The @enotrans.bsky.social has written about this dilemma. To oversimplify, the Europeans inflict severe disruption on a street or neighborhood, but done much faster than the U.S. And far less customization than people around here demand.

In Sound Transit's defense, all of WSLE's general points were already presented at night forums ad nauseam over the last nine years, so this sort of detail really was the only stuff to talk about. The question is why hold a meeting? I think it's to jump-start CM Mosqueda as a new board member in '26

They tried hard to relate the findings to laypersons, by describing budget contingency as like "collateral."

It sure sounded that way, that they wanted to drop Avalon Station to make the lower neighborhood impact and the tighter Alaska Junction Station doable. So that brings them down to $6b for two stations.

It could do both at the same time.

Move fast and break other people's things.

I'll probably go check that out Tuesday. Are you seeing any confused passengers down there?

Would be miraculous to do so by then.

I missed the retreat, but noticed this gorgeous yet confounding workflow chart that tells me they aren't ready to 'grapple' for quite a while.

Mike McGinn frequently biked to work, so it seems quite possible for Mayor (elect) Wilson to ride public transit for certain nearby events, with the usual two or three SPD bodyguards alongside.

That's a safe bet

Here's one - the @wsdot.wa.gov just built a pre-emptive desire trail that will help some apartment residents in the northeast go more directly to a new light rail station to their southwest, in this southward looking image. (The walk is still not very pleasant, at wide I-5 access roads.)

The engineers and planners make astounding sums of money during the futile planning process, not to mention outreach contractors. If we had a leaner project selection culture in the U.S., the "sunk cost" (psychologically more than $$) would be less of a drag on hard decisions.

When push came to shove, road projects got done under Mike McGinn and bike projects got done under Bruce Harrell.

Affordability isn't the goal, creating new financial products is the goal.

What do they do?

It wasn't on the Seattle Times front page because the paper goes out before 6 a.m. and the new vote counts aren't posted until after 4 p.m., or about one hour ago.

Reliability rates are around 97% in 2025, which is respectable performance. Downtown escalators used to be only 50% operable in 2020.