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rest his guts posted:As a graduate of UW's illustrious political science program, I am decidedly retarded/apolitical. The issues I care about include decreasing traffic congestion, housing affordability and how limiting the rights of Amazon/teach start-up employees. Other than Sawant, who I see little picket signs for all over my neighbors' lawns, who should I vote for? Than's list is good.
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Aug 2, 2015 19:05
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http://www.theurbanist.org/2015/08/04/2015-august-primary-early-results/ Early primary results. Poor Alon, Gonzalez's resume was too impressive for people to realize that being a cool person and lawyer doesn't mean you're going to know what to do about the housing crisis. 
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Aug 5, 2015 06:02
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Peztopiary posted:It's a terrible place that no one should ever move to or think about. (Jesus, do you really want more people?) California, now that's the place to be. Give us five more years of unsustainable real estate inflation and we'll be the San Francisco of the north! Seattle is cool but we also have a lot of dumb problems caused by dumb people fifty years ago.
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Aug 10, 2015 16:48
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ElCondemn posted:I grew up in the ghetto in Arizona, then lived in Florida for a while, I can say with certainty that the PNW is the best part of the country. Vermont is pretty nice too but it doesn't have the economy that we have here. There is a lot of deep seeded racism here that hardly ever shows on the surface; lots of people decades ago moved to the PNW during the "white flight" era, escaping "urban issues" (black people). It was predominantly white here for a long long time. And most neighborhoods in Seattle didn't let minorities buy or mortgage property, thus forcing communities to develop outside the city. So that's why you'll hear older people talk about the horrors of federal way, or lake city, and that's why they reminisce about "the old Seattle", back when the city was 85% white or whatever.
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Aug 10, 2015 20:31
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ElCondemn posted:The expansion toward UW and Northgate seems to be going well, according to the transit website it's only 3 miles of underground track. I'm excited for it but I don't know if people are angry about it or not. I'm not sure how many miles of underground track are required for the subway idea, but 3 miles doesn't seem like too much. Smart people hate the 99 tunnel because it's putting a germ-infested bandaid on an infected wound. The viaduct was a horrible monster that should never have been built so its good that it's coming down, but 99 should have stayed as a surface level street. Look up the concept of induced demand; the tunnel is only going to make congestion worse. It's a huge waste of money. We could have spent all that money on subway tunnels, which I think would have really overwhelming support. The people in charge of the light rail construction really know what they are doing (tooting my own horn here), so we could use a lot of the same principles for designing the subway system. The geography of Seattle and its Urban Villages makes a municipal subway system an incredibly useful and efficient way to move people around. It would be cost effective, we could remove unnecessary roads, and a whole lot more small businesses, restaurants, and shops would thrive.
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Aug 10, 2015 21:49
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anthonypants posted:Doesn't the I-5 interstate run straight through the "core" of Seattle And they only had to demolish a huge chunk of several low-income and minority neighborhoods to do it! Meanwhile Mercer Island got its own resident-only express lane exits for the handful of waterfront mansions located on its shores. Truly we are a city with a noble and just history.
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Aug 10, 2015 22:44
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ElCondemn posted:They're tearing down the viaduct regardless of whether the tunnel gets built or not, it has to come down due to structural concerns. The tunnel isn't a replacement for the viaduct, it's a bypass. Like I said, I think there needs to be more paths to get through the city quickly, since that appears to be what the viaduct is mostly used for (with the added congestion of people trying to get into downtown too) I think the tunnel will solve that problem. I disagree that we need a bypass road through a major city at all. Having a through road increases congestion in the city without increasing economic activity; basically the city takes on high congestion and high financial burdens from road construction and maintenance for the benefit of truckers and the relatively few people that need to go from south to north, or vice versa. It's a poor investment of tax dollars. Plus the bypass will encourage more people to move to unsustainable places and take on longer driving distances where Seattle is only an obstacle and not a destination. Like I said earlier, in practically no time at all the tunnel is going to be backed up the entire way.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:42
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:i mean, if you really think about it, seattle should just ban all privately-owned automobiles, sooooooo Actually I don't even have to think hard at all to come to this conclusion
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Aug 12, 2015 07:41
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RuanGacho posted:The city of Seattle has done a remarkable job already of making its feel hostile to drivers. Seattle really wants you to come into town and create economic activity but it doesn't want you to live there or commute into the city to do so. Is this a real opinion a (presumably) non senior citizen has?
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Aug 13, 2015 00:42
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My friend posted:I was literally one of the last cars to make it through. Passed the rangers zooming off to close the road in the other direction. Passed them setting up the road block on the way out. Got to play swerve around the smoldering road debris haha Here are some pictures he took near Winthrop... pretty harrowing stuff.     
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Aug 20, 2015 06:12
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Soarer posted:I haven't been around the area in a bit, but during the first couple of weeks of the one in Lynnwood opening, they had Lynnwood PD directing traffic around if because of how slammed the road was getting. The Bellevue one is still depressingly popular. I work right by it, and all the weird conservative people I work with LOVE going there at lunch and gushing about it to anyone who will listen. I'm sorry, call me a bleeding heart liberal (which I am), but I don't eat at Jimmy Johns anymore, and I'm surely not going to take an hour to wait and buy a lovely homophobic chicken sandwich. There are tons of great local joints in Bellevue where your money doesn't go to a billionaire bigot.
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Sep 11, 2015 20:23
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mod sassinator posted:Guess what, the money you pay for federal taxes directly pays for drones that murder people, a nuclear armada that could destroy the world hundreds of times over, and much more reprehensible stuff. If you're scoffing at people who eat a chicken sandwich you really aren't looking at the big picture. Actually it's really easy to not eat a chicken sandwich. You have to go out of your way and make a conscious decision about it. It's not so easy to not pay taxes
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Sep 11, 2015 22:42
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Any love for that lovely Orange King burger place on the ave? That place is my jam. Although I think it burned down or something. But speaking of the ave, the actual best burger is on 50th and the Ave: Mr. Lu's.
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Sep 15, 2015 01:51
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BrandorKP posted:Here's the thing I see that really bothers me out here. Lots of homeless South Asian women with children. I'm not talking so much in Seattle. Think out in Sammamish and Issaquah. It's seems like there is a thing going on with it. A lot of people still don't realize the amount of sex work and human trafficking that happens in Seattle and the Puget Sound. I wouldn't be surprised if that is a byproduct.
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Sep 22, 2015 06:54
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WayAbvPar posted:I love that you have to have a goddamned Flex pass even if you are a carpool. Needlessly complex and almost guaranteed to extract money from people who aren't supposed to be paying it- the Washington way. The carpool Flex pass is really the biggest boondoggle here. It is completely dumb, but as far as I understand it is a problem with the technology used for the toll. Still... c'mon.
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Sep 23, 2015 22:40
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effectual posted:Just make a general ~5 dollar toll for people to enter Seattle by any road, like London has, and increase public transit to compensate, funded with those fees. Course, that wouldn't enrich the corporations as much. gently caress capitalism. Congestion pricing is a super great concept that works incredibly well everywhere it is implemented. ALSO, it has a huge advantage over HOV lanes because it neither requires additional construction nor induces more people into their cars to take advantage of clearer roads. Unfortunately, suburban NIMBYs aren't likely to ever allow congestion pricing in Seattle/Bellevue, out of fear of a drop in business or something.
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Sep 24, 2015 16:03
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Also, there are a ton of suburban nimbys within the city of Seattle itself. Read: opponents of HALA
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Sep 24, 2015 19:41
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Read Donald Shoup's "The High Cost of Free Parking" for a great study on why free parking is bad for everyone, and why cities should charge more for on-street parking. Hint: free/cheap parking is actually subsidized to everyone instead of the end user. Reserving a piece of concrete for a car to sit on in a dense city with high real estate value should be as expensive as the free market dictates.
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Sep 28, 2015 23:53
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reading posted:I heard the city spent $100,000 on each of the rainbow sidewalk paintjobs in Cap Hill. If that's true it makes their refusal to spend chump change putting in cement barriers on the Aurora bridge all the more damning. Stop listening to Dory Monson
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Sep 29, 2015 16:36
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Motorcycles are the same size as people so if you developed cities and infrastructure around them, everything would be human-scale instead of the current car-scale we currently have. That on top of the environmental aspect means a huge push for motorcycles would be insanely good.
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Sep 29, 2015 19:20
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foobardog posted:Rantz seems to be a conservative talk-radio jackass, so I don't put stock in him complaining about the state resorting to lovely regressive poo poo like tolls to get money when I'm sure he's been gung ho about stopping more sane systems for funding poo poo (i.e., income tax). Add congestion charge system to Bellevue and Seattle. Bam. Regional traffic problems fixed.
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Sep 30, 2015 02:45
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SousaphoneColossus posted:I'm guessing most of the downtown businesses would be against it, because they'll presumably go out of business if people refuse to drive to downtown to patronize them something something. Although this sounds feasible, it is not a thing that actually happens; pedestrians and bicyclists walking by a store contribute way, way way more to the wealth of the business than car traffic could ever hope to. So if you prioritize pedestrians in an area, businesses will do better.
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Sep 30, 2015 04:06
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WayAbvPar posted:There should be heavy tax incentives for businesses to encourage/allow/enable telecommuting whenever possible. I do it two days a week, and could easily do it every day. I would just need to stop into the office every couple of weeks to pick up any packages that come my way. It would be like getting a raise for everyone- no gas, less morning coffee/breakfast/lunch out, no commute time. Obviously everyone can't do it 24/7, but a hell of a lot more people could do it than now. 1 million times this. I can do 90% of my job at home. Technically I don't know that I'm even allowed to (no one else does and it was never mentioned), but I do it anyway every so often.
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Sep 30, 2015 05:01
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SyHopeful posted:Am I the only one who likes a geographical separation between work and home? For me, home is my refuge. I don't want to taint it with the stress of my job. I totally get this. Personally, I have so much downtime at the office that just gets wasted. It's hard for me to work for 8 hours on a computer without taking a ton of tiny breaks. When I work from home, I use that downtime to do things like clean the house, make appointments, call my parents, work out, make lunch, water the plants, run down to the store, etc. Things I can't really do at the office.
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Sep 30, 2015 06:19
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BraveUlysses posted:Well they invest money creating a new second lane that is only usable by those who are willing to pay for it! After we pay for the new lane that only some people get to use, we will use some of that revenue to enforce the rules of that lane. Adding GP lanes to freeways to try to ease congestion is completely the wrong move.
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Sep 30, 2015 18:39
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Cicero posted:Adding a congestion charge would make those things easier, as I already explained. One way you could go about this is tying them together: propose transit improvements and a congestion charge that helps fund those improvements as one package. This is an area that rejected a bill to increase funding for transit in one of the most heavily congested areas in the country. I'm sorry, but the voters here have shown time and time again that they are unwilling to find transit packages unless they feel a push. Without interaction, it will never happen. There is no future Seattle I can see that builds an effective mass transit system without a significant political shift due to a financial push away from car commuting. A congestion charge is a quick way to accomplish that, and it would absolutely come with a massive increase in public transportation investment, so its not really a valid concern to say that congestion pricing is impossible because we don't have good transit NOW.
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Oct 1, 2015 00:33
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RuanGacho posted:I want to clarify I have no problem with the congestion pricing idea I just don't think it's a panacea for the larger structural problems in transportation. I more wanted to comment on the attitude that it seemed some people were taking that not only is it the suburbs fault for all the traffic but they should be charged for the privilege of coming into glorious jobs provider Seattle. I don't put the blame on any one person or group. It's certainly not the suburbs fault, or even SOV commuters that they have no choice but to live in far-off suburbs and commute into cities. Cars came around and everyone fell under their spell, for good reason. We bought into their concept of freedom but didn't consider how the future would look. Thus suburbs were created and subsidized, cities bulldozed minority neighborhoods in order to build expressways, and we stopped designing things for people. Now that we're at the point where we have critical car mass, we're stuck picking up the pieces and making unpopular decisions. It's tough but we've got to make sure our future cities are sustainable, and unfortunately that means quite a huge paradigm shift.
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Oct 1, 2015 01:47
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http://wsdotblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/i-405-travel-times-show-first-commutes.html?m=1 Don't forget that the hot lanes were not designed to make general purpose lanes faster. Their goal was to improve speeds for carpools and buses, and add a fast travel alternative for people willing to pay a toll.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:45
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seiferguy posted:Have Idaho absorb Eastern Washington, if anything. If Eastern Washington created their own state, you've basically just created a permanent red state that will give 2 Republican senators and at least 1 other Republican congressman. I've heard lots of talk on how western washington needs the agricultural power of eastern washington... but is that still the case? With our tech sector, surely we're blowing them out of the water by now. Let's cut the dead weight loose.
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Oct 2, 2015 16:37
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Accretionist posted:Well if you have a better plan for destroying rural Washington then let's hear it. Wildfires seem to work pretty well
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Oct 3, 2015 17:48
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Maneki Neko posted:Since moving up north, I kinda miss seeing goodspaceguy in the voters guide, but Snohomish County gets to features guys like this: I'd vote for Electrick DeWitt
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Oct 19, 2015 17:13
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Kaal posted:I mean to be fair it was almost certainly illegal. A business can't employ racial discrimination, full-stop. I'm sure she's a good person, and it sounds like she was a quiet yoga practitioner who got brow-beaten by a conservative radio-jock jerk, but at the end of the day you can't advertise services with an open disclaimer that certain races or skin colors are excluded. The Washington State courts don't give you a pass for "good intentions" (nor should they). Hmm, but then how do women's clubs, shelters, etc. exist? Because they would violate this same law.
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Oct 20, 2015 01:21
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Kaal posted:Everyone always gets hurt in these sorts of things, but that doesn't mitigate the fact that the discrimination was wrong. I think lots of people here would argue that the "discrimination" in the case of the POC yoga studio is not at all morally wrong.
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Oct 20, 2015 06:04
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seiferguy posted:I predict Tim Eyman's next initiative will be that all sales taxes collected in WA State will be evenly distributed among all WA state citizens. It will pass 70/30, only to be foiled by that dastardly WA State Supreme Court for being "unconstitutional." Can we do this exact thing but with an income tax please
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Oct 28, 2015 20:11
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a rowdy mullet posted:Did anyone else here vote no on the move Seattle levy? I've voted "yes" for every single tax increase since moving here, but $900 million for a medley of "meh" projects is too much for me. I don't see any of the measures in it significantly reducing traffic, and Sound Transit has done a much better job with the billions they've gotten to improve transit. Yo, Move Seattle isn't going to improve traffic. Literally nothing will, short of a regional recession / depression. Move Seattle is aimed at improving alternative modes of transportation, so that instead of being forced to drive everywhere, you have better walking, biking, and transit alternatives. $1 billion sounds like a lot out of hand, but it is a tiny fraction of the yearly road and highway tire-fire budget that we constantly shovel money into without thinking about it. Honestly, I'll be surprised if Move Seattle passes. Time and time again people here have shown that they don't really give a poo poo about infrastructure improvements unless they are A) in service of sprawl and roads, or B) huge mega-projects like light rail. And even the light rail was thrown out half a dozen times before people realized the mess they made. Drunk Tomato fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Nov 3, 2015 |
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Nov 3, 2015 05:09
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Fix posted:Can someone explain to me the rationale behind the HOV changes to the 405? I only come into/through Seattle once every couple of months and finally my father told me about them, but for the life of me they seem rear end backwards. Sure. The hot lanes are part of a larger-picture effort to provide more transportation options to a heavily congested corridor, introduce the concept of congestion pricing to the region, and allow for more dependable and faster transit service. A transit-only lane would have been vastly underutilized at this point, so WSDOT put in the system of two toll / HOV lanes in order to prioritize certain forms of transportation. Since they are just two lanes of freeway, they are easily customizable in case conditions change in the next few years.
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Nov 3, 2015 15:57
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mod sassinator posted:Yeah it's even dumber, you need a Flexpass which is totally different than the Good to Go pass for the bridges: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/GoodToGo/PassSelectionHelp/FlexPass.htm And if your windshield is metallic, like if it has an antenna or defroster inside it, then you're SOL if the signal is blocked and you get charged. Well it's the same system; the flex pass is also used on the 167 hot lanes. Basically the flex pass is the exact same thing as the good to go pass but you can set yourself in carpool mode to avoid the toll. Otherwise they are interchangeable. The metallic windshield problem is massively overblown and only affects a tiny fraction of cars. For those few cases, you can get a license plate sticker.
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Nov 3, 2015 20:33
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Tigntink posted:Only at 20% ballot returns in city of seattle. For a city that is filled with such little bitch complainers about everything under the sun, we sure as gently caress don't make an effort to change anything. I'm guessing Move Seattle fails to pass 65 - 35.
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Nov 4, 2015 03:50
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xrunner posted:Why is that not a valid part of the discussion? This story has no national coverage and these are local sites, so it's mostly people within the community commenting. I find it quite telling that the overwhelming response is to suggest it's a hoax. That, and the response completely ignores the slowly festering tensions up there. Commentors on news websites are not in any way, shape or form indicative of the actual community. Only the most insane and angry people comment.
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Nov 23, 2015 21:45
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seiferguy posted:There was a protest / counter-protest about Jay Inslee's comments on Syrian refugees, this was one of the protestors: Glad this guy came back in time to show us what the average Redditor is like in 25 years.
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Nov 24, 2015 00:49
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