Will Seattle Spend $10.8 Billion on 50 Miles of Light Rail?

May 30th, 2007
Sound Transit, which is way overbudget in the construction of Seattle’s first light-rail line, now wants voters to approve a measure to build 50 more miles of light rail for the modest cost of $10.8 billion (in 2006 dollars). That’s a mere $216 million per mile, which is about four to five times the average [...]

San Jose BART Will Not Relieve Congestion

May 29th, 2007
In preparation for my lecture in San Jose last week, I took a look at the environmental impact report for the proposed BART extension to San Jose. Even though rail advocates are telling people BART will take two freeway lanes’ worth of people off the roads, I was not surprised to find that, in fact, [...]

Maggie Fimia for Shoreline City Council

May 24th, 2007
While I don’t often find myself endorsing Democrats, there is always an exception. Maggie Fimia has been one of those exceptions for me for more than a decade. The former Metro and King County Council member is running for re-election to the Shoreline City Council. It is easy to be cynical about politics in general and politicians in particular. Politicians are convenient targets for our outrage - the people we can point to when things don’t go quite the way we’d hoped or expected. Occasionally this cynicism is justified. In most cases, it’s not. ...

Greater Scrutiny Urged For I-90 Light Rail Plan

May 16th, 2007
In a Seattle Times op-ed published today, the former chief examiner of the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, George Kargianis, and former state Supreme Court justice Phil Talmadge assert Sound Transit's proposal to build light rail across Lake Washington to Eastside suburbs via the I-90 floating bridge just doesn't pencil out. We have taken no official position yet on either the Eastside light rail proposal or the larger November, 2007 roads and transit ballot measure of which it is a part. However, our Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute supports system wide, time variable automated highway tolling; taxpayer-friendly design-build ...

November Ballot to Test: Are Seattleites Still Suckers?

May 4th, 2007
After rejecting it once, Seattle voters got fooled into voting for a light-rail line whose cost doubled almost immediately after the election. Then Seattle voters got talked into a monorail line whose costs also exploded after the election. Fortunately, they were able to vote their way out of that one. Now Sound Transit, whose light-rail costs [...]