Why do you need bike lanes when people can just ride on the sidewalk?

Sheesh.

Later on in the op-ed he also trashes paid sick leave and funding for libraries and education:

Think about the impact of utility rates on small employers. Think about mandated leave policies and new hiring requirements. Think about homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages whose property taxes continue to rise. Has a levy ever failed in this city?

Continuous levies to support operational budgets cannot be sustained and do not set a foundation so working families can build economic upward mobility.

This guy is really out of touch.

Tunnels are downward sprawl.

also: WAR ON CHRISTMAS!!!!

Thanks for commenting on this....I read this piece earlier and was amazed at the abject stupidity of the author. What a fucking jerkoff.

@2 out of touch? You mean he's actually a closeted Paul Ryan Republican.

I'd rather ride my bike on the quiet street parallel to the arterial than on the arterial.

@1 FTW.

could be putting together a nice little coalition of mckenna/seattle times type fiscal conservatives, longshoreman/port people, key arena/seattle center/queene anne types, and of course asians to get through primary with like 25% of vote, then pivot to left for general?

@7: Seattle Greenways, in case you don't already know about them:

http://seattlegreenways.org/

Mr. X @10 nailed it. It's time these elitists get out of their bubble (which doubles as an echo chamber) and realize that Seattle voters have rejected multibillion-dollar tunnels, basketball arenas, and candidates who promote transit and bike lanes. For example, just this year, voters in the 46th legislative district, a part of Seattle where real Seattleites live, refused to elect a radical transit activist who was running for the state legislature.

Hat tip to Andy Borowitz.

@10) If these "good Democrats" deride paid sick leave and can't grasp the necessity of certain levies to fund basic services, they are also the sort of uninformed dolts on the margins who should be ignored. And god allowing, if these "good Democrats" are stupid enough to believe a smattering of bike lanes and a three-mile streetcar line are threats to families, their candidate needs to be nixed by the primary.

@7 - I'm with you, as much for safety reasons as for aesthetic ones. That's not an option downtown, though.

Thank you! Couldn't quite figure him out on my own. Such a subtle fellow.

But but but...he's concerned about my safety as a bicyclist! He's worried that I will ride on the street that is supposed to be for cars! He cares so much about my well-being.

Maybe he'll buy me a car, so I can be one of the citizens who counts.

How did this dumbass even manage to get on the board of trustees of a community college?

A tool, says the writer for The Stranger, which is in the bag for McGinn, who is in the bag for Paul Allen and Chris Hansen and any other passing billionaire. A tool, you say.

@18 look out for your non-native plants! They're next after a president never gets elected with an unemployment rate over 8 percent and soon weed will be 11 cents a gram!

@17 - Right, that is indeed the scary bit.

#19, quite the stalker bitch, huh?

p.s. I never claimed that "a president never gets elected with an unemployment rate over 8 percent," or that "soon weed will be 11 cents a gram." Hey, are you the Mittster? Is that why you lie so effortlessly? Or is it because you're a Seattle "progressive?"

Why the jail? Because the cost of growing your own, if pot was actually legal in the same way that beer and wine are legal, is about 11 cents a gram. But the state wants to charge 250 times that. Which means that they have to use the police to squash any competition.

In 1960, 1968, 1976, and 2000, the unemployment rate was flat in the second quarter. Each of those elections was razor close in the popular vote. Two of them (1960 and 2000) were decided by election fraud. This year, the second quarter unemployment rate began at 8.2% and ended at 8.2%.

You don't like it, and neither do I, but it's factual. The only way Obama could win would be if he ran a much better campaign than Romney. Which his handlers gave him all the way through the Convention. And then he blew it, big time.

durrr

They didn't teach ya to read so good in Tampa, did they, stalker bitch?

I seem to have gotten by well enough on the meager skills I picked up along the way.

Dominic Holden.... Go Ref 150 !!!!

Wow, it's amazing how a little legal weed can warp minds.... The message of Mr. Shen's OP-ED reads to me like there is a lack of focus on the part of those in governance. Where do you get anti tax, anti-transit??? Try anti-incompetence...nothing more, nothing less.

I read the words...." city leaders, in an all-too-familiar theme, punt on making key, macro-level decisions that protect and propel our city forward.

They focus on finding solutions that beg for a problem to solve, and pander to the least common denominator seemingly without a care to securing Seattle’s position as the innovative, technological, futuristic city that was envisioned 50 years ago"

Sure sounds like the reality of Seattle

Dominic....

Wow, its amazing how a little legal weed can warp a mind.... Read the words without trying to interpret a position will ya?

It is not anti-tax, anti transit, it is anti-incompetence in government.....

" city leaders, in an all-too-familiar theme, punt on making key, macro-level decisions that protect and propel our city forward.

They focus on finding solutions that beg for a problem to solve, and pander to the least common denominator seemingly without a care to securing Seattle’s position as the innovative, technological, futuristic city that was envisioned 50 years ago"

If you had a clear mind you could see that the words above are exactly what Seattle government does to keep buzz bombs like you happy!!

#26/27, the problem is that Albert Shen has failed to kiss the appropriate "progressive" rings.

Instead of "progressive" why don't you just say cryptofascist and be done with it?

#29, hey stalker bitch, looks like I'm seeing you in all the old places.

Are "you" sure it's not "just" your "imagination"?