4 ms·

I'd love to see how this would work in the greater Seattle area, where year after year, the King County Metro system has to beg for money to continue operating

I'd love to see how this would work in the greater Seattle area, where year after year, the King County Metro system has to beg for money to continue operating at their current capacity. For the past two years, the threat has been that Metro will have to cut their service by 17%, which is huge. From their site: "annual revenue will fall $75 million short of what is necessary to maintain current service after temporary funding runs out in mid-2014" http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Future.aspx http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Future.aspx Serious changes would have to occur for something like completely free public transit to become a reality.

johnbellone 13y ago
I have only been in the D.C. area for a little over a year and there is definitely budget problems here as well. The problem may actually be that the people, and by extension the government, do not believe that mass transportation is a replacement for cars (yet - maybe ever) in a metropolitan area. There may also be a whole hell of a lot of other political reasons (oil and car lobbies, etc). But the end result is the same. When I was in New Jersey I heavily took advantage of the NJ Transit Light Rail system in Newark, and between Hoboken and Jersey City. That was absolutely amazing, and the price point was a hell of a lot cheaper than it is to ride the NYC subway or D.C. metro systems. I really think that the northeast just has had a lot more experience and failures here. The main arteries for traffic, at least that I see, come from Amtrak (which again, is amazing in northeast) and local rail systems such as NJT and PATH. In contrast it seems that there are a lot less people in the NOVA and Maryland area that use D.C. metro and the VRE. Some of that may because of the distance, the belt way, but I think a lot of it has to do with the reliability of the systems (at the very least for D.C. metro).

johnbellone 13y ago

I have only been in the D.C. area for a little over a year and there is definitely budget problems here as well. The problem may actually be that the people, and by extension the government, do not believe that mass transportation is a replacement for cars (yet - maybe ever) in a metropolitan area. There may also be a whole hell of a lot of other political reasons (oil and car lobbies, etc). But the end result is the same. When I was in New Jersey I heavily took advantage of the NJ Transit Light Rail system in Newark, and between Hoboken and Jersey City. That was absolutely amazing, and the price point was a hell of a lot cheaper than it is to ride the NYC subway or D.C. metro systems. I really think that the northeast just has had a lot more experience and failures here. The main arteries for traffic, at least that I see, come from Amtrak (which again, is amazing in northeast) and local rail systems such as NJT and PATH. In contrast it seems that there are a lot less people in the NOVA and Maryland area that use D.C. metro and the VRE. Some of that may because of the distance, the belt way, but I think a lot of it has to do with the reliability of the systems (at the very least for D.C. metro).