The Real Cost of Seattle's Next Transport Bill Would Come from Not Passing It

A fourth would just be to hire foreigners to build/manage us trains as per their own standards.

There's a Donate table item on the Info tab of the iOS app you can tap. Thank you!

Your point about bus bunching stands, though, if only as an example of how polarized the use of curb space is in this city. "BAT lanes" that aren't well enforced (though I have seen a lot more towing of parked cars out of them as of late) and a dearth of bus-only lanes in favor of preserving on-street parking are just two of my complaints. But service, at least in town, has gotten better in my experience. Hopefully the additional station openings in 2021-2023 will free up even more service hours to fill in gaps and extend the span of service (dare I dream for 24-hour bus[0] service?).

0 - Sound Transit has already said that 24-hour train service is very unlikely until the second train tunnel is online.

If we vote no, we have a chance to keep working on it. They'll have to try again in four years. The demographic shift toward reurbanization will continue. Seattle's political power will continue to grow. The ST2 bonds which are limiting us so heavily will continue to expire. We might actually be able to get a better deal if we wait - and we certainly won't get a worse one.

Amen to this but I want them only in dedicated lanes, preferably lanes separated from general purpose traffic by more than just paint. A streetcar would be great on, say, 23rd Ave between University Station and Mt Baker Station. Or replace route 7 down Rainier and connect it to the south side of the First Hill Streetcar. (As an aside: the Broadway segment of the FHSC is an example of how not to build them.) Or, if I'm wishing for ponies, start at Carkeek Park and go south on 8th Ave NW, turn right onto NW 85th St to go west until either the terminus of the most northern Ballard Link stop (and that's where you plant the maintenance and operations base for this streetcar) or continue on to the foot of the Ballard Bridge and run the M&O shop into the run down area just south of Ballard Blocks.

There are also still a lot of surface lots in downtown and throughout the city that should ideally be buildings with parking garages instead. If we converted some of those garage spots to paid public parking (similar to the pearl apartments on 15th), we'd get the best of both worlds.

That's one of the shitballs that the Washington legislature has handed us with how Sound Transit 3 works. It's called "subarea equity" and means that taxes are spent only in the area where they are gathered--areas called things like "North King," "South King," "Snohomish," and so on--which sounds great and all but the tax rate has to be uniform across the district and the entire district must vote in a single yes/no vote. So Bothell is spending its own money to go to Totem Lake but Seattle's more expensive needs can't be fully met because it would take the tax authority of the entire district to be spent in a single subarea and neither the voters or the Sound Transit district organization would go for that.

This is what I alluded to when I wrote that I understand, politically, why ST3 is written as it is. Seattle as a city is never going to have the tax authority for us to buy the kind of in-city dense transit we really want. There's absolutely no reason for the state legislature to give it to us (especially not with that 1% hard property tax cap written into the state constitution) since leveraging Puget Sound's representatives for votes on allowing us to tax ourselves on a handful of transit packages is what the rest of the legislature uses to strongarm votes for road packages in the rest of the state (that, conveniently, never seem to have to go to the ballot).

So I'm voting yes on ST3 because, with all due respect to Mars Saxman whom I really respect and really want his ideas to come true, I don't think we'll get a better package in four years.