by "victor" (victor)
Published 06/09/2017 at 19:25
by "victor" (victor)
Published 06/09/2017 at 19:25
No Tags
STARS: 2
/Minor Rant
Today, it took me 30 minutes to drive a bit under 3 miles from Queen Anne to Capitol Hill in the morning. This evening’s commute will take a brisk 1 hour to travel 11 miles.
The last place I was at that got this bad was in Taipei, where my parents’ 6 mile commute took 90 minutes on average. The citizens of the city got fed up and built a true subway system. They realized that putting more highways and roads just lead to more congestion and worse traffic. Now 1/3 of that city take the subway and traffic has gotten significantly better.
Right now, the issue is that Seattle is growing at an unbelievably fast clip, but our infrastructure needs seem to be addressing needs that are years behind the curve already. Anyways, just bitching before I need to drive home. I love driving, I hate commuting.
/End Rant
"Decay buys too many beaters" (decay)
06/09/2017 at 19:34, STARS: 0
The whole Northwest, Portland needs this as well :/
"Quadradeuce" (quadradeuce)
06/09/2017 at 19:36, STARS: 5
Because you guys can’t dig a tunnel without hitting an old well casing and derailing the whole project. (Google “Bertha’s pipe”)
"RiceRocketeer Extraordinaire" (ricerocketeer2)
06/09/2017 at 19:45, STARS: 2
I grew up in Taipei ... just before they put that subway in.
I actually tried taking the bus & subway here in LA yesterday, but the last 1/2 mile is a steep uphill hike with no sun cover.
Also, I live 13 miles from work. Driving ... 75 minutes. Public transportation ... 90.
"Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo" (thetomselleck)
06/09/2017 at 20:12, STARS: 1
It’s bad all over King and Snohomish counties.
I live within ten miles of my office, and it takes 35 minutes for me to get home. If it’s a Friday afternoon, it’s 50 minutes. Every highway, backroad, main drag, are all completely backed up.
My morning commute is starting to get longer too.
"DipodomysDeserti" (dipodomysdeserti)
06/09/2017 at 20:18, STARS: 1
If I ever had to live somewhere like that, I’d end up burning the place to the ground. I just drove my 15 miles home in about twenty minutes on surface streets in a city with about 3x the population of Seattle.
I have friends that moved to Seattle and they’re all depressed and ready to move back. It is a pretty city though.
"just-a-scratch" (just-a-scratch)
06/09/2017 at 20:19, STARS: 2
Seattle is not years behind its need for transit infrastructure; its decades behind, at least two decades. I have been commuting on and around Seattle for over twenty years. There has always been a need for better transit infrastructure.
It’s too bad the Seattle Monorail project was such a mess. That system might have rolled out faster and cheaper than the light rail we are finally getting. However that project had garbage management that needed to be tossed out in the end.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Monorail_Project
"lone_liberal" (token-liberal)
06/09/2017 at 20:21, STARS: 0
My commute is about 15 miles and normally takes 30 minutes. Tonight’s drive home took 50 thanks to construction on I90 and everybody taking the same alternate route that I took.
"victor" (victor)
06/09/2017 at 21:06, STARS: 0
Seattle metro area now has more people than Phoenix metro, it’s just a lot more dense.
The main draw at the end of the day is still economic. I make probably 3x what I would make in anywhere outside of the Silicon valley and Seattle.
"Svart Smart, traded in his Smart" (svartsmart)
06/09/2017 at 21:17, STARS: 0
I don’t have enough horn pads, middle fingers, or angry words for the box blockers, lane splitters, and people going out of turn (running the red light, etc.) at 4th & Battery.
"Eric @ opposite-lock.com" (theyrerolling)
06/09/2017 at 21:29, STARS: 1
There are a lot of very terrible things about this city. Traffic is worse than anywhere else I’ve ever lived (it makes Los Angeles traffic look like open country roads), the housing stock is shittier than anywhere else I’ve ever lived, and it’s just a train wreck socially.
On the other hand, I love the weather/PNW, my wife, and her family. She doesn’t want to leave, and I can’t blame her.
Hopefully this fabulous weather makes the sun lovers hate it here and move away.
"Eric @ opposite-lock.com" (theyrerolling)
06/09/2017 at 21:33, STARS: 0
I don’t know that it would help much. My commute is 1.5-2.5 hours, with about 45 minutes in heavy traffic on I-90 or 520 (with a ridiculous toll) to get home.
There’s really no way to make the commute reasonable since most of us live deep in suburban areas that are completely car dependent.
"DipodomysDeserti" (dipodomysdeserti)
06/09/2017 at 22:08, STARS: 0
Nah. The Phoenix Metro area has over 4.5 million people. There’s probably another 2 million people who would have DHS at their door if they filled out a census form. Seattle metro area is at 3.7 million. Probably a lot of undocumented workers but nowhere near the amount in Phoenix.
Obviously Seattle has a much higher population density and money is the reason people subject themselves to being stuffed into cities like sardines. I could live in the mountains but I’d make a lot less. I’d probably be happier. Hmmmmm...
"DipodomysDeserti" (dipodomysdeserti)
06/09/2017 at 22:13, STARS: 0
It won’t make the sun lovers move away. If 115F summer days and a twenty five year draught can’t scare people away from AZ, clouds and rain can’t save the PNW. White people love that shit.
"Eric @ opposite-lock.com" (theyrerolling)
06/09/2017 at 23:34, STARS: 0
People legitimately hate the weather here. Many get seasonal affective disorder. People will deal with a lot of crap for sunny warm weather; I don’t get it.
At least 80% of the people that aren’t poor here travel to Hawaii, California, or Mexico for 1-2 weeks every winter. It’s crazy. They just hate the weather here.
"Eric @ opposite-lock.com" (theyrerolling)
06/10/2017 at 08:28, STARS: 0
Another thing to note is that the entire housing market run up has happened since a low point in 2012-2013. The last time we had winter weather here was in 2012 to very early 2013, and this last winter hasn’t even included one of those big winter snow storms that we haven’t seen since early-2012 (well before housing prices started going up; we’ve added roughly 800k people since 2000, with the last 400k of that in the last 4 years). We’ve also had long, hot, dry summers with practically no winter weather for the last 4 years that have encompassed the majority of time the population has increased and the entire run up in housing prices. It also coincides with the end of Amazon very actively recruiting for people outside the area (2012-2013) and the last decent winter snowstorm (2012). I remember watching the 2008 one on the news from San Diego and thinking, “I’m really glad I don’t live there. That looks like serious suffering.”, then the one in 2012 and thinking, “I wanted to move there, now I’m not so sure.”. It was the main outside factor I was worried about during my interview with my current employer, as I knew that they happened periodically and were nasty. Since moving here, I have either been out of town or never left the house every time it has snowed or even been below freezing - I don’t trust these idiots to drive on bone dry pavement, let alone on ice and snow.
"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr)
06/10/2017 at 09:30, STARS: 0
If you’ve got a suburban sprawl problem, maybe the solution is various price controls on rent, and then instituting some sort of market pressure to demolish buildings and build taller?
"Eric @ opposite-lock.com" (theyrerolling)
06/10/2017 at 11:13, STARS: 0
You really can’t fix the sprawl. The low-density housing is too ubiquitous, has ossified, and the infrastructure simply isn’t suitable for higher density, even if we had extensive mass transit. They have been playing with microapartments in some areas, but when they tear down an old suburban house to build them, all they do is make the area so congested (because people still need cars and these developments never seem to consider that those living there will need a place to keep a car, let alone drive them on these tight streets) that it becomes almost unlivable.
The odd thing about the low-density SFHs in the Seattle metro area is that a lot of the developments were surprisingly-high-density for their eras, with tiny streets that can’t accommodate more than one direction of travel at a time (they’re practically alleys) and expecting each SFH to only have one car parked off-street in a driveway.
They were also built on the cheap in an era when Seattle was a low/working-class city with a small population. Now these houses command around 1M+ a piece. It would take razing entire suburban city blocks near major streets/transit to be replaced with multi-story mixed-use buildings with 2-3 parking garage spaces per housing unit and 7-10 per business to make them livable. I’ve only seen this done right a handful of times in Bellevue, but even these lack decent mass transit access.