[PRCo] Re: A summer trip through the west

[Vigrass, Bill]

Re: Seattle tunnel.   Howzabout a car wash kind of conveyor to haul/propel regular buses through the tunnel with engines shut off?  How would we handle HVAC?  Who needs a dual mode bus anyway!
BV.  technonut 2/c

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Subject: Re: A summer trip through the west


My only basic flack for you is about automobiles.  What a shame all those 
OTHER DRIVERS were making the roads congested for you.  And those DO-GOODERS 
making you ride a bus in Zion instead of taking your own automobile through.  
The Highwaymen have the solution: make the roads wider.  Most everywhere, 
especially Zion, this solution only destroys what you were going to see.  
Maybe at Zion, let people drive - but sell tickets: your appointment is at 
12:15 tonight.

By "most everywhere," except at Zion, I'm mainly talking about the roads that 
are already six lanes wide.  Further widening I-5 through Seattle, for 
example, would tear down a fair amount of useful city - maybe it needs an I-5 
subway??  We are already going for the next Big Dig monstrosity: the ugly 
Alaskan Way Viaduct, built on the cheap 40 or 50 years ago, is an earthquake 
hazard and getting ratty to boot.  The favored plan is to replace it with a 
multi-level tunnel, and more lanes of course.  

East of Lake Washington there's the I-5 clone, I-405.  There's a 
multi-billion plan to widen this also.  Since there's really no there, there 
(call me West Sound prejudiced), maybe it's OK to tear down Bellevue and 
similar places for the project.

The tunnel and its dual power buses were built for a political objective: the 
transit tax is collected throughout King County but most of the money is 
spent in Seattle.  It's obvious that, from an operating standpoint, the 
tunnel should have taken the existing trolleybus routes off the streets.  But 
what was "needed" was a project that benefits folks outside the city limits.  
Most tunnel routes would be ridiculous to electrify, even if the highwaymen 
would allow it over the freeways.  Hence the monster dual power buses that 
spend 5% of their time under wire.  Metro is planning to replace them with 
diesel hybrids .. there'll be so little noise, smoke and stink you'll hardly 
notice it!  What they should do is kick the buses out of the tunnel when they 
build rail.

You want to talk about rail, visit Seattle.  You want to ride rail, visit 
Portland.

J. Aurelius