Seattle taxpayers pay some of the highest taxes in the country so that Sound Transit can build $75 billion worth of light-rail and other transit facilities. Some of those taxpayers must have been overjoyed to read a Sound Transit press release saying, “Local taxpayers to save more than $500 million through USDOT financing assistance.”
Those same taxpayers, however, may be wondering: are they going to get that $500 million back in rebates on the taxes they have paid to date? Is Sound Transit going to reduce future taxes to take this savings into account? Or will Sound Transit just throw a big party with an open bar and invite Seattle taxpayers to attend? How about none of the above.
Early this year, Sound Transit admitted that the cost of two planned light-rail lines will be as much as 70 percent more — than originally projected. That’s $6.2 billion. The agency faces a $6.5 billion shortfall in funds, which plans to deal with by delaying completion of several promised light-rail lines to as late as 2041 — 44 years after taxpayers began paying for them.
Any money that is “saved” by federal assistance will be immediately reallocated to other light-rail lines. By 2041, Sound Transit hopes to have nearly 120 miles of light-rail lines, more than any urban area in the country has today. But will anyone be riding these trains?
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The pandemic will eventually end, but its effects won’t. Many of downtown’s high-tech workers who make up much of Sound Transit’s ridership will continue to work at home at least a few days a week. Many jobs are likely to move out of downtown. Many people are likely to move their homes further into the suburbs, away from planned light-rail lines.
By enabling Sound Transit to keep building light-rail lines that can’t be economically justified, the federal government is costing the region’s taxpayers, not saving them money. Ironically, Sound Transit’s CEO is the guy who, when he was the head of the Federal Transit Administration, said that “paint is cheap; trains are extremely expensive” and that “bus-rapid transit is a fine fit for a lot more communities than are seriously considering it,” including Seattle.
If he acted on that belief today, he could save taxpayers at least $50 billion, or a hundred times more than the agency’s press release claimed they were saving. Of course he won’t because as a CEO of a rail transit agency, he gets paid about twice as much — currently about $380,000 a year — as CEOs of agencies that operate only buses.
If you don’t think it can happen in the next decade, you don’t know if it can ever happen.
https://www.myballard.com/2021/08/18/ballard-light-rail-plans-pushed-back-to-2039/
The timeline to bring light rail to Ballard has been pushed back four years, with new estimates targeting 2039 for service to the neighborhood.
Sound Transit just announced its latest timeline for the West Seattle and Ballard Link Extensions (WSBLE) project, influenced by financial assessments carried out last year. In early 2020, the Sound Transit Board started a process called realignment to review options for addressing the “significant affordability gap affecting our future transit expansion projects not yet under construction.” The original timeline would have brought service to Ballard by 2035.
The funding gap to complete the project is currently forecasted at $6.5 billion, creating delays for all construction on the WSBLE project
2040’s……..’we’ll have starships and flying cars by then.
“Investments in technologies with lengthy timeframes/introductions are risky ventures, because no one can predict what technologies will emerge to compete against it by the time it unveils”
The Plimp is described as a plummet-proof aircraft with the lift of a plane, the control of a helicopter and the buoyancy of a blimp. Like a blimp it’s got a air/helium filled bag. Unlike a blimp it doesn’t float away. While some mock the idea, it’s only asking for 10 million in development dollars. That’s barely 1% of 1% of what lightrail in Seattle hopes to obtain.
That’s just one…The 1930’s saw the end of the airship era. Blimps and Airships however may make a comeback. An Ohio company Ohio Airships, combines the advantages of air cargo while significantly reducing ecological problems. They achieve this by designing slow cargo airships, called “Dynalifters”. These air vessels mix the travel concepts of planes and Zeppelins. The company completed 4 conceptual designs for four different sizes. All designs are equipped with detachable cargo pods for rapid loading and off-loading, and a prototype with a length of 37 metres has already been built and tested. They’re not blimps, they do not float away without a tether. The Dynalift is a airship/plane hybrid, it uses the helium/air mixed bag buoyancy to reduce most of the aircrafts weight penalty but it’s not light enough to float. The airship has wings and engines and wheels and takes off and lands as passenger aircrafts do albeit at a slower pace. The aircraft do not fly at stratospheric altitudes and can navigate safely in as little as 2,000 feet or less. It’s top speed is 200 km/h or 124 miles an hour, while four times slower than a jet it uses a fraction of the fuel to travel the same distances. The passenger gondola offers wider floor plans than jet’s, a 747 is 240 inches wide (20+ feet) a passenger gondola can be over 25 feet wide and windows the size of house windows because cabins don’t less pressurization except at high altitude and open floor plans means no coach style seating. With a seating arrangement wider than a 747 means you can carry as many/more people.
Dynalifter’s and plimps offer another asset, Infrastructure-less travel. High speed rail requires dedicated precisely maintained infrastructure, to be built. And maintained indefinitely. Air travel thou more energy consuming, requires vastly less infrastructure and designs offer no added New infrastructure they can use existing runways.
The big gamble in the future is whether or not Synthetic fuels become available. By thermally converting chemicals using high heat or catalysts you can turn nitrogen, water and Carbon dioxide into things like Ammonia fuel, methanol and synthetic gas.
All these technologies work, except they’re infancy programs. But not beyond our reason