The wheels on the bus...

Tamara has a very good--as usual--post on mass transit and whether it will work in a given urban area.  (Although  not as snarky as usual...)(Which is remedied here.)

Bottom line:  If the  city was not laid out/designed with mass transit in mind, fuhgedabout it.  The Seattle-Tacoma  Metropolitan area had several opportunities to develop a coherent mass transit system 40 years ago, and passed, as unneeded.  Now, of course, the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) are pushing schemes to discourage automobile ownership and use, and get people to ride a "gov't cattle car", as PDB said in comments to a Winston-Salem (NC) Journal editorial encouraging everyone to, well, ride a gov't cattle car.  (A comment, by the way, which keeps getting pulled and then replaced by the paper...)

Mass transit will get used to the extent that it meets a need; it has to be convenient and affordable.  The "convenience" part of the equation includes variable such as frequency of service, how far I have to go to get the bus or whatever, how far I have to go to get where I am going, once I get off the bus or whatever, how comfortable the bus or whatever is, and how secure I feel while riding--or waiting to ride.

As PDB notes, a car means freedom.  That may be the crux of the watermelons' hatred for the automobile, right there:  Freedom, to the watermelons, isn't even a word for nuthin' left to lose, it's a sign that you are an unmutual, bourgeoisie, selfish enemy of the people.

Mrs. Drang usually takes the bus to work; her boss pays her parking, but there's so little of it in the neighborhood she works in, that it's not worth it to her most days.  I have started taking the bus to work, as my employer does not pay my parking, and that $50+/month will buy a lot of beer.  (Or not so much of the good beer, but never mind...)

The latest hobby horse of the watermelon crowd is Light Rail.  I worked for a couple of months as a temp at the local regional transit agency office several years ago, where I learned that Light Rail is defined as running more frequently than commuter or passenger rail, on standard guage tracks,  but with fewer cars per train.   One problem with building the fairly new Light Rail system locally is that the infrastructure did not exist:  They had to acquire rights of way and build everything from scratch.   Another is that everyone wanted light rail in their neighborhood, but no one wanted it in their back yard.  Every time a route was debated, an interesting phenomenon arose:  Prosperous neighborhoods would protest having it run there, because it would drive property values down, but poor (especially ethnic) neighborhoods would scream bloody murder if it didn't serve them, because only prejudice could explain it (no matter how detailed the engineers' explanation of why the soil there would not support the system, or something.)

The less said about the controversy regarding Light Rail service, or lack of same, on the east side of Lake Washington the better.

So, now we have light rail running from Seatac Airport up to Seattle.  Those who ride it back and forth to work either arrive very early, or they are frequently late, due to, um, issues with the "Light Snail"...  Accidents.  Maintenance.  Power outages.  4 hours to make a trip that would be one on the bus.  Bus and light rail service not synced.

And, if course, the whole money pit thing...