Comment by lev99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lev99 | Hacker News Reader

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> In Seattle

Seattle is a really bad example if you want to talk about poor public transportation. Seattle is one of the few places where bus ridership is increasing. Living anywhere with 5 miles of downtown (beside some areas divided by water) makes having a car somewhere between optional and inconvenient. It's one of the few places where bus ridership is increasing, and Sound Transit 3's implementation will make the Link Light Rail much more accessible. The number of bike trails and separated bike paths is arguably at the point where we might have too many for bike ridership levels. The city is very anticar, increasing the area where minimum parking requirements are not required, making bus only lanes in high traffic downtown areas, and talking about a downtown toll.

Saying it takes 1.5-2 hours to ride a bus from the east side to the city ignores the fact that it takes more than an hour to do so in a car. Not to mention how important the I 90 floating bridge light rail project is to further connect the east side to the city.

Transportation sucks in Seattle because of the population growth and the lack of investment in the 60s and 70s. Most of the things Seattle and King County has done in the last 20 years in regards to public transportation is correct with a few notable but not critical exceptions.

> Saying it takes 1.5-2 hours to ride a bus from the east side to the city ignores the fact that it takes more than an hour to do so in a car.

But, that's a key part of the problem. It's easy to compromise and take public transit instead of a car when the public transit saves you time. For many trips between popular commuting destinations, Seattle doesn't have that yet.

Seattle doesn't have good public transit because it's getting better, it is getting better because it has so much catching up to do. Right now we're pretty good at filling busses with riders, then jamming those busses up in traffic.

There wasn't just a critical lack of investment in the 60s and 70s - the 80s and 90s didn't make great progress with infrastructure either. What did Seattle have to show by 2000? Less than a mile of monorail, a downtown transit tunnel, and a few retired streetcar lines?

Seattle's first light-rail line opened in 2009. By comparison, Portland's MAX opened in 1986 and had over 50 miles of light rail by that point.

I'm optimistic that things are getting better and heading in the right direction, but am sympathetic to the argument that Seattle's system is poor - because in many ways it is.

> It's easy to compromise and take public transit instead of a car when the public transit saves you time.

And/or money. The public parking in the city is prohibitive, alone.

> It's easy to compromise and take public transit instead of a car when the public transit saves you time.

I don't get this at all. Between parking and traffic I almost always save time by taking the bus or riding a bike for trips less than 5 miles long.

> The public parking in the city is prohibitive, alone.

Prohibitive, or correctly priced?

I will candidly admit I've only had 5 years of context, but in those 5 years, while bus ridership may be increasing, my perception has not been that it's proportional to population growth, and a brief look at the data seems to back this up. (comparing % growth of ridership to % growth in population over the last 10~ years) [0][1] I don't want to come across as to criticize growth and progress, I don't have enough knowledge on what was done to address that. I just don't find the results to be sufficient; as you said, population growth is a huge factor, and that's what renders this a pressing issue.

I agree that we're probably paying for a lack of investment; to the point of my comparison with Philadelphia where the infrastructure was in place. I'd reference my other comment questioning governance, since while you say a few notable but not critical exceptions, I find massive build-out times (Overlake Transit Center, for instance, will be closed until 2023, assuming I'm not confusing dates), lack of funding (discussed this issue at a local city council meeting, apparently it's partly a state/federal problem), and mismanagement (see other comment) to be quite prevelent. I may well be seeing a small slice of this, but my slice's commute is looking anywhere but up, even considering future development.

I'd also add that I didn't ignore that it takes an hour in the car. I'd agree, it takes an hour in a car. But you're in your own car, which many people see as a positive despite the mental overhead of driving, and that's still less time, variance, and inconvenience than the bus. I can only speak to the # of cars I see in the lots at work, these are clearly sufficient dis-incentives to the bus as it currently exists, and we can't ignore that if we want to improve the situation. (I'd also note that your mention of "less than 5 miles of downtown" makes me think we may be looking at very different strata of things; perhaps I should have said initially "Seattle Area", the trains I was referring to in Philly go 20+ miles out in many directions)

[0]https://www.kingcounty.gov/independent/forecasting/King%20Co... [1]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qyj31NiW1kc30GX9PCNr...

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