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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Ironically, the existing tracks from Renton to Bothell could have been used for half of a light rail system for a song. But the government has desperately pretended those tracks don't exist, and has gone to considerable lengths to destroy them.

A few years earlier, they destroyed the tracks from Renton to Black Diamond so thoroughly the right-of-way can never be used for rail again.

It boggles the mind.

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This interests me... Do you have any articles I can read about this?

I was always under the impression that the Sounder (our commuter heavy rail line) used tracks shared with commercial traffic (BNSF, etc.) and thus couldn't be fully developed into a city-wide system...

Nothing has run on the tracks for 20 years. Some of it has been pulled up, but the right-of-way remains.

Seattle Transit just announced a $50 billion plan to blast new right-of-way, never mind the trackage could be doubled by re-using that right-of-way for a few million.

You can still see the tracks on Google Maps:

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6753261,-122.1882192,16z

although it has been renamed "Cross Kirkland Corridor" in their attempt to hide what it is. Sound Transit prefers a plan that costs one thousand times as much, still won't serve the eastside, and will not be in service until half the existing taxpayers are long dead.

It's not Sound Transit's fault. The cities won't let them. Kirkland wants them to build out Buses and threatens to veto any light rail project. Residents by the CKC want to "save the trail" (aka we're selfish jerks that bought a property by a railway line, but don't want noise of trains)

http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/12/kirkland-st-struggl...

The tracks still run through Renton and Bellevue and can connect to the rest of the light rail system in the Tukwila area.

I'd build the system to the border of Kirkland, and wait for the Kirkland residents to get fed up with rotting on 405.

Easy to say if the tracks don't go (almost literally) through your back yard as they do mine.

Eh, its been used as recently as 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Washington_Dinner_Tr...

There are reasons why they can't be used. The city of kirkland has lots of residents against it. But more importantly, the tracks don't really go to the city centers that we need. I think we are so desperate we should try using them, as it would cost much less.

Yes, that lost opportunity saddens me.

The Eastside (the Kemper Freeman Jr cohort) has traditionally spiked anything resembling public transit, public good, regional bon ami. Apart from their public statements about "those people", I assume their primary bare knuckled motivation is that anything that hurts Seattle helps Bellevue (landlords). Which I'm totally fine with, love and war and all that. I just hate the hypocrisy.

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