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Comment by chris_va | Hacker News Reader

Not necessarily wrong, but not a well thought out piece. I'm all for public transit, but this doesn't cover the issue in sufficient depth to actually be informative.

Assuming $30/hour opportunity cost? Pulling 20 minutes a day out of a hat? Ignoring the alternative forms of public transit?

Commutes are complex beasts. The article ignores the demand curve of commuting, and dynamic responses like people moving closer to their work.

If we are going to look at opportunity cost, what is the expected gain by investing $53B in existing public transit? Or rezoning density downtown?

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> Or rezoning density downtown?

You can't really get any more dense in Seattle's downtown core. There aren't any single-family houses left and everything between Denny and, say, Yesler is zoned much, much more dense than pretty much anywhere else in town.

I completely agree that there needs to be more dense zoning, especially around the light rail stations. (I also read somewhere that the new Roosevelt station will have less density zoned for it, because of neighborhood opposition, than already exists in areas of Seattle not getting light rail. The math seems to bear that out, at least from the zoning maps I have read.)

Seattle still has a long ways to go for densification. Lower Queen Anne is not dense at all if you walk through it.

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.

The article also conflates the tax increase with the cost of the plan, which are two entirely separate things. Whether the government immediately raises taxes enough to cover the whole tab or does it at some later point doesn't really matter -- the people will eventually pay (this is also the case for our massive federal debt). In this case, Seattle is covering under a third of the cost with their up-front tax increase, so for the article to suggest that the tax increase should be the number that folks consider is disingenuous at best.

One of the pluses of living in Seattle instead of the Bay Area is the significantly lower taxes (especially given that Washington has no state income tax); this could be a trend in the wrong direction. I'd really hate to see Seattle become the next Bay Area (except without the nice weather to justify the higher costs of living).

> this could be a trend in the wrong direction

Some, like myself, argue that Puget Sound's taxes (and those in Seattle, specifically) are too low to both pay for the infrastructure we have and that which we need. Our property tax rate inside Seattle is in the bottom half of the country and our sales tax is relied upon too heavily and fluctuates too much to be used for funding things that need a long-term stable tax source. I'm perfectly willing to pay taxes on transit, schools, roads, water-and-wastewater, social services, and even a municipal fiber optic network. Voters usually agree with me since almost all of these levies have been put to a public vote and are approved in, generally, at least 2:1 margins.

I still remember how miffed everyone was about the toll bridge...

What are the alternative forms of public transit?

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