Is "homo urbanus" the password?

That almost brought tears to my eyes. I can't believe we'll be living in the future very soon. I'm so nerdy about good, fast and frequent transit that I literally have dreams whose central premise is about subways and light rail in an alternate Seattle.

Charles, I know many of you took alternate forms of locomotion from Capitol Hill to the U District a while back: Walking, Biking, a cab (didn't you?) a bus, a car. I'm impressed that the Rail Line competes. But, the bikie is still the fastest, ties up quickly, can get through many crosstown routes--just be watchful on the bike, wear a helmet and have good brake shoes. Can't beat it.

"No form of transportation is more irrational, more costly, and more stupid than the car". That is unless you don't live near one of the fucking trains. Or can't park your car near the fucking train because they don't build park-and-rides at the fucking train. Until then, I'll be in my stupid car.

@3 A raised bridge will stop your bike in its tracks as good as a car. Nice that ST can build a tunnel and not have a sinkhole along the way (for once).

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news…

This is tooooooo goooood. Thank you charles. Now can all fantacize about living in NYC again.

I'm so happy about this. This is going to completely change the way people feel about the city.

More please.

@2, Come join Seattle Subway! We fight to bring more of this as soon as possible. You can check us out at the Pride Festival on Saturday.

You know everyone will be saying as soon as this opens;"Why the HELL didn't we do this 10 years ago?" Why, indeed.

This weekend, Charles, you'll see lots of Homos in the Urbanus!

@9
I will be saying "this is AWESOME!" and "Let's open the next one!"

Capitol Hill thinks it's invaded by the Bros now, wait until every Fratboy and Sorority Girl can get there in 3 minutes.

I'm a huge supporter of good public transit. I've ridden Seattle buses for decades and loved the subways around the world. I rejoiced when Link went to SeaTac and have used it many times because it sure beats paying $50+ for a shuttle or taxi.

But to vilify the car as "the deadest end" is to oversimplify and misunderstand our transportation needs. The simple fact is that trains can't solve everything. Trains are there to service the low-hanging fruit of people who are concentrated densely enough to make a train practical. They simply cannot run everywhere. There's no train to take anyone from Redmond to Queen Anne, from Ballard to Alki, or from Burien to Lake City.

I'm gonna love this new train. But the purpose of the train is not to replace all cars. The purpose of the train is to add flexibility that makes life easier for everyone, both those who can do without cars, and those who must depend on cars and trucks and bicycles (by getting cars off the road).

There's no journalistic virtue in setting this up as a "them or us" between trains and cars as you did in the article. That is just polarizing sensationalism, and that attitude is both useless and dangerous. Anyone who has taken even a semi-intelligent look at the successful transit systems of other cities and countries realizes that ALL modes of transport are needed, including cars, and those multiple modes must be designed to complement each other as interconnected layers.

You can do better than this, Charles & The Stranger.

booooooring

Strobing tunnel light induced seizures in 3... 2...

@16
I think they are still doing signal testing and such stuff. Also, I don't know if all the train sets have arrived.

Cars take you exactlywhere you need to go approximately when you need to be there. That can't be said about any other mode of transportation in Seattle. That's important if you have to be at work at a specific time, which probably is not your situation, Charles.

I want to do a mural along the track! C'mon Metro hook me up and I'll do you right!

Thank goodness people didn't listen to the Stranger when it edorsed Tim Eyman's Initiative 776 and called for the cancellation of light rail.

@18 "approximately when you need to be there"

LOL, sure, if you leave an hour early.

@20 wow, you're right. What an embarrassment.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/more-…

I hope this works in Seattle as it does in other urban areas. But come a few miles out of the city and see how long you last without a car. Pitting hard working Americans doesn't win anyone to your side of the argument, if there ever was one.

Charles: you can have my gas-guzzlin, money-sucking, back-hurtin SUV when you pry my cold, dead hands from the steering wheel.

@22 -- there has never been a better example of the stupidity and lack of foresight of the Stranger than that endorsement. Every time they write about mass transit and light rail they should apologize and be thankful that ST sued to overturn I-776, because if they'd listened to the Stranger and done what they wanted, there would be no light rail today.

Bax and JonnoN, The Stranger's endorsement of I-776 has to be the one strike on this paper's record that's even more shameful and embarrassing than Dan Savage's endorsement of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.

And it's not just, "Oh hey, we get things wrong sometimes." It speaks to a certain ego and hubris and juvenile petulance and adolescent rebellion; it speaks to a character flaw where, even when you're on the right side of the issues, you find a way to be wrong and sabotage your own cause.

Here's the irony. The Stranger's strange-bedfellows endorsement of a goddamned Tim Eyman initiative in 2002 was all about getting sucked into an unnecessary us-vs.-them, light-rail-vs.-monorail view of things (yeah, let's find a way to pit transit supporters against each other), but if Sound Transit 3 goes to the ballot in 2016, its most promising route is going to be a light rail line from Ballard to West Seattle where the monorail line would have gone. And if Sound Transit can muster the guts to build a tunnel through downtown for that line as they should, it's going to be a big improvement over what the monorail had to offer.

This is obviously fake, no train can travel that fast. Once again, The Stranger falls for an elaborate internet hoax!

Why is there only one rail in the video? Is there a totally different tunnel allowing travel in the other direction? I am confused.

@2 never in a billion zillion years will you be able to make that trip in 3 minutes.

@12 I fail to see any meaningful difference between Fratbros, Homobros, Hipsterbros. They're all obnoxious, oblivious to the amount of disposable income they possess and the options they can afford, and consider themselves superior to the unwashed masses (and other bro-tribes)