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Seattle Mayor: I have Comcast, and I would like better service

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Re: Seattle Mayor: I have Comcast, and I would like better service

#41

Post by aaronbrethorst »

specialist wrote: post #38
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The monorail, if completed, would have been of dubious value to the city. I mean, c'mon, billions of dollars to transport people from Ballard to West Seattle? At least the gigabit internet service offers a clear value proposition: 'gigabit internet service for less than you're paying for Comcast or (god forbid) Broadstripe.' And while we're on the subject, I voted against the tunnel. I think the tunnel is a terrible…

You may feel different if you commuted Ballard-Downtown. Standing room only, even before the service cuts. Have you seen the plans for the Seattle Street Car? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Streetcar Please note the Green and Purple lines. Kinda looks like 1/2 of the monorail project plan. The capital cost of the monorail was ~$1.4b. What killed the project was the finance package, totaling ~$12b. Still less pe…

Also totally useless...so far. However I think Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square will be nice for me. Big, important difference is that the SLUT cost $50mm. No reason to expect future lines will be much different in price. I'd much rather have a half dozen 50mm projects than a single billion dollar boondoggle.

http://www.seattlestreetcar.org/about/docs/faqCosts.pdf

Re: Seattle Mayor: I have Comcast, and I would like better service

#43

Post by avn2109 »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #41
specialist wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may feel different if you commuted Ballard-Downtown. Standing room only, even before the service cuts. Have you seen the plans for the Seattle Street Car? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Streetcar Please note the Green and Purple lines. Kinda looks like 1/2 of the monorail project plan. The capital cost of the monorail was ~$1.4b. What killed the project was the finance package, totaling ~$12b. Still less pe…

Also totally useless...so far. However I think Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square will be nice for me. Big, important difference is that the SLUT cost $50mm. No reason to expect future lines will be much different in price. I'd much rather have a half dozen 50mm projects than a single billion dollar boondoggle. http://www.seattlestreetcar.org/about/docs/faqCosts.pdf

The Californians in the room are laughing at these numbers because they're used to spending $3.5 million bucks _per calendar day_ on transit projects. Makes Seattle look OK.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/14/local/la-me-bullet-r...

Re: Seattle Mayor: I have Comcast, and I would like better service

#44

Post by donavanm »

mattgrice wrote: post #37
donavanm wrote: post #30

For the past year the city of Seattle has been hyping "gigabit seattle" as the solution. The idea is that a private group would get access to city fiber at/near cost and manage the actual service. The private group in this case is Gigabit Squared. As far as I can tell Gigabit Squared is a sham. They have no previous completed projects. The dates and milestones reported to the press and recorded in the city meetings,…

I don't fully understand how the decision was made which neighborhoods will be built out. It is obviously not based on demand because the coverage areas [1] include every single one of Seattle's poorest neighborhoods[2] and virtually none of the richest. Even if you don't know Seattle neighborhoods, there are obvious clues in the map. It seems almost gerrymandered to avoid including non-industrial waterfront. Some of…

IIRC the choice to favor neighborhoods like central, chinatown, and beacon hill was intentional. The thinking was that the traditional franchise agreements allowed incumbents to choose to compete in the neighborhoods with the greatest disposable income. Other nieghborhoods were left to providers, like broadstripe and clear, that were unable to provide the significant capital outlays required for infrastructure upgrades. Over the past few decades this led to significant divergence of infrastructure, and ultimately capabilities, between neighborhoods.

One of the "funny" things about Gigabit Seattle is that the last mile is actually supposed to be wireless. Much like that other network pioneer of Seattle, Clearwire.

Re: Seattle Mayor: I have Comcast, and I would like better service

#45

Post by aaronbrethorst »

avn2109 wrote: post #43
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also totally useless...so far. However I think Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square will be nice for me. Big, important difference is that the SLUT cost $50mm. No reason to expect future lines will be much different in price. I'd much rather have a half dozen 50mm projects than a single billion dollar boondoggle. http://www.seattlestreetcar.org/about/docs/faqCosts.pdf

The Californians in the room are laughing at these numbers because they're used to spending $3.5 million bucks _per calendar day_ on transit projects. Makes Seattle look OK. [1] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/14/local/la-me-bullet-r...

city vs state level projects.
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