Alternatively, instead of getting the Professor to build stationary bicycles that cool us with palm fronds, we can join every other technological nation on earth and start building hydrogen fuel stations as KIA and others begin production of the vehicles this year.
Legislative changes are needed to enable tolling of existing general purpose lanes on state and federal highways, to provide a regional entity with authority to set and adjust toll rates and establish tolling objectives, and to permit the expenditure of toll revenues on multimodal transportation improvements and TDM programs region wide.To fund other GHG emissions reduction actions and strategies in this plan, revenues would need to be distributed to local jurisdictions.
Would the city have authority to put tolls at access points to SR99 from the city side?
Tolls on any surface road without a captive audience will never work. Put a toll on the 35th in West Seattle or on 15th/Elliot or 4th coming into downtown, for example, and people will divert to a side street to avoid the toll. Put a toll on the Ballard Bridge or Fremont Bridge or West Seattle Bridge coming into downtown? More captive audience, harder to avoid.
I have no idea how you would do anything with this for traffic coming from the east or south.
I'm not sure it was so much controversy as suitability that swung McGinn's SDOT away from cycle tracks on Dexter. David Hiller (then Cascade Bicycle Club, now McGinn aide) hoped to see cycle tracks elsewhere but not on Dexter. Seattle Bike Blog reported recently that Linden Ave was going to see work start soon on a cycle track there. http://publicola.com/2010/08/11/sdot-bac… http://seattlebikeblog.com/2012/04/05/wo…
It sounds nice but none of this will ever happen. I'd almost call this entire discussion a waste of time and internet space. Remember where you live people.
There's this weird thing that happens in Seattle. They prohibit the use of roads if there is a concern that a lot of people will want to use them. I see it happen all the time. Is there a game down in SoDo? Watch the police close the streets that people most want to drive on. Not that anyone can make any sense of the roads around the stadia anymore. Lots of people want to drive on the bridges across the Lake? How can the government discourage that? People would love to have a fast way to go east-west across Seattle? Don't build that! Want to go north-south past downtown? Have I-5 constrict down to two lanes. Highway 99 allows three lanes of traffic to fly over downtown with downtown onramps and offramps and access to the Market and the waterfront? Replace it with a narrow tunnel with no on-ramps or off-ramps.
God forbid that we actually make it easier for people to get where they want to go.
Given that congestion pricing on city streets has failed even in places where it would actually make sense (Manhattan, San Francisco), it's more than a little embarrassing that people in Seattle are still under the delusion that it would be feasible here.
The 18th Amendment to the Washington State Constitution states that tolls collected on roads/bridges/etc can only be used to fund additional highway projects.
If they were serious about this, they would have already found a state rep or senator to propose constitutional amendment.
They suck you hippies in with their fugues, and then they suck the yuppies dicks while kicking you in the balls...and, you continue to rally around them.
or we can just start using UW tech patents and build solar film cells that wrap buildings and cars and power everything.
Seattle is actually a good place for solar - even on cloudy days we get 80 percent of the radiation, and some of the new tech uses organic dyes instead of the old heavy metal doping in the old stuff.
The answer is not One. The answer is All of the Above. Except coal, dirty dirty coal. And very bad fission.
@12, I hate to break it to you when you've worked up such a froth, but the 18th amendment controls taxes and fees collected by the State itself, not cities.
@17 The plan is to first waste all of the road money on a giant car tunnel downtown and a massive new 520 bridge, then someday save up for the stuff people actually need.
Why is everyone who drives a car a car lover? I hate driving to or through Seattle. If the goal is to make Seattle miserable for cars you're already 80% there.
AEG Power Solutions is Awarded a 6 Mw Contract for Hydrogen Electrolysis Process in Hybrid Power Generation Plant
This recent order is the biggest one signed by AEG PS for the Thyrobox H2 during the past 12 months. The AEG PS power supply system will be used for the hydrogen electrolyzer with a total capacity of 6 MW, in a hybrid power generation plant under construction in the North of Germany.
However, WA state, like all Democrat controlled enclaves, has been decidedly anti-hydrogen. Strange, since Germany, South Korea, England and elsewhere are utilizing it to go towards 100% renewable generation for home, industrial and transit.
There's a problem with this bike-encouraging, aside from the obvious one of spending so much on such a trivial part of the total commuting picture: bike amenities, such as bike lanes, "cycle tracks", and so on, are often paid for not by cyclists but by the gas tax. Revenues from which are going down, even if people still aren't riding bikes much. If they start to more, revenue shrinks even more.
@25
State money can be used for fixing local potholes, that is a transportation function allowed under the 18th Amendment. The problem is the state used all of the last gas taxes for state transportation and provided none for counties and cities. Now the gas tax has been maxed out and there is no money to fund local transportation needs or even basic maintenance for state roads.
@24, it's easy to say "tax bikes" but that's not a funding proposal. Tax WHAT bikes? Bikes don't use fuel, and bikes don't have odometers. Should bikes be forced to register? That's a huge new bureaucracy. Should the little girl up the street who rides no further than around the block be taxed the same as the guy who rides 25 miles a day across four bridges? What about bike riders who live outside the city?
As far as I know, no one's come up with a good funding idea for bike improvements besides "general fund", which is already strapped.
@18 for the win. Kinison for the Untruth Of The Day Epic Fail.
SR-520 western approach is still mostly unfunded and requires City and Port money and also CITY ACCESS ROADS which are unfunded.
SR-99 Deeply Borrowed Tunnel is still almost entirely UNFINANCED and UNFUNDED and the Private Vanity Tunnel For Billionaires And Millionaires - by it's own estimates - will have 80 to 90 percent MASSIVE TOLL AVOIDANCE. It is a giant boondoggle trying to use the same funding as the SR-520 does but there isn't enough funding for both, and barely for SR-520.
Buy a bike. You're going to need it when the Billionaires and Millionaires GRIDLOCK SEATTLE. All so they can have a private $10 a day round trip express lane for Rich People to their Private Jets and Stadiums. Paid for by you.
Also, @27 has a point, bikes on the REGIONALLY FUNDED Burke-Gilman Trail would not be subject to a City toll anyway. Most bike trails are on County or State land for all or part of their runs, so trying to toll them will just mean people setting up Jump Ramps to get over the fencing.
In order to prevent little girls from getting a ticket from riding their bike in their own neighborhood, simply enforce the laws of bike registration on roads with a speed limit of 10 mph or higher. Anything lower is exempt.
Bikes should be forced to register as a excise vehicle, so they would get a car tab sticker, except this one mounts on the back of the helmet. If the current system charges just as much for a moped, scooter or motorcycle, then bikes should be charged the same amount. But the problem is that bikes, no matter what the argument, it all boils down to them just not wanting to pay. I may not like the idea of paying 20$ every 4 years for a State ID just to be able to buy beer and cough syrup, but I pay it.
This would be used to help pay for things that cyclists are demanding, but refuse to pay for. It would also ease off the crowd of "No Voters" if it appears the growing number of cyclists are equally paying in their share. If put up to a public vote, would provide a greater chance of passing.
@30, the speed limit on neighborhood streets is 25 MPH, not 10.
And the vast majority of bicycle owners take them out of the garage for a couple of hours a year, on days like yesterday. You're going to set up a huge taxing bureaucracy for that? Again, what about riders who live outside of the city? Will you need to buy a sticker if you cross into city limits? Not feasible.
The question of how to get tax revenue out of cyclists hasn't been solved.
@30: Whatever revenue you could generate would easily be eaten up by the bureaucratic costs of collection and enforcement. Are you really going to have cops pulling over bike riders to check for stickers?
I know it's popular to try to stick it to bicyclists in some stab at "fairness," but putting that aside, your plan is utterly impractical.
@30: So I get one helmet? What if my friend wants to ride my bike? Do they need to put my sticker on their helmet, or do they need to get their own?
What about people who live outside the city but ride their bikes in for work, or just for the day every once in a while? Are they liable to get a ticket for riding without a permit?
Should the penalty be the same ~$220 fine that people get for driving cars without valid registration? Seems over-the-top to levy a fine that could easily eclipse the value of the bicycle. If it's a significantly smaller fine, then is it still worth having police use their limited resources on enforcement?
I just renewed my motorcycle tabs this morning. It cost $82. Is that the amount you'd suggest cyclists pay annually? Should people under 16 be exempt, or just have to pay less?
Not every argument against it boils down to "just not wanting to pay." There's a ridiculously long list of practical reasons that it's not a feasible solution.
I don't like the idea of the raised bike tracks. When you raise them, pedestrians just use them as a wider/another sidewalk, completely defeating the purpose of having a place for the bike to be. The one on Dexter works just fine. Don't raise them please.
Its just an idea. And there are many residential neighborhoods with speed limits of 15 mph or less, those are areas where one might expect to see a 12 year old on a bike.
"And the vast majority of bicycle owners take them out of the garage for a couple of hours a year, on days like yesterday. You're going to set up a huge taxing bureaucracy for that?"
Yes. We do exactly this for snow mobiles, boats and other recreational vehicles that people use a few days/weeks out of the year. Its also not creating a bureaucracy as it already exists at the local DMV, you would just add one more vehicle to the list of vehicles it already has to deal with.
"Again, what about riders who live outside of the city? Will you need to buy a sticker if you cross into city limits? Not feasible."
Its pretty simple, they too would be required to register. Perhaps a law like this could be enacted on a state level to avoid this sort of confusion?
"The question of how to get tax revenue out of cyclists hasn't been solved"
The same way they solved it with cars by jacking up the car tabs. If charging 20$ every 4 years wasnt working, then you double, triple or quadruple the fee. If cyclists dont like it, the only thing they can do is vote against it, assuming it ever comes to a public vote.
One could also tax bike helmets, not to mention revenue from red light cameras, which the city could make quite alot of money off Pike/Pine and Boren (anywhere near the bottom of a hill is where you will find plenty of cyclists running red lights). Or do you think cyclists should be immune to automated red light tickets?
"So I get one helmet? What if my friend wants to ride my bike? Do they need to put my sticker on their helmet, or do they need to get their own?"
Same thing applied if you let your friend borrow your car, if they dont have a drivers license, then they shouldn't really be allowed to use your car.
"What about people who live outside the city but ride their bikes in for work, or just for the day every once in a while? Are they liable to get a ticket for riding without a permit?"
Yes.
"Should the penalty be the same ~$220 fine that people get for driving cars without valid registration? Seems over-the-top to levy a fine that could easily eclipse the value of the bicycle. If it's a significantly smaller fine, then is it still worth having police use their limited resources on enforcement?"
Same thing could be said for people on moped scooters. The fine does indeed exceed the cost of some of these scooter and the city/state doesn't have a problem with this. But if you apply the same rules to bikes, then suddenly theres an outrage.
"I just renewed my motorcycle tabs this morning. It cost $82. Is that the amount you'd suggest cyclists pay annually? Should people under 16 be exempt, or just have to pay less?"
Sure. Why not. 16 would be exempt if biking on a residential road with a posted speed limit of 15 mph or less (anywhere you see speed bumps and islands).
Okay, license the bikes. Dogs and cats don't have odometers either--and you're required to license them. You'd get a tag on your bike, keyed to the serial number. Bikes operated by anyone over the age of sixteen would be subject to immediate impound if they weren't registered. Christ, we have a huge bureaucracy for everything else--why not this? It creates jobs. If we can put parking meters all over the city and a fleet of meter maids in electric trolleys to write tickets, we can do the same for bikes.
Fnarf's argument @22, namely why spend the money on a small part of commuting picture, is willfully obtuse. The more bike infrastructure you have, the more it gets used and the higher percentage of commutes are done by bike.
Kinison: As a biker, I'd have no problem paying for a license.
I'm curious, though. Why is it that no state or city in the entire US requires a meaningful registration fee for bicycles? You sincerely believe they all tried to institute bicycle fees to cover road cost, but all of them backed down when the bicyclists griped?
Hell, everyone gripes about car tabs, yet it's a revenue source in all 50 states.
Doesn't that wild disparity make you suspect that there may be a different reason why Seattle/Washington doesn't implement your scheme?
Cities lie within states and just like states must follow the federal constitution and laws, so must cities follow state ones. I haven't looked to see if the State Constitution has a Supremacy Clause like the federal one does, but I'd be willing to bet, without looking, that it does.
@36: "Same thing applied if you let your friend borrow your car, if they dont have a drivers license, then they shouldn't really be allowed to use your car."
You've already shown that you have no idea how driving on city streets works (10 miles per hour?), and now you're showing that you have no idea that there's a difference between registering a car and getting a driver's license.
Alternatively, instead of getting the Professor to build stationary bicycles that cool us with palm fronds, we can join every other technological nation on earth and start building hydrogen fuel stations as KIA and others begin production of the vehicles this year.
Techsplanation: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles
http://autos.aol.com/article/techsplanat…
Would the city have authority to put tolls at access points to SR99 from the city side?
Tolls on any surface road without a captive audience will never work. Put a toll on the 35th in West Seattle or on 15th/Elliot or 4th coming into downtown, for example, and people will divert to a side street to avoid the toll. Put a toll on the Ballard Bridge or Fremont Bridge or West Seattle Bridge coming into downtown? More captive audience, harder to avoid.
I have no idea how you would do anything with this for traffic coming from the east or south.
http://publicola.com/2010/08/11/sdot-bac…
http://seattlebikeblog.com/2012/04/05/wo…
Good luck on getting any support for that.
God forbid that we actually make it easier for people to get where they want to go.
If they were serious about this, they would have already found a state rep or senator to propose constitutional amendment.
They suck you hippies in with their fugues, and then they suck the yuppies dicks while kicking you in the balls...and, you continue to rally around them.
Good work.
If that doesn't explain leftist thinking nothing does.
Seattle is actually a good place for solar - even on cloudy days we get 80 percent of the radiation, and some of the new tech uses organic dyes instead of the old heavy metal doping in the old stuff.
The answer is not One. The answer is All of the Above. Except coal, dirty dirty coal. And very bad fission.
Germany is rolling these out like bundt cakes.
AEG Power Solutions is Awarded a 6 Mw Contract for Hydrogen Electrolysis Process in Hybrid Power Generation Plant
This recent order is the biggest one signed by AEG PS for the Thyrobox H2 during the past 12 months. The AEG PS power supply system will be used for the hydrogen electrolyzer with a total capacity of 6 MW, in a hybrid power generation plant under construction in the North of Germany.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/aeg-pow…
However, WA state, like all Democrat controlled enclaves, has been decidedly anti-hydrogen. Strange, since Germany, South Korea, England and elsewhere are utilizing it to go towards 100% renewable generation for home, industrial and transit.
The Germans are serious the trains running on time, so they're doing something. America will hold off until beyond the last minute.
@21 I dont see anything in the PDF that mentions road or bridge maintenance.
State money can be used for fixing local potholes, that is a transportation function allowed under the 18th Amendment. The problem is the state used all of the last gas taxes for state transportation and provided none for counties and cities. Now the gas tax has been maxed out and there is no money to fund local transportation needs or even basic maintenance for state roads.
As far as I know, no one's come up with a good funding idea for bike improvements besides "general fund", which is already strapped.
SR-520 western approach is still mostly unfunded and requires City and Port money and also CITY ACCESS ROADS which are unfunded.
SR-99 Deeply Borrowed Tunnel is still almost entirely UNFINANCED and UNFUNDED and the Private Vanity Tunnel For Billionaires And Millionaires - by it's own estimates - will have 80 to 90 percent MASSIVE TOLL AVOIDANCE. It is a giant boondoggle trying to use the same funding as the SR-520 does but there isn't enough funding for both, and barely for SR-520.
Buy a bike. You're going to need it when the Billionaires and Millionaires GRIDLOCK SEATTLE. All so they can have a private $10 a day round trip express lane for Rich People to their Private Jets and Stadiums. Paid for by you.
Just an idea....
In order to prevent little girls from getting a ticket from riding their bike in their own neighborhood, simply enforce the laws of bike registration on roads with a speed limit of 10 mph or higher. Anything lower is exempt.
Bikes should be forced to register as a excise vehicle, so they would get a car tab sticker, except this one mounts on the back of the helmet. If the current system charges just as much for a moped, scooter or motorcycle, then bikes should be charged the same amount. But the problem is that bikes, no matter what the argument, it all boils down to them just not wanting to pay. I may not like the idea of paying 20$ every 4 years for a State ID just to be able to buy beer and cough syrup, but I pay it.
This would be used to help pay for things that cyclists are demanding, but refuse to pay for. It would also ease off the crowd of "No Voters" if it appears the growing number of cyclists are equally paying in their share. If put up to a public vote, would provide a greater chance of passing.
And the vast majority of bicycle owners take them out of the garage for a couple of hours a year, on days like yesterday. You're going to set up a huge taxing bureaucracy for that? Again, what about riders who live outside of the city? Will you need to buy a sticker if you cross into city limits? Not feasible.
The question of how to get tax revenue out of cyclists hasn't been solved.
I know it's popular to try to stick it to bicyclists in some stab at "fairness," but putting that aside, your plan is utterly impractical.
What about people who live outside the city but ride their bikes in for work, or just for the day every once in a while? Are they liable to get a ticket for riding without a permit?
Should the penalty be the same ~$220 fine that people get for driving cars without valid registration? Seems over-the-top to levy a fine that could easily eclipse the value of the bicycle. If it's a significantly smaller fine, then is it still worth having police use their limited resources on enforcement?
I just renewed my motorcycle tabs this morning. It cost $82. Is that the amount you'd suggest cyclists pay annually? Should people under 16 be exempt, or just have to pay less?
Not every argument against it boils down to "just not wanting to pay." There's a ridiculously long list of practical reasons that it's not a feasible solution.
Its just an idea. And there are many residential neighborhoods with speed limits of 15 mph or less, those are areas where one might expect to see a 12 year old on a bike.
"And the vast majority of bicycle owners take them out of the garage for a couple of hours a year, on days like yesterday. You're going to set up a huge taxing bureaucracy for that?"
Yes. We do exactly this for snow mobiles, boats and other recreational vehicles that people use a few days/weeks out of the year. Its also not creating a bureaucracy as it already exists at the local DMV, you would just add one more vehicle to the list of vehicles it already has to deal with.
"Again, what about riders who live outside of the city? Will you need to buy a sticker if you cross into city limits? Not feasible."
Its pretty simple, they too would be required to register. Perhaps a law like this could be enacted on a state level to avoid this sort of confusion?
"The question of how to get tax revenue out of cyclists hasn't been solved"
The same way they solved it with cars by jacking up the car tabs. If charging 20$ every 4 years wasnt working, then you double, triple or quadruple the fee. If cyclists dont like it, the only thing they can do is vote against it, assuming it ever comes to a public vote.
One could also tax bike helmets, not to mention revenue from red light cameras, which the city could make quite alot of money off Pike/Pine and Boren (anywhere near the bottom of a hill is where you will find plenty of cyclists running red lights). Or do you think cyclists should be immune to automated red light tickets?
"So I get one helmet? What if my friend wants to ride my bike? Do they need to put my sticker on their helmet, or do they need to get their own?"
Same thing applied if you let your friend borrow your car, if they dont have a drivers license, then they shouldn't really be allowed to use your car.
"What about people who live outside the city but ride their bikes in for work, or just for the day every once in a while? Are they liable to get a ticket for riding without a permit?"
Yes.
"Should the penalty be the same ~$220 fine that people get for driving cars without valid registration? Seems over-the-top to levy a fine that could easily eclipse the value of the bicycle. If it's a significantly smaller fine, then is it still worth having police use their limited resources on enforcement?"
Same thing could be said for people on moped scooters. The fine does indeed exceed the cost of some of these scooter and the city/state doesn't have a problem with this. But if you apply the same rules to bikes, then suddenly theres an outrage.
"I just renewed my motorcycle tabs this morning. It cost $82. Is that the amount you'd suggest cyclists pay annually? Should people under 16 be exempt, or just have to pay less?"
Sure. Why not. 16 would be exempt if biking on a residential road with a posted speed limit of 15 mph or less (anywhere you see speed bumps and islands).
I'm curious, though. Why is it that no state or city in the entire US requires a meaningful registration fee for bicycles? You sincerely believe they all tried to institute bicycle fees to cover road cost, but all of them backed down when the bicyclists griped?
Hell, everyone gripes about car tabs, yet it's a revenue source in all 50 states.
Doesn't that wild disparity make you suspect that there may be a different reason why Seattle/Washington doesn't implement your scheme?
Cities lie within states and just like states must follow the federal constitution and laws, so must cities follow state ones. I haven't looked to see if the State Constitution has a Supremacy Clause like the federal one does, but I'd be willing to bet, without looking, that it does.
You've already shown that you have no idea how driving on city streets works (10 miles per hour?), and now you're showing that you have no idea that there's a difference between registering a car and getting a driver's license.
You have no idea what you're talking about.