I have a three month old son, and I’ve been walking him around the neighborhood near my house, looking at the beautiful old buildings that were built around 100 years ago, when my house was built. Here’s a little tour.

This is the high school he could have attended:

This is the Queen Anne High School, probably the most beautiful school I’ve seen. It’s brick and stone with intricate detailing and a 180 degree view of the city. But our underfunded or poorly run school system has decided he doesn’t need these amenities, and sold the building as condos. Instead, he may go here:

Ok, this is just a stock office photo. But I couldn’t find a photo of the Center School, the closest high school to my house. This school is located above the food court of the Seattle Center and looks like a run-down office. Upon entering you expect cubicles rather than classrooms. The Center House building it is housed in was designed as a temporary structure over 40 years ago. The lunchroom is the Seattle Center food court.

This is the middle school he could have attended:

This is the West Queen Anne Public School. It’s another beautiful brick building designed to last at least 200 years. But it was also sold as condos. Instead, he’ll probably go here:

Built in the 60′s, this cheaply constructed mess of concrete and brick facade looks run down already.

This is the elementary school he could have attended:

Not brick, but still a beautiful building. It hasn’t been sold as condos yet, but isn’t being used as the elementary school. Instead he’ll probably go here:

Ok, this one’s a bit nicer than the others. But then it’s new – we’ll see how it holds up in a hundred years or two.

Where did we go wrong? How come we used to build great monuments to our children designed to last hundreds of years and now build cheap, short term classrooms? Were previous Seattlites just much more wealthy than we are, or did our priorities change? Imagine what our schools would look like if spent our road building taxes on our children instead.

Providing emergency response services is priority one. Getting the transit system up and running should be priority two.

Greg Nickels is the Ray Nagin of the North. Ron Sims is our Kathleen Blanco. Let’s get it together, folks.

By perhaps the 2nd or 3rd day of snow and only after a painful learning curve, buses in Seattle seem to have settled into a comfortable routine. Sure it’s a routine where half of the buses aren’t running, and most routes are unpredictable in terms of pickup and travel times, but at least the routes have settled down. However, these routes don’t look much like their published adverse weather routes (for example the 13 adverse weather route – had planned on still making it up the hill). And during the first days of snow people were stranded without even knowing which bus stop to wait at or which bus to take.

I humbly submit to the Internet my weather plan for the next snow season.

1. Find the most level, drivable route to serve a neighborhood. One way of doing this is to look at the routes as they exist right now. Now name these routes something easy, like #1S replacing the #1 (S for snow).

2. At the first hint of snow, announce to every media outlet you can that Seattle will be switching to snow routes. This shouldn’t be hard, since news reporters love this sort of thing. And don’t overlook the “first hint of snow” piece of this – buses are no good to anyone if they’re broken down on hills.

3. At every stop list directions to the nearest snow route stop, the snow route number, and a phone number to call if you need assistance (for those that can’t walk down a snow-covered hill).

4. Every non-articulated bus that serves a route that is canceled should now join these snow routes. This is critical, since we need to keep frequency high on these now overloaded routes.

5. 4×4 shuttle buses can ferry people up and down hills where required.

6. I’d have the city send someone around to shovel snow off of at least a few walking routes from each hill.

Yes, this will result in people that live on hills having to do a little more walking in the snow. But I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking an extra 10 minute walk to a reliable and predictable bus beats the current system hands-down.

Despite the popular sentiment about what a given project would do for your commute, using personal benefits as a factor in transportation planning seems like a terrible way to decide things. Let’s assume you live in Lynnwood, right next to the possible future station. The station won’t be available to you until 2023. That’s 15 years out. I don’t know about you but I’m not sure where I’ll be living in 5 years, let alone 15. I’m sure you don’t know where you’ll be working in 15 years. And even if you don’t move and don’t change jobs, you’ll be living your life for 15 years in a way that would otherwise cause you to move?

The reason I’m a supporter of ST2 has nothing to do with my life. If I wanted only to experience a good transit system, I’d move to New York or the other Washington. Why I support ST2 has more to do with a beneficent feeling about how a city should work. We know we’re running out of oil. We know that it’s a waste of human life for millions of people to sit in gridlocked freeways. We know that cities with fewer cars are more enjoyable places to live and work. We know that efficient transportation systems increase quality of life.

I live here because I like Seattle. I’m voting for ST2 because as much as I like Seattle, it could be better.

Let me quickly go over this analysis again, just to let it sink in. At 200 miles a day x 5 days a week x 52 weeks a year, you’re putting 52,000 miles a year on your car. Using a lifespan of 200,000 miles for a $20,000 economy car getting 30mpg, that’s $7,700 worth of car you’re burning through a year. Add $1,400 a year in maintenance (low, I’d say for that many miles), $600 a year for insurance, and $7,000 in $4/gal gas, and you’re up to $16,700 a year (I came up with $14,000 in my comment – I think I used a cheaper car?). In 30 years you’d spend $501,000 doing this.

Now I ask, what kind of upgrade of a house can you get in the city for an extra half million? Assuming you don’t need a ritzy area (which you don’t if we’re comparing the suburbs) that’s a big house and a big yard. And you don’t need to spend 3.5 hours a day (at an average of 55mph = 910 hours/year = 16% of your waking life = 24% of your non-working waking life) driving a car.

Note that this comparison isn’t apples-to-apples. First of all, you’d have to get rid of a car when you live in the city to save on all of those insurance and maintenance benefits (though they’d both shrink immensely if you didn’t drive much). But then most of the money was in the gas and wear on the car itself – both of which are all but removed in city life. But the real difference in this comparison is that in the exurb case the money you spend is just gone – sent to oil companies and car manufacturers. In the city case, this money still exists in your house. Yes, perhaps half of it will go into the interest in your loan, but you get the rest back when you sell your house (and likely more, if housing prices go up in 30 years).

Of course a working-class commuter probably can’t afford a half-million dollar home in the first place. I think the lesson here is that if you can find a city house that you can live with and afford (even with a larger mortgage than you’re comfortable with), it’s a strongly better deal than anything you can get out in the country.

This is an extreme example. But it’s a real-life example, and likely a common one. Also, the lesson applies for shorter distances as well – the numbers get more mild as you approach the suburbs, then drop off once you don’t need a car at all.

Which brings me to the tie-in to Seattle transit infrastructure. With rail or bus access within walking distance, we can extend that carless-commute out a ways from the city center. You still waste life (though less of it), but you don’t waste close to as much money.

http://maps.google.com/maps/user?uid=103428233658015669918&hl=en&gl=us&ptab=2

There were several comments about how the branding a Seattle transit agency would be confusing. I’m not sure I agree (many other cities handle this fine), but I’m ok with not having a new agency as a requirement.

Here’s my proposed compromise: We build all of the infrastructure, buy the trains, then ask King County to run it. They may need to pay for a few new drivers, but it would certainly be an easier sell than having them come up with all of the initial capital.

Of course, this is exactly what’s happening with the streetcars. But I’d argue that streetcars aren’t enough. Unless they’re completely traffic-seperated, they’re just busses with increased ridership (good, but still slow and inefficient). What we need is a monorail-scale plan. We could still use streetcars (though light rail may be better), but elevate them, put them in tunnels, or just make their path completely seperate from cars.

It sounds like a pretty big vote of confidence on the part of the council, that either the city will come up with the money from outside sources, or from the city itself.

Background here on the back-and-forth between the Mayor and the Council over these projects.

Why are we abandoning our bus trolley system every weekend in response to an infrequent and avoidable problem? Here’s an idea: Maybe we should put trolley power on two circuits where this occurs.