Hello, McFly

For me when I think about what the future was suppose to be two sets of images come to mind. Star Trek and Back to the Future. There are many iconic images from those shows, Star Trek in particular, that have become reality. The technology that let Captain Kirk chat with far-out hippie aliens on a large screen at the front of the bridge is arriving soon with LG and Panasonic partnering up with Skype. The flip cell phone was patterned after the communicator and the blue tooth headsets today sure remind me of that strange knob looking thing that Lt Uhura wore in her ear.

Fast forward 20 years and Robert Zemeckis brought us hover boards, tennis shoes that tied themselves and one size fits all self adjusting clothing. Oh, and of course flying cars that traveled through time. I'm still waiting on the Zemechis plan, but I'm hopeful. Self tying shoes are a large man's dream fashion statement!

I was trading emails with my brother Mike recently. 15 or so years separate us. It's just long enough for him to represent the prior generation to me (not an "old guy" joke bro, so no pinning me down and tickling me). Most of my earlier memories of Mike were of him as a long haul truck driver. Having logged over a million miles on the roads he has a rare perspective on commuting. He tells driving stories that will make you grind your teeth flat. So when he says "I truly hate the commuting process in this state" it carries Morgan Freeman like gravitas.

"Before me is a telegraphic key that is of special significance. It has been used by seven Presidents to open great expositions such as the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle in 1909, the Panama Canal, and many others. It was presented to me by your senior Senator Warren Magnuson at the White House last Wednesday. By closing this key may we open not only a great World's fair, may we open an era of peace and understanding among all mankind. Let the fair begin!" -- John F. Kennedy's opening remarks for the Seattle World's Fair, April 21^st, 1962.

In expressing his own frustration with this area's commute, Mike talked about the excitement that the Seattle area had as JFK spoke those words. The Monorail provided an expectant glimpse to the future of commuting and plans to extend its 1+ mile long route promised to launch the Puget Sound into the 21^st century. In reality I guess it did give us a look to our future, just not quite the ambitious, hopeful version expressed by the President. The Monorail never saw that expansion and it wasn't until recent years that we've seen any movement toward a serious mass transit plan for the area. As Mike said, after the fair it was like "all the smart people left town."

Here we are, 50 years later and we have The Link Light Rail in place that runs from Seatac to downtown (the same route as the original expansion planned for the Monorail). Does this signal a new hope for the area? Have the smart people returned to finally deliver on that promise? Well, I've ridden it and I'm not convinced. Don't get me wrong, the train is a marvel of engineering matched in scale perhaps only by its cost. My only real complaint about the experience is that the seats are really uncomfortable. For a big guy I don't have as much padding on the caboose as one would assume. After 20 minutes of "riding the rail" I was pining for the comfort of an aluminum bench seat at a little league baseball game and starting to think I had actually been "riding a rail".

Setting my admittedly somewhat unique comfort requirements aside, here's my real question. Is the plan to overhaul our transit system ambitious enough? The first iteration of the Light Rail takes passengers from downtown to the airport. I guess I get that this is a selling point for Seattle and they really pushed to get it done in time for the Vancouver Winter Olympics. As a traveler visiting the area, it does look good on tourist flyers that we have Light Rail service to downtown. But which problem are we trying to solve here?

Call me silly but somehow I would have liked to see that $1.7 billion put into a route that actually had an immediate impact on the commute for people that live here. Sure, at some point in the plan it makes sense to extend this service to Seatac, but was that the highest priority?

It will be some time before we know the truth to any of this and probably well beyond the point that I will be able to take advantage of it. I'm guessing though that if I haven't run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible by then I'll be sitting in my rocking chair on the front porch and saying "Meh, Light Rail, Monorail, same blasted pie in the sky silliness. Hey! You pain in my no-padding butt little miscreants, stay off my lawn!!!"

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!