Ed Murray was a terrible mayor. Jenny Durkan is worse.

Remember that one time The Stranger endorsed Cary Moon?

@3, it owned that dan made them endorse cary, who had a total of like 4 volunteers during the primary

@1, do we really want to go there? Okay, if it's a guy he's likely well hung as back in the old days that would land you a job at The Stranger, just ask Christopher

I don't like Jenny Durkan either, but I'm pretty sure you are worse Mr. Cole. With your complete inability to see the validity of any opposing viewpoints I can't even imagine what tyranny you would subject Seattle to if you got just a little bit of power.

The plain fact is Jenny Durkan is mostly doing what the majority of Seattle wants. If you don't like it, you need to change the mind of the Seattle Times reading, Local news watching, "Get Jesse" loving Seattle voter, not whine about how she is Trump-lite.

What a pout fest!

The streetcar is no longer desired, one of the blessings you can count as you’re waiting for the light to change to cross the street.

@1 you call trump a "she"? His election was illegitimate, btw.

How is the mayor's office supposed to shift development/design of a state highway nearing completion?

I'm not an architect, so perhaps I am missing something here, but isn't this locking the barn after the horse is out? I mean, the viaduct replacement plan has been underway for something close to a decade now.

"Durkan pays vague lip service to progressive sound bites while dragging her feet or outright sabotaging actual progress"

sounds par for the course for establishment Democrats.

So Jeff and Bill installed the woman who has been on a permanent kissing the black babies tour to... What?

What?

Guys, say Seattle goes carbon-neutral. No more cars.

Still not good enough.

Ok. Now let’s go conquer BRICS and destroy their technological advances, potentially starving a billion.

Probably still not good enough.

David Cole, aka “The Woke Suburbanite” with internet access.

The San Francisco waterfront has between 4 and 8 road lanes, plus 2 bikes and 2 separated streetcar tracks—it works just fine for pedestrians, beg buttons and all. Timing the lights to prevent it from becoming a thoroughfare and including wiiiide sidewalks will help.

Durkin isn't Trump. She's Norm Rice.

I agree with a lot of what was said in this article, but comparing Durkan to Trump is idiotic in the highest degree.

@OP

As a life long Northwesterner (I don't call myself a native because I'm not a member of any regional First Nations tribe), I gotta tell you that your expectations for what the mayor of Seattle is going to do is... well, misplaced. Seattle has always been a company town, right back to it's founding as a pit stop for loggers and miners to buy sex at the local fuckhouses. All of it's policies and culture have, by and large, been enacted with local corporate interests in mind. City officials have, for the most part, acted in line with this. Worse yet, a majority of the population is comfortable with this, being as they all see Seattle as more of a money faucet than a collective enterprise; everyone wants to get theirs and buy a home in the suburbanized countryside, and almost no one wants to grow old or raise a family here. I applaud your passion and encourage you to focus it on getting politicians elected who reflect your values, but I fear that so long as the people of this city remain ostensibly progressive but frighteningly mercenary in their economic loyalties, permanent success and progress will evade our collective grasp.

“This is something you find on multilane highways in sprawling suburbs, not downtown streets in major cities.“

Ok, I’ll type this slowly:

1) The eight lanes will be at the automobile entrance to the ferry terminal;
2) The ferry system is legally part of the state highway system (Hint: “WSDOT” on their funnels);
3) Therefore, a pedestrian crossing at that point on Alaskan Way will be equivalent to crossing the on-ramp of a limited-access State Highway.

Can you now see why the buttons are needed? (Please tell me you do.)

You’re welcome.

Oh for fuck's sake. You are pissed because there will be 8 lanes by the ferry terminal, and because the mayor isn't willing to spend another $300 million or so for the goddamn toy train. Durkin hasn't been able to sprinkle magic pixie dust over the city and fix all of the issues. That's true. But this article makes it seem like you are pissed that she hasn't reached into her bag for that magic pixie dust quite yet. Fucking absurd.

@20 Actually, the pedestrian crossing at the ferry terminal (Marion @ Alaskan) will be, like it always has been, a bridge that allows pedestrians to cross Alaskan and Western without regard to automobile traffic. No buttons needed.

I'm not sure how David managed to omit that from his piece, unless it was some sort of half-assed attempt to bolster his argument. I mean, the damn bridge is right there in the renderings he linked, right where it's been for the past 50 years or so.

Durkan has turned out to be shadier than expected. However, trying to pin global warming on her is a bit much. I hope the author isn't doing horrible things to the earth like flying in airplanes and eating beef or else he's as much to blame as she is.

The Democratic Party is not serving the country well by offering up these Republican-lite, Davos Democrat, limousine neoliberals. They can't lead a democracy. Or a republic, if you want to get technical (though our nation is both), not with any sort of fairness over the rampant greed and constipation that pass for a culture nowadays. Goldman Sachs huggers with a few crumbs to affirmative action is same ol' same ol' Clinton/Obama corruption. I'd almost have an honestly corrupt Republican than these weasels in sheep's clothing. Durkan is a local aristocrat serving the big money in town.

@22: I believe there are also pedestrian crossings at grade in the plan, not necessarily for walking to/from the ferry terminal.

(Of course, with a rant which is as poorly-written as this one, it’s hard to tell if he meant either set of crossings, both, or neither.)

@25 Yeah, there are also a number of crossings at grade. Plus at least 2 other elevated crossings--one existing, and a new one at Pike/Pine off the market expansion.

You guys do realize that David Cole does not own The Stranger, right? Or choose the election endorsements? Does it totally blow your minds when you read the New York Times and there's five incompatible different opinions all next to each other on the op-ed page?

@21 Stole my opening, but I'll use it anyway: Oh, please. Come on, have some perspective. First of all, you can't talk about this administration's approach towards transportation unless you talk about the previous administration. Here are some facts worth considering:

1) Kubly was fined for ethical violations relating to his work with Pronto.
2) The city hired a firm to study SDOT under Kubly. The firm concluded employees perceived “favoritism in hiring, promotions, everyday management,” “discrimination against women” and “leaders & managers tolerating different levels of accountability.”
3) Kubly and Murray both new that the Move Seattle levy couldn't possibly deliver what was promised before the vote.
4) The same lies about financing and lack of communication exists for the streetcar.

Number 2 and 3 are the big ones. Murray and Kubly were slimy motherfuckers who lied to the city. They actually made the Seattle Times editorial staff look good (not an easy task). This means that we can't afford many of the projects we voted to build. Everything that was planned -- bike paths, bus lanes, and yes, the streetcar -- has to be viewed with this in mind. Many of the plans (like the streetcar) are fundamentally stupid. Other plans are simply underfunded. Previous planning was simply a box of lies, pushed by dicks.

The mayor has moved slowly in terms of getting a new SDOT director. That is on her. But the city has made important progress (students can ride the bus for free, Third Avenue will see important transit improvements soon, etc.). But more importantly, going forward, there will be a comprehensive study of projects like the streetcar, so that hopefully, this city can stop building stupid shit.

Finally, the analogy is fucking stupid. Here is a better one. The current mayor is handling transportation like Obama handled the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe he isn't solving the problem fast enough, but the problem was caused by his predecessor's lies.

@27: No commenter here has claimed that David Cole owns the Stranger. No commenter here has written anything about how his opinions are “incompatible” with other opinions expressed by writers at the Stranger.

Now that you raised the subject, Cole’s opinions are indeed very compatible with other opinions expressed by writers here: that Jenny Durkan is not doing a good job as Mayor of Seattle, specifically that she favors the rich over everyone else; that questioning any policy or politician the Stranger supports is equivalent to supporting Trump; that Seattle now sucks and everyone should be miserable. (Cole’s attitude of bitter contempt here toward Seattle’s voters also fits well with the Stranger’s attitude towards us.)

Oh, and David, you are finally waking up to the fact that the waterfront will have lots and lots of lanes? Where you been, man? This has been in the works for years. All those lanes are basically to allow extra queue space for the ferry and to have bus lanes. Yeah, it sucks, and won't be nearly as pretty as say, Vancouver's waterfront. It will be more like San Fransisco's (Embarcadero) which, actually isn't that bad. It is still better than what exists now (not that I'm saying the tunnel is worth it -- it is a stupid idea).

I just wish folks would stop saying that the biggest transportation problem in this city is that we aren't progressive enough, or that we value cars over transit (or cars over bikes, or some such nonsense). That just isn't the case. The biggest problem, by far, is incompetence. We are spending billions and billions on transit (way more than any city our size) and yet much of it will be shit. The people in charge have their heart in the right place -- they want this to work for as many as possible -- but they obviously don't know what the fuck they are doing. They think designing a major mass transit system is easy and obvious (embracing stupid ass ideas like a spine between Tacoma and Everett) and refuse to hire consultants who will tell them the opposite. It is stupid, and this becomes obvious when you look at every, single city that has built something similar. Just like streetcars are almost always stupid, and building streetcars with the same capacity as buses is definitely stupid. None of the projects (ST3 or the streetcar) was the result of sitting down with transportation experts and saying "OK, we have a bunch of money, what are the best options?" or even consulting with experts to see if their stupid ideas are stupid.

I tried to warn y'all ahead of the election, Nikkita Oliver was a representative of all things Seattleites claim to be, Durkan is the embodiment of neo-liberal word salad nonsense, it's hard to be failing when the former Mayor was a sexual assaulter, but there we have it, Durkan admin paying developers in dividends, I hope that architectural firm you work for building more 4 story grey boxes with street level retail is paying you well, the taxpayers are paying extraordinary amounts to build them.

@31: “...Nikkita Oliver was a representative of all things Seattleites claim to be...”

Every one of us claims to be “a queer black woman of color”?

“...the former Mayor was a sexual assaulter,”

Really? @28 lays out a whole list of problems Murray left for his successor, and the best you can do is regurgitate the emissions of male convicts?

Fail harder next time.

Any divergence from The Stranger's editorial orthodoxy apparently means one is an elitist corporate shill urging anti-environmentalist views on a complacent Seattle majority of white middle-class pseudo-progressives who need instruction from The Stranger about what a real progressive sounds like. From day one, The Stranger has denigrated and insulted Durkan. A mediocre mayor who attitudinizes more than believes progressive policy? Okay, arguably. But a terrible, rotten, corrupt sell-out, comparable to Trump in evil... No! It's sick to suggest Durkan resembles Trump. Sick and grotesquely unfair, whatever her faults.

@31: Nikkita Oliver was a representative of all things Seattleites claim to be, but aren't.

It doesn't because Seattle voters are UNIMAGINABLY stupid. As long as they see a (D) behind a politicians name, they stop thinking and start projecting thier own politics onto the politician, regardless of what the politican actually does.

Who needs Republicans when you've got Democrats willing to take their place?

@35: “...Seattle voters are UNIMAGINABLY stupid.”

Yeah, embittered contempt for Seattle’s voters is another recent pillar of the Stranger’s editorial credo. Given their recent history of political choices (being totally in the tank for McGinn, smearing Murray in revenge for McGinn’s defeat, endorsing Moon, supporting the EHT) it’s easy to understand why.

Apparently, the Stranger cannot find a better way out of this situation than endlessly insulting everyone in the hope this will somehow induce agreement — or, at least, make the continual losses hurt less.

@12 The City is poised to acquire Fort Lawton from the Feds. The majority, 21 acres, will be added to Discovery Park. Thankfully, low-income seniors, families and those needing workforce housing (also low-income) will have homes there, adjacent to a wonderful park and playfields.