpose of getting across the water fast. There is real value in making that trip fast again.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 3:08 p.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: i live in magnolia and bus to work. just saying.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 3:22 p.m. inappropriate

RE: Try 5 billion: The NYC expansion cost about $440 million in current dollars, which adjusted for inflation is just shy of $5 billion.

In order for the figure on $1.13 trillion to be correct, the cost of the subway would have had to have been $99 billion in 1929 dollars, which is roughly the same as the GNP for the entire nation.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 3:27 p.m. inappropriate

Morrill Has It About Right: I believe that Morril has it about right. A $38 billion dollar package (and the all-in cost would be considerly higher) that doesn't rebuilt either SR520 or reconfigure the viaduct is sort of crazy. And light rail on I-90, which is the center-piece of this package would, if built, reduce capacity on I-90. Go figure.

The thing about urban mobility is that it's a really easy problem to solve. Take transit: Price the freeway HOV lanes, turning them into HOT lanes, and convert some arterial parking lanes to bus lanes. Add buses, vanpools, carpools.
Problem solved.
see here

As for general mobily, just follow along this same path, first making any new freeway lanes (eg on I-405) HOT, and finally at some unspecified time in the future, convert the currently "free" lanes to the same status. One benefit: a lane in free-flow can carry about twice the number of vehicles as can a lane in typical rush hours "gridlock". So we would increase our effective capacity by a factor of two. A freeway with a "market clearing" price that changes every few minutes (see, eg, I-15 HOT in San Diego) balances supply and demand. And a freeway system in which the net funds from pricing are reinvested in capacity enhancements in the corridor where they are collected -- either via more lanes (I-405) and/or more transit (eg I-5) -- balances supply and demand dynamically, ie through time.
It's pretty simple stuff.
see here
and follow links at the end for more information.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 3:30 p.m. inappropriate

RE: "From an economic perspective if it increases rents, then it increases livability.": I'm being simplistic and trying to say that ultimately you have to translate social values into a medium of exchange, i.e., money, and that the market will reflect those social values in the value of rents. This ain't perfect because of externalities, the problem of the commons, etc., but generally, properties in an urban area with high "urban livability" will have higher property values and can charge higher rents across the board than similar properties with low urban livability.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 3:33 p.m. inappropriate

RE: Morrill Has It About Right: Pretty sane and reasonable proposal. And thrifty to boot.
We should vote on it and not the RTID.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 4:50 p.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: .
Matt again: "I know exactly where they're coming from and to when we're talking about any given pipeline. On I-90 about half are coming from the east side of the lake to the west. The rest are coming from the west to the east. You have a point that not everyone going west is going downtown, but a whole lot (I'd say most, but have no numbers) are. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of clogging up our expensive bridges, those that are going downtown parked on their own side of the lake (at a much less expensive parking lot - lucky them) and rode light rail right downtown? Then those people that aren't going downtown wouldn't have to wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The cost of adding capacity to the bridges is directly relevant. We spend a whole lot of money on bridges, for the purpose of getting across the water fast. There is real value in making that trip fast again."

--------
YOU know "exactly" where they're coming from, yet you only cite one side of the lake for one direction and the other side of the lake for the other direction. Very funny, but you haven't pinpointed the true trip origins for that 'almost everyone' you claim to know all about. You subscribe to what I term a 'first-order' analysis: simple, neat and far too general. Strive to understand the problem at a deeper level.

Your suggestion that people should avoid the bridges, use park 'n ride lots and ride (rail) transit across the lake has some merit (although many already do, of course), but it is appealing only for those headed to downtown Seattle and don't have to travel to clients, etc. regularly as part of their job. By contrast, though, avoiding the bridges, ditching their cars and riding transit eastward is not appealing for those working on the Eastside, owing to rail having great difficulty in providing adequate geographic coverage UNLESS 'almost everyone' lives (and works) in only a handful of geographic locales. That's not gonna happen, so why plan for such a pipeline that works best & mostly only in one direction? (Think on that: doesn't the imbalance leading to that condition provide a clue as to the real problem that needs to be remedied? Building pipelines that principally flow in one direction might work well for sewerage service, but is that a desirable objective for transportation systems characterized by diurnal flows? That forces you to wastefully build capacity in each direction for peaks artificially *larger* than would be the case if travel demand was more directionally and temporally uniform in its distribution.)

I agree that adding capacity to the bridges, but only 520 is under such discussion presently, as I-90's capacity will be reduced by extending LRT to the Eastside. However, if you want to add the cost of that added capacity to the $100K/cubicle Seattle transportation impact fee on downtown office development I hypothesized earlier, you won't be able to assign all that cost simply to downtown, as my number does for Sound Transit light rail, commuter rail and express bus projects. What distinguishes 520 from ST projects is that, as part of the region's ubiquitous roadway network, the accessibility benefits flowing from an added lane on 520 won't/can't be captured exclusively by downtown property.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 5:12 p.m. inappropriate

Care to back up your statistic ??: Wow, what an amazing factoid - right down to the tenth of a percent !

Just what is the source ?

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 5:12 p.m. inappropriate

RE: How much do roads cost us?: Matt once again engages in first-order 'analysis':

"...upper Queen Anne hill alone [is] about a mile wide and a mile long, with about 20 blocks in either direction. Streets are about 35' wide. 5280' x 35' x 20 x 2 = 7,392,000 sf of paved area.Average per sf land cost is around $250 on Queen Anne. That's 1,848,000,000 (1.8 billion).

Wow, Queen Anne roads are worth 1.8 billion dollars for the land alone"

-----
I guess the streets of Queen Anne must be paved in gold. You say just the land they occupy is worth the equivalent of $10.7 million an acre, eh? I'll let that pass...

My question to you is -assuming for the moment your figure is accurate, which I seriously doubt- what allows for that $250/sf raw land value you claim? The roads do, thanks to the accessibility they provide to the land parcels they serve. Imagine upper Queen Anne without any streets. How many QA homes would sell for over a million, even if they sat on an 4,000 sf lot (which your $250/sf of land figure would place a value of $1 million on, just for the land.)

The 'first-order' analyses you seem to specialize in can lead to dangerously ill-informed conclusions. (But that's just the way Seattle works, isn't it?)

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 5:16 p.m. inappropriate

Hey jamier ...: my post above is meant for you.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 8:21 p.m. inappropriate

RE: There is no Silver Bullet: When I say they are hidden, I mean to people like Stuka, who thinks that Light Rail trips cost 20 bucks each.
He is assuming all those other costs to government, industry, and individuals are totally disconnected from the cost of light rail.
My point is that if you look at the overall cost of the entire system, we are already paying 20 bucks a ride for people to drive their cars downtown- we are just doing it in a thousand different, "hidden" ways. The government pays billions for all kinds of things that make it "free" to drive on I-5.

If you looked at the entire systems, you would see that light rail is not so expensive after all.
Its similar to airplane tickets- I can buy a ticket to fly to California for a couple hundred bucks, because the government is subsidising the entire air traffic control system, paying for R&D; on radar, GPS, and avionics, and building airports.
If each airplane ticket had to pay its share of those costs, it would cost a couple of thousand dollars to fly to LA.
Just like it "costs" 20 bucks to ride Sound Transit.

But if we actually calculated the lesser costs elsewhere by getting people off the roads, Sound Transit gets cheaper.
And this has to be a long term investment.
Development will occur around transit stops, especially if the city helps with zoning, as gas goes higher and higher.
And the more dense the area along the light rail lines get, the more ridership, and the more cost effective they are.

Paris has 40,000 people per square mile.
Seattle has 4,000.
So of course, our ridership numbers are going to be lower than theirs.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 8:50 p.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: We're getting closer, but we're still far apart.

1. Yes, that was a little tongue-in-cheek, but I wanted to make sure we were both talking about geography-constricted pipelines, not open flatland networks.

2. True, I only know the common destination, and only on the west side for that example. The east side is too sprawled to be a business destination (ok, Bellevue is getting closer). It's not ideal, but its enough. The source can be a park-and-ride solution. What makes mass transit a good solution is having a common endpoint - once you're in the city most people don't need to travel anywhere else.

3. I don't think your example of having to travel constantly to meet clients is the common example. Me and all of my co-workers need to travel to meet clients. How this was handled in my last office was a few company cars. How it's handled at my present one is planning ahead and one person driving in, or just rent a car / take a taxi.

4. You're certainly right that the devil's in the details, but if you plan a good efficient system people will change their behavior to use it. Leaving the system alone is a sure way to end up with gridlock, high fuel costs, and a cripled economy (try to visit clients when it takes 2 hours to cross the bridge).

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 9:50 p.m. inappropriate

RE: There is no Silver Bullet: It's important to base these discussions on the best facts available. It is simply inaccurate to say "I can buy a ticket to fly to California for a couple hundred bucks, because the government is subsidising the entire air traffic control system, paying for R&D; on radar, GPS, and avionics, and building airports. If each airplane ticket had to pay its share of those costs, it would cost a couple of thousand dollars to fly to LA." Reality: Revenues from taxes on tickets and other user fees go into the Federal General Fund and are then transferred to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund which covers 100 percent of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airport grants-in-aid; facilities and equipment; and research, engineering, and development. It also helps support over 75 percent of FAA's operations and maintenance budget. (THE TAXATION OF AIR TRANSPORTATION; Kenneth J. Button, Center for Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics, School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, April 2005.)

A good rule: Use Google to check facts. In this case, google "cost of air traffic control"

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 10:36 p.m. inappropriate

RE: Hey jamier ...: steptoe.fan, click on the number and you'll see jamie's source. he adds up three different numbers for the three different methods of transport. not clear that they are mutually exclusive, but they do seem to add up (I didn't actually add them, but they do appear to be legitimate numbers).

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 12:42 a.m. inappropriate

RE: Hey jamier ...: Stuka writes: "he adds up three different numbers for the three different methods of transport. not clear that they are mutually exclusive, but they do seem to add up (I didn't actually add them, but they do appear to be legitimate numbers)."

----
All numbers are 'legitimate' -- but their definition & meaning are too often vague, as is the case with adding up three 'legitimate' but unclear numbers: the resulting number, 'tho also 'legitimate', is undefined and hence imprecise. Jamier does us no favors by accepting (secondary) data he doesn't understand.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 1:10 a.m. inappropriate

RE: There is no Silver Bullet: .
Ries again flails:
"When I say they are hidden, I mean to people like Stuka, who thinks that Light Rail trips cost 20 bucks each."

What the hell does that sentence say? Nothing at all, other than you have a problem with 1) Stuka and 2) logic.


Ries further flaps:
"My point is that if you look at the overall cost of the entire system, we are already paying 20 bucks a ride for people to drive their cars downtown- we are just doing it in a thousand different, "hidden" ways. The government pays billions for all kinds of things that make it "free" to drive on I-5."

Could you point us to any peer-reviewed, accepted study that substantiates what you claim is true (i.e. "we already pay 20 bucks a ride for people to drive their cars downtown.")? If you can, I promise you it will make front-page news in Seattle as the ST2/RTID debate heats up.

Besides, who is the "we" you reference? Where do the dollars that government pays for those "things" come from? The answer is from federal & state gasoline taxes (plus federal excise taxes on tires and other things consumed in automotive/trucking activities.) It's all money generated by the USERS of the transportation system; that's the "we" you're talking about, whether you realize it or not. Neither the feds (nor the state) spend any income taxes, sales taxes, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, Social Security taxes or any other general taxes on road programs. (You'll also be surprised to learn that all the federal dollars for mass transit like ST's LRT system come from gas taxes and automotive excise taxes - the very same pot from which they supply roadway monies to the states & localities.) With the system paid for by its users, there's no 'hidden' costs - the "we" is the system's users. (BTW, I commend dn for correcting your misperception re: the cost of air transportation and citing a reliable source.)


P.S. Now I understand your need to toss irrelevant things into your argumentation: because you have no argument -- you only have hollow, meaningless and irrelevant slogans. How "Seattle" and "progressive" of you!

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 6:59 a.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: Matt:

"What makes mass transit a good solution is having a common endpoint - once you're in the city most people don't need to travel anywhere else."

----
OK, with that in mind, take it another step: WHO is it a good solution for? Like your earlier too-cute-by-half reply, one could say that it's a good solution for the employees who work in that common endpoint. (Let's continue to assume that they don't all live at a common endpoint at the other end of the line, so the imbalance needs correction by park-n-ride lots (or garages) - lots of them, plopped down amidst neighborhoods, imposing costs on peripheral communities who now are asked to host as M-F 6am-6pm free all-day parking lots consuming acres of their community's land, posing potential additional problems re: security, etc..)

You could say that mass transit (I'm assuming you mean rail here) is a good solution in these circumstances because it allows people to economically (to them) park their car and hop on board a multi-billion rail line that will whisk them quickly (and, again, to them economically) to their downtown workplace. But consider this further. ST's ridership forecast apparently says this multi-billion rail line will serve only 1.2% of the (taxpaying) region's daily commuters. So that leaves a remaining need for a 'good solution' to the other 98.8% of the region's commuters (or at least that portion that is most deserving and long-suffering who face excruciating commutes -- and don't get me wrong, I'm not sympathetic to those coming in from Bonney Lake.) Most of these remainder don't work in downtown Seattle and although they'll be paying the same taxes as those (few) who do work in downtown Seattle and can conveniently rely upon that new, multi-billion dollar rail line to get there, these others won't see a dime's worth of benefit. This 'efficient transport pipeline' you envision will be sucking them dry, all for the benefit of 1.2% of their regional neighbors.

But take your observation that it's a good solution because they have a 'common endpoint' a little further -- and focus on the forest instead of the trees. That 'common endpoint' (i.e. downtown Seattle) is in private ownership. While 1.2% isn't much for the region as a whole, it's an attractively-sized slice from the perspective of the owners of that common endpoint. Especially since it means they can build more & higher/denser buildings (particularly now that the city adopted new downtown commercial office zoning regulations in the past two years), into which they can draw new tenants and their employees, and from which they can obtain higher rental income and higher property values than they could if access to that downtown common endpoint were to progressively clog up. (Follow what I'm saying?)

Now, follow the money -- or rather notice that the money for nourishing this common endpoint (to which you think it's a good solution to funnel/pump ever more people) via a multi-billion dollar rail line bringing a 1.2% ridership 'delta' to downtown properties IS NOT COMING from those owning the benefited properties in that common endpoint. ST's sales tax is, for the most part, not generated by businesses typical of downtown: accounting, consulting, architects, attorneys, gov't workers, etc.. Nor do these downtown business produce much in the way of MVET. Sure, their employees produce sales and MVET taxes, but how does that offset the enhanced rental income that will flow to these common endpoint properties from the 1.2% added market share points that will be delivered to their building entrances? Isn't this a gigantic gift to downtown property owners? You might say that they'll pay higher property taxes as a result of their higher property values and that's true. But do the math: (cont'd below)

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 7 a.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: .
(cont'd from above)

But do the math: a $1 million increase in AV will be taxed at 1.2% (Seattle's approx. property tax rate), so that's $12,000 higher taxes annually in return for a $1 million boost in the property owner's equity in the property or building. A 1.2% annual payment for $1 million in added wealth is a pretty damned good deal relative to the cost of capital/borrowing they would otherwise face raising that $1 million in the private marketplace, wouldn't you agree?

So, the benefits of this 'good solution' -even one that only serves a paltry 1.2% of the region's need- accumulate in that 'common endpoint', yet those into whose pockets those benefits disproportionately flow walk off with fatter wallets at a small added tax cost. While 98.8% of everyone else is saddled with paying the full tab. Even Rube Goldberg would be proud of this mouse trap. I suppose you'd call it a pipeline. I call it a trough.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 7:11 a.m. inappropriate

Feet First!: An important point - not the least of which is the resulting health benefits from walking a mile or two a day or five.

One advantage of a bus system is that you can invest in a high speed corridor - a 'busway', like that South of Downtown - and once you reach the end you can than branch off into the regular street system. Buses have the advantage, too, of much faster brake times than steel on steel technology. We can give busways the cache of a street car system by upgrading stations, etc - and maybe have money left over for more comfortable seats, etc.

As to shuttle buses - I think that it is an expense not really justified, save for tHe disabled, etc. Flexcar I think is a more realistic option for most.

I like the Rickshaw idea - perhaps one of the wealthy clients of any of the law firms behind our current transportation planning would put forth the funds to try it out.

HA!

-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA
(about 5 minutes from the Sound Transit Hub)

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 7:23 a.m. inappropriate

All Roads Lead to Rome: Although I agree with your demand supply perspective on individual responsibility vs. government I do think the first lesson from enhanced individual responsibility is that we need to expect a lot better from our government.

James Vesely, usually a balanced voice on regional affairs wrote last Sunday on the subject - suggesting that the Eastside move away from its historical support for bus transportation and support the current, unrealistic, funding plan. His rationalization - the 'sins of our fathers' in failing to build previously submitted transit plans.

Well, I've got a comment for Vesely - how about our current 'Fathers' - and Mothers take responsibilities for their sins.

That's the kind of personal responsibility that will lead us to solutions - in an arena that has belonged to government for a long time.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the Jesus whinings as we metaphorically hoist this scum onto the crucifixes along that road.

Methinks we have no choice.

-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 7:29 a.m. inappropriate

RE: How much do roads cost us?: .
I should have been more specific about what allows for that $250/sf land cost on upper QA.

Not only does the street network on QA help to allow those land values, but so do the connections that street network offers to the arterial network and the highway and freeway network. Those connections, plus those arterials, highways, freeways themselves -and don't overlook those bridges and viaducts too. Their existence, in sum, enable those fortunate folks who live on QA to be able to get to workplaces, clients, etc from which they can earn sufficient income to afford paying those $250/sf land costs (plus the cost of the home sitting on the land.)

Sidewalks, parks, nearby commercial establishments and public libraries, etc. also contribute to the ability of the land to command that market price. So, too, do the sewer lines, water lines, water supply, electricity, electrical lines, telephone lines, cable lines and such, too. Without these, as without the street network & its connections, that land on QA wouldn't be worth half the amount you claim to be it's value. (For only a slim few, the view helps, too. That's about the only natural feature that adds value.)

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 7:30 a.m. inappropriate

Follow the Money: One of the first intellectual tools one needs to learn when engaging in public finance issues is that of 'follow the money'. If one does not apply that rule to a debate, you will end up being a fool. That too, is a rule.

E.g- I guess that the environment is really the reason why we are spending ALL of our transportation dollars to reinforce downtown's uneconomic and hopelessly clogged transportation.

-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 7:40 a.m. inappropriate

Denny Triangle - Think Incrementally: We need more opportunistic thinking that advances our transportation system as opportunities arise.

One such opportunity is the current discussions regarding the future of the Denny Triangle.

Here's an idea- how about extending the Battery Street Tunnel directly East to a rebuilt Denny interchange? A cut and conver tunnel built at the same time as the rest of the area is redeveloped would be cheap. It would also help to address the sleeper bottleneck issue with current viaduct proposals - the connection to I-5 on the North end.

Further, a tunnel to Denny could be continued under Capitol Hill to 520. You might need to cut and cover through the Arboretum, but I think that would be a realistic environmental cost of a short term nature that would be worthwhile. As to would avoiding the need to expand the 520 footprint through the Mountlake and Roanoke neighborhoods. (the sleeper bottleneck issue on the current 520 proposals.)

-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 7:47 a.m. inappropriate

A lesson from one of Dr. Morrill's classes: I took a class from Dr. Morrill.

I only remember one lecture well, one that is relevant to this subject.

He compared the historical efficiencies of different types of transportation networks in the context of democracy and monopolies.

You would think that a single system of transportation - say a river - would be more efficient than a redundant network of roads.

It is however exactly the opposite. Single systems develop into anti-democratic monopoly type situations, and also get very expensive. A messy road system ends up working much better.

I'm not sure if Dr. Morrill would go so far as to call our current 'leaders' anti-american, but one thing for sure, the academic debate is certainy advanced by wise contributions like that of Dr. Morrill, agree or disagree.

A second valid conclusion - anyone who attacks such a contribution should have their standards applied to themselves. FULLY.

-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 7:52 a.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: .
One last thought: Please don't presume that everything would be just hunky-dory if everyone lived, worked, played, etc at 'common endpoints' at the end of a pipeline. We're human beings, for lord's sake, not fecal matter! We don't aspire to live in Blade Runner conditions.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 8:11 a.m. inappropriate

RE: There is no Silver Bullet: Air ticket prices pay all the expenses?
Yeah, right.
Here is 5 second google search-
http://murray.senate.gov/news.cfm?id=219339
Showing a relatively small, but I am sure quite common federal contribution above and beyond ticket tax money.
This kind of thing happens all over the country all the time.
Airports and the air traffic system are subsidised.
In many subtle and "hidden" ways.
While they certainly dont deserve allocating the entire cost, GPS satellites alone cost billions to develop and place, and the new generation of aircraft navagation systems use them heavily.
Does part of my ticket price go to pay that back?

The same thing is true with road systems.
The entire cost is NOT paid by gas tax.

No, I dont have peer reviewed studies to prove it, but its still true that the transportationg system of this country is not all paid for directly by the users.

And my basic point is that EVERY major transportation system in the USA, be it rail, ports, roads, or air, has significant federal monies spent above and beyond the user fees paid by taxes on tickets or gasoline.

You can quibble the fine details all you want- but we, as a country, make decisions every day to support, with general fund state and federal dollars, certain systems, and not others.

No one has ever done a study of the total costs and impacts of a road system, because we are already so committed to it that we dont even think of changing.

But its easy to pull out specific per passenger costs for light rail.
This is not an apples to apples comparison, thats what I am trying to say.

To make the case that we should, or shouldnt, subsidise light rail to the tune of $20 per passenger trip, we need to know how much we are really subsidising other modes of transport. And because of the myriad ways we do that above and beyond direct gas tax spending, thats very hard to do.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 9:14 a.m. inappropriate

This isn't helping: Rail just doesn't work? Oh brother.

Hey crosscut folks - I'm sure that publishing this kind of nonsense plays well with the cranky old guys who seem to gravitate towards your publication, and who seem to know so much about the ways of the world even though they've never left the Pacific Northwest. But is pandering to ignorant retirees with such blatantly ridiculous claims really a good strategy?

From a business perspective, conventional wisdom says these folks are not the best market to go after. If integrity and credibility means anything to you, you probably want to minimize the amount of disinformation that appears on your pages. And, if you actually care about solving transportation issues in this region, this kind of fiction isn't helpful.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 10:16 a.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: So, as a summary of your long response, your only problem with this deal is that some people will benefit while others won't, yet everyone pays the bill? How exactly is this different from any road built in this state? Yes, it's unfair that someone who doesn't commute at all pays for light rail, but it's also unfair that they pay for 405 expansion or freeway maintanence or for the new city hall that they've never placed a foot in.

We just can't connect individual use with taxes - there's no fair mechanism (read the post about reginal tolls for more on that). The best we can do is decide which problems make sense to fix - which solutions would be best for the region in general. Sure it's mostly downtown workers who would benefit from improving that particular pipeline. But that was one example. We need to widen all of the pipelines if we want efficient transportation, but adding car lanes just adds cars - which has become a problem. The current solution is to widen them with light rail. I don't really care if it's light rail or ski lifts, as long as it helps the flow of people.

Re: your last comment. I didn't mean to imply that people need to live in the optimal transit configuration - people will choose where they live. But if we make living in such a way convienent, we'll see a higher number of people choose that lifestyle.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 10:30 a.m. inappropriate

RE: How much do roads cost us?: What a great point. Value of land increases with the quality of life of those living there, specifically including transportation services available to those residents. Could we think of some form of new transportation service being added that is being under-valued by certain commenters in this thread?

Oh, and the cost/sf - as assessed by King county for an average house on Queen Anne is around $150/sf. Considering retail and high-density real estate is more valuable than single family housing, I bumped it up to $250. Even if I'm wrong and commercial and high-density residential is the same as single-family (which it isn't), that's still a land-only value of $1.1 billion.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 11:33 a.m. inappropriate

Hey, I'm a cranky old guy too...: And I think rail does work.
I live in the Skagit Valley, and I would love to take rail to Seattle.
Resurrect the old interurban.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 12:41 p.m. inappropriate

RE: more malarky from Morrill...: .
What's different is that unlike light rail, roads do not bestow their benefit on a narrow slice of people and property owners. It's a matter of equity. Roads, both as individual links and in sum as a ubiquitous network blanketing the region, are open & available 24/7/365; rail isn't open 24/7/365 (plus it's not 'instant-on', as you have to wait several minutes to board it -- probably worse than the ramp-metering at 45th Street onto I-5.) Rail can never be ubiquitous, which is what it would have to be to overcome the huge disparity between the no. of beneficiaries and those who pay the bill. The cost of making rail ubiquitous would simply be astronomical to the third power.

My point is that economics should guide (indeed, discipline) this investment decision, but because of the manner this project is being financed, the true economics have been hidden, shunted off to the unsuspecting. Pumping ever more people into Seattle's highly geographically-confined downtown has become just too damned expensive. We built them a freeway which they filled up; isn't building more transit capacity so they can build ever more office towers just throwing good money after bad? When does this madness stop? It's too costly to overcome the laws of economics.

Besides, what would you have against bringing the real economics of ST's rail transit projects to bear -- say with $100,000 per cubicle transportation impact fees on new downtown office buildings, just like $6,000 per home school impact fees are imposed on new suburban residential subdivisions? Isn't downtown Seattle the principal beneficiary - and disproportionately so- of ST's rail projects? Isn't a goal of GMA to get growth to pay for itself, alleviating taxpayers from carrying all the weight of infrastructure enjoyed by identifiable others (i.e. downtown property owners/development)?

--
Lastly, if you make living in such way convenient, I agree you'll see a higher number of people choose that lifestyle. Assuming, of course, they can afford it. Even still, there's only a limited market for 300 sf condos priced at $150,000 -- or was that 150 sf condos priced at $300,000? I forget...

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 12:49 p.m. inappropriate

RE: This isn't helping: .
And your counter-argument is what?

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 1:12 p.m. inappropriate

RE: This isn't helping: Sean, the assertion that "trains don't work" is not meant to be taken literally, i.e., that trains are incapable of transporting people. Rather Morrill's assertion is simply that it is "insane to spend ... $24 billion out of $38 billion ... on trains which cannot possibly meet more than 1% of demand for trips."

I've heard that light rail might someday meet 4% of trip demand, but that's really low too. What parts of Morrill's thesis are nonsense, disinformation and fiction? Please enlighten the ignorant Crosscut audience. Were I retired and ignorant I'd want to know.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 3:35 p.m. inappropriate

RE: This isn't helping: First, Morrill claims as fact that trains cannot possibly meet more than 1 percent of demand for trips. What? Is this a general statement about all trains? The first phase of Sound Transit's light rail? The second phase? A particular route? The New York subway system? Is this magic 1% number, which apparently can't under any circumstances be exceeded, still going to hold true 50 years from now, when there may be 100s of thousands more commuters?

Second, he asserts as fact that a rail system is skeletal and accesses very few people or activities. Again, is this a general statement about rail systems? Is he claiming that it's impossible, for some reason, to build rail along highly trafficked routes? Has he ever been on 520 during rush hour? Has he ever heard the phrase "park and ride"? Has he considered that someone might take a bus to a rail corridor, the same way they transfer from bus to bus today? Has he ever visited the greater New York metropolitan area?

Morrill can't even be bothered to cite research backing his sweeping claims. Apparently, we're just supposed to accept his categorical dismissal of rail because he says so.

Right, whatever. This article wasn't even worth the effort I put into this comment.

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 8:16 p.m. inappropriate

RE: There is no Silver Bullet: .
You're assuming that the $11 million grant toward SeaTac's third runway mentioned in Patty Murray's press release (http://murray.senate.gov/news.cfm?id=219339) comes from the fed's general fund (i.e. income taxes, etc.) - and hence would represent a subsidy from non-users. But the press release doesn't say where that money comes from. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say its from the Airport Trust Fund (into which ticket taxes and airport surcharges flow - and from which airport construction grants are appropriated.)

Patty is Chair of the *Transportation* Appropriations committee, not the Senate Appropriations committee (the committee which controls releasing the fed's general tax funds.) Maybe you should contact Sen. Murray's office and ask them from what pot that $11 million is coming from. You don't have to believe me - but I know what I'm talking about.

Here's Wikipedia's entry: "The Airport and Airway Trust Fund (AATF) provides funding for the federal commitment to the aviation system of the United States of America through several aviation-related excise taxes. It was established on the books of the United States Department of the Treasury in 1971. The existence of an accumulated surplus in the fund has led some to question whether users of the aviation system are receiving their fair share of government spending given the aviation excise taxes they pay."

Also, the FAA (surely you've heard of the FAA, haven't you?) has a page on the fund at http://www.faa.gov/airports_airtraffic/trust_fund/

I bid you adieu with your uninformed reply: "Air ticket prices pay all the expenses? Yeah, right."

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 8:39 p.m. inappropriate

RE: How much do roads cost us?: .
"Value of land increases with the quality of life of those living there" Who said that? (Even if it were so, which one is the chicken and which is the egg?) You may be mistaking correlation for causation. I suspect you're struggling to say something profound -something that accords with a deeply-held belief- but it's not evident what that may be. Want to try again?

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"Oh, and the cost/sf - as assessed by King county for an average house on Queen Anne is around $150/sf. Considering retail and high-density real estate is more valuable than single family housing, I bumped it up to $250."

You still haven't adequately defined that '$/sf' figure -- is it the land or the improvement (building) value or both? (You earlier treated it as simply land value, yet now say the KC Assessor places a $150/sf for "an average house on QA". You didn't say average residential lot.) And who said retail and high density real estate "is more valuable [per sf] than single-family housing"? Would you care to produce some figures? Besides, does the total sf devoted to the former, relative to the total sf devoted to the latter support your "bumping it [the overall average] up to $250/sf"? Please show your work.

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Don't attempt to make value-judgments on how others wish their money be spent ("could we think of some form of new transportation service that is being under-valued by certain commenter in this thread?"). It's insulting. Why don't you disenfranchise them, too, while you're at it?

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 8:49 p.m. inappropriate

RE: This isn't helping: .
"Has he ever been on 520 during rush hour? Has he ever heard the phrase "park and ride"? Has he considered that someone might take a bus to a rail corridor, the same way they transfer from bus to bus today? Has he ever visited the greater New York metropolitan area?"

What do you think? He's been a professor at the UW since 1961 (before the 520 bridge opened), though now as emeritus professor. From his web page: "My doctoral work was in transportation and medical geography, and these interests have remained. However, opportunities and interests of students led me in additional directions - notably population distribution and migration, and two aspects of political geography - electoral districting and local government and regional planning. My radicalism led to a stong and continuing interest in inequality. In recent years I have taught population geography, geography of inequality, location and movement models, multivariate analysis in geography, urban geography, the United States, history and philosophy