I finally found the announcement on the BNT after some searching.

I don't understand…

Keep up the short-sighted thinking!

On top of that let's look at some of the directly related expenses that are not included in that budget:
1) Law enforcement to patrol all those roads. The Washington State Patrol budget is $485 million, almost all of that directly related to law enforcement on the roads.
2) Billions of dollars in health care spent as a direct result of auto crashes.
3) Environmental damage as a result of all those cars.

Light rail costs in these areas are a tiny fraction of what roads cost. Light rail is also less maintenance intensive than bus-only transit.

Like I said, it's amazing that every major city on earth thought it a good idea to build a transit system. But hey, every single one of them is completely wrong and YOU, planning genius that you are, are correct?? Sorry but I find that just a tad hard to believe. On top of all that you admitted to not having any actual experience with light rail transit so you offering an opinion on the subject is sort like a priest giving a sex talk!

Still, it's nor far from what some Libertarian lunatics would probably like to see.

Also always struck me as odd that some people have no problem spending billions on fire departments who mostly provide health care services these days (80% in Seattle and higher in other cities) but then get all freaked out about the government spending money on other forms of healthcare. They don't want to spend a dime to help prevent someone from having a heart attack but then have no problem with the fire department coming in at great expense to save the person when they do have the heart attack. Just seems like a huge disconnect.

Let's also shut down all the libraries and only have private libraries. Such things do exist – I used to have a membership at the privately run Mechanic's Library in SF in large part because the public library was so bad. We spend $50 million on the library system – that's $83 for every person in Seattle. I doubt most people in this town read $83 worth of books in a given year.

We should also do away with public schools. Why should those without children and those who send their kids to private school have to pay for public schools?

I'll never understand the state liquor store thing in this state. When I first move here I was amazed such a backwards concept was even allowed in this day and age.

HUGE understatment! Too bad the morons in this town seem to forget we live in a major PORT city and international point of entry. You don't have to be an epidemiologist to realize that puts us at a much higher risk for being ground zero for any new bugs coming over from other parts of the planet.

Greyhound is not efficient. One thing I REALLY despise about this country is having to travel. If you want to travel from here to SF or from Boston to NYC your only real choice is an airplane. That means spending at least 1-2 hours going through airports, paying an insanely high ticket price, having to take your shoes off, being squeezed into an uncomfortable and too small seat, and having at least a 1-4 chance of not arriving on time. Go to Europe or Japan and you can make a similar trip via high speed rail where you can quickly get in/out of the station, have roomy seats, can get up and walk around, get to keep your shoes on, and will always arrive on time. Oh did I mention you can do all this for substantially less money than an airline ticket?

Amazes me that the US is the only nation to put a man on the moon yet somehow we can't seem to build a transportation system even remotely comparable to what the cheese eating surrender monkeys built 30 years ago! That's sad.

Downsides are lack of flexibility and sky-high cost of implementation. Ideally, you really need both. Even NYC with their vast subway system still has buses.

Please accept my sincere apologies for the less than convenient time for folks to join me….with my wife, four young kids and my (regular day job) professional work as a business development consultant, I'm working as hard as I can to balance out the substantial demands for legislative time.

We're supposed to have a citizen legislature with real people living real lives, and personally I do believe it makes me a better legislator to stay engaged in 'real' life…work, family, schools, life. But there are tradeoffs and I hope you can understand that I don't have as much flexibility as full time legislators.

Still, I'm sorry for those who can't make this time slot and I hope you can join me on the 30th.

As always, please consider my door open and contact me anytime along with these casual coffee hours. My blog is: http://www.reuvencarlyle36.com. email: carlyle.reuven@leg.wa.gov.

Your partner in service,

Reuven Carlyle
State Representative
36th District–the heart, soul, passion and spirit of Seattle