Thread 2049487

Need it or keep it?

>>2049487 (OP)
why are people allergic to building subway lines?? so far this century we've got miami airport line, second ave subway, and tren urbano lmao. is that really it? meanwhile there's been like 20 new light rail lines and I guess the wmata and bart extensions

>>2049492
Digging is expensive, and a lot of big cities are too flood-prone for tunnels filled with electronics to make economic sense. Meanwhile, you just slap a couple tracks on the street and you have a new light rail.

>>2049494
yet many of these light rail systems have tunneled sections; miami system is fully elevated to avoid water issues. I guess I should clarify I mean subway in the american usage meaning heavy rail metro regardless of height relative to ground level. nyc subway is iconic for it's elevateds after all. and none of this is cheap, look at the new hawaii system or the pittsburgh north shore connector. as for just slapping tracks on the street, yeah there are way too many useless new streetcars

>>2049492
Why would you need a subway line in American cities which have such low density? Better build LRT and make it more extensive

>>2049500
sunbelt cities are fucked by density to the point where anything built will get no ridership until there is a comprehensive network. but ny dc chicago miami could easily support multiple new subway lines, and I'd argue seattle, msp, and la would have been served better by a subway system instead of light rail

>>2049492
Well we are on the ring of fire in WA, and getting ST-3 built at all has been a major challenge due to funding and legal issues. I imagine a subway would have made it even harder. Major tunnel projects around Seattle have been shitshows as well.

>>2049487 (OP)
It's cool. I rode it a few times while living in Federal Way years ago.
I'm looking forward to riding across the floating bridge on the Link when they've finally finished that section. Pretty neat knowing it will be the first of its kind.

>>2049492
heavy rail gives me the ick
light rail is much more healthy, eco friendly and nice because 1) it's light 2) it reminds me of European trams
subways are ugly, loud and scary

>>2049487 (OP)
Well if you needed it you'd keep it, right?

>>2049492
I had a look at this Seattle line and it seems almost entirely grade separated, but it has a couple sections that run in the middle of a street. I guess that's the benefit, in a tight spot you can just have it on a street like a tram which makes it slightly cheaper and easier to construct

>>2049596
>heavy rail gives me the ick
>light rail is much more healthy, eco friendly and nice because 1) it's light 2) it reminds me of European trams
>subways are ugly, loud and scary
I know you are playing the straw man, but I still wanted to reach through my computer screen and strangle you.
Good job, I guess.

>>2049487 (OP)
What Link looks like right now

>>2050098
What it's supposed to look like in 19 years (probably more like 25-30)

>>2050099
So the most important station will be Chinatown? What's the area like? Offices?

>>2050111
It's just south of downtown. That place has been a transit hub forever.

The clock tower on the left side of the pic is King Street Station for Sounder and Amtrak. Left/middle is Union Station, which is unused right now. The green archways middle/right mark the Chinatown entrance down to the transit tunnel for Link.

Anyone here live in Seattle? I’m moving there next month to look for a job, bike life is getting tiresome. No experience/work history/college but I don’t drink or smoke and i’m 30 so i can still work. any tips on where to go to find some work where my noble steel steed wont get stolen by fentfiends?

>>2050116
So the Link station is right next to Union Station, but they didn't name the Link station "Union Station"?

>>2050137
>where my noble steel steed wont get stolen by fentfiends?
Good luck. My sister took some classes at UW for a few months and they cut through her bike chain and stole her bike.
>>2050138
It's being discussed to use Union station for a different stop in the future. The transit tunnel was built for buses originally and then converted for light rail. When you go up stairs, one of the first things you see is the pic.

>>2049596
>subways are ugly, loud and scary
Pussy

>>2050080
>but it has a couple sections that run in the middle of a street
Where the poors live.

>>2050111
>What's the area like? Offices?
Fent dealers.

>>2050080
>>2050803
How many miles is the at-grade section?
Should they just build a new viaduct?

>>2051006
>How many miles is the at-grade section?
About 4 to 5 miles along Rainier Valley (the poor neighborhood). But they put a one mile section at grade in Bellevue (light industrial zone in a wealthy town).

>>2050098
The Redmond section layout turned out kinda dumb. It does a U-turn around into downtown from the other direction, which makes it hard to ever lengthen the route if they want to go further east. There's a pretty big business park in Redmond Ridge, SpaceX has an office and factory there... it would have made sense to extend the line up that way.

>>2050143
For a few years they even had buses and light rail both using the transit tunnel, but now it's exclusively for light rail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX2cbp56TSY

>oopsy, we need $20 billion more, paypigs

>>2049487 (OP)
>Need it or keep it?
The people of King County (where Seattle is) originally voted against it. But the county board of supervisors then used their emergency powers to override the public vote to have it built anyways. There must have been a lot of money "under the table" at stake for the board members and sinecure jobs and "pass through dollars" for their families. The people voted against it. Lo and behold, it had billions of cost overruns and here we are now still paying for it.

>>2050137
You’re moving to one of the highest cost-of-living cities in the nation, without having a job lined up first? Good luck, really. So you plan on biking to work. That cuts out most contracting / construction jobs, since you won’t be able to carry all your tools and hardware with you. I’ve seen people bring their bikes into the office for safety, which is perfect if you can score an office job. But without any degree or certifications, how are you going to do that? The last thing you want to do is end up homeless here.

>Seattle Monorail
>System length: 0.9 miles (1.4 km)

disgusting

>>2049534
Subway and other heavy rail systems mean you can't build at-grade. Light rail like DART is flexible.
>park and ride in the suburbs
>cross roads like the old freight line it replaced
>descend into tunnel
>a few closer stops in the downtown street running section
>return to freight rail ROW mode

amazing how much money they spent on this POS and it's vastly inferior to transit in small canadian cities with less population (vancouver and montreal). I mean it's good they have it but it's woefully inadequate and the city doesn't have lines where they actually need them yet.

>>2055324
Vancouver metro area has >3 million people. It also badly needs some sort of commuter system like REM (Montreal), something that would traverse the downtown core and also provide capacity relief to existing lines not like that horrible mess Go Transit.

Reminder that Seattle could've had a BART like system and the Feds would've paid for 2/3rds of it but retarded fiscal conservatives voted it down multiple times in the 70s. The funding then moved to Atlanta to fund MARTA
The project's name was Forward Thrust

>>2049487 (OP)
Needs to be expanded yesterday. Seattle is a traffic hellscape and the buses get caught up in the car gridlock, because it's a death spiral where transit takes forever to get around so more people drive so traffic gets worse so public transit takes even longer so even more people drive... The light rail is running in a dedicated track and won't get caught up in the fucking car traffic, giving people hope. There is no reason Shitattle can't have NYC level trains. It has the density if only because the water forced all the development to be restrained and thus dense.

Shoutout to the Bellevue mall owner for being a fucking dick.

There's also no reason that the trains can't go everywhere from Everett to Olympia. None. In a rare case the development in the sound region is almost a straight line and YET there's no train system. And don't say just take Amtrak because the amtrak gets delayed by an hour because some yoofs are out in kent playing on the god damned tracks and the cops take forever to show up because they're too busy eating donuts. Just equip the amtrak with a snowplow and mow the little bastards down.

It would be better if we could carpet bomb everything south of yesler.

>>2050111
King st station is walkable to all of downtown including the ferry platform. The issue is the large number of gronks congregating in the area. It's a slum. ID and pioneer sq should be the most beautiful and desirable area in the city and yet they're overrun with tents and needles and off leash shitbulls. Every fucking gronk has a massive pitmongrel so you get random maulings in addition to random stabbings.
>>2050137
Recruiting/temp firms. The job market is pure ass but the microstudios make cost of living affordable. The caveat is it's too expensive to own a car in the places you can get the microstudios (cap hill etc) because the cars get stolen all the time. my coworker has had her car stolen 4 times in 6 years. And yet the jobs are a bunch of boomer retards who will discriminate against you if you don't have a car because they all live in the suburbs with houses they bought 20 years ago for 3 chickens and some pocket lint that are now worth 1.5m. With no job experience you can look at amazon warehouse, but you need a car to get there, and it doesn't pay enough to afford to upkeep a car. I truly hate this place.

>>2055389
>Reminder that
Who cares

>>2055329
Vancouver CMA has <2.7 million. To >>2055324's comment though, Montreal CMA is bigger than the Seattle metropolitan area. Still much better coverage/quality of service per capita though

>>2049487 (OP)
Kleep

>>2049500
that low density is because of the lack of public transit

>>2049596
lightrail should be used as tram
trying to substitute for train is fail
and tram must operate in conjunction with trains in a unified public transportation system, that is what you find in Europe