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Mar. 9th, 2007 11:25 am
the tunnel/viaduct/nothing debate
Seattle voters have a few more days to mail in their votes on whether to replace the viaduct that Highway 99 runs along, bury 99 in a tunnel, or get rid of that stretch of highway period. The Stranger had a fairly half-baked article last week advocating the do-nothing approach--rip it down and don't rebuild, forcing mass transit and the city to catch up and deal with the 100,000 drivers a day that use the viaduct. I don't really think that's good city planning, it would mean decades of really bad traffic on I-5 and downtown, which already have horrible traffic. I guess I favor building a great mass transit system first, then ripping down the highways, instead of doing it ass-backwards. But the thing that pissed me most off about the Stranger article was this line:
""The decisions we make today will determine whether those transit improvements become a way of life in Seattle or if transit here will continue to consist of an inconvenient, unreliable system of buses that only poor people ride because they can't afford to drive."
A. Hey classist bitch, there was no reason to slag the poor in your editorial. WTF?
B. Besides, this point it total bullshit, tons of working and middle class folks ride the bus. This chick obviously does not ride mass transit.
C. This vote will do nothing to improve Seattle's mass transit, and the idea that Seattle would react to bad traffic by funding a mass transit system is one that's been around since the '60s. And it still hasn't happened. We seem unable to build one, we always disagree. We voted to build a monorail system 3 or 4 times and it still is going to happen.
D. Our bus system may not be perfect, no public transit system is, but it is fairly large and reliable. My guess is this Stranger writer lives on Capitol Hill and rarely leaves it (like everyone that lives on the Hill), hence she doesn't really give a shit about our bus system or traffic on our two highways.
E. I completely don't understand advocating removing one of the two highways that move cars, trucks and buses and not advocating people move to mass transit. What do you expect people to do instead when you aren't advocating using our bus system, but rather calling it inconvenient, unreliable and only used by people that can't afford to drive?
I'm voting for the rebuild, it's the lesser of 3 evils to me. Seattle traffic is already a clusterfuck, we don't need to make it worse.
""The decisions we make today will determine whether those transit improvements become a way of life in Seattle or if transit here will continue to consist of an inconvenient, unreliable system of buses that only poor people ride because they can't afford to drive."
A. Hey classist bitch, there was no reason to slag the poor in your editorial. WTF?
B. Besides, this point it total bullshit, tons of working and middle class folks ride the bus. This chick obviously does not ride mass transit.
C. This vote will do nothing to improve Seattle's mass transit, and the idea that Seattle would react to bad traffic by funding a mass transit system is one that's been around since the '60s. And it still hasn't happened. We seem unable to build one, we always disagree. We voted to build a monorail system 3 or 4 times and it still is going to happen.
D. Our bus system may not be perfect, no public transit system is, but it is fairly large and reliable. My guess is this Stranger writer lives on Capitol Hill and rarely leaves it (like everyone that lives on the Hill), hence she doesn't really give a shit about our bus system or traffic on our two highways.
E. I completely don't understand advocating removing one of the two highways that move cars, trucks and buses and not advocating people move to mass transit. What do you expect people to do instead when you aren't advocating using our bus system, but rather calling it inconvenient, unreliable and only used by people that can't afford to drive?
I'm voting for the rebuild, it's the lesser of 3 evils to me. Seattle traffic is already a clusterfuck, we don't need to make it worse.