Comments

1
if it works so well now, why are we nowhere near having a subway?
2
We have to remember that subarea equity was initially created to lessen the hesitancy of suburban people to invest in things they thought would all go to Seattle, even though it hurt them to do so.

So, changing it now, not so bad.

On the other hand, I think we should look at County level equity for roads, based on a mix of sales tax revenue from online purchases (most of the plug-in electric owners will end up paying that), and gas tax revenue.

That way Eastern Washington and TimmyLand can freeze in the dark.
3
@1 I'll go ask the LINK light rail what you call a giant tunnel filled with light rail trains. Maybe it prefers to be called Not Stupid Car Tunnels For Rich Jerks?
4
I'm pretty sure that just because the FINANCING is split up by subarea it doesn't mean that the VOTING is
5
Did it ever occur to you to ask the Murray campaign for a statement on this?
6
Subarea equity broke logjams which held up transit investment in Seattle for years (decades?). A different city might be able to build a system faster by concentrating on one area after another, but that just isn't realistic for the Seattle area.
7
Speaking of transit, Ed Murray as mayor would be a train wreck. I expect McGinn to clean his clock in the debates.
8
Yeah, I like Ed Murray well enough but McGinn is letting the rest of them look like uninformed idiots when it comes to mass transit, and mass transit is my number one issue.
9
I really want to like Ed Murray, but he has the stench of Olympia all over him.
10
Well, GOOD.

Fuck subarea equity. All it does is give people who don't need transit more transit and people who do need transit less transit. Why is ST pouring hundreds of thousands into legal costs and redesigns to kiss Bellevue's ass while fucking Federal Way in it's ass? Subarea equity, that's what.

Subarea equity isn't.
11
Well color me surprised, because I never, ever thought I'd say this, but a McGinn second term is looking better all the time.
12
Vancouver built an entire metropolitan Sky Train in the time it took SoundTransit to build one misrouted starter line.
13
Color me unsurprised. Among the candidates, Mike McGinn is the undisputed champion on transit issues, both on paper and in practice. It's nice of Murray to remind us of that.
14
"by spending money raised by Seattle to building that rail network in Seattle."

let's see... costs we are incurring for our "subway" are upwards of $500M per mile (it is $2B for the 4 miles from downtown to the U).

so we'll tax Seattle residents to pay for more of Schiendelman's Folly. that's quite a bit of licensing fees and property taxes we'll incur. would love to see the plan.
15
@14 um, you mean the Deep Borrowed Tunnel (SR-99), not the light rail tunnel.
16
What scares Dominic more than Sub Area Equity? Apparently Publicola! You cite a Seattle Transit Blog story, that cites PUBLICOLA, but won't name them? What are you afraid of Dom?
Oringinal story:
http://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-profi…
STB citing Publicola:
http://seattletransitblog.com/2013/04/23…
Fix your piece Dom if you are now a journalist.
17
@16. Agreed. It's lousy to aggregate other local writers and let them do the heavy lifting of actual reporting just to springboard your opinion piece w/out crediting them. Especially another thinly veiled election endorsement piece...
18
dominics not a journailist (and neither is the stranger newspaper or progressive for that matter) they are shills and cum dumpsters for rich one precenters who wrapped them selves in the cloak of a alt-weekly.
19
I favor extending the light rail across Seattle and throughout the entire state. At some point within my lifetime, I would like to be able to ride the light rail to Spokane, Blaine, Vancouver, and Aberdeen.

Is ee this si the key to our state's economic revival. The number one complaint the major regional employers have (be they Boeing or Microsoft) is that traffic here sucks. There is no reason at all why it should take 2 hours to travel 60 miles. And yet it does, if you try to during rush hour. Longer if you take the bus.

And its not just workers who suffer from this. Our car crazy culture locks people too old or too young to drive, or persons with mental or physical handicaps preventing them from driving, out of an active lifestyle. Why shouldn't a kid in Everett be able to pop down to Seattle to see a show? Why shouldn't your grandmother be able to ride to the coast to enjoy the beach during the summer? Should your wheelchair-bound sister be prevented from visiting her friends in Vancouver, simply because she cannot drive?

If we make transit easy in this state, and we make it cheap and clean, then employers will benefit, workers will benefit, the elderly, young, and disabled will all benefit. Everybody will be able to enjoy air unchoked by exhaust and water unpolluted by motor fluid runoff.

So yeah, I support the expansion of the Seattle subway. But I don;t think that's enough, and if you're limiting your vision to just the City, you're not thinking broadly enough. There's other parts of this state you should be able to go without having to drive there.
20
Yeah, Publicola should've been mentioned, but technically STB wasn't even mentioned either. This post is about Murray's comments (and Ben and Dom's reaction to it) rather than Publicola or STB. I don't think he's committed an egregious sin here.
21
It may not be sinning but its irksome. And a fairly consistent omission.
22
@16) I hear you. But my post is primarily about STB's opinion piece. I quoted their headline in my headline, and I quoted the analysis because that was the writing I wanted to share with people on Slog. I also thought the explanation of sub-area equity was nice and clear. I hear you, though. I could have linked to the PubliCola article. I've linked to them plenty in the past and I'm sure I'll do it in the future. They have a good news blog.
23
Dom,
Thank you. Very thoughtful response and my original message was overly shitty. Thank you for all your great work.
A recovering asshole.
24
If Murray were smart about transportation, he'd be at the forefront of trying to build that transit system in his lifetime.

The frightening thing is that Ed Murray is smart about transportation. It's just that he has a long track record of being a wolf in sheep's clothing when it comes to supporting mass transit. Note that this latest attempt to tinker with Sound Transit's foundation would set back transit. Some years back he tried to tinker with Sound Transit's governance, again to the detriment of transit. And then there's his long-time supporter, anti-transit rich guy John Stanton. Look up those two names together some time.

I'm sure Murray has done some good things for mass transit (i.e. rail transit) in his years as House Transportation chair, but somehow they don't come to mind. And even so, hey, he has to keep up something of an artifice that he's ostensibly on our side.

As scattershot and half-baked as Mike McGinn's vision of transit has been, he's the only mayoral choice out there whose support for rail transit is unquestioned.
25
Again, have you asked Ed Murray for a comment on this? I'd like to hear his side.
29
@25) I asked him yesterday to write a guest post for Slog about this.

Please wait...

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