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Fair. Maybe I'm too much if the weeds of this because all I can think of is how much of a fight it was to pass ST2 and ST3 and how we haven't even started on the Ballard line despite voting for it in 2016 (10 years ago!) and how it might be delayed forever.
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I get that it is neat but it's hardly the Hoover dam is it?
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It's not exactly brain surgery, is it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I

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No, it's significantly more complex.
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No, it's not an insane engineering achievement. It's just a normal one, because nobody else has floating bridges, nobody else needed it. It's also years late and costs 10x more than it should.

It's also the wrong stupid technology. The trains are constrained on space because of the low-floor bullshit. It's the longest light rail in the country, it's too fucking long and slow. Even if we fully built out ST3 it can't handle more than ~20% of commuters. It can't be expanded with express tracks because it's built deep underground, so the commute is so much slower than the equivalent in other countries and will NEVER compete with the automobile except during peak rush hour. The northern stations are next to the freeway so over half the land that could be transit-oriented development can't be, and then what's left is devoted to parking anyway. Complete, total waste of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, built and planned by people who don't and won't ever use transit.

That 10x cost directly makes it so we can't build out our system properly and we keep building out car infrastructure because people would rather have a car and save 2 hours a day commuting.

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> No, it's not an insane engineering achievement. It's just a normal one, because nobody else has floating bridges, nobody else needed it. It's also years late and costs 10x more than it should.

Your other points aside -

Doing something no one else has ever done is the definition of an engineering achievement.

There isn't a set of best practices. There aren't a bunch of off the shelf parts, there aren't any contractors who can help you out because they've done it a dozen times before. It is an original engineering challenge.

Pulling it off is by definition an achievement.

That said, 100% agree about the station placement. Heck the stations that are well placed were poorly designed, they should be profitable by including commercial real estate and residences, with the revenue from both going to Sound Transit to pay for the system.

But no, we didn't do that and I can't even get a cup of coffee, in Seattle, at our light rail stations.

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