i'm in Stockholm this week and JFC it's great when everyone gets together and decides to get the mainstay of their transit system off the streets. You can get a lot of places in a matter of 15-30mins, stress free.

Skytrain! (Think of it as Monorail with 2 rails, or Light Rail in the sky, or just as The El).
Cheaper to build than light rail, better view. Yeah, noisier than underground train, but not too noisy unless (as with our present system) you put way too many curves in it.

Transit without upzones is doomed to fail. See: the barren parking structures surrounded by wide streets in the outskirst of BART.

We can have the politics to fix zoning. Hell, around half our population already lives in multifamily housing. This is a problem we can solve, if we find the will to do so.

This subsidizes Suburban Sprawl And increases emissions in the region.

Better solution: upzone every arterial Block citywide to 6+2 story mixed income MFH with zero exclusions or reviews and replace all arterial street parking with transit/bike only lanes with zero exceptions.

@2:

Were you here in the mid-aughts? We tried to bring in above-grade transit, voted for it multiple times, but the anti-mass transit crowd kept finding ways to send it back to the ballot until they finally managed to kill it. Granted, that was more than a decade ago, so perhaps people's attitudes (or just people themselves) have changed, and with the huge influx of new residents the tax base might now be able to support the investment, which was an admittedly problematic issue. But, it's not like it wasn't ever considered before.

A monorail?

I dunno... that's more of a Shelbyville idea.

@6: well, it put North Haverbrook on the map!

@7, there's nothin' on Earth like a genuine bona-fide electrified six-car monorail!

Where, Mudede, is your reference point for desirable urban cities where large shares of quality housing is available for less than the "affordable" market rate? You constantly reference them, as if they exist?

You would think such sensitivities would be evident in cities that are liberal bastions with generous involvement of government in the housing resource?

How's that working out in Seattle? San Francisco? What's rent like in NYC? What's affordability like in LA? Bonn? Dublin? Paris?

Below market-rate housing is effectively a resource tax -- in opportunity cost -- of renting to one person at a cost lower than another person would be willing to pay.

In NO CITY EVER have there been significant lifestyle subsidies for people that make career choices that limit their ability to pay for their necessities, like rent.

Stop.
Believing
In Santa Claus.

The world is NEVER going to give you more free/cheap shit because you decided to become a writer.

I’m totally on board with light rail and have voted for all transit levies. But some of us in North Seattle now have longer commutes, thanks to canceled bus lines and being shunted to Link. I used to be able to walk across the street and take the 72 bus downtown in about 25 minutes. That route was canceled. Now I have to walk to the 372, take a long, slow ride to UW, walk across campus (which doesn’t feel safe at night), and transfer to light rail — a total trip of 45 minutes. Depending on the time of day, it’s easier to just drive and pay for parking.

@11 there's more than a few people who say it's not a coincidence they cut those bus lanes near the light rail. But I'm sure they're just being overly cynical. Sound Transit would never Do something sneaky like that, would they?

Regarding that academic’s “housing supply myth” argument: It’s like if in a famine someone claimed that there’s no shortage of food because the amount consumed is the same as the amount produced.

@13 Wrong. It is like if in a famine there is a silo with 66,719 rations of food not being distributed, pointing out that perhaps the famine has been created by forces beyond simple food production.

There is no population surge in America, there is no wage surge in America, yet housing prices are rising incredibly fast all across the US (even in places without an Amazon boom). Perhaps it is time to step back and think perhaps this might have more relation to international capital flows than simple supply and demand.

I would not want to be in a monorail when our 9.0 earthquake hits. Nope. Tunnels are safer.
(That said, I voted for the monorail last time. But really, Seattle missed its opportunity to Monorailize the city back after the '64 World's Fair, when no one took the moment to reserve light rail / monorail right-of-ways [because cars!] and just let the city fill all the spaces w/ structures... and we now have to retrofit the city for light rail. *sigh*)
--
@10 - ...housing is available for less than the "affordable" market rate?
I don't even know what this means. Why is "affordable" in quotes? What is the 'affordable market rate'? Because the regular market rate in this city is quite unaffordable for quite a lot of people who are being forced out (and into longer commutes > worsening traffic) since they can't pay the new rental prices. Their jobs don't pay enough and their wages can't rise fast enough to stay put. I think minimizing the social disruption of making people move due to radical cost increases is a reasonably positive goal for a community and a society to have. "Market forces" only care about one thing: profit. At the expense of people and communities. The economy should work for us, not the other way around.

As far as Vancouver housing is concerned, it sounds like a bubble. If the city continues to build new places, but there isn't that much demand for them, then prices will plummet fairly soon. You can't make money if the apartment is empty.

Of course it is possible that there is some sort of flaw with the data. It is hard to explain all those empty places when other reports point to an extremely low vacancy rate (less than one percent) for Vancouver.