Demand for and Feasibility of Light Rail

/deadhorse/ I wonder how much money the state would save on the budget if we went with a viaduct rebuild instead of the tunnel?

Why does Gregoire’s savings plan, specifically target UW? Does it currently get a disproportionate amount of state funding compared to other schools (per capita)?

As an opponent of the tunnel, feel free to take this for what it’s worth. But I’d love to see Conlin, Rasmussen, or any of this site’s tunnel-boosting commentors tunnel respond to the EIS on tolling. I really mean it…if you truly believe this option is the best, what about the impacting of tolling on tunnel usage and traffic on surface streets?

The State’s EIS — not the Mayor’s Office, not the Sierra Club — says that with no downtown exits, and with the anticipated tolls necessary to bring in the revenue needed, the tunnel accommodates 66% fewer trips per day than the current elevated would if it could still exist. Further, the State’s EIS predicts that these extra trips won’t disappear; rather, those 66% of trips (more than 75,000 trips per day, and nearly twice the 41,000 that will take the tunnel) will take surface streets.

If the problem with Surface/Transit is that it pours traffic onto our streets and creates gridlock, please tell me how the tunnel doesn’t do the same…just without a plan to mitigate it.

That was definitely the main point stressed at last night’s forum.

I like Mike O’Brien’s quote:

“If we’re going to spend billions of dollars to build a new highway, I’d kind of like to have people use it.”

He is describing, of course, the present Viaduct, which people use. If we build another in its place, people will use it. The alternatives, whether tunnel or “surface option,” will bring us a nightmare of congestion on city streets, no matter what the car-hating “urbanist” fantasists and Tinker Bell Santa Claus Easter Bunny Tooth Fairy unicorn believers will tell you.

“he will make an announcement in The Stranger” – right, because Dominic Holden is McGinn’s puppet.

The rebuild won’t be tolled? It won’t close down the waterfront for years?I do believe in the possibility of unicorns because genetics is tricky, and I don’t pretend to know all the possibilities which might arrive from mutation.Construction is pretty straight forward in comparison. I do not believe in free viaducts that could would magically appear with a wave of a wand.

It sucks balls that the rebuild will nuke traffic for a few years, but is that the lesser of two evils versus the DBT in the long run?

Or you missed the goofy joke nature of the exchange from not being there. This wasn’t exactly a fire and brimstone meeting until the brilliant speaker at the end from Greenlake, Brian DeLuca. That guy’s closing remark needs to be You Tubed.

Have any of the other Council ever addresses this yet?

1. Gregoire proposed reduced funding for the UW? Even after she appointed loyal party member, David Dicks, a new position there? Will the funding cuts impact political appointees/operatives? Or will the cost for their positions be borne by tutition-paying students?

3. The Sightline Institute is playing fiscal conservative on the tunnel issue? Is this the same Sightline Insitute that just advocated raising the state’s constitutional debt limit – and then borrowing more money – for “green” retrofits (read transfer of taxpayer money to political cronies) of school buildings? I think it’s time for another name change, Sightline. The public’s catching on to you again.

5. A “sustainability” site is shutting down for lack of resources? Hmmm…. guess they aren’t the experts on sustainability they would have had us believe.

Please try to think in the long term. The rebuild has been budgeted for no tolling, with the state paying for all cost overruns.

Now I grant you, a rebuild might be more expensive now that it was when originally budgeted, but remember that this was before downtown real-estate speculators and the “design community” threw a shit fit because they might have to look at a viaduct for the next fifty years. They, and their lackeys on the City Council, have driven up the cost of a rebuild with their insistence that replacing a highway be made a beautification project.

I am not sure.

If tolling is put in place for either tunnel or rebuild, I’m not going to be using it, except in the rarest of emergencies. I’m cheap that way, and I’m guessing I’m not alone.

The tunnel initially seemed like a good idea but, given how much traffic is going to be diverted to city streets in either case, I am starting to lean towards just tearing the sucker down, and trying to squeeze a few dollars out of the state for traffic mitigation.

The DBT costs $2.8 billion and moves fewer people than the ballard bridge. Worse, it only moves those able to afford $1300 a year in tolls, certainly not your average mom or dad plugging along at $45K — you know, the people who are contributing most of the revenues to the project via the gas tax?

And get this: there isn’t even a bus stop in the tunnel!

Every major transportation project needs to have coordinated integrated high capacity transit in that corridor — no more building highways alone, car oriented megaprojects. So the 520 should be rail compatible, in fact we should plan the rail and the stations and the route and the connections BEFORE building the new 520. Any tunnel under downtown — before building we should PLAN OUT what tunnels we need for transit first.

Don’t we need a tunnel for our future high speed rail? Don’t we need one for that future light rail connecting Ballard and West Seattle? Is there no way to put rail in the DBT — at a 54 foot diameter and with only two platforms with vertical clearance high enough for a semitrucktrailer, isn’t there some way to put more corridors inside the tunnel for rail or at least a rapid bus transit line with a stop under the middle of downtown with connections to the light rail tunnel ?

We are simply building more car-oriented stuff in a disjointed way. The result is spending billions without adding much people moving capacity at all. And that capacity is more and more going to be restricted to the well off. Th 25 cent tolls financing the Garden state parkway are not comparable to the lexus level tolls of $4 a shot each way on 520 and the new DBT. The effect of the tolls is that only folks driving from Medina to MAdison park will use 520 and only people driving from Paul Allen’s buildings near the south portal to the Highlands will use the DBT.

These are crappy projects from every point of view — mobility, social justice, infrastructure AND environmental.

The actual bore is only like $300 million. I don’t see how a rebuild would so substantially cheaper as to be able to get away with tolling.

ivan-

you build a bridge to vashon and we’ll rebuild the viaduct. deal?

Suck balls for a few years or suck balls for the next forty years, those are the options.

That’s just how the state budgeted it. DBT=like $4b with tolls, Viaduct=like not that much by near to half if I recall correctly and with no tolls. I don’t have the actual math at hand, but it was along those lines.

I’m not surprised how on top of it the Republicans are when it comes to cutting the state budget. I am surprised that no one is yet standing up for public state & higher ed employees who will face a 2.5% pay cut if Republicans have their way – an idea that is little more than that. Cutting state employee salaries isn’t fair to workers who’ve already taken a huge hit this past session and who aren’t overpaid to begin with. http://bit.ly/hmCpn2

I’ve have changed my position from pro-tunnel to pro-rebuild. Transit, no matter what the infrastructure choice now, will come in bits and pieces over the next few decades.

Probably because they have significant alternative funding sources, i.e. wealthy donors like the Gates family and major corporations. Other state programs are basically funded in full by the state. The logic is probably, “What will die if we cut its funding and what won’t?”

Not to mention Sightline’s dislike of light rail and Sound Transit.

Bear in mind one of the big arguments against a rebuild was the seismic issues with the waterfront. Still debatable about how much the tunnel mitigates those issues (depending obviously on what side of the fence you’re on) but even with stronger engineering a rebuild remains a risk given it’s built atop fill.

No, he’s Dan Savage’s puppet. Follow the pot-speckled strings more closely.

#3 – Borrowing money to save money is both fiscally conservative and green.

#5 – Or not pop-culture enough to get all the traffic needed. Maybe the should have pandered more to the middle.

#3 – Borrowing money to save money is both fiscally conservative and green.

#5 – Or not pop-culture enough to get all the traffic needed. Maybe the should have pandered more to the middle.

Your recollection is wrong. The final iteration of the rebuild was priced out at 3.5 Billion.

Your recollection is wrong. The final iteration of the rebuild was priced out at 3.5 Billion.

Unfortunately, that “main point” was made by people that, overwhelmingly, also oppose the solution that will pour the least amount of traffic on our streets and create the least amount of gridlock (after construction) … the aerial rebuild.

They oppose the project in almost all forms for many valid reasons: ghg, the opportunity to reclaim the waterfront, opportunity to re-do transit in a major corridor, urban development, seawall replacement, etc.

But, because the above objections are not accepted widely enough, they try to develop broader opposition using arguments like cost over-runs, increased traffic, tunnel boring risk, and distrust of Olympia.

And, it results in Mike O’Brien saying he’d kind of like people to use a highway? Really? Even with the “if we build it caveat,” does anyone truly believe him at that point?

It’s not, as you suggest, a gentle nudge. It’s a contortionist exhibit.

Unfortunately, that “main point” was made by people that, overwhelmingly, also oppose the solution that will pour the least amount of traffic on our streets and create the least amount of gridlock (after construction) … the aerial rebuild.

They oppose the project in almost all forms for many valid reasons: ghg, the opportunity to reclaim the waterfront, opportunity to re-do transit in a major corridor, urban development, seawall replacement, etc.

But, because the above objections are not accepted widely enough, they try to develop broader opposition using arguments like cost over-runs, increased traffic, tunnel boring risk, and distrust of Olympia.

And, it results in Mike O’Brien saying he’d kind of like people to use a highway? Really? Even with the “if we build it caveat,” does anyone truly believe him at that point?

It’s not, as you suggest, a gentle nudge. It’s a contortionist exhibit.

So you decry a 2.5% pay cut for employees at the UW? Did you, also, decry, the 5.5% tuition increase that institution just put on the backs of students and their families (who – by the way – have also taken some “huge” hits lately)?

#3 – “The more you spend, the more you save”. I heard that once in a store advertisement. Rather than have the state go even deeper in debt (and have much of the money wasted on process, bureaucracy and cronyism) maybe each school district should decide, and address, their own need for weatherization improvements. If, for example, your school district has a bunch of leaking buildings, let that Superintendent make the case to his parents and pass a special levy to fix the problem. It would be pay-as-you-go. It would be locally controlled. And it would be far less expensive than handing over the money to state government and their conspiratorial cadre of non-profit advocacy (cream-skimming) organizrions (like Sightline).

#5 – Pander to the middle? They middle is the enemy.

Those families and students that you talk about haven’t taken “huge” hits. They are simply adjusting to market conditions. If they can’t afford higher education, oh well, that’s their problem. Who gives a flying-fuck about huge hits, that’s life and you might die hungry if you don’t have a neighbor that cares to use his god-given freedom of liberty to give of his wealth on his own choice to help you. I saw let’s privatize all higher ed and let the market set the price of cost and salaries.

“it will divert traffic to city streets”…um, hello, all of the alternatives throw much more traffic onto city streets! I would like this to be a more honest discussion.

In all the studied alternatives we depend on increased transit service as well as transit infrastructure investments. As far as new transit service goes, where do we get the money for that when King County Metro is in a position of SLASHING service and has disportionately targeted Seattle for service cuts?

If the Tunnel+Transit+Waterfront folks and the Surface Highway+Transit+I-5 people wanted to find some common ground this is a REALLY good place to start. I understand we have made some great progress here lately but we need to keep the pressure on and make sure transit service is allocated based on growth estimates (not sub area equity).

I also hope the Transit Master Plan will prioritize investments in this corridor and that CTAG3 will propose funding for increased transit service in the corridor.

After last weeks snowstorm I am more convinced for the need to investment in streetcar from West Seattle to downtown.

Personally, I’d like to see these Seattle officials find some common ground instead of continuing to fight about it. Next year we will be a full decade since the Nisqually Quake. There has been 10 years of debate, charettes, consultants, review, analysis, advisory group input, stakeholder review, national expert panel reviews, civic engagement, economic analysis, environmental analysis, visioning, debate, discussion, more review, more analysis, more outside experts.

Funny to me was the alleged outrage that those moving forward on the tunnel would not agree to attend this giant hatchet job of a presentation. Yeah, because attending what would have become a glorified roast would have acheived so much positive dialogue.

No one in this city supports the Tunnel except the business elites and some of the unions. I was approached one of the Tea party leaders in Seattle last night, and told me how much they dislike the tunnel citing spending and the union involvement as their main concerns. He offered me–if we can work together to defeat the tunnel. I told him that I am a progressive, and I oppose 99 percent of the Tea Party’s ideology, but I am glad that we have one percent in common. This is how the Tunnel deal is unpopular in Seattle.

So I suppose that if you could buy a new home furnace for $500 and save $100 per month on your energy bill, you wouldn’t do it. Right? After all, you don’t fall for that “more you spend” business. Because you’re too smart for that.

There are families that have taken huge hits. There are kids in our state who cannot even aspire to a college education with tuition going as it has and aid opportunities going the way they have. Sure, there is no constitutional guarantee of a university education, but the parents of these prospective students have – through their taxes – built these institutions: their kids should not be priced out of them. But, maybe, privatization is the way to go. It seems our public universities are being politicized, more and more. David Dicks was just appointed to the UW College of the Environment. Not because of his academic credentials, but for his party affiliation. If the public system is so corrupted, perhaps we taxpayers – increasingly locked out – should defund it entirely, privatize the entire post-12 industry. In addition to the market pressure on cost and salaries, it might also afford a diversity of dogmas from which the purchasing student might choose.

It’s times like this that I’m grateful that my unbelievably liberal ass was educated on the taxpayers dime, thereby allowing me to move out of the life of poverty and social class that people like you would have me destined for and become a much more valuable and productive member of society and providing a great ROI.

Do you and your imaginary Tea Party friend understand that *any* and *every* transportation project of any scale in central Puget Sound will be built with union labor? And that union members drive the buses necessary to any tunnel alternative?

I actually don’t like this tunnel plan, but this has got to be the stupidest anti-tunnel argument I’ve heard yet.

If my furnace breaks, I will buy a new one. You – and the money you expect to spend on schools, roads, police and fire protection – will neither know about it, nor be asked to fund it. I won’t form a non-profit organization and lobby a legislator to push a bill requiring the taxpayers buy me – and all my neighbors, many with fully operational furnaces – new ones. The latter approach pushes that $500 cost you cite to $2,500.

What kind of bridge?

All options, including doing nothing, require public transportation as a major component to mitigate the inevitable growth of people being here.
A complete viaduct rebuild will not be enough capacity… eventually.
The “Surface” option is as bad as (and in fact cost Seattle more) the tunnel when you have the state/county/city fail to deliver on transit.

What do you, and the mayor, think the mitigation plan would be for a Surface option that did not have a transit component?
What makes anybody think that the same legislature would embrace delivering on the transit component of a Surface option with any more effort than they are with the Tunnel option?

Please use the same criteria when performing analysis.
Thanks.

All options, including doing nothing, require public transportation as a major component to mitigate the inevitable growth of people being here.
A complete viaduct rebuild will not be enough capacity… eventually.
The “Surface” option is as bad as (and in fact cost Seattle more) the tunnel when you have the state/county/city fail to deliver on transit.

What do you, and the mayor, think the mitigation plan would be for a Surface option that did not have a transit component?
What makes anybody think that the same legislature would embrace delivering on the transit component of a Surface option with any more effort than they are with the Tunnel option?

Please use the same criteria when performing analysis.
Thanks.

Large tuition hikes are nothing new: They’ve been going on almost annually for decades, a whole other problem in itself.

Not really, thanks to the concept of induced traffic. Basically, because roads are a “free” resource new capacity is generally filled within 5 years as people move further out or get jobs further away. The inverse should also be true, and traffic levels should come back to normal within 5 years as people find other ways around or just move or switch jobs.

I haven’t heard this discussed but is it possible to just do nothing? Simply end SR-99 on either end of the viaduct, a simple row of jersey barriers at the last exit on either end. The state could save billions and it’s going to need to over the next few years. And Seattle gets what it wants also, less auto capacity. The state could deed the right away to City and then the City could either leave the viaduct standing thus creating some sort of funky promenade or plenty of space for the homeless or tear it down and do a road or park or both… Should’t this idea get some debate?

McGinn is against having a new viaduct.
If the Tunnel option died I am willing to wager that Tunnel proponents will be against the “Mike McGinn’s Surface Option”.

It is most likely, in this order:
Tunnel
New Viaduct (Choppaduct)
Hell freezes over and people ice skate across Elliot Bay
Nothing, money us used everywhere else in the state.
Surface option (no transit)
Surface option (with transit)

I would pay an $8 toll instead of being 10-15 minutes late to pick my son up from daycare in West Seattle. From a pure economic standpoint I can measure the value of that 10-15 minutes. Every minute late I pay one dollar per minute. 15 minutes late means $15. I’ll pay the $8 toll and get there on time.

It’s not about broken furnaces. It’s about saving energy, and by extension money. An inefficient furnace leaks energy invisibly – the Superintendent won’t replace an energy hog partially because he doesn’t have the funds to even figure out where he’s wasting money and partially because his budget is at best annual. The state can look at longer term paybacks.

You seem to be the type of tax nut that’s running our schools into the ground.

I keep making this point, and I am dissapoiinted in city government’s lack of common focus on transit.

I expect that Dow Constantine, with the recommendations from the transpo board, will make a major effort, more power to him (and a variety of meanings).

The state has an economic interest in our state having the ability to get products to market, through Seattle, and/or from the air and sea ports.

The state has a right of way they will not give up without a plan to do something, so, nothing is off the table.

I am a big supporter of unions, and to be fair- without the Union good work, we would have been in far worse world than we are today. Mr. Fattailed, don’t get me wrong. And I am no way a friend of Tea-Party. I was just trying to explain how the Tunnel has Zero support with many diverse groups in Seattle.

Oh, they will know the lobbyist is from Seattle.

Wow, Olympia will reach a new level of hate for Seattle.

Not one commenter above mentions the Republican proposal to cut back, if not outright eliminate, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and take $40 million from anti-homelessness efforts. Those target poor children and homeless people. Safe targets, I’d guess, from the comments above.

I was just reading that, and add the medical interpreters being cut is not so smart.

I agree here that the discussion is dishonest. Instead of talking about the price tag of the tunnel+transit+waterfront option we should talk about the cost difference between the surface highway+transit+I-5 option. It’s not like any of the options are free. We are talking billions for any option. One costs a bit more, one costs a bit less.

Most of us in Seattle value the opportunity to reconnect our Downtown to our Central Waterfront which is why the rebuild option has NEVER had any serious support. That’s basically how we got to the choice between some type of tunnel versus some type of surface highway only option. The cost differential seems to be minimal in the greater scheme of things.

If we apply our “Seattle Values Filter” then the legitimate questions come down to this; greenhouse gas impacts which are essential to our role in global climate change, impact to movement of freight which is crucial to our place in the global economy, impacts to our pedestrian environment which is essential to making downtown a safe and livable place. Then there is the practical question of people’s appetite for lengthened commute times (which is currently a 15 minute bus ride from the West Seattle Junction to Downtown).

We have had 10 years of debate. The Governor and even many of our Seattle delegation in Olympia were ready to go forth with the rebuild of the bigger, wider Viaduct (the cheapest option). The Nickels Administration and the City Council, along with much of the Urban Design Community, Big Labor, the Business Community, half of the Seattle Enviro’s rallied back and pushed hard to put the new tunnel option (deep bore) back on the table. The weird thing is that if we could find a way to make a surface highway work effectively by looking through our “Seattle Values Filter”, I think MANY of the above mentioned folks would accept it. Unfortunately the debate has become so utterly contentious I no longer see a path forward where that possibility can happen. The continuousness of the debate, the name calling, calling into question people’s trust worthiness has eroded the level of discussion.

it’s not so much hate as dismissal.

I’ll kindly ask you to use the same criteria for analysis.

For tunnel boosters, the criterion that matters most seems to be effect on traffic. All we’ve ever heard from tunnel supporters is that any surface / transit option fails this criterion miserably, and is therefore off the table. Now that the state’s own analysis shows that the tunnel fails this criterion miserably, I think tunnel supporters have some explaining to do.

Sparsity Advocates are calling for a termination to the big budget projects that are wrecking the state and its budget.

All the money is wasted on a few square miles of a state…

LINK and tunnel are eating up billions, while school kids are getting short changed on lunch and libraries.

Punt the crooks from Oly.

all really great reasons not to commit State or City budgets to the giant risk of the largest deep bore tunnel in the history of the world through “the worst soil profile I’ve ever seen,” in the word’s of a tunnel engineering expert.

The tunnel is the most expensive solution on the table, and the most risky, that meets the least of our needs. Yet we’re prepared to sign 2.8 billion from the State and a blank check from the City (for cost overruns) while we cut medical interpreters and anti-poverty efforts.

So Sarah, please know: my opposition to the tunnel is because I care about those people.

Ooh, a libertarian. Goody.

It is not true that only ‘business elites’ support the tunnel! When the Governor and Seattle delegation were getting ready to announce the Rebuild as the Preferred Alternative 2-3 years ago it was a coalition of the urban design community, some of the environmental community, Labor, Business, stakeholders for freight movement, lots of folks from West Seattle, Ballard, etc. who all came together to push the ‘new’ tunnel (deep bore rather than cut and cover) back onto the table. The City Council and the Nickels administration joined that coalition and fought hard to get Olympia to agree. Their main reason was not losing the “once in a lifetime opportunity to reconnect of waterfront to downtown” while still maintaining the capacity that Olympia was demanding.

“Seattle values filter,” my ass. Nobody deserves to be taken seriously who purports to speak for an entire city. I’ll tell you what most people value. They value their time. They value their time and their money more than they value some view for some damn postcard, and the profits of the “Design Community.”

You CAN’T “find a way to make a surface highway work effectively” unless and until enough people make a conscious decision that their time is not important. Good luck with that. Because that’s just what that pompous fraud Alex Steffen has been selling, and as we see, people aren’t buying.

Do you think WSDOT would ever even have bothered to plan for a rebuild option if they didn’t think there was at least some reasonable level of support for it? When you tell me that “the rebuild option has NEVER had serious support,” then accuse others of being “dishonest,” then why in HELL are you surprised that there is “name calling” and “calling into question people’s trustworthiness?”

I think now would be an important time to mention that Cabdi is one of the four or so folks driving the anti-tunnel, er I mean, anti-cost overruns initiative

I think it may be time to revive the City-State structure.

Those in rural areas would be in for a rude surprise, when they discover where the real revenue-generating tax-base is located.

And the cities would be surprised how fast food and commodity prices would rise…..killing the concept of city as we know it.

The laws of supply and demand would somehow be suspended?

“For tunnel boosters, the criterion that matters most seems to be effect on traffic.” Epic fail!

For most “tunnel boosters” the criterion that matters most is doability. Nice try though.

“For tunnel boosters, the criterion that matters most seems to be effect on traffic.” Epic fail!

For most “tunnel boosters” the criterion that matters most is doability. Nice try though.

“For tunnel boosters, the criterion that matters most seems to be effect on traffic.” Epic fail!

For most “tunnel boosters” the criterion that matters most is doability. Nice try though.

Are you planning on changing the state constitution so your argument is valid, or are you going to pretend that gas tax money is part of the general fund?

Oh please, if the so-called “Surface/Transit” option had been on the ballot it would have been crushed by an even wider margin than the cut-and-cover tunnel was. Jan Drago and the tunnel supporters on the City Council went out of their way to ensure that voters didn’t get to weigh in on S/T for just that reason.

The deep bore tunnel doesn’t address it at all – that’s why repairing the seawall is a separate project.

Um, who from West Seattle and Ballard was pushing a tunnel over a rebuilt Viaduct? Over doing nothing (ie – “Surface/Transit”), perhaps – but over a rebuild? Most of those folks could give two shits about the urban design cult concerns you express, and supported a tunnel because it preserved their mobility a lot better than doing nothing would have.

Evidently, your “Seattle Values Filter” doesn’t apply to neighborhoods west of SR99, which mostly voted IN FAVOR of an elevated replacement for the AWV…

http://www.seattlepi.com/transportation/308511_breakdown22.html

As I posted above, neighborhoods west of SR 99 mostly voted for an elevated replacement of the AWV.

http://www.seattlepi.com/transportation/308511_breakdown22.html

Too be fair… that was pointed out by folks last night. The tunnel currently has no plans and no funding for transit improvements.

You’re correct that all alternatives require transit to be functional, but a “surface” or “rebuild” option had transit dollars figured into their budgets and would require transit as a part of the actual project replacement of the Viaduct. The tunnel at this point, just seems to expect street and transit improvements to be for the city to deal with outside of the project.

Well, it’s not a sorority party. If elected officials can’t defend their views in front of a room full of constituents, even if you expect a “roast,” then they’re not really doing their jobs, are they? It’s not like the opposition is a tiny minority or the tunnel supporters are an overwhelming majority here.

All else being equal, I’d said that you might be right. But with growth, I’m not so sure. a major cultural shift would need to take place, which is a total wild card.

Saving energy on a large scale also saves you money as a rate payer because that means that you don’t have to fund, through your electric bill, the cost of more infrastructure or purchase electricity on the open market.

“their kids should not be priced out of them”??? Where did that libertarian streak in you go???

Some years back the refurbished viaduct was estimated at about $800 million, mostly for pile foundation and retro-fitting beam hydraulic braces, I believe. So, the savings would be in the order of nearly $3 billion.

Verd1n

In general growth shouldn’t change the equation. Traffic will increase with growth, but will find its way back to a stable level as people move closer to work (for example) to adjust for the increased commute times.

The state is unable to go in debt; the constitution forbids it.

That’s how it works in Ideologyland.

You realize that there are as many shades of libertarianism as there are say conservatism, or liberalism.

If only Seattle had some other High Capacity roadway running through it….

They don’t have to defend anything in a room full of political snipers in order to do their jobs. That event was created mainly as a stump rally for a political cause in the first place. No one in that room’s going to change their mind or is interested in understanding anything other than what they already believe. There is absolutely no positive benefit for them to attend that roast.

The liquefaction risk of the Waterfront in an earthquake remains a risk whether or not the seawall is replaced. Fill lacks the stability of regular soil and bedrock.

I think he’s referring to laws concerning interstate commerce, and moreso the fact that Seattle would then be on the hook for all the local infrastructure that WA currently covers, as well as utilities, energy and other commodities shared with the state that don’t come from Seattle.

I’m guessing that people here don’t quite get what a city-state is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City-state

Repeat after me ” You can’t refurbish the viaduct without bringing it up to current standards ( i.e. lane width, off-ramp geometry )”

Transit will barely return to 2005 levels in 10 years

“Don’t we need one for that future light rail connecting Ballard and West Seattle?”

Who other than McGinn’s most pot-addled fanbois believes this is ever going to happen? The Mayor has no clue about this topic, he didn’t even realize that to rebuild the Ballard bridge to accomodate the line he was talking about that he would have to shut down the entire working port for over a year. How much will that cost the City? Even he doesn’t know.

Unfortunately it has the unwavering support of the only group that matters. All this rest of this silly knees-bent running about behavior is just window dressing for an eventuality that cannot be changed.

That Wikipedia article’s validity can be summed up in one sentence.

“This article needs additional citations for verification.”