A very affable Kurt Triplett, the City Manager of Kirkland, and a very able staff member whose name I didn’t catch, presented an ambitious plan for expanding Kirkland by adding fancy, new buses and creating a ‘Bus Rapid Transit’ corridor across the city. The cost? A bit vague, but probably in the half a billion category. This notion enhances the current Cross Kirkland Corridor. There were lots of slides and examples of how cool it will be. Europe and bicyles were mentioned, a lot. However, if I understood it correctly, the net result of the $500 million or so, would be increase bus ridership from Kirkland to Bellevue from 2,700 peeps per day to 7,000 peeps per day. As appealing as the presentation was, is this really a good deal for the people who pay for all of this? This also presumes, of course, that people will really want to ride a bus more often.
