Comments

1
I'm in the same boat as Gabriel Caine. Driving would be faster for me, but many times more expensive because of parking fees. And if the cuts go through, it would pretty much force me into driving because the bus would become unreliable (service cuts = full buses at my stop, which already happens sometimes).

People like us would absolutely choke the roads with additional traffic if we had to drive to work. Every single car commuter should be in favor of the MVET. It will prevent traffice from becoming an untenable nightmare.
2
The people of Washington have been robbed under the guise of "transit".

Billions squandered and nothing to show.

Not a penny more until we flush out the ideologues who are against the common norms of the average citizens.

We need a complete overall and purge of every layer of transportation spending, design and management across all of Washington State.
3
Bailo, Metro provided almost 120 million trips in 2008. Nothing to show? Whatever.
4
The entire local economy depends on reliable bus service. To cut transit is to hobble our economy.
5
Where the hell is the pro-car group protesting these proposed cuts? Shouldn't "Keep these fuckers out of my way!" be a rallying cry we can all get behind?
6
When we limit bus service, we're basically asking for traffic to become worse, for the parking situation to become worse, and ultimately, our city's growth to become untenable.
7
Terming bus service a "right" isn't the way to frame it; that will just bring snide comments. What should be a right is what's done in European countries: all public transportation is reliably tax-funded. "Tax me!" should be a button everyone wears.
8
As long as I've lived here, Seattle has been yammering about its ambition to be a world class city. You know what world class cities have? Extensive public transportation networks.

Constantly having our bus system under attack, and rolling back service on routes that are heavily used or reach the most remote areas (sometimes both) is exasperating. We're never going to shift away from a disproportionately car-centric culture if our public transit options outside of a very few high profile routes (LINK, SLUT) are continuously being eroded. bah.

9
It seems like cutting bus service leads to a death spiral like with adverse selection in insurance. High and middle-income folks will take the bus if there are many, frequent, consistent routes so there's more ridership and more fares. But then you start cutting routes and those folks quickly switch to driving. Fewer riders leads to more cuts leads to even fewer riders leads to even more cuts and the ones who get fucked are the ones who can't possibly afford to drive.
10
Why don't they just raise bus fares? Obviously they are not enough to support the transit system. Besides, if the objective of getting people out if cars is acheived, there will be fewer cars to tax, resulting in less revenue.
11
@10 - Raising the rates will also push people out of the bus. Perhaps the solution involves a more stable source of revenue...
12
So they're building the First Hill Streetcar while they can't even afford to cover their existing routes? They also implemented the new Rapid Ride routes at great cost, for very little payoff.

What a horribly managed organization.
13
I can't quite get behind calling bus service a "right." A vital service, one of the absolute minimum things local government can provide, sure. But not a right.
14
Maybe rich people should pay taxes. Just a thought.
15
i would SO fuck that dude in the yellow tee.
16
@12,

The streetcar is not run by Metro.
17
@16 - Which is another problem: Why the fuck does Seattle have this totally schizophrenic mess of multiple transit orgs running different transits... Metro, SoundTransit, CommunityTransit, SLUT (who is running that?), the CapHill Streetcar (someone else?), monorail (god help us)...

Good christ, talk about bureaucratic & transit chaos. If we had one managing authority, with a reliable funding source, perhaps we could actually have a coherent, integrated transit system. But I supposed it's too late for that.
18
@11 maybe the solution involves managing the money they receive better, along with making the fares cover a greater portion of operating costs. There is no good reason why all the fancy Rapid Ride bus shelters needed to be installed, for example. Those busses could have used existing stop infrastructure much more cost effectively.
19
@17,

The First Hill Streetcar is run by SDOT; I assume the SLUT is too, but I could be wrong. I do agree with you, though. The transit situation in this region is fucking ridiculous.
20
@17: Mostly because the interests of Seattle itself are not necessarily aligned with the interests of outlying areas. Seattle residents want local routes with short wait times. Outlying areas want express commuter services that give one-seat-rides to downtown. These aren't compatible goals, given a limited pot of money.
21
I have a car.

Cutting bus service will just add me to the people between the suburbanites and Seattle destinations.

Making their commutes much slower, cause I don't tailgate.
22
@21: Same here. All the routes I could potentially take are either on the list of routes to be cut entirely, or to be severely curtailed. And I have a really shitty old car. It's a diesel. It smokes. If you don't want to be driving behind that, don't cut bus service.
23
People that couldn't make it to the public hearing last night can still make their voices heard. Let the King County Council know your opinion on the transit cuts here.
24
Don't you just Love It when the rich poke the humans that have less -materially- than?
25
I'm actually seeing a lot of opposition to this bill on pro-transit blogs I read, because it contains a lot of highway expansion money -- which, unlike the transit funding, does not have to go up for a public vote.
26
Being a stalwart transit advocate, someone who relies primarily on Metro, or someone who has never owned a car in his/her life -- I qualify as all three -- does not require you to endorse Metro's habit of jacking up fares, trolling for additional tax revenues, and threatening a transit apocalypse every four months all in the service of keeping the same collection of overlapping, labyrinthine, poorly aligned routes running at 30-minute intervals barely faster than you can walk.

Metro needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Losing that barely-useful service right outside your door is not such a bad thing, if you can suddenly walk four blocks to a route that comes every 10 minutes and actually moves you across town quickly and in a straight line. Transfers suddenly become feasible, so now you can use the bus for more than just going to work.

Best of all, a system of ultra-frequent core routes can be run for much less money (and at a lower fare for the end-user) than what we have now, because consolidated corridors shrink the standard deviation in run-time caused by demand spikes and keep Metro from having to schedule buses to loiter for 25-45 minutes at hundreds of route ends.

That's not to say I fully trust current Metro administrators to implement consolidation correctly. Ballard RapidRide was totally botched -- not actually faster, not particularly frequent -- so walking further or transferring to it almost never pays off. And the schedule revisions associated with RapidRide managed to completely fuck over evening and night frequencies to any part of northwest Seattle.

But I'd still take the risk of budget-coerced restructuring over giving Metro endless money to keep things the crappy same.
27
I'm expecting bus service to cut. Olympia will do ANYTHING to screw with Seattle...ANYTHING.

28
@ 20, coming from a city where one transit authority is in charge of buses and light rail over six counties, with service ranging from the dense urban core to suburbs to exurbs to rural areas, I can tell you that it works just fine here.
29
Yasmine, whining is a right. Bus service is an option. Why can't you just walk, ya fat cow? Or take a bicycle? I'm sure the fuckwits would get you one. Or maybe you could just steal it like the rest of them do.
30
#10, they can't raise the fares because they are parasites who want a free ride.
31
Hey brainwashed, you just reminded me of something. Did you ever learn anything about guns and suicide like I told you to go and do? Or are you keep embarrassing yourself whenever the topic comes up?
32
Might help if we didn't have some of the highest paid drivers in the country:

Metro drivers rank third nationally in wages, with a top rate of $28.47 an hour, and the average yearly income, including overtime, is almost $61,000 a year, according to a Metro review that includes full- and part-time drivers.

Meanwhile, bus drivers in Seattle trail only Boston and San Jose, while ranking just ahead of New York and San Francisco in top pay.

Pay for a top-scale driver is nearly $60,000 a year before overtime. Last year, 255 drivers made more than $75,000, with 20 of those topping $100,000. Metro’s highest-paid driver made $115,716 in 2009.

Source: Seattle Times
33
@32 $28/hr isn't that much. I know private non-union semi drivers who make around $40. If you want to piss about income and class issues, start at the top, not your fellows in the middle. IOW, EAT THE RICH.

But otherwise to issues in this thread - MVET sucks and I, who ride transit several times a week, would vote against it. Go with gas or something, anything else.

And, yeah, Metro needs to redesign all in-city routes for duplication and common sense.
34
@33,

I'm also less than pleased that this is going to be a pretty huge MVET increase for a wide range of different projects. Either increase the MVET to save Metro specifically or find a different source of funding. This reminds me a lot of the city's proposal last year to massively increase taxes to fund a bunch of wishy-washy, non-specific road and transit improvements.
35
Olympia is the David Stern of Washington State.
36
You have to hand it to the transit fuckwits and their idiot friends for sheer gall. How many times does a tax increase fail at the ballot box in Seattle? But that's exactly what happened in 2011 when the fuckwit mayor, the fuckwit city council, and their fuckwit transit friends tried to shove a $60 MVET down our throats.

Learn from it? Not at all. Now they want to triple their bet and really shove it down there. Who knows, maybe people will be stupid enough to vote for it. Never overestimate the intelligence of a Seattle voter.
37
The reality is this: 84% of Seattle residents live in a household with at least one car. There are more three-car households in the city limits than zero-car households. We already told you fuckwits where you could shove your $60 MVET increase. And now you want an MVET worth 1.5% of the value?

On a car worth $10,000, that's $150. This is what the Seattle fuckwits want to do to you to almost seven-eights of the people who live in this city.
38
@ 37, you got proof of those figures that you'd like to share with everyone?
39
#37, not only did the number of trips fall by 5%, but the number of passenger miles declined by 10%. Gee, should we look at the population growth in King County during the same period? That might be kind of interesting, because we do know there were more people in 2011 than in 2008, yet KC Metro's use actually fell.

I'm sure the transit fuckwits will come up with a lie for that one. Oh, right, you wanted links. Oddly enough, the data comes from KC Metro itself. Imagine that.

http://tinyurl.com/KCMetro2011

http://tinyurl.com/KCMetro2008
40
Oops, answered the wrong question there. You asked about vehicles available.

http://tinyurl.com/seavehicles

Total households in the city: 282,492

Households without a car available: 44,958 (15.9%)

Households with 2 or more cars available: 116,917 (41.4%)

Among owner-occupied households, there are more people in 3+ car households (19,575) than in zero-car households (5,822). It's the renters who are somewhat more likely to be too poor to afford a car, and hence jealous of anyone who does. This would surely include the fuckwits of the Stranger, except for the owner, who ruthlessly exploits his labor.

But even among renters, There are almost four times as many people with cars than without, and approximate the same number of people with at least two cars than without any cars. Seattle is full of people who own and drive cars, and they are slowly becoming aware that the fuckwits have declared war on them and their wallets.
41
Wow, "Unbrainwashed", you certainly are angry. Way to sell your side of the story, dude. I can almost see the spittle spraying from your mouth as you shriek your comments.

Oh- now would probably be a bad time to point out to you I hold an ORCA card that's fully paid for by a Federal grant. Yes... your tax dollars pay for my bus ride.

42
@ 40, thanks for the links. I'm not sure you got the searches exactly (the link in 40 actually seems to be for the entire USA), but it's enough to convince me that you've done your homework here.

Now, the core of your argument seems to be based on an assumption that if you own a car, you wouldn't ride the bus. You're not actually thinking that, are you? Because the people parking at all those park n rides aren't working in the adjacent offices.

Transit ridership has been ticking upward for several years now, all across the country. Why? Because a) it's sometimes cheaper than driving and parking, especially in office parks and downtown cores where nothing free is available, and b) it's nice not to hassle with driving in rush hour all the time. The bus might be slower, but you can relax, even snooze a bit.

I lived in Seattle for over eight years. For all but about five months of that time, I also owned a car. And I commuted to work by bus, always making sure I was near a line that would take me to work without the need to transfer or walk far. I got a pass paid partially by my employer, and the rest I paid was far cheaper than the gas and the cost of a parking pass over a month. Hell, that would have been the case if I was footing the entire bill myself.

Anyway, I only bring that up to prove that being a car owner in no way proves that I'm anti-transit. (Or anti-bike.)

Is it possible that your anti-transit attitude is a manifestation of an anti-poor or anti-working class attitude?
43
Now, the core of your argument seems to be based on an assumption that if you own a car, you wouldn't ride the bus. You're not actually thinking that, are you?

How is that "the core of my argument?" And no, I don't believe that.

Transit ridership has been ticking upward for several years now, all across the country.

But not in Seattle.

Is it possible that your anti-transit attitude is a manifestation of an anti-poor or anti-working class attitude?

Hey you stupid fuckwit, I'm not "anti-transit." And "anti-poor?" What the fuck are you talking about? In Seattle, transit users have household incomes higher than average.
44
#41, it doesn't matter. I don't care about "persuading" your or any other Seattle fuckwit. I post because I enjoy showing what anti-intellectual, hypocritical, Palinesque fuckwits you are.
45
Unbrainwashed, your anger is really getting the best of you. Perhaps if you hate the city and its government so much, you should move to some rural Beckian paradise. The teabaggers will welcome you with open arms.

At least until their tax-free building-code-less society crumbles comically.

Anyway, you're whining about an imagined $150 tax/year on a $10,000 car? So let me ask how you can afford your hypothetical $10,000 car but not a hundred-fifty clams once a year? I know, I know, it's 'all dem taxes all togebber, deys adds up!' is what's got your panties in a twist.

Here's a counterpoint for you, just because I'm rather feisty this morning.

When me and the Future Mrs. head out to work in the morning, we head past our five registered vehicles (three cars, two motorcycles, too many, I know) and we take the bus to work. She's paying about $70/month for her ORCA card, mine is courtesy of Obama's commie pinko socialist gub'mint.

We thus save on paying $80/month parking (me) and $150/month parking (her) that we would pay if we drove our cars.

Plus we save another $150 to $300/month on gas that we're not using.

Economically, we're coming out ahead by taking transit to work. Way ahead. I would not mind paying an added $150/year on car tabs (assuming the figure you pulled out of your ass up there is even correct. Others have doubted you already).

Here's the kicker, we don't live in the City. We don't even live in King County.

So shove it, spittle-sprayer. Perhaps your anger should be at the idiot tax system we have here in Washington. As The Stranger has pointed out, with no income tax, the other taxes to support necessary government functions are unevenly applied and ill-suited to the revenue needs.

So off to TeaBaggistan with you, since you seem to hate the city and its residents so much. G'bye!
46
#45, we rejected the $60 tab increase that your fuckwit mayor, your fuckwit council, and your fuckwit transit advocates proposed two years ago. Now you're back with a triple bet. Good luck.
47
@ 46, you're only repeating yourself. -10 points.
48
But I'm feeling rather feisty this morning. You fuckwits sound kinda angry though. Maybe you should get some help with that.
49
Please, please, PLEASE tell us again how liquor privatization will increase available variety and significantly reduce prices!

You will never live down that monumental display of idiocy, G, no matter how many new accounts you register.
50
Who is this "G" I am occasionally compared to by one or another angry fuckwit?
51
You tipped your hand the last time you started complaining -- yet again -- about that Fremont Mischief distillery. You are "Dickhead G", G.
52
You say "G" and "Fremont Mischief" and "liquor privatization" and all I hear is blah-blah-blah.
53
A "right"? Are you freaking serious? Wow, I think I've heard it all now. Why don't we make nonfat milk a right too? Oooh, or how about iPhones? Let's not forget everyone's right to bear arms! Oh, wait, that's "right"...
Totally ridiculous.
54
@33, I want to know where a non union driver can make 40 an hour driving in a legal (or even somewhat sane) manner. Being only slightly overpaid for this industry (based on how long I have been driving trucks since straight trucks don't count toward pay scale) I only make 22 dollars an hour when driving down the road at 65. Now that assumes a 65+ speed limit (not the case on the west coast) and that all I do is drive. Now we have to figure in things that are work but don't get me any pay. 1 to 11/2 hours a day doing a federally required inspection, fueling the truck takes time, loading and unloading take up a lot of time, and of course scale houses and DOT roadside inspections (which I always pass due to doing that mandated inspection) also take up time in my (nominal) 70 hour week. All of that extra stuff isn't paid by the way. I only get paid when the tires are turning. So on a good week I get somewhere around 15 dollars an hour for all the hours I work. No overtime or holiday pay either. No sick pay either for that matter. All so you can eat. Oh and I work for one of the GOOD companies that way. Not even owner operators (guys who own their own trucks and authority) get that much after expenses (fuel, truck taxes, repairs, etc ad nauseum).
55
The trouble with KC Metro is that they always want to do "band aid" plans to "fix" the problem. Two years ago KC Metro blackmailed us by threatening to pull heavy-duty routes like the 43 unless they got some money. They got a reprieve for two years by getting an extra $20 fee added to car licensing. During that two years did they do anything to mitigate the problem so they wouldn't come back and threaten the public again about closing or lessening bus service? No, they sat on their asses for two years knowing damn well that the same situation that caused them to blackmail the bus riding public would happen again. KC Metro doesn't want to find a solution to their funding problem and think that the best way to bring the newz media out is to threaten the public so they'll show up in number because of their threat. Perhaps someone other than Kevin Desmond needs to helm Metro so that we can have a sustainable service.

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