A Washington state Senator from one of our southern counties wants to stop development of a mass transit rail system across Interstate 90′s floating bridge. You see, if you’re not familiar with our geography, we have a conundrum in Washington. It’s called water. The King County area is basically split up repeatedly by lakes, bays, harbors, and rivers–click on this link for an idea of how crazy it can be (Google Maps). See how that route goes east out of Seattle, across that massive lake? That’s I-90. Our bridges, built to float across these massive bodies of still water, are major traffic choke points for West-East commuters. The Eastside of that lake is quickly approaching almost Seattle-levels of development and population, so we need robust mass transit across both ways.
For some reason, this daffy politician from way down South, in the completely opposite direction 88 miles away, is against the idea. His bill boils down to:
A light rail system or any other rail fixed guideway system may not be constructed or operated on the Interstate 90 floating bridge.
Why is this laughably clueless? As my first link points out, the construction and transit work is already paid for by the Federal government to the tune of $900,000,000. It’s apparently important enough that this massive expansion was paid for by the US Government as an important need. We’d also have to pay back the money with interest and a loss if we don’t build the train system. Stupid and harmful to Washington state? Very much so. Thankfully, it will probably be dead on arrival in Olympia.
