[stares at the Sound Transit website for light rail]
Oh, Seattle. I see that you remain committed to *EXCELLENCE*. I know you have some challenging geology, but I'm preeeeetty sure that's not the problem here.
Yeah ST really likes to commit to a plan then backtrack for 10 more years for "community comments" before deciding to do take the worst option. Really helps that one member of the ST board actually uses transit, but it's her own pet line that can't be killed (despite low ridership).
Well, there’s this three disconnected light rail lines thing. I was scratching my head why the route planner wasn’t working the way I expected.
Then I pulled up the service map and said “Oh.”
The station next to the place I want to be exists and is open now after four years. The rail line does not connect to the airport however, which is a titch unhelpful.
Yeah, it was supposed to open this spring, but the contractor in charge of the bridge cheaped out on the concrete, and ST just allowed them to do their own QC during the pandemic, so we didn't find out until like 2023. We had to demolish all of the pilings and start over. 😡
It's okay. This is mostly complaining about ST utterly failing at its one fucking job, staring at a station that I've been waiting for them to finish for years and now that they've done it that it isn't actually helpful.
If you're looking at the east side (Redmond/Bellevue) I believe it's because a contractor messed up the construction of the part that crosses the floating bridge, and they're redoing it. It's not even the first time that's happened on that project; they also had to redo a parking garage in Redmond.
The other disconnect is just because Tacoma's and Seattle's systems were built more or less independently and the connection between them is still under construction
It could certainly be better, I'll admit that. Steady improvements are being made, though, even if they're quite a lot slower than some of us would like
Old joke: of course there's freedom of speech in Russia, just like in America! Why, I can stand outside the White House and yell "fuck Joe Biden" – and I can stand outside the Kremlin and yell "fuck Joe Biden" too!
I believe there's quite a rich history of racism involved, including, but not limited to how the light rail line connecting to the airport runs exactly through /that/ part of the city and stoped at downtown until recently.
But we could have gotten into it in the ‘70s and instead they *turned down the grant* so Atlanta built MARTA instead and we had to build light rail after property values exploded and the metro area had already sprawled.
I’m assured that sometime in the next decade or so the lines will connect with each other! They’ve certainly reduced service to (presumably) work on that project a lot!
