Orphan Road

Dan Savage is fond of writing about the awesome airport rail links in the cities he visits. Now that the light rail is funded from the Stranger's offices on Capitol Hill to SeaTac, it would seem that the paper is far more circumspect about endorsing light rail.

Consider this line about the proposed SeaTac-to-Tacoma light rail in The Stranger's anti-Prop. 1 editorial:

The line itself (through a low-density area) may feed sprawl in South King County, instead of promoting dense urban development that will grow alongside light rail stations in North Seattle.

Josh Feit admits the paper "caught hell" for that, and rightly so.

Today, Feit is going back and forth with Will @ Horse's Ass over this. Will says the stations along the line will lead to transit-oriented development, Feit says they'll lead to more sprawl.

I'm with Will. Growth is going to come to South King County anyway. And while Feit is right to note that "light rail is not just a pour and stir fix," it is an important part of the equation. If you get out in front of it with good growth management (which we have) and a light rail line (which we will have) then the kind of growth is much more likely to be centered around the rail stations than freeway exits. Once the growth happens, buying up right-of-ways for trains becomes much more expensive.