Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute • Hacker News Board

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#81

Post by loeg » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #34

news_to_me wrote: post #32

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 Light rail will not reach Snohomish County until the mid 2030's. That is not an acceptable answer.

Snohomish county is an exurb. If you work in Seattle and chose to live in an exurb, what did you expect?

The interim solution is the same as it has always been for suburb/exurb transit: the last mile is a drive to/from a park and ride.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#82

Post by curtis » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

Cars aren't going away in Seattle. The bus is a good alternative, and maybe often a superior alternative to driving if you live near a bus line that also stops near where you are going. If your bus trip involves a transfer, it is almost always going to be a better choice to drive. Buses are a great, but they are no panacea.

I guess my real complaint with articles like this is that they assume cars are a problem and buses are a solution. This is wrong. The problem is that I need to get from point A to point B. Buses are a possible solution, and cars are a possible solution, bicycling is a possible solution, walking, heck, even electric skateboards are possible solutions.

The big problem right now in Seattle is that any form of commuting (especially downtown) sucks. Buses are more popular now and cars less popular now, but that's largely because for many of us commuting by bus sucks less than commuting by car. But make no mistake, they both suck.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#83

Post by loeg » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #62

davidw wrote: post #53

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.

The working class can drive on largely un-congested roads to a park and ride. No one is taking away road capacity in places that aren't getting better mass transit.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#84

Post by loeg » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #65

briffle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long would it take to widen the freeways to account for the same number of commuters that the light rail is predicted to carry? I'm guessing rebuilding all those roads, overpasses, underpasses, purchasing rights of way, etc, take some serious time and money..

Even maintaining current capacity would be an improvement over what's happening right now. They are intentionally trying to reduce the number of drivers before the transit system is ready to handle them.

Are you talking about the I-90 express lanes? If not, where else is capacity being reduced?

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#85

Post by loeg » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #15

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…

OneBus is awesome and I use it every time I ride the bus. Thanks for your volunteer work.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#86

Post by loeg » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #22

beisner wrote: post #9

To add to the points raised in the article, Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good . Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes; HOV lanes are (finally!!!) present along the entirety of common longer commutes (especially across the lake). The bus system is especially…

Bus routes are a circuit, so they are more heavily impacted by traffic than other modes of transportation. Thus, heavy traffic regularly makes Seattle's commuter buses 10-20 minutes late. The bus from Mountlake Terrace can sometimes be over an hour late, and rush hour makes this a 2-hour ride on top of the wait. With a car, you can hop off the freeway and take a side street and you're there in 30-40 minutes instead o…

> With a car, you can hop off the freeway and take a side street and you're there in 30-40 minutes instead of 2+ hours.

You're comparing the best case time with a car to the worst case time of a bus. How long do you think the car will take in 5 years, or 10, as the region continues to grow?

> We could put one WA State resident on the moon for that price.

Perhaps, but what's the utility of that? Infrastructure costs money and the region needs mass transit or it will suffer from increased gridlock and commute times.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#87

Post by loeg » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

andrewguenther wrote: post #35

beisner wrote: post #9

To add to the points raised in the article, Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good . Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes; HOV lanes are (finally!!!) present along the entirety of common longer commutes (especially across the lake). The bus system is especially…

> Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good. Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes... Did we live in the same city? This is the exact opposite of my experience with Seattle transit.

I was going to say, Seattle buses were not new and often not clean five years ago (in my experience). Metro suffered a lot after the 2008 financial crisis. It's really only in the last few years we've been getting new buses to replace all the old ones.

As far as cleanliness goes, it really depends on the route. Commuter routes tend to be pretty clean.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#88

Post by loeg » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

curtis wrote: post #82

Cars aren't going away in Seattle. The bus is a good alternative, and maybe often a superior alternative to driving if you live near a bus line that also stops near where you are going. If your bus trip involves a transfer, it is almost always going to be a better choice to drive. Buses are a great, but they are no panacea. I guess my real complaint with articles like this is that they assume cars are a problem and b…

I don't think the authors of the article would really disagree with you.

The problem isn't cars per se. It's the percentage of trips made with cars and the relative low person-density of a SOV (or even a fully occupied car, relative to fully occupied buses or light rail).

There will always be routes that are not well served by transit compared to cars. The end goal is not zero trips made with cars. The goal is to make transit convenient for the majority of trips, so that people choose transit over cars. The result of higher person-density transit is that travel times do not become even more unreasonable as the region grows.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#89

Post by beisner » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

andrewguenther wrote: post #35

beisner wrote: post #9

To add to the points raised in the article, Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good . Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes; HOV lanes are (finally!!!) present along the entirety of common longer commutes (especially across the lake). The bus system is especially…

> Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good. Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes... Did we live in the same city? This is the exact opposite of my experience with Seattle transit.

Yeah I suppose I might have just experienced a particularly good section of it. I've lived in Kirkland and Bellevue, and took either the 540->372 (change at Westlake) or 255->522 (change in U District) to get to Lake City nearly every day. Buses were always pretty pleasant (esp. compared to NYC), and only added ~15 minutes to the trip. Also would commute across 520 a bunch, and found the bus service to be pretty darn convenient getting to SLU, Downtown, U-District, Cap Hill, Fremont, and Beacon Hill. Obviously not EVERY route was convenient and used Uber to pick up the slack, but 9/10 times public transit was only slightly slower and slightly less convenient than using a car.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#90

Post by mikestew » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

eksu wrote: post #47

bryanlarsen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ...

Ideally Boise, potentially Salt Lake City or Bozeman or Spokane or Denver. Mountain West. If you or someone you know is hiring College Graduates in these areas, drop me a line.

As a Redmond resident who,has investigated getting out, I sincerely wish you luck. I’ve kept an eye out in Idaho and Montana, and though the jobs are there, the pickin’s are slim. Denver or SLC might be a better shot for the first job, and more importantly, the second job when the first doesn’t work out.

Thankfully I’ve recently landed work in Bellevue (as opposed to Yet Another Pioneer Square Startup), so maybe I can hold off for a while longer. Love Redmond, but a lot of the work is across the lake. And, no, I’m not moving to Seattle.