Comments
Please wait...
Comments are closed.
Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.
Editors' Picks
is a proud member of the
media network
media network
All contents © Index Newspapers LLC
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
My biggest concern is that Amazon doesn't have a catastrophic collapse like WaMu did.
Granted, the endpoint-to-endpoint commute wouldn't be the primary purpose of such a line. That's more for Rapid Ride.
Which brings me to... I shudder to think how long it will take to get from Ballard to downtown on Rapid Ride. Ah, I see we'll find out in little more than a week from when I write this:
http://metro.kingcounty.gov/travel-optio…
In the long term, the real answer for corridors like westside Seattle is light rail with a second downtown transit tunnel or elevated like a monorail. However long it takes to get a Sound Transit 3 plan to the voters, that corridor has got to be part of it.
Modes like streetcars and so-called bus rapid transit should be short-term stopgaps and long-term complements to the transit spines. Just, if we're going to introduce these things, let's give them enough right-of-way and frequency to make them significantly better than conventional bus service. You can sense my ambivalence.
Isn't BRT a more prudent approach?
seriously. the middle class is fighting for its life here, we can't afford things that don't actually work.
26,000 a day is easy, sure, put in a street car and take out some busses, presto! you have streetcar ridership. so what? if the travel time is not faster. and what's the $50 million a mile capital cost for, if it's not faster?
here's how to boost transit NOW. put in point to point express busses from dowtown ballard all the way downtown, no stops! before the terminal. boom, those will full up pronto, give quicker travel times. you don't need more concrete laying to do it, you don't need curb bulb installation to do it, you don't need rails to do it, and you don't need to fuck up car and crosstown traffic to do it. btw you do know that the signal prioritization will affect buses going east west, too? you don't really gain by making other things slower.
cressona is right, the need is for fast grade separated, till we build that we're just massing the problem endlessly with no real solution.
I might start riding it if it ever starts raining again, and I definitely appreciate when I'm going all the way down to SLU. Thumbs up.
@12 No. I wonder how they even count ridership -- must be extrapolated from literal headcounts.