Tonight is the night of the big MSNBC debate in Philadelphia, so we'll be hosting a watch party for the West Coast rebroadcast.
Montlake Ale House
2307 24th Ave E
8pm until close (though some of us may be there for the original debate broadcast starting at 6pm)
A bus-riding commenter suggests that if existing bus service provides for all your needs, you won't get anything out of voting for Prop 1. I ceratinly fall into that category. Let me give my own story.
I live somewhere in the Madison Park/Madison Valley neighborhood. The 11 bus takes me to the downtown bus tunnel, which takes me 1 block from where I work (a couple of morning buses give me a one-bus trip, but we'll set that aside). It's a 35 minute trip---slower than a car, but fast enough that I'm willing to do it, especially since I get to read during my commute and don't have to pay for parking. This is all find and dandy.
At peak hours (and sometimes off-peak hours too!), though, the trip is much less fun. Buses both into and out of downtown during rush hour are standing room only. When the buses get too full, this starts to slow down trips, as passengers take a longer time getting on or off the bus. If the city could up its rush hour bus service from one bus per 15 minutes to one every 10 (and it's off-peak service from once every 30 minutes to once every 20 minutes -- I'm on the 9:30 bus into town and it's SRO before we get to Broadway!), that would both speed up my trips and improve my quality-of-commute (letting me sit and blog rather than stand and read) enough that I'd be willing to pay for it.
There are two ways we can get there: we can buy more buses; or we can build a mass transit system that does some of the work that buses are doing today, then use the buses that currently go downtown to beef up other lines of service. I'm definitely hoping that Prop 1 helps me out in that regard.
The Playstation 3—which is a much quieter DVD player than the 360 —doesn't have an infrared receiver, which means you can't control it with a programmable remote control. But by buying some PS2 accessories, you can re-join the twenty-first century of in-home movie watching.
More instructions on using an infrared remote with your Playstation 3.
Update: Alternatively, there's the Nyko Playstation 3 Blu Wave Remote.
It turns out that on the whole, the Roads and Transit deal does not "pencil out", in that the time wasted and gas saved is less than the amount of money spent on new projects, system wide. But if the funding mechanism is sufficiently progressive (and the sales tax, while regressive, is not that regressive ... more on that later), or we're willing to put a premium on our free time, or the lifespan of the roads & trains will be longer than the bonds, then it starts to look like a better deal. But let's try to bring this down to the individual level. If you are voting purely in your self-interest, should you vote for or against Prop 1? First the obvious winners:
Next, the people who are sort of in the middle:
Finally, the clear losers.
In the last post, we determined the cost of the free time that's wasted spent sitting in traffic. The total cost--if we were to reduce traffic congestion to zero--is $1.7 billion per year, but a more realistic 15% reduction in congestion would be worth a little over $250 million a year, just from the savings in lost time alone.
The cost of Roads and Transit, of course, is much higher, closer to $900 million per year over 20 years. It doesn't look like a good deal, given our current tally of costs and benefits. But have we estimated the value of the benefits accurately?
Well, probably not. So far we've taken a very minimal view of the benefits of reduced congestion. We're only counting the drop in wasted time for commuters who are on the road; we haven't counted any of the benefits that flow to bus & rail commuters. Anyone who uses the new light rail to stop driving to work reaps enormous gains; they save on gas, wear-and-tear, and parking. If you use light rail to commute from Shoreline to downtown Seattle, you're going to drive 5,000 fewer miles a year, which on average will mean almost $3,000 savings (that's twice the 11.7 mile trip from Shoreline to Seattle times 240 days of commuting times the $0.52 per-mile cost of driving). That's a big win. If the "transit" portion of the Roads and Transit package generates 200,000 new transit commuters, or 150,000 should the cost of gas and parking continue to increase, then the transit package pays for itself just with the drop in wasted time and the savings in car operating costs.
In addition, we're taking a rather literal view of the value of free time; we're saying that an hour of free time is worth an hour of wages. But, the value of free time is something of a metaphysical question. For businesses that depend on driving around, congestion costs much more than the hourly wage. And perhaps you personally think of your free time as something that's more valuable than an hour's worth of wages.
There are other considerations that I'm leaving out—replacing the 520 bridgeis crucial for commuters that have to cross the lake; the roads & rail system will last longer than the 20 years of bond payments—but overall, the transit package is a good deal for the city, especially for any family who plans on using the bus & rail system regularly.
Because sometimes interesting people just show up unnanounced:
That's General Wes Clark, telling a very receptive audience that trying to start a war with Iran might not be the greatest of ideas while the Army is still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 08:03 17 October 2007
