Quote:
Originally Posted by idiot206
Both Seattle and Portland are disproportionately wealthy, white and millennial-dominated just about anywhere within city limits.
That said, Seattle's First Hill streetcar opening this year goes through Pioneer Square, Chinatown, Little Saigon and Yesler Terrace - some of the poorest and most diverse parts of the city. The Link train made an expensive and time-consuming detour through the Rainier Valley on the way to SeaTac specifically to serve the poorest quadrant of the city (and the most diverse zip code in the U.S., they claim).
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Political compromise can produce weird results. In order to gain support from one or more city council members, cities often will have to create a least a light rail or a street car segment that might serve a given ethnic set of demographics in order to get approval for the bigger package.
This type of practice is inevitable in city, country, and, metro level transportation projects as the fundament driving forces are political donors and voters. Donors seek to increase the value of their investments through route positioning and station location. Likewise, the lower classes want routing and station locations in their neighborhoods. Regrettably, the resulting compromise often produces mediocre route layout and station location.
Lost in the process is the age old thesis of building infrastructural that will either make money on receipts alone or, when combined with tax subsidy.