West Coast public transportation

Seattle's Beacon Hill
station, published with
NYT article, credited to
Seattle Times

When Seattle’s King County Metro won the award [for outstanding public transportation] in September, it was praised as “a system that is expanding and innovating to meet rising demand” — not to mention a program that offers lower fares for poor riders that has served as a model for New York and other cities. Transit ridership in Seattle is growing, and car use is down.
--New York Times

Yesterday's article in the New York Times, lamenting the condition of rail transit in New York and other eastern cities, was surprising -- not because the problems with East Coast transit haven't been publicized before, but because of the article's unfavorable contrast of East Coast (and specifically New York City) transit with developments on the West Coast.

Experts quoted in the article gave two primary reasons for the West's superiority -- first, the fact that eastern subway systems are old and in desperate need of maintenance, while western light rail systems are still new and in excellent shape, and second, the fact that New York's system, especially, depends on largesse from a largely unsympathetic state legislature, while Seattle and Los Angeles area residents have the legal ability to vote taxes on themselves to build and improve their rail networks.

In addition, New York and New Jersey state governments have also been unwilling not only to improve their systems, but even to provide for basic maintenance.  The article complimented Seattle, specifically, for including future maintenance costs in the amounts submitted to and approved by the voters.

Seattle also wants to learn from the East Coast’s mistakes, [King County Executive Dow] Constantine said.
“I made sure we included funding for long-term maintenance,” he said, “so you don’t get the situation we’re seeing in New York and Washington where the systems have been neglected and it’s expensive and inconvenient to rebuild.”

All this is heady stuff for us long-time Northwest Corner residents.  As a 14-year-old visitor to Chicago's north shore, I was asked by a girl my age about relations with Indians in my home state.  She didn't think the Indian wars were still on-going, but she somehow envisioned Indian settlements -- teepees perhaps -- as a common and unmistakable sight as one drove away from Seattle.  Perhaps trading posts where fish and gold dust were exchanged for blankets and trinkets.

 

I'm proud not only of our relatively new and still rather small rail transit system -- small, but extremely useful to me as it already exists -- but in our comprehensive bus system. We get lots of complaints about transit in Seattle, and about the cost of expansion.  But as the article notes,

Seattle has won accolades for its transit system, where 93 percent of riders report being happy with service — a feat that seems unimaginable in New York, where subway riders regularly simmer with rage on stalled trains.

But let's keep our perspective.  Yes, New York's system does seem ancient and creaky, and its stations dark and dingy.  And even Washington's system -- which I still consider "new" -- is getting a bit tired in appearance and service.  But both systems -- and especially New York's -- are huge by comparison with Seattle's, and even with LA's.  Trains may run late, but they run, and they run seemingly everywhere.

If I were a tired commuter in New York, riding the trains to and from work daily, I might be bitter about late trains, crowded trains with standing room only, and dingy stations.  But as a tourist, the New York and Washington systems are both a delight, enabling me to get virtually anywhere I want in four of the five New York boroughs, and into Maryland and Virginia suburbs from Washington.  Our eastern older brothers should be proud of their ancestors who bequeathed them the comprehensive systems they have today.

But they really should bring them up to date.