Mayor Mike McGinn has said all along that he would like to see a light rail line from Ballard to downtown and West Seattle. Now he’s proposing that Seattle build the transit system on its own with money collected from Seattle residents.
In this Publicola article, Mayor McGinn addresses his side of the issue – that Seattle needs light rail sooner than Sound Transit can deliver. He’s estimating that Sound Transit won’t be in the black for another 14 years. Looking at Portland as an example he writes, “Portland spent $103 million on its current streetcar line. That line, in return, has generated $4 billion in private investment and more than 10,000 new residential units within 750 feet of the line. Buses simply do not generate that level of investment or have that kind of impact on surrounding land use and development patterns. Portland’s rail system helps save more than $2 billion a year in gas costs, allowing Portlanders to spend that money locally.”
On the other hand, King County Council member Julia Patterson disagrees with McGinn. Patterson writes, “After all, the world doesn’t end at a city’s limits. Seattle’s roads don’t end when they hit Tukwila and buses don’t stop on the Bellevue/Redmond border. Sound Transit’s plan creates a regional spine of light rail through King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. While it offers a long-term, regional vision—one that includes light rail for Seattle and beyond—Mayor McGinn’s Seattle-only ballot proposal offers a short-sided, parochial vision.”
Both sides offer lengthy details on why they support their opinions. Click through to read their takes on the issue.
![](https://www.myballard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024-My-Ballard-Tile-Ad-Troop-100.png")
![](https://www.myballard.com/wp-content/uploads/My-Ballard-ad-1.png")
Street car yes. Light rail, no way.
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) would be better. A street car is nothing more than a really expensive bus that is tied to a specific route and is still stuck in traffic.
No way that Seattle will ever build light rail on our own, that’s pure crazy talk and diminishes what little is left of McGinn’s credibility.
I take Metro and it works just fine for me and everyone I know who uses Metro. Why would we want to diminish something that works perfectly fine already??? Oh I know… so on the 9 months out of the year that it rains the bike riders can get to work on something cooler than a boring Metro bus. FU McGinn.
Seattle buses suck, I would gladly pay more taxes for grade separated transit of any kind between Ballard and Downtown.
BRT will still take an hour to get from Ballard to Pio Sq though won’t it?
Monorail yes, but nothing else. :)
Would you gladly pay more taxes for better and more buses? This would be a significantly cheaper.
Buses are for bums and earnest liberals. I want a tram.
I like how McGinn brings up that the Portland train costs only 108 million. For those who were not around around just 6 years ago or have a short memory span the Monorail that was going to go from Crown Hill to Downtown price tag was at 11 Billion before everyone came to there senses.
More taxes? Just use my car tab money you collected for the monorail.
Half an hour to downtown is pretty optimistic on the 15, 17, 0r 18. Is that “just fine”? If light rail can get me downtown in 15 minutes, sign me up to pay the light rail tax!
yea it’s just fine. I’m getting my ride subsidized by KC tax payers and it’s only costing me and everyone else who rides 25% of the actual cost to ride the bus. The monorail commision spent 125 million just planning the Crown Hill to Downtown. It was going to cost in the end 11 billion or 22 Safeco fields… yea the Bus suits me fine.
Significantly cheaper?? 125 million just to design the Crown Hill to Downtown Monorail. 11 Billion to build it. Mars man.. your living on Mars.
Can someone explain to me why there is not a Ballard stop for the Sounder train that runs to Everett? Granted, it only runs a couple of times a day and would not be a replacement for bus/light rail, but it seems like an affordable place to start.
Yes, yes, yes! We need rail service from Ballard to the rest of the city — and it will more than pay for itself over the near term. Can we please stop talking about it and finally do it?
I grew up in the Bay Area and everyone debated BART’s costs endlessly — until the rapid transit lines went in and became indispensable everywhere. Portland, Vancouver…the list goes on and on. (Not to mention European cities who figured this one out in the Victorian period.)
We are the only major West Coast city without significant rail transit! Come on. SOMEONE please figure out how to make rail work here….now!
My husband would take the rail to Everett every day if he could but the Sounder train people told him that they could only run it going south in the morning and north in the evening. Very shortsighted!
I don’t think they realize there is a market for that kind of train service. (And rebuilding the old Ballard train station near Golden Gardens would be even better.)
That would make sense. Build park and ride station in Shilshole/lower Sunset Hill area. Tracks are already in place. People in the Ballard Region would use it, but it wouldn’t attract many people outside of ballard since to get in/out of Ballard for a lot of people would be just as fast to get downtown. (Someone living on Phinney ridge wouldn’t bother driving to there just to take a train in to downtown). It would be a fraction of the cost of whatever fantasy world McGinn is living in.
That’s well and good when gas costs $3/gallon, or maybe even $4. The bus system is just barely adequate. When gas costs $5/gallon and everyone’s leaving their cars and flooding the bus system, what then? We need a system that can handle serious load. I don’t know that this is that system, but at least it’s an idea.
Salt Lake City! Effin’ _Salt Lake City_ has a great light rail system — actually it’s regional rail that connects Ogden quite efficiently, too.
If the reddest state in the nation can do this, we… well, I don’t know if we can, but we certainly /should/.
Buying more buses when there is more demand from riders would be considerably cheaper than building a light rail system.
A very good idea, I’m afraid, that’s going to be sunk by its messenger.
In the short term, yes. Looking at the incremental cost of buying buses vs. a huge capital outlay to build a new system, it’s always appealing just to pile more money on an inefficient system. Transportation projects on this scale pay for themselves on the scale of decades, not years.
I know that Tacoma used to have trolleys going all over the place.
I could only stomach more buses if they were NOT diesel or gas powered. Diesel is $4.50 now. I have a feeling it is not going to go down in price.
Seattle bus service keeps going up in cost and down in service quality due to the cost of gas and lower tax revenue. At least using electric as the power we can eliminate gas price inflation from that equation for budget projections.
I am not privy to growth projections but this city’s leaders need to look at growth projections for the next 50 years, factor in cost of resources and population density, and design a system that will actually withstand that growth and transportation challenges of the future.
All this peacemeal “throw a few streetcars here, a few buses there, a few trains here, and naw, they don’t have to interconnect or be able to scale” is indeed a waste.
Forget $4.50, what happens when Diesel is $8.00 a gallon?
How will “Bus Rapid Transit” work then? Rapid cost increase and service cuts is my guess.
If electric streetcars fit the bill, fine, design a complete system to link up the city and make it happen. But right now they are slow as hell. No way I can commute from Ballard to work in Pio Square on a streetcar in under an hour.
Isn’t streetcar simply “slow light rail” ?
Light rail might seem expensive now, but what will it cost to design the right system 20 years from now, when we can’t live without it?
The idea that McGinn thinks Portland is a city to emulate is horrifying. Then again just everything else he thinks horrifying too.
That was in reply to Steve: “More buses = cheaper”
BTW, don’t the Rapid Transit buses cost $1Mil a piece? How many buses are they buying, was it 100 or so?
That’s a lot of diesel guzzling million dollar buses, not too cheap really…
wtf where did you get 11 billion?
it would revive the 44 and 46 lines fer shure.
are you/mcginn just generalizing portland or their light rail. i love their light rail. wish we had it.
Yes! I would happily pay more!
The El works great in Chicago, too. The point is not to be a monorail but just to be out of the traffic. Perhaps we need cable cars…
I think we need this in Seattle. Love the Ballard to downtown idea (even if it’s not new).
Good luck with that Mr. Mayor. We tried that with the monorail and got nowhere.
It galls me just thinking about the fact that we could be riding the monorail from Ballard to downtown to West Seattle today if only construction was started when it was supposed to.
Developers will not allow it to happen and they’ve got the big bucks to make sure it doesn’t.
That $11 billion figure was bogus, just more of the FUD thrown about by the opposition. The the problem was not quite enough funding up front to lower terms. $2.54 billion for 14 miles with two water crossings was closer to the real figure.
google seattlepi, monorail timeline 11 billion
Then why did they resign and cancel the project as soon as those numbers came to light? If that number was wrong, and after already investing 125 million into the project… don’t you think they would have fought it.. instaed of rolling over? The tax payer was not on the hook for 2.5 billion.. it was on the hook for 11 billion and they couldn’t justify it. Thats what happened. Don’t start making stuff up that isn’t true.
Amen
Pay more taxes so Liberals can feel better about themselves. I think not.
It works fine for a lot of people. Commuting between where I live in Ballard and working in Pioneer Square, it’s ridiculous. I commute outside of rush hour, so there are no express routes. I can drive it in 15 minutes, but it takes about 45 by bus. And don’t even think about coming in or leaving the office during a baseball or football game.
Ultimately, given the choice between employer paid parking or an employer paid bus pass, I chose the parking.
Not everyone is going to use mass transit altruistically. Make it worth my while.
11 billion divided by 650,000 people equals $17,000 for every citizen (man, woman, child) in Seattle. I doubt 5% of the entire city would have used it as a means of daily transportation. So does 17K sound like a good investment for you if only 1 in 20 would use it?
I’m still pissed off at the $3,500 in vehicle excise tax I spent on the aborted monorail.
I collectively blame the entire culture of Seattle. Face it, when it comes to transportation policy, we’re screwed.
We certainly don’t need 11,000 more buses… or the cost equivilant to the tax payers for the monorail (that would have been used by a very limited amount of citizens in this city). And as for cheap and environmentally cleaner- I think in time (next 10 years) you will see buses convert to naturual gas (which is considerably cheaper than oil or diesel, cleaner plus the US is the Saudi Arabia of NG reserves, which makes us less reliant on foriegn oil) and the newer ones coming online now and for the last few years on metro have been hybrids.
It was actually 1.6 trillion yen when you calculate all the interest and costs that were pulled out of thin air.
Why are you asking us? Are we all experts in transportation planning?
Hire the experts, figure it out, and build it if it makes sense.
Why is he asking us when he’s just going to tell the city to f*ck off and try to shove what HE wants down our throats?
Why do you even bother to comment when you’re just going to get angry at anyone who becomes mayor?
No one is talking about monorail, STFU
Because no one is going to drive all the way out to Shilshole so they can ride a train downtown. That literally makes no sense.
Its not shortsighted, its real life. BNSF dictates who can use the rail lines and when. Nothing Sound Transit can do about it. But please feel free to keep scoffing, the rest of us will laugh at your ignorance.
What does this even mean? What is the benefit to developers to fight against light rail?
I think that was a reference to the developers and building owners who managed to squash the monorail.
Except there are people who simply will not ever ride a bus no matter what you call it. If you doubt this spend some time in NYC, Boston or SF.
So does super Republican Phoenix! Phoenix built their system faster than the f***ing idiots in Seattle could vote on the matter.
We used to have light rail. Then we tore it out. Then we voted on the monorail and pissed away a bunch of money on it. Then we voted on it again and decided to cancel. Now we’re having multiple votes on the tunnel/viaduct. On top of all this McGinn wants to add light rail to the list??
1) Let people trained in transit planning decide what the best solution is. Leaving it up to a bunch of Seattlites – many of whom have never lived anywhere but Seattle – seems like a bad idea. It’s like asking an Egyptian for an opinion on designs for a ski slope.
2) Once they decide what the best solution is make an actual commitment and build the damn thing. Don’t have an endless string of meetings and elections. 3) Stop whining about the price. It won’t be cheap but neither are roads (which are also highly subsidized). Seattle will only get more crowded and our choices are pretty simple: either build public transit or suffer more gridlock. Building more roads isn’t an option. If you think it is why don’t you volunteer your house to be torn down to make way for them.
Problem is people in Seattle (and many other cities) can’t think decades into the future. Anything that takes longer than a 4 year election cycle to complete is bound for failure.
The monorail is completly relevent to this conversation. The Mayor in his speach points to how Portland was able to build a light rail system for $108 million, and the monorail price tag was $125 million before it even started the building process. He’s using an example completely out of context just to make it sound like to the uninformed voter that it would be easy and cheap to build. Just to put things into perspective in 2011 dollars, 108 million is 1/4 of the cost of the new Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation building downtown. The footprint would be very similar to the Monorail.
Phoenix is a flat gravel pit. I’m amazed that people – most of whom moved here for the topography, water, bridges, etc – don’t understand the complexity and cost needed to build a transit here in Puget Sound.
No, PDX light rail isn’t the problem: it’s envying and trying to emulate PDX. Portland has a horrible economy – but fantastic light rail!
Yaaaaay.
I don’t have hard data to back this up, but I think at least a sizeable minority of voters aren’t from Seattle. Regardless, it is still a bad idea to keep voting/revoting/referenduming/consensus seeking/wondering about the impact of squirrels for anything we try and fail to do. Just hire some fucking experts and do it.
As for what we have already, we aren’t even keeping that up. Nobody wants to properly maintain the roads. You can’t just keep re-filling potholes. It actually costs more in the long term to do that. Streets need to be resurfaced. Crazy experiments like road diets and reducing capacity for bike lanes aren’t helping either.
Yes. This is long overdue. Light Rail would mean Ballard to downtown in minutes without regard to traffic conditions. People on here who are praising the 15 must have some kind of syndrome brought on via long term abuse.
Light rail should serve the urban population first and foremost. I really dont care what Issaquah and Kent and Woodinville do to get around. If they are having transportation troubles they should consider moving closer to the city.
“I really dont care what Issaquah and Kent and Woodinville do to get around. If they are having transportation troubles they should consider moving closer to the city.”
If you leave them no alternative but to commute to work in their cars, you’ll have that traffic to deal with locally. You can’t just write off people who make different choices about where they want to live.
My point is that the public transportation needs of those who live in outer suburbs are secondary the public transportation needs of those who live in the city… and I’m pretty tired of all the arguments that are pretending they have an equal seat at the table.
McGinn’s arguments that we cant wait a generation to improve our transit infrastructure to Ballard is very sound — Ballard is dense and adding density.
The counter that we should be considering everyone in the region, blah blah blah — is something we should care about only after we are done making city dwellers a priority. Good urban transporation should be a perk of living in an urban place. Thats part of the idea. You shouldnt have to own a car to live in Ballard.