Consider these three separate Ballard developments:

-A group of Seaview residents and business owners want King County Metro to restore bus service to their area, but Metro says it's not cost effective because there are too few riders.

-The Olympic Athletic Club is going to expand and add a four-star hotel to its complex on Ballard Avenue, adding thousands of square feet and some additional parking for those who use the facilities.

-Ballard residents say that city officials and business owners may like the new parking kiosks on downtown Ballard streets, but many say they cannot afford the high prices of parking and often can't even find a place at any cost. Others say they avoid paid parking and search for a free spot or come down less and sigh "it is only going to get worse."

Those are the headlines from Page One of this issue of the Ballard News-Tribune. The stories indicate the formation of a "perfect storm" than can eventually spell serious problems for our neighborhood. "Get out of your cars" says the current city council and mayor, but at the same time the city seems bent upon making the entire experience worse and worse with no relief in sight.

The basic problem is they are using 1960s and 1970s thinking. In that era, the idea was to move people quickly and smoothly into the central city. Buses ran from Blue Ridge, from Seaview and Loyal Heights to the big, shiny office towers of downtown Seattle where the jobs were. That thinking drove the development of eastern cities like Boston, Washington and Chicago where driving a car to work is often never even considered and, when easterners come here, they must learn to drive to survive.

The current idea of "Bus Rapid Transit" sounds so smooth and so logical. It would be if we all lived in Ballard and worked downtown. We don't and we won't.

For those who live here and work downtown, the buses are there and they are, for the most part clean, available if a bit pricey.

But if you live in North Beach and want to come to the Ballard Library or to the shops and restaurants on Market Street, you may find service every two hours or more, and often no weekend or evening service.

If and when you find a bus, it may be filled with street people moving from one location to another, various others with problems needing professional help, dirty bus interiors, crabby drivers muttering about being behind schedule and sky high fares to go short distances.

If we are ever going to get people out of cars we must have convenient and pleasant ways for them to reach a bus going where they want, not just downtown.

One person said people in Ballard are not demanding two minutes be cut off the trip to the Columbia Tower, but ways to get around their own neighborhoods.

Until our leaders understand that, it will be a hard sell to have us increase our taxes to provide service we neither want nor need.

Let's get our leaders to think in the new century.

- Jack Mayne