Posted on 07/25/2007 1:16:59 PM PDT by sionnsar
LOL! And they want to do the same here in Seattle, along the ignored & decayed waterfront. (To be restored with federal monies — money the rest of you non-Seattle saps will pay.)
Busses are diesel. Diesels produces visible particulates but little else. Gasoline produces little visible particulates but lots of other bad stuff that’s invisible. In otherwords, buses are not as dirty polluters as your eyes are telling you and gasoline engines are not as clean as your eyes are telling you.
I guess replacing useless concrete ceiling panels couldn't be considered "rebuilt" either.
I pointed out in their inaugural meeting that Link was a real estate development project, not a transportation project. And I introduced them to the Law of (Robert) Moses, which says, "Once you put in the first stakes, they'll never make you pull them up."
I won't be able to speak for Link's ability to function as a successful transportation project until it opens for business in July 2009. But I can testify to its efficacy as a real estate development project.
I took a tour of the right of way where it runs down the middle of MLK Way in South Seattle. MLK Way was a 4 and 5 lane highway. It is now about the width of a 10 lane highway. Outside the rail right of way, there are two lanes on each side. The large median, with the light rail tracks, takes up about the same width as a 6 lane highway in itself.
All the rundown businesses and apartments on MLK have been torn down. On intersecting streets, a lot of homes in poor condition have been torn down some distance from MLK. The new single family homes and apartments are subsidized housing aimed at a multiracial neighborhood. In other words, whites have been invited to return to what was once an Italian neighborhood that went black. Several years before the line opens, transit-oriented development has already begun to line MLK Way -- which is exactly what former Seattle mayor Norm Rice had in mind when he pushed to run the line down MLK in the first place.
So it's fulfilling the main function set by its designers.
The problem with light rail is that its backers have turned it into a religion. There are places where light rail works well (San Diego, Denver, Salt Lake City, Portland, St. Louis, the Los Angeles Blue Line), where it works adequately (San Jose, the LA Gold Line), and where it has failed ignominiously (Buffalo, the LA Green Line, the River Line in New Jersey). Light rail is not a panacea.
But I have long since stopped listening to Emory Bundy. When I saw Maggie Fimia at a chamber music event last week, she greeted me and tried to convert me to her BRT religion, but I explained the economics of gasoline, diesel -- and electricity. For Emory, Maggie and their group, BRT has become just as much a religion as light rail. Both modes have their uses in the Seattle area. But I no longer take such a dim view of Link. It may just work after all.
The Big Dig is a new highway tunnel. It replaced an elevated highway approximately 50 years old.
That would be maintenance, which is necessary on all infrastructure. You know, like patching potholes or restripping a highway or replacing a guardrail damaged in a wreck.
Rebuilding is the complete replacement of the sunk investment at the end of its useful life.
Seattle is a very dense and populated area. If the Link fails, it will be because it does not have the service characterisitics and speed of modern subway and elevated rapid transit like the Washington Metro, MARTA in Atlanta, or BART in San Francisco. The key of the link succeeding is speed.
The economic way to implement light rail is to go find a few square miles of empty land, construct an elaborate underground rail tunnel network, then build a new city on top of it. ;)
And the trains are dirty (largely because they let bums ride for free) and the system still can't turn a profit, despite very heavy usage.
The Airport extension was 7.5 miles for $1.5 billion.
Yeah, but the airport extension was completed a while back, and construction costs have skyrocketed lately. They’ve estimated four billion to extend four miles from Pittsburg/Bay Point to Antioch, for example, probably killing that idea. It’s going to cost 13 to 16 billion to extend from Fremont to San Jose, and it isn’t that many miles. Further BART expansion isn’t economically justifiable any more.
If it's not too expensive, conveniently timed and connects directly to the Sea-Tac airport, I intend to use it to bypass the traffic jams there.
I would just feel sorry for the poor saps who have to sit next to the person who rode their bike to work.
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