"A mind lost to Twitler is a mind that's gone forever."

There's no hope of ever reaching these bug-eyed, tongue-talking, racist, far-white submorons, who've carried out an electoral murder-suicide against our country. They must be quarantined and neutralized.

RE: Trump voters who will be hurt by Trump's policies but still support Trump

They'll find a way to blame democrats and/or minorities.

If you read his screed, you see it's all him whining about Seattle making it hard for him to drive on Sandpoint Way and take the bridges. Let's rezone him to 6+2 MFH.

Trump voters are basically 419 scam victims at this point, forever waiting for their exiled prince to send them money.

One great way to improve the traffic problems is to tax the shit out of the worst offenders. We need to raise the federal gas tax from 18.4 cents to about two bucks a gallon. One dollar could go to the Highway Trust Fund and the other back to the state and local governments for transportation needs like bridges and busses. The Koch brothers will howl about how cruel this is to po' guys in giant pickup trucks.
Meanwhile tax the liver out of people who spend a fortune on a fancy gas hog like the bird brain in a Benz shown. Maybe 10% a year for the first five years on any new gas or diesel car costing more than $50.000 and getting less than 45 MPG.

Apparently, Cliff Mass's solution to Seattle's traffic problems is... wait for it... more traffic.

I can't wait for this meteorologist's uncanny insights on...
Homelessness.
International trade.
The Seahawks' roster decisions.

Perhaps he could put on something like a TED Talk at Town Hall. Or maybe Mass is just setting the stage to do a two-minute random-observations segment on KNKX, a la Andy Rooney.

"I never though leopards would eat MY face!" complains now faceless woman who voted for "Leopards Will Eat Your Face Party".

@5 Trump voters are REAL Americans, which is more than you can say about Killary.

By the way, Killary LOST! HAH!

And if not for three million illegal voters, he would have won the popular vote too!

"a concrete solution to our traffic woes" -- excellent pun. It is indeed a massive island of concrete, laid over a vast wasteland of nothingness. The station itself is great, revolutionary even, but the surrounds...a death zone. Not too bad on a bike, but pedestrians have to walk miles in any direction to reach any sign of civilization (college football is not a sign of civilization, sorry).

So did Mass write a bad review of Police Beat or Zoo? I just don't get the Mass hate from Charles.

And, wow, blasts from the Slog past with 9 & 10...missed Fnarf; Lord Basil, not so much.

Cell-phone driving
Perhaps police can promote this Mythbusters episode, which clearly demonstrates "that it was actually harder to concentrate...while talking on the phone than while tipsy"

@9 - Could someone define what an "unreal American" is?

Charles. Calling Cliff Mass a global warming skeptic is not reasonable. He consistently says that climate change is real, it's visible in the data, but our particular region will see many effects later than other areas will.

Repeating the claim over and over to try to make it stick is a tactic that's unworthy of you. We don't need more of that these days. Seriously. Go after his car cranking, sure, but please stop and think about what you're doing.

The closing of the u district half Price books eliminated any reason for me to use the little train for northern destinations.

You have way more people commuting by car who are not going to convert to bikes or walking than you do people who want to use bikes or walk. If you build the city in the opposite direction of growing traffic demands you are going to make the problem worse. Californians want to drive.

@17: when did it close? I went there a month ago, tops.

@19 it is closing on the 9th of this month, I believe.

I used to enjoy reading Mass' blog on occasion. But I've been really turned off by his rampant copyright infringement. He seems to have a huge sense of entitlement to just grab pictures off the internet and run them without permission or even credit to the photographer. Demonstrates a real arrogance and lack of ethics.

The Stranger should stop calling this "News".
Hire a reporter for reporting news.

Maybe Prof Mass is suffering from early-onset senility?

@2 The GOP has spent decades convincing Herr Gropenführer's voters that the Dems only care about minorities. This last election, these people finally figured out that the GOP only have ever cared about the richest people and their corporations, and has been using their votes and their hard work to get even richer. So they voted for the "outsider" who said/says he cares about them. So here we are!

Hate won't solve any of our problems, and won't save our futures and our planet. Let's fight Bannon & Koch et al., not the people who were tricked and betrayed by them.

@17 Oh NO! When?

@17, Haven't been to the Half Price in the U district for a while. Sad to hear about it. Loved the disheveled look w/ the old wooden bookcases. Always able to find a good book or two in politics from that location.....reminded me of a smaller scale version of the Strand in NYC:(

Better selection than the one in Tukwila

@18 which is why it makes no sense building more parking instead of more transit and bike lanes, which carry more citizens than suburban car roadways and parking do.

@18:

There may be more people who want to drive than don't, but the reality is we don't have the physical space, let alone the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, to build out our freeways in this region; and given all the other pressing budgetary priorities in Olympia (combined with the general "fuck you Seattle!" attitude from the GOP) these days, I don't really see them going for any major transportation infrastructure projects of that scale in the near-term. Besides, given our skyrocketing growth estimates over the next decade or so, even if they were authorized in the next couple of years, by the time they were completed the number of vehicles added would very likely near capacity for the system and we'd essentially be right back where we started in terms of congestion, not to mention increased pollution from all those extra vehicles. So, making the attempt NOW to provide alternatives to SOV transportation seems like not only a reasonable, but a necessary approach.

Documented lefty here, yet it is my impression that the city of Seattle had declared war on cars long time ago.
As a south end resident I become claustrophobic by the day. An extreme “road diet” on Rainier Ave S at Alaska creates traffic jams almost all day long, and by the time you finally cross the Orcas light you already spent some 15 minutes or on a one mile stretch.
Reducing MLK and 23rd Ave to a one lane in each direction mean you’re stuck anywhere you go.

Turning major streets such as Boren to school zones may prove as a great business decision: for an estimated $5,000 or so the city installs a camera that enables it to send fines to all cars driving over 22 mph during rush hour. $234, thank you very much.

Oh yes, bike lanes. I doubt those were ever meant to do any good beyond easing former mayor Greg Nickels’ guilt for being under exercised.

I would gladly use public transportation provided it took me where I needed to go. And while the light rail is great to get to downtown or the airport those are not my daily destinations.

@29- "Documented lefty here,"

Actual lefty here.

"yet it is my impression that the city of Seattle had declared war on cars long time ago."

Good for Seattle. Also why did you use the word "yet" in that sentence?

The numbers on through-put on road dieted streets indicate people get through faster, they just do less accelerating and braking so they don't feel like they went as fast.

@ 24,

No. The Dems have spent decades reaching out to the hate-crazed, rural, white working class with programs for higher minimum wages, healthcare, environmental protection, utility and housing assistance, job safety and training.

Yet every time a hand is offered in friendship, those inbred, racist degenerates chew it off and vote GOP--the very same people who've ruined their lives--all because we're now the United States of Stiggenit to everyone that they hate. That's why they voted to lynch us all last November.

@17 That IS sad. But you can just get off the little train south one stop and you'll be only a block from Twice Sold Tales (just West of Broadway on Olive).

@3: The Trump voters I know (all related to me by blood or marriage) did it because Jesus and abortion were more important to them than electing a qualified candidate. They're mostly spending their time with their fingers in their ears, insisting none of the current political situation is as bad as it seems. As long as the Republicans dangle an abortion ban on the horizon these people will follow them to the end of the Earth. And I mean that literally.

Oh, except for that one uncle who voted for Trump because he couldn't stomach voting for a woman. As far as I know he's still happy with his decision.

The CBC recently interviewed Ma and Pa Cul-de-Sac in Kentucky. They're typical elderly, far-white Twitler enthusiasts. Pa has black lung from a career as a coal miner, and Ma has the die-uhbeetus bad. The only thing keeping them alive in the face of their $6,000 monthly medical bills is--wait for it--Obamacare. Repealing the ACA would be an instant death sentence for them both, but guess what: They're still rabid Twitler supporters and will vote RepubliKKKan no matter what.

JUST DIE ALREADY! Stop making everyone else's lives a living hell, you nasty, sadistic old dumfux.

@29 - Getting people out of cars and putting them into busses is left wing social engineering designed to take away our freedom of mobility. Taxpayers should be able to nullify government programs they disagree with, like mass transit, teaching kids how to be homosexuals in school, etc.

@23: Well, what would you do if you needed to get to the airport to catch a plane and you're running late and didn't have a car - cancel the flight or dial up Uber/Lyft?

And please don't say taxi.

@16 -- B-b-bbut that means out of 320 million citizens... nearly 260 million of them (us?) are unreal Americans... ! ...How could that possibly be true... o_O

I reject your assertion, sir! By the simple fact that I --a non-voter of Ronald Rump-- am a hereby registered and card-carrying Surreal American. Ergo, your claim is falsified.
--
Re: the Moscow subway bombing. Considering the massive anti-corruption protests last week, and given the Putin regime's documented willingness to bomb entire apartment buildings to support it's power & objectives, it would be no great surprise if this subway bombing weren't the work of state terrorists... Research and evidence pending, of course. But let's see what happens in the wake of the bombing. More moves to consolidate power? Widespread arrests of protest organizers? The crushing of someone or other? Another mysterious assassination or 3?

@29
What the hell is a "documented" lefty? Who documented it? On whose authority does this documentor get to decide who is and isn't worthy of the title?

for an estimated $5,000 or so the city installs a camera that enables it to send fines to all cars driving over 22 mph during rush hour. $234, thank you very much.


Um, good? If you're going to take on the awesome responsibility of operating an extremely dangerous machine that outsources a good portion of its dangerousness to others, including people (like schoolchildren!) who lack your steel cage of protection, the absolute least you can do is follow basic safety rules. If you can't be bothered because you're in too much of a hurry, paying a fine isn't really something you have any business whining about. The deadliness of car-human interactions drops dramatically from 30-20 MPH. You're putting other people's lives at risk by violating the law.

Which is another thing about the awfulness of Mass's column; his casual dismissiveness of silly concerns like "pedestrian safety" is chilling.

Actual lefty here@30
You are more than welcome to drive south on Rainier Ave. any time between 2-8 pm and check out for yourself the traffic flow between Alaska and Orcas.

Lord Basil @ 36
I’m actually for public transportation and very much prefers left wing social engineering to the messy dog eats dog the other side throws at me. Most of all, I’m so grateful I learned how to be a homosexual while in school.

I still think the road diets and narrowing existing streets without offering sufficient PUBLIC alternative is a huge mistake considering the growth we are witnessing.
I’m also working on the east side and my work schedule is not always predictable. As such I have to overcome the guilt and rely on a car.

Glad to see both Fnarf and Lord Basil resurfacing. Yes, Lord Basil too. And I'm convinced Lord Basil is intended as satire.

@31- Day long averages that show a overall reduction in travel times wouldn't happen if rush hour travel times were increased by anything but the smallest margin. In the meantime the danger to life and limb of pedestrians, cyclists, AND drivers is greatly reduced. And the only thing that is lost is your sensation of empowerment that you gain from wasting gas by driving fast to get to the next stop.

@39
My point is that despite being a lefty (admittedly a self-assessment, you're also welcome to check my previous posts here) myself and many others still have to rely on cars. If there was a light rail that could get me to the Bellevue transit center by 6 am I would gladly take it, not to mention avoiding the bridge traffic once I get back home.
But narrowing major streets, adding mostly-feel-good bike lanes further choking roads without offering any alternatives is taking toll on all of us regardless of our political inclination.

Despite operating an "extremely dangerous machine" I’m still for public safety and have a very good driving record. I consider wide enough roads and reasonable flow of traffic to be safety issues as well.

Charles, As he usually does, totally misunderstood what I was saying and demeans the Stranger by starting with his accustomed name calling. I am a bicycle commuter. I am an environmentalist concerned about climate change. Grid locked traffic is bad for the environment, emitting more carbon into the atmosphere and creating air pollution. We need more mass transportation and we need to do smart things that help, not feel-good stuff that doesn't. Our roads are in bad shape--does he doubt that? Smartphone use in cars are leading to more accidents--does he doubt that? Bicycle commuting is unnecessarily dangerous--does he doubt that. Light rail using traffic-filled streets is a bad idea--does he doubt that? And many of road-diets are leading to more traffic....would he like more evidence? How long will the Stranger allow him to inappropriately follow a journalism of name calling and put downs? Of not even talking to folks he is attacking to make sure he understands what they are saying?

@44 I don't think Charle's misunderstanding was accidental, Dr. Mass. For some reason Charles -and other commentators here- are hard on you because they regard some of your work as wrongthink - presumably because you have expressed reasonable care and parsimony in attributing any particular weather event(s) to climate change. Anyone who has read your blog over the years understands that you are not a denier.

I think Charles' framing ("Traffic broke his brain") is silly. That post was a much more pedestrian phenomenon; it's very common for someone who is very accomplished and successful in one field to simply assume that he'll (and it's more often then not a 'he') be wise and insightful in others, without really understanding them. He's obviously not aware of the significant body of underlying research on park and rides' contributions to emissions and congestion, but he doesn't think that matters, he just applies what he takes to be "common sense" and that's good enough. He doesn't bother to put any real thought into the (very poor) ridership potential of Sounder North or an airport express, or their payoff relative to other investments, he just thinks they'd be neat, and "shouldn't be too expensive" for some reason. His own drenched-in-confirmation-bias assessment of road-diets is good enough; data be damned. It doesn't even seem to cross his mind that there might be some serious negative tradeoffs to making UW station as car friendly as possible (that may be the most baffling part the whole post--if we invite lots and lots of cars to crowd the roads around that station, how well does he thing the bus connections are going to work?). He's just going with his gut--he's mastered Atmospheric Science, transit policy should be easy.

It's the same general phenomenon of Ben Carson, brilliant and accomplished neurosurgeon, turning to politics (with less odious values, of course).

On another note, Charles, it remains slanderous to call Mass a "climate skeptic." You should withdraw that statement and apologize immediately, your evidence for the claim is as terrible now as it was when you first invented it.

Remember when Cliff Mass thought his qualification as a meteorologist was good enough to contradict the oceanographers who said it was bad for the Puget Sound ecosystem to salt Seattle's roads?

A fucking WEATHERMAN. Knows so much about the weather now he thinks he knows what's good for the orcas and the octopuses. Yeah.

That wasn't yesterday; that was several years ago. It was right then that everyone should have realized that Cliff Mass was a sham.

His blog has certainly shown plenty of examples of "my opinion, built on information I receive from the Seattle Times and the internet, is assuredly valuable about everything" syndrome. But I'd be sending
a cease-and-desist letter about "climate skepticism", because that's just bullshit trolling on Charles' part.

(And is the "weatherman" thing ignorance or name-calling?)

I have to say that it's amazing to see so-called transit advocates pooh poohing ample parking at light rail stations.

~80K per spot, on average, for 1-4 daily commuters. And, of course, the more you build the more you clog up the roads around the station at peak travel time, reducing the effectiveness of bus-rail transfers. If you think that's the most valuable use of the necessarily limited and valuable land adjacent to a high-capacity transit station, I don't know what to tell you. There are far more efficient ways to spend money to generate ridership. And, of course, the ridership of the existing line amply demonstrates the profound wrongness of your empirical claim; of our ~70K+ daily riders, only a tiny fraction are P&Rers.

Your partner's preferences demonstrate why trying to build transit to solve congestion, as Mass seems to think should be the goal, is a fool's errand. There will always be people who'll willingly subject themselves to miserable traffic because they're too good to use a bus, or that demand society subsidize the cost of their car storage, in order to take transit. The point of light rail isn't to cater to these very special people, it's to give the rest of us an option to avoid the miserable pain those people insist on inflicting on themselves.

Chiming in here belatedly to say that, whatever doubts we may have had about Cliff Mass, dilettante transportation planner, have fully been dispelled by Mr. Mass's weighing in @44. Apparently, Mr. Mass is not a PR expert either, as in, he's not familiar with the PR adage, "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."

Just this one sentence here: "Grid locked traffic is bad for the environment, emitting more carbon into the atmosphere and creating air pollution." These are the words of someone who has never given any serious thought to transportation issues and has no idea what they're talking about. Either that or these are the words of someone who has given serious thought to these issues but has instead decided to disingenuously demagogue them.

Oh, and instead of being distracted by Charles Mudede's supposed bias against him, let me refer to the commenters at Seattle Transit Blog, most of whom were similarly puzzled by Cliff Mass's blog post.

Professor Mass has fallen into the same trap as many of his detractors (including Mudede). He has made statements that sound reasonable, but without supporting evidence, are merely idle speculation.

When folks around here say things like "last summer was hot -- it must be global warming", then people who are experts in the field -- or even people who have spent thousands of hours learning from such experts -- find fault. They point out that without evidence that a particular event was caused by global warming, and with plenty of evidence that the events fall within the normal range of random weather, you simply can't attribute those events to climate change. In other words, even though he is smart, and even though he knows a lot about his field, he obviously knows nothing about the subject at hand.

He offers up no evidence whatsoever that either road diets or poor road conditions contribute to increased traffic. As someone who lives very close to the very road he mentions (125th) I can tell you that end to end traffic is no different than it was before. The congestion has simply shifted (to where the road narrows). More importantly, he is basically saying that the SDOT engineers didn't consider this. That is absurd, and if you have been following the road diets, you will be familiar with the studies, and how SDOT determines whether a road is appropriate for one or not. It gets complicated, but basically if a road doesn't have too much traffic, and has turns, then switching from four to three lanes really doesn't hurt.

As for the trains, they are very popular in the south end, but hardly anyone rides them in the north. A big reason is that they are very slow from Everett, and cover places with very few people along the way. Even in terrible traffic, you are better off taking a bus. With regards to a bypass, I think he misses the point. In fact he misses the point with both of these issues. Nothing is free. Sure, it would be wonderful if Sounder ran every five minutes, and there were two lines to SeaTac. But why not make it five! How about ten!

The problem is, he never makes the case that this would be a good way to spend money. Because it wouldn't. The issue of a bypass has been debated, but never seriously, because it is very hard to make the case for it. It would not be that fast, and it would cost a fortune to serve very few riders. Suburban rail never exceeds urban rail in terms of ridership. Which really gets to the core of his traffic and transit theories. You can make the case for various transit improvements by looking at what works in various cities. But what Cliff Mass is proposing has never worked -- it has never been a cost effective way to move people. He ignores this, because, my guess is, he has never actually spent the time looking at it. I'm not saying you have to be a transit engineer to offer up an informed opinion, but making a case without considering the dozens of different cities that have tried something similar (and failed) is not a great idea.

Finally, he simply ignores induced demand when it comes to traffic. Even if we built a very good transit system -- something similar to what Boston, New York or D. C. has -- we would still have very bad traffic. It is just that folks would have an alternative to sitting in that traffic.

@33- I walk by twice sold four days a week while heading to work. Pop in at least twice a week to buy something or to harass a cat or two. For those interested the rapid ride to Redmond drops you off about 3 blocks away from the Redmond half price books.

@6 sez:"Meanwhile tax the liver out of people who spend a fortune on a fancy gas hog like the bird brain in a Benz shown."
That car is a CLA and lists at $32,000 and gets 36mpg on the highway. Sure, it costs more than a Kia and gets lower MPG than a Prius but it's hardly a fancy gas hog. It's the "cheap" Benz for people who want the features and the badge. ...and any driver flipping someone off like that isn't just a "bird brain" but an asshole.

I was in Brooklyn during a transit strike that closed the subways for a few days. Walking with a friend past an endless line of cars, buses, and cabs that were barely moving they said: "You must feel like you're back in Seattle!". Yeah, when a New Yorker clowns you for your city's gridlock and lack of transit you know it's bad.

@54- $180,000,000 per mile in 2009.

I find people who want to increase bike lanes and mass transit have no kids. How am I going to get my kids from Phinney Ridge to West Seattle to drop them off at school (their mother lives in West Seattle), then drive to work on Cherry Hill on a bike or on a bus by 8am in the morning? It's not happening. Yet I would argue single parents who need to drive kids to school, soccer games and such make up more of the population of 20 something guys who ride their bike to work everyday. The city is serving a small section of the community at the expense of a larger one.

@27 when did i say anything about parking?