101–108 of 108 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there any specific actions Seattle has taken to make the driving experience worse?
Yes. Approval of an insane number of construction sites in downtown core has lead to absolute gridlock, the removal of lanes on arterial roads for wider bike lanes, and the 405 toll lane are the first which come to mind.
Psst, Seattle also has a reliable, free, and open source pair of apps for knowing where you bus is and when it’ll arrive. These apps are built and maintained entirely by volunteers. (In the case of iOS, this is basically just me.) If you have any background in iOS or Android development and want to help improve your own commute in Seattle, come check out our projects and pick up a bug or two. Hundreds of thousands of…
How Seattle is winning the war on cars: make driving a car into the city a living hell, and actively peruse road expansions that make commute times worse to move people over to mass transit. Mass transit use up, quality of life down. I've grown up slightly outside of Seattle and have been working at some startups, but I'm leaving at the end of this year.
Where are you going to move to? Every big metro area in North America that is significantly geographically constrained has horrendous traffic: SF, NY, Boston, Vancouver, ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> middle and lower income people can only afford to live in the outlying areas in the first place. That is a solvable problem: get rid of the zoning that keeps them out.
That's wonderful, but now you're trying to solve mass transit and affordable housing at the same time. The fact of the matter is that a war on driving is a war on the working class. You can get a used car for just above $1000, but that's how much more you would be paying per month to live within transit distance of your workplace.
It's not a war on driving - it's favoring public transit over driving. There's a contradiction in your statement because public transit is often opposed by wealthy communities for fear of attracting "undesirable elements" (read: the poor). How can public transit both be used by working class people but also be bad for them?
To add on to that, how is it better financially for working class people to put thousands of dollars (a significant fraction of their net worth) into an otherwise unproductive asset that sits idle 80-90% of the time? Not to mention that $1000 used car is far more likely to break down and require expensive repairs (due to more use) when used by a poor person who has to drive an hour each way every day (because housing within decent commute range is too expensive). Operating a car can cost quite a bit too. Insurance can easily be another $1000/year and gasoline is maybe another $1500 more. Compared to that an unlimited VTA pass is $70/month. And the cost of sitting in traffic vs sitting in a train/bus and possibly getting some sleep or work done.
A lot of the anti-transit comments here are simply saying "yeah but it's hard to get to X place by transit" (particularly Microsoft). This may be true now, but from my perspective only underscores the need for even better coverage — for example, ST3 reaching Redmond will help enormously for people getting between Seattle and Microsoft. In general, focusing on transit at the expense of drivers is simply the smart thin…
> In general, focusing on transit at the expense of drivers is simply the smart thing to do Plus, as Seattle continues to expand, it's only going to become more expensive and difficult (zoning, nimby etc) to build rail mass transit. Now is the time to do it and do it aggressively. You put it into place now because you won't be able to later.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> middle and lower income people can only afford to live in the outlying areas in the first place. That is a solvable problem: get rid of the zoning that keeps them out.
That's wonderful, but now you're trying to solve mass transit and affordable housing at the same time. The fact of the matter is that a war on driving is a war on the working class. You can get a used car for just above $1000, but that's how much more you would be paying per month to live within transit distance of your workplace.
Yes, that's exactly how it needs to happen. Transit works more efficiently in higher-density areas, and higher-density areas become more appealing when served by transit, and everyone benefits. The solution is obvious: upzone all the low-density neighborhoods within city limits, then build transit links connecting them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In general, focusing on transit at the expense of drivers is simply the smart thing to do Plus, as Seattle continues to expand, it's only going to become more expensive and difficult (zoning, nimby etc) to build rail mass transit. Now is the time to do it and do it aggressively. You put it into place now because you won't be able to later.
It's a real shame that we've chosen with ST3 to build rail to the suburbs instead, deferring the much-more-important task of rail between the neighborhoods for the next generation.
A lot of the anti-transit comments here are simply saying "yeah but it's hard to get to X place by transit" (particularly Microsoft). This may be true now, but from my perspective only underscores the need for even better coverage — for example, ST3 reaching Redmond will help enormously for people getting between Seattle and Microsoft. In general, focusing on transit at the expense of drivers is simply the smart thin…
Your comment makes it seem like population growth is inevitable. I don't think that's true at all. The city can manage their policies (for example around permitting) more reasonably, to slow down/disincentivize unchecked population growth, to protect the quality of life for folks already living here. Things are not just "a little less convenient" for people who use a car. That's minimizing what has been a much more r…