I'm still banging the old lady like it's 1999. Dreams don't always need to die.

Well, if governments didn't spend (doing some addition..) $52 billion more than they have, it would go a long way to making everything else more affordable. They're building rail despite being $30 billion in the hole while also doing a $22 billion project?

That means Seattle is issuing bonds like crazy, soaking up investment capital that then does not go to creating private sector jobs or paying higher wages. It just turns into debt. And that debt carries interest, so even less money for the people.

Tptb already made plans to just kill us off.

Actually, the problem commuter trains are supposed to address is that there are too many cars on the roads. The whole reason the area I live in is considering a commuter rail expansion, is because the tourists are getting sick of sitting in the horrible traffic that perpetually exists in the attractions area of central Florida.

> Something has to give.

Well, unless you want to move within walking distance of a train station, chances are you'll still need an e-bike or e-scooter to cover the "last mile" portions of train commuting.

Forget the cost in terms of dollars...the traffic congestion and parking won't sustain economic growth, not at any cost, past a certain point, by pure simple geometric math. If every apartment in Manhattan had a single surface parking spot, the resulting parking lot would be bigger than Manhattan itself. The corollary: you simply can't have a strong urban economy if you rely on universal car transport. There are two choices for cities: Hard-cap your economic growth at a low level, at the same time permanently putting your city at the limit of traffic misery it can never escape from, or take mass transit seriously as the transportation backbone, and not as an afterthought or a charity effort.

As long as there are roads and cars, people are going to drive cars, but that can't be your only option, or even the primary option, in any healthy city economy.

There have been previous instances of [1]floating rail links [wikipedia.org]. One can only wait to see if Sound Transit suffers the same fate*.

*It won't be the first time that this bridge sank.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage#Sinking_of_the_SF_Hydro

It sounds fancier than it is. There are many of floating bridges in the world (and in the USA). You usually don't even know you're driving on something that is floating. The additional weight of a rail carriage isn't a significant engineering challenge.

Maybe the "have-nots" won't have so little if they can affordably compute to where work is?

> they will be simply shipping criminals to the suburbs.

Not so much. At least not in my neigborhood. Our local cities have already put heavily armed transit police divisions in charge of rail security.

> what we need are services in local areas so that everyone can access the shopping, medical care, alcohol, and entertainment that they need.

Many of which are closing in the Seattle neighborhoods due to crime. So local transportation will do no good. And the riff-raff will be facing armed security once they step off the trains in the suburban areas*.

*Which may be one reason that the left wing state legislature is trying to get hold of the sheriff and police election process now. Before the cross lake s

I am genuinely amazed that someone is rallying against a decent public transport. Most of the world sees cheap transport as basic amenity a government needs to provide.

Yeah, the whole Cross-Kirkland-Corridor issue, specifically how a NIMBY added a competing bus-right-of-way option to drive more opposition to light rail, definitely killed one of the most obvious extensions (and might even have renovated the Truck Eating Bridge. I'm still hoping that they will revisit that, especially since the rail yard in bellevue is right on the tail end of that corridor. It'd enable a direct line right past Totem Lake straight into Woodinville.

Having said that, that entire section was,

i was a messenger in seattle. they have spent an ungodly amount on separated bike paths. it may feel safer, but it creates huge blind spots for drivers when they are turning into a parking garage or similar. i'm not sure its actually safer. the off street bike paths are first rate tho. the burke gilman trail is outstanding.

Why does it only fail in the USA?

California's high-speed rail is first-class HSR, using normal HSR trains from Siemens, and it has a good alignment that directly connects multiple population centers. There are many ways you can criticize CAHSR, but it's definitely HSR.

The problem with CAHSR, to be fair, is that they bit off a huge megaproject all at once, without a clear funding path. Argument 1 is that they should have started by building a single link between two biggest cities, like the French advised them to do at the beginning, then b

Hobos sleeping on the tracks.

The spirit of henry ford haunts everyone that want to turn his car only dream into something with rails and trains.

He screams at night, "MORE ROAAADS!" pretty much like the daggerfall's dead king, and even send wraths and all that.

> Give Seattle refuses to lock up criminals

Voters. Please.

> The future of urban transit is Waymo and Zoox.

Nope. With those, you can't confine development and population movement to pre-defined corridors where the tracks and bus routes are. Soon, you'll have bums hopping a Waymo into downtown Bellevue. And real estate development just anyplace a developer sees fit to put it.