A Bridge to Microsoft

Bellevue = Microsoft Office 2008:

Microsoft’s prosperity is enabling lots of new office construction in downtown Bellevue. There are hundreds of tech and financial tenants grabbing large chunks of office space.

The workforce in Bellevue is growing. Traffic is growing even faster. I-90, 520, and I-405 get backed up in every direction during rush hour. That lasts from around 3 am until a couple hours after midnight.

Bellevue is only a part of the growth of employment on the east side of Lake Washington. Redmond is turning into Windowsville. Yahoo! Sorry, just had to say that. Even Newcastle added a job last week. McDonalds hired an extra burger flipper.

Of course everyone who works in Seattle lives on the east side and everyone who works on the east side lives in Seattle. That means the Lake Washington bridges are full all the time. The virtual workplace is in its infancy so a great many people still trudge in and spend eight to ten hours drinking institutional grade coffee while pretending to be useful. Anyway, that’s what I used to do, so I assume that’s how everyone does it.

Christine says we need to replace the SR 520 floating bridge before it sinks. We have plans to do that and a pile of money to get it started. But wait, this is Seattle so nothing is easy. Even the prospect of hundreds of commuters sinking in the icy cold waters of Lake Washington during a minor earthquake won’t budge these people.

People on the east side are insisting they want a six lane bridge with provisions for future high capacity transit. That could mean exclusive bus lanes or light rail. “Nothing less than that could possibly work.” West side people say if it includes any more than six lanes it will spoil their view. Of what? Bellevue? Sheesh.

At issue are the pontoons. If they have no plans for growth they can use small pontoons. If they plan for growth the pontoons need to be bigger. Or they have to provide a way to add more pontoons later. The reason that’s hard is they have to be very careful about the anchor cables. But we aren’t here to explain how a floating bridge is designed.

And the environ-mentals are against it. Against what? Anything that might help people get where they’re going is what. “We’d rather have you sit in your idling cars for hours on end.”

The University of Washington Athletic Department wants their own off ramp because they think they can trick the state into building a parking garage as mitigation. So they’re fighting that battle. It’s all about football.

People who live near the UW Stadium are against it. “We’d prefer a bridge several miles away from here and we’re willing to fight for it.”

Microsoft has its own lobbyists in the battle because they think everyone living in Seattle will eventually work for them. They want an eight lane bridge and transit line from everywhere to Redmond, but they don’t want to pay for it.

And Bellevue just wants to be in charge. So they’ve enlisted Kirkland, Redmond, and several other cities and civic groups but they say it’s a team. A team whose coach is the Bellevue Square Developer.

The point is delays and stalls year after year only have two results: the cost goes up and the inevitable disaster looms ever closer. We can’t predict earthquakes or windstorms but we do know that either one could sink the 520 bridge. So you’d think everyone would get busy and get the work started, right?

Nope, the same people who confused the caucus/primary process are dragging their feet on this bridge. “We need to talk it to death” is pretty much what they say.

Here’s my suggestion: Sell the problem to Dubai. We make it contingent on them building a bridge that can carry all the traffic by 2010. $10 billion seems like a good price for them to pay. If they don’t finish on time we get a $10 million dollar monthly rebate until it finally opens. If they want to charge tolls well, that’s fine, just so long as we get a new bridge by 2010. There may be a flaw but I can’t imagine it’s as bad as waiting for the old bridge to sink.

Al

See Blog at: http://lbrtr.blogspot.com/

Caucus Results

Newcastle Caucus Site Maybe

Caucus Confusion – What Happened??:
Once upon a time in a land far, far away there lived a magical princess. She turned into a frog and lived happily ever after among the lily pads. The end.

Well, we went to a caucus. The first item of business was to enter the room (gym) which revealed our party choice. Then we had to reveal our choice for presidential candidate. Normally we’re allowed to keep our choices private.

Then we tell everyone in our group why we think this person is the right one. Again, I thought our reasons for favoring a particular person were not something we had to explain.

Finally, after a few of the group defect to a different choice we begin the process of selecting delegates. These delegates will then be subjected to another caucus in a few weeks. After that another caucus selects delegates to the next one. Finally at the state convention delegates are selected to send to the national convention. Its months before the real results of the Washington State Caucuses will be known.

However news reporters told everyone on earth the exact numbers from yesterday’s preview, preliminary, non-counting caucuses.

At the national party conventions delegates are only obligated to announce their preferences during the first roll call. If no winner is selected during that first round everyone is allowed to change their position.

Here’s why “THEY” think this is OK. Each political party (all 7) thinks it’s their job to select their candidate for the presidential election. Allowing peasants to participate in a caucus is their way of legitimizing their selections. If I, a private citizen, wish to support the magical princess who now lives among the lily pads then I have the option of forming my own political party. I can raise funds, make campaign signs, and talk until my head explodes. But if I say I belong to any of the existing parties then I’m also saying I support the person that party selects as their candidate. And only after the parties have finally decided which individual they will run, plus a running mate, will I get to vote in the general election. That’s the first time my vote will count. And as usual whoever I vote for will probably lose. Happens a lot.

OK, this sounds like my person lost. That’s not the point. Maybe we accidentally supported the right person and maybe we didn’t. Holy cats, maybe the smart people were at another party’s caucus. Bummer.

Well, now you pretty much know why I mostly don’t talk about national politics. Millions of smarter and more productive people can do that much better than I can. The Republicans, for example, even have their own news network. The Democrats have George W sending votes by the ton their way. I don’t need to get in the middle of that. I can barely keep track of the 82 unit affordable housing branch library parking garage city hall in Newcastle. I wonder if it’ll have a lily pond.

By the way, the “magical princess” is not a reference to any person (or Senator) currently running. It refers to my personal hero who, due to their frog like appearance, is not considered electable but would make an outstanding president. Really.

Al

Learning About Blogs

This is a windmill well in Eastern Washington's wheat fields without snow.

Still getting used to the nuances of blogging. Looks like I need a little more work. The good news is I'm learning new things, like how to goof up, how to really goof up, and how to patch it back together.

The Bellingham boat name is Snow Goose and it can be seen if you search on Snowgoosealaska. All one word gets you there. He has a blog too. It's a good boat with a great captain and we had a very good time.

Al

Ferry Boats and Caucuses

Holy Cow, Batman, Am I A Democrat??:

The excitement suddenly spilled over into Puget Sound after the alleged “Super Tuesday” vote resulted in no clear leader. Now I have 27 messages on my answering machine from Hillary, Barry, and John McCain. They want my support in the caucus Saturday. Washington is suddenly important in the candidate selection process. What a surprise.

A lot of Washington voters are confused over this caucus deal. Since a great many of us got ballots in the mail that we have to mark and send in by February 19 we are wondering why Hillary wants our support on February 9. For one thing several of the names on the ballot are people who are no longer running. For another we have to sign the envelope and check which party we are. If we check “Democrat” it won’t matter because all of those delegates are being selected in the caucus. Election officials tell us that many of the ballots already mailed in do not have a party checked. So they are invalid.

We also have several districts with additional items on the ballot and those actually count. And the whole voting process costs money. So why are we doing this? Why confuse everyone? Oh, that’s right, it’s funny.

But enough about trivial matters.

Our danged passes over the mountains keep closing. We only have three passes between east and west here in Washington. These days about one or two are open at any given time. Even then chains are required. The snow reports are in feet not inches.

But this is only a small part of the story. All across the country there are tornados, snow storms, floods, and ice. It’s been a hard winter so far for everyone. We’ve lost the service of a couple of ferries due to damage from waves. Our latest wind storm has lasted for two days now. Barry is at Key Arena where the Sonics used to play basketball trying to get people to support him in the caucus tomorrow. Hard winter.

I wonder if this hard winter is getting us prepared for a long hot summer. Boy I hope so, and I hope the candidates keep calling, too.

Al

The Ferry System

Bellingham Water Taxi Transit:

Saturday I went for a ride on a prototype waterborne transit out of Bellingham. Bellingham is a medium sized city that has its own fire department and a nice big salt water bay. Newcastle uses a neighbor’s fire department and only has a little lake.

Here’s the problem here in Washington (named after a president who never won Iowa). The Greater Newcastle megalopolis of about 4 million people stretches along both sides of Puget Sound. Go to Google Maps and search on Puget Sound. See?

Puget Sound is too wide for a highway bridge. We have tides, earthquakes, container ships, sea serpents, whales, canoes, sewage outlets, and nuclear subs out there. A bridge would only be in the way.

Therefore Washington carries people and their cars over the water in boats. We have the largest fleet of state owned ferries in the whole United States, and Texas. We like our ferry boats because they have wi-fi. We can check our email and eBay auctions. For many years they had food on board but the state got all snooty about it and the food contractor quit. It took way too long to sort that out and now we only have pseudo food. But the coffee’s not bad.

Many of these ferries were built on leftover WWI cargo hulls that require constant bailing. Ferry employees are called “bailers” for this reason – they all have to take turns. The system is managed by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The name of the boss is Paula.
Last week one of the bailers was standing under a boat in dry-dock. He hit it with a hammer. Now Paula is docking his pay for the hammer. It busted through and disappeared into the food bay where it dissolved. This is just one example of the current shape of the fleet.

Paula and Christine think we need to update the ferry system and buy new boats, smaller hammers, and waterproof paint. Riders would like to see that as well. Except for Timmy. He wants to eliminate taxes and let the state fall apart around our ears. He’s too dumb to make the connection that tax is just a short name for “people sharing the cost of running the state.”
Oh, sure, a lot of things we may not need, but if we did things only as I want you’d vote me out of office. Which is why I don’t run.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Bellingham.

The Bellingham Bay water taxi is a pretty good alternative to our ancient ferries. For example it slows down to look at interesting birds. And the captain buys bagels for everyone. What could be better?

Apparently a new chief of Ferry Boat Operations would be better. Christine and Paula just named Dave to be head bailer. He looked at Google Maps and says the ferry system is a floating highway. During the interview he pretty much said it can’t be too hard to manage a few old boats. Right?

There are 28 ferries (more or less on any given day depending on hammers) and 20 different docks on the system. They carry 26 million passengers. The web site doesn’t say if this is per day, month, or year. I’d have to assume year. I don’t know, but traffic near the ferry docks can be pretty bad.

The ferry system ranks right up there on the list of really big problems along with the Alaska Way Viaduct and the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. Fun times to come.

Al