Our public transit has crossed the line to critically unusable

In a previous post I mentioned that I was a life long die-hard public transit and bike rider. You can’t find someone more on the transit side than me.

And I had to switch to the car. This morning I drove by the light rail station in Roosevelt and I saw that the lightrail was again 25 minutes delayed.

This is not reliable transit. In Seattle, we have switched all buses to connect to the lightrail, and we did that because we thought the lightrail will be the backbone of our transit infrastructure. But it is simply not. The lightrail, since it opened in Roosevelt, has been delayed almost every day. Single tracking, power line problems, collisions with cars and people in Rainier Valley. These are not “momentary” problems that will be resolved this year. These are the result of decades of bad faith prioritization of cars.

It’s also now no longer possible to ride my bike – it is so dangerous (I’ve been riding since 1999), drivers speed, they are distracted, the blow through red lights, don’t yield on right turns, etc.

I am not sure what the plan is for seattle. I do know that current course and trajectory will not get people out of their cars. it’s too dangerous and too unreliable. I think an earth-swell shift in safety needs to happen with entire swaths of car free streets for safe options, and complete re-prioritization of street space. Everything else will not work. You can’t compromise, because any bit of “some car” leads to the current situation.