Comments

1

Articulated buses are a scary menace to other vehicles and pedestrians.

3

@2 Or, uh, maybe just get yourself vaccinated first?

There's no waiting list now, you can walk right into Lumen Field and get your shot whenever you feel like it.

4

Just a reminder that all outdoor music and film events will be COVID VIP and way in the nosebleeds for those who don't get their free vaccine shots.

All.
Summer.
Long.

WE'RE GOING TO PARTY!!!

Except for people who don't have all their COVID-19 shots, they go to the back of the line.

6

@1 Oh bullshit. An articulated bus is just a big bus. They are driven by professional drivers, who know how to operate them. How the fuck is that scary? Your average car on the road -- driven by an amateur who will get a slap on the wrist instead of losing their livelihood if they fuck up -- is a lot more scary.

8

@6: No, not BS. Just facts. No matter how professional the drivers are, they cannot overcome the inherent dangers of the bus design. Here's one British study:

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/bendy-buses-the-fatal-facts-6588794.html

9

@6 Raindrop is probably referencing the London study that resulted in the retirement of bendy buses there. The finding was that the bendy bus was ~5x more likely to be involved in accidents with pedestrians-- but the study is criticized on the grounds that routing distorted the comparison-- the bendy buses were deployed primarily in areas of dense pedestrian traffic, industrial areas and bedroom communities were served by standard buses.

So maybe we can discount that study, but if you're a pedestrian, the problem with an articulated bus isn't that it's articulated, but that it's a bus. Non-articulated buses cause ~8x more pedestrian fatalities per vehicle mile than cars. This is still about five times lower than cars per passenger vehicle mile (assuming buses run at half their capacity on average) but getting hit by a bus is no joke.

For riders, though, studies worldwide consistently show buses (including articulated buses) are about 10x safer per passenger vehicle mile than cars.

11

@10 Yeah, sure, who runs the place. That's definitely what you appear to be worried about here.

12

@10 Didn't you see him get excited about the location, location, location? Dow is counting on one of the residents burning the place down, or it becoming so dilapidated in a few years they have to close it, and sell the property for a tidy profit. Motherfucker said sell it when we end homelessness, LOL. Nguyen kind of dunked on him there at the end of the story, like if you want 12 more years of worsening problems and lip-service vote for Dow.
Also dude looks like he wears a rug, just throwing that out there.

14

@11: You shouldn't have a problem with details, unless you're afraid of them.

15

@13 Oh really? And which characteristics of the managers are going to make that difference, do you imagine?

Hint: see if you can do it without another lurid portrait of the tenants-- you've given us that already, thanks, we're more than adequately acquainted with the assumptions about the homeless you're starting from.

17

@16 So in sum, you will only consider this new housing a success if the homeless people who upset you the most are excluded, remain homeless, and continue living on the street, upsetting you.

Man, no wonder you seem so cranky all the time.

18

@16:

Why? The "wet housing" or "housing first" concept pioneered right here in Seattle in the late 1990's and predicated on the principal of harm reduction, that is, focusing on putting chronic substance abusers into an environment that minimizes risk to both themselves and others - a concept now emulated in cities across the globe - has been a verifiable success. Subsequent studies have shown that Housing First programs not only greatly reduce costs to the taxpayers: fewer arrests and less incarceration, fewer public complaints, and reduced use of emergency and social services; but that over time residents demonstrate reduced rates of substance abuse and recidivism back into addiction than do so-called "sober first" programs.

So, if the ultimate goal is to reduce homelessness and the public costs associated with addiction and substance abuse there are very few programs that work BETTER than this. If, on the other hand, the ultimate goal is to continue a thoroughly disproven policy of punishment and incarceration - at significantly higher cost to taxpayers - then, by all means, keep on keeping on with your anachronistically judgmental, Calvinism-inspired doctrines

19

This is a tough problem. On the one hand it's true that Housing First is a great way to get people off the streets. I'm sure there are plenty of housing facilities that no one even notices because they don't create problems. On the other, housing first with no consideration for how it will be done or the consequences can be a disaster. The Morrison Hotel example is probably the most egregious case in Seattle, but it was literally unsafe to walk down an entire block of Third Avenue or to wait for the bus across the street. IIRC they were forced to close the main entrance to the County Courthouse (across from said Hotel) for a time because of the violence happening outside.

I don't think it is out of line for a neighborhood to object if that kind of situation moves in. The real issue is that a lot of the Morrison Hotel resident probably should have been in mental health facilities, not hotels. Housing first may be a great way to deal with drug addiction or alcoholism but perhaps not serious mental illness.

@13 - the issue is probably not so much the management, but what types of people who are in a given facility and what their particular problems are.

@17 - not saying that the toughest cases should be forced to stay on the street. But there are clearly people who should be in some kind of supervised living situation rather than running around hitting others over the head with their metal crutches, spitting on commuters waiting for the bus, etc. (and yes, before you ask, I personally saw both of those happen in the garden spot that was the Morrison Hotel sidewalk). And assuming they were Morrison residents, that would tend to show that just housing them did nothing to address their violent mental health issues.

21

@20 Ah, yes. Just load them into vans and lock them up! Forever. Life in prison, for being drunk or high (but not the wild investment-banker kind of drunk or high, the poor kind).

That's all this was ever about for you, isn't it? You couldn't give a shit how the housing is managed, you just want the winos and druggies in shackles.

23

Raindrop, I have lived in Seattle for more than thirty years, and was a frequent visitor before that time. In all of those years, with all of those articulated buses, the only tragedy I recall is that time that crazy guy shot the driver on the Aurora Bridge and the bus went careening over the handrails (landing on an apartment building, if I recall). If that had be a standard bus, the same thing would have happened.

You're overwrought, dear. Have you taken your pills?

24

@22 You don't want them wallowing in filth, so naturally you're going to deny them public housing, lock them up in prisons instead, and throw away the key?

You're absolutely right my angry little friend, I'll never have your level of compassion.

26

@25 Right, send the winos and druggies who fail your mandatory public-housing-application blood tests to prison, and keep them there forever. Also round up anyone who doesn't want to apply for public housing and dump them into prison forever, too.

Jesus guy, we get it already, you don't need to keep repeating it.

28

@27 I dunno Toby, letting the druggies and winos live in their own public housing units just like the other poors kinda sounds better to me than leaving them and the rest of the homeless out on the streets where they are right now, causing you all that consternation you're making such a fine show of here.

But clearly, no plan to house the homeless will ever be good enough for you unless you get to demand blood samples and throw all the winos and druggies you find into prison for life. My goodness, you've got your priorities just perfectly clear here, don't you.

30

"people who have struggled for years without shelter while simultaneously dealing with untreated neurological disorders including addiction don't immediately suppress all symptoms of their traumas and disorders as soon as you stick them in a shelter, so I don't think giving them shelter is the answer here." - a man with a plan

31

Maybe Dr. Nelson Salim can take care of their addiction problems and their mental illness. About damn time he made himself useful around here.

32

@23, you have not paid attention to all situations where articulated buses have caused problems. Nor have I to be honest. But I do have a close friend who's mother (a woman of color, in her 50's, who worked as an officer cleaner) was killed by one. She was waiting for a bus after work (during the evening rush hour) at a bus stop in downtown Seattle when one of the articulated buses jumped the curb while turning a corner and essentially cut her in half. She lived for a few more hours but due to the road being closure for hours due to investigation, along with Friday evening traffic. neither her husband or children were able to see her before she died (they lived in north Seattle in the Sand Point neighborhood). The family sued and lost, and had to endure days of medical testimony along with graphic pictures of her actual death. Many lawyers contacted them wanting to try the case at no charge, it should have been an open and shut case. The family lost when Metro produced obviously fraudulent training notes on the driver (notes in the same handwriting and all in the same pen, going back years, what are the chances of that?) along with a couple of alcoholics claiming to have seen her standing in the road, who recieved compensation for their testimony, free bus passes for life and immediately afterwards were placed in an apt at the cities expense. Citizens rarely win as you have one governmental agency being judged by another. Perhaps the case would have had a different outcome today but any cases won against government controlled agencies are the exception rather than the rule.Within six months her husband died of a heart attack most likely due to his grief and depression and their house on six lots they were sub diving for their retirement that they had worked hard to develop was lost in foreclosure. This was in the later 1990's. Sad story for the family that was not helped legally as it should have been.


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