Extend Ballard to Northgate

I can't wait to vote on the project and I'm glad to see that they've extended the funding mechanism to 25 years (this will benefit the project by making it eligible to federal funding and better interest rate bonds).

What I find most interesting about this project is the question of the White Center line and "social justice." According to many of their studies and projections, depending on where they situate the line and the associated stations it's a tradeoff:

-Place the station in a bustling, economically vibrant area of West Seattle and get X number of riders. (Mostly white, well-to-do)

-Place the station in a historically underserved community of West Seattle/White Center and get 1/2 of X number of riders. (Mostly minority & economically challenged)

I have my own opinions on the subject, but what do you think they should do? Spend somewhere around a billion dollars of your tax dollars to serve the most number people in that area, or spend a billion dollars to serve 1/2 the number of riders, but it would serve those who come from an economically disadvantaged background?

It's a fairly clear cut decision for urban planners one way or another, but the main difference is in how you view the goals of public infrastructure.

Will an east-west connection between Ballard and the University of Washington make it into the package? The "go big" activists at Seattle Subway are pushing hard for this line.

In my view, this thinking is the antithesis of "go big." It's more like, spread yourself thin enough that you can't really go big anywhere.

The spectacular initial success of U-Link should be an indication that building full-fledged subway lines to prime locations gives you the biggest bang for the buck, even if it is the biggest bucks.

Adding a second north-south light rail tunnel through downtown to accommodate, directly or indirectly, Ballard and West Seattle connections is the "go big" foundational investment that makes all sorts of other routes and extensions feasible and practical. Want to get to Burien? Get to West Seattle first. Want to have a whole 'nuther Ballard-to-UW line? Get to Ballard (from downtown) first.

Well, I'm arguing about a decision that perhaps has already largely been made, considering the announcement is this afternoon.

That map is a good start.
In addition to
Ballard <=> Udist and/or Northgate...
Add:
Mountlake Terrace <=> Redmond...
White Center <=> Rainier Beach <=> Renton <=> Bellevue College

And Extend:
Tacoma <=> Olympia

And those are just the obvious ones.

COME ON FUTURE, HURRY UP!

Extend Ballard to Everett. Or at least the northern border of the city and if possible through Shoreline.

Also, what happened to the proposed ST bus route along N 145th St? There are currently zero E to W bus routes that go the width of the city that far north. I will never forget the time I was living up in eastern Shoreline and had to get to Bothell. What would have been a 20 min drive was a 90 min three bus ordeal.

@3: Oh, so 20,000-ish people on what is supposed to by the molten core of the urban transit network is "spectacular" now? That should come as a surprise to... well... riders of any actual urban subway transit in the known universe.

U-Link's ridership bump seems more like a number that represents a bare minimum of urban usefulness, which is of course commensurate with the inaccessible ultra-express (taking longer to walk to than most of the bus rides it replaces) that is the crux of Sound Transit design.

But by all means, let's watch them roll out $25-$47 billion worth of lines to Fife and Burien and a decentralized industrial park and some hypothetical office development adjacent to Issaquah, which somehow would manage to be built so uselessly as to leave 98% of Seattleites driving all the time even when all of the money is spent and the opportunity costs tallied.

I can't wait to see how much your blind enthusiasm for massive, inexplicable waste doesn't translate to "excitement" at the polls. The best possible outcome, at this point, would be the failure of ST3 and subsequent scaling back to targeted high-capacity segments built sequentially according to best practices.

(I know, I know, blind railfanning is so much more fun!)

@7 It's hard not to agree with that sentiment. If metro provided decent transit within city limits, it would be great to have ST for regional stuff, because a lot of jobs and affordable housing are outside city limits. But now that ST seems to be replacing more accessible local transit, yeah, it's a huge frustration.

d.p. @7, please feel free to sign up for the "No on ST3" campaign. Sounds like a wonderful use of your valuable time.

In the meantime, I'll go out on a limb and characterize an increase in ridership from 35K to 57K as "a good thing."

@3
Seattle Subway wants to build from downtown to Ballard AND from Ballard to the UW. That's why it is the "go big" proposal.

@10: ST3 would be my first "no" vote on a transit proposition (or frankly on any form of public-good tax levy) ever.

But there's little need to campaign against it, when the hilariously anti-urban routing details and project phasing announced today are destined to doom its prospects anyway.

Sound Transit is, quixotically and somewhat anti-democratically, relying on a Seattle supermajority to buoy its electoral math, i.e. to ensure district-wide passage and taxation over the popular objection of 3 subareas already assured to vote "no". The weak-sauce Seattle offerings are likely to chip away at the "desparate for transit" vote in the city too. Why would anyone vote for 20 years of no relief at all, and basically useless shit after that?

d.p. @12: @10: ST3 would be my first "no" vote on a transit proposition (or frankly on any form of public-good tax levy) ever.

For every mass transit measure of the last 15 years, people always come out of the woodwork to say, "I've voted for every measure up until now, but on this one I'm no." Welcome to the club.

Happy to hear about that more democratic d.p.-approved plan. Maybe you can muster a democratically elected majority among your Seattle Transit Blog cohorts.