Transit Fare Holiday

“ Ross wants ST to die and go away, and the tax revenues to be redirect to the county agencies”

No greater truth has ever been spoken on this blog

And yet I never said any such thing. It is amazing how people will put words in someone else’s mouth, instead of simply asking for clarification. It isn’t like I’m a rare visitor to the blog. I actually write for it.

The point I’m making is that the state screwed up. Big time. They were trying to solve two problems at once, and failed miserably at both. The two problems were:

1) Build a high-capacity mass transit system where it makes sense to do so.2) Build intercounty transit.

Somehow, someone decided that these should be combined, despite the fact that King County is very large, and contains just about every shred of density appropriate for a high-capacity mass-transit system in the state.

The result is basically crap. BART del Norte, as someone famously put it (I wish I knew who coined such a clever and appropriate phrase). Like BART, it has some essential pieces that any major subway system would have. Like BART, it has miles and miles of very-expensive, rarely-traveled sections, and has failed to cover the areas where a subway actually makes sense. Between the UW and Westlake there is one station — exactly the same number the county had when they built the (very affordable) bus tunnel, those many years ago! By no means am I saying that Convention Place Station was as good as Capitol Hill Station, but Good God, who builds a subway and then doesn’t bother to put stations in the most urban part of the state while making bold plans to extend farther outside downtown than the Paris Metro, the New York City Subway or the London Underground? Sound Transit, that’s who! It was Sound Transit (in their zeal to complete the ludicrous spine) that managed to skip over the heart of the city while focusing on trips to Fife, Ash Way, and Evergreen.

This was all before there was talk of building an extra tunnel with inferior downtown stations, or rail to West Seattle that is inferior to what they have now (let alone what they could build with anywhere near the spending) or one single solitary Ballard station that seem to be farther and farther away from the heart of Ballard as we speak. They’ve had two tries to build a station at First Hill and failed. Nothing for Belltown, Fremont or the Central Area. Even the “South Lake Union” Station seems not long for this world. But Mariner? Oh yeah baby — essential.

Meanwhile, they have done an adequate job of running intercounty bus and train service, but you have to be delusional to think they have solved all of the various problems between the agencies, even in the area they cover. You need only look at what Metro and CT have planned to realize that the border has a huge influence on the routes and the stops, and the folks who live close to it suffer accordingly. Notice that with Metro’s latest proposal, there is no connection on Aurora between 185th and 200th to Link, even though that is the fastest way for Swift Blue (the most frequent bus in CT’s fleet) to get to the station. It is as if Swift Blue, in all its beautiful plumage, is giving this part of Shoreline a giant middle finger.

But I never said we should get rid of ST. I was simply pointing out what many people are coming to realize, which is that the structure of ST was (and is) a big mistake. Was it the only thing that was politically possible? Maybe. Is it ideal? No! That is my point. Oh, it is easy to argue that a smarter board, with better leadership, would have done the right thing, and somehow built something close to what any transit expert would suggest we build. But as many have said, the structure of the board, and their priorities, doomed it from the start.

What they have done from the very beginning is focus almost entirely on long distance travel, to the great detriment of the vast majority of riders that aren’t going that far, or find that for such a distance, the buses work just fine. That is all I was pointing out. I mentioned that the second goal — providing intercounty service — should have been done by a state agency that did that for the entire state and not just one little bit of it. Notice that it is actually quite easy for someone to get from Tacoma to Seattle. You have commuter rail when there is traffic, and relatively frequent and fast bus service when there isn’t. And yet it is a real pain in the ass to get from downtown Seattle to Olympia — the capitol of the state! Why? Because of the arbitrarily defined borders of Sound Transit, an agency with oodles of cash, while what passes for intercounty bus service in the rest of the state is abysmal.

Of course I don’t have a time machine, so we are forced to muddle along. The state can create yet another agency (or give the existing agency more money) to promote something that is definitely within ST’s wheelhouse. With enough effort, we can have decent bus service from Seattle to Spokane or Seattle to Olympia. The same agency might be tasked with working with the various existing transit agencies — that will always carry the bulk of the riders — to make sure the edges between counties are a little softer. But for now, we just hope for the best.