It's a start.

But we really need nationwide high speed freight and passenger rail, instead of airport runways and highway lanes for single passenger vehicles.

Not just local transit.

An interesting post for everyone who was wondering,"But wait, what's Charles Mudede's inimitable take on the new light rail trains?"

Regarding: "Last night at around 11 pm, I chanced to catch of one of the 152 trains Sound Transit (the S-700 series) purchased from Munich-based corporation Siemens Mobility." For me, the more salient factoid is not that Siemens is based in Munich but that the vehicles were manufactured in Sacramento.

I like the greater visibility and openness of the cars and how that gives riders a greater sense of security. God knows that's going to come in handy if you're an attractive woman and Bill Gates comes by and starts hitting on you.

OK, in all seriousness, this figures to be a triumphant year for Sound Transit 2 with the Northgate extension opening, and just as life should be easing back to normal. But last year was a disastrous year for Sound Transit and particularly Sound Transit 3 and its funding. I'm worried now that Sound Transit is going to cut corners on a 100-year-plus system extension due to a one-year-plus pandemic. If they need to stretch out the timeline, we can wait a few years longer, what with how long we're already waiting.

Obviously we need to cut funding by SDOT for new car vehicle lanes and plow it into more mass transit to Ballard and First Hill, as well as adding more capacity to city bridges for bikes and pedestrians (the cost to do so is usually 0.1 to 0.5%, but the pro-roads people add in all the signals upgrades for cars and trucks to beef that cost up)

At about $100,000 per rider and $600M per mile, you guys better promise to ride this system a lot to help offset these nose-bleed construction and implementation costs. Also, trains are not the silver-bullet that many advocates proffer, with many commuters working from home and not commuting, and air transport is more cost-effective and faster. These financial resources would be better spent addressing social problems like homelessness and promoting safer urban spaces, the romantic clickety-clack of rail transport notwithstanding. We should promote the outdoor dining and Seattle café lifestyle for example, rather than endlessly pouring concrete "Gangnam Style" to satisfy the temporal needs of the bureaucrats and construction unions, all in the name of moving buttocks in and out of the city.

@3 -- ST3 problems have very little to do with the pandemic. Neither the temporary revenue problem (that the federal government helped compensate for) or the fact that more people will work from home is a big issue. They really have two big problems:

1) The expansion was poorly designed. Freeway stations in distant suburbs always perform poorly (https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/economics-of-urban-light-rail-CH.pdf). Mass transit should be focused on urban areas. Everett Link, Tacoma Dome Link, and Issaquah are all terrible projects. Even West Seattle Link is a very bad value. The vast majority of people will be forced to make a transfer, and not get to their destination any faster. The only decent, large project is Ballard Link. Which brings me to the second point.

2) It is way over budget. The original budget for Ballard Link was around $7 billion. Now they expect to pay at least $12 billion. It is also getting worse. Instead of serving the heart of Ballard, or even 15th, the plan is to move it further east, to 14th (which is actually a couple blocks east). This means moving away from the people (the apartments, the jobs, the night life) and towards the warehouses and industrial plants.

ST doesn't know shit about transit. They got lucky with UW to downtown. You really can't fuck that up too much, although they tried (at one point they were going to run it by the freeway). Even without the First Hill Station (that they were supposed to add) it is still a good urban subway. But spending billions for a subway to Fife is a really bad idea.

Most of Seattle is dependent on the buses, and will be for the foreseeable future.

@5, I'd really like to know who you actually are, and where you're actually coming from, because what you're spouting there is some pretty well-honed anti-rail propaganda coming from the sort of person who's been at this a long time.

Actually, $600M per mile for a subway-liked grade-separated system is actually a pretty good deal. We spent over a billion per mile on the Downtown-to-Husky Stadium line, and all of you rail skeptics have been having a tough time casting that as wasted money.

"These financial resources would be better spent addressing social problems like homelessness and promoting safer urban spaces,..."

The voters have spoken and decided otherwise. They've decided to tax themselves to fund an infrastructure project that promotes the common good and benefits the economy.

You really think the voters of this region would have made a similar financial commitment to address the problem of homelessness? And how exactly? Just to build more and more free housing for a population most of whom have mental health and addiction issues? Or would we be trying to spend enough money to solve the affordable housing problem (a different problem from homelessness) for the entire West Coast?

@6 - suburban commuter rail stations can work very well. The BART stations out in the burbs get tremendous ridership and keep lots of cars off the freeways. I expect that the Everett and Federal Way extensions will do the same here. And whether or not the Ballard line is a better investment than the others probably depends on whether you live near it. If you don't, then it's no better than the others. None of these lines are near my house but I see the value in at least getting thousands of other drivers off the roads.

@1 - where exactly is SDOT building new lanes for cars? There is no space for that and it is not going to be happening in the future either.

@8 they were planning to do so, before the pandemic, they'll propose it again.

dvs99 @8, one thing to keep in mind. Ross is a contrarian crank who never met a Sound Transit decision he couldn't second-guess. Clearly, Ross is a greater transit planner than Peter Rogoff. And clearly, he doesn't accept the legitimacy of subarea equity.

Ross actually does have a legitimate point here: "Instead of serving the heart of Ballard, or even 15th, the plan is to move it further east, to 14th (which is actually a couple blocks east)." But he's blown his credibility with all his other complaints, including his wish to re-contest the 2016 ST3 ballot measure. Hey, if you throw enough spaghetti at the wall...

Woohoo! Each side tells stories. Every advocate tries talking loudly. Elsewhere, go orbit now—don’t only listen acutely.