Please, don't get me wrong. I applaud the renovation of King Street - I even made a special trip there once in 2005 just to see what they were doing. Well that, and to get a sandwich at Molto Mario's dad's place. In fact, I expected the King Street renovation to be finished long ago but, like every public works project, it seems to have more lives than an alley cat.

I also applaud renovations of any other rail stations both still in service or just as historic sites (one in Billings MT and the Berkeley CA Espee station come to mind as great projects).

I guess being a "federal government" retiree, it causes my head to spin when money approved for one purpose (e.g., "high speed rail") can be reappropriated for a different purpose (in this case, station renovation) that only seems loosely related. It's been my experience that these "small" diversions become common as pork barrel spending and ultimately we get neither high speed rail or well-managed discretonary projects. The fact that King Street is evidently on its third or fourth "two year warning" seems to bear out my fears of less than good project management.

BTW, wouldn't double tracking the tunnel at Point Defiance in Tacoma do more than any other effort to improve passenger speeds in the PNW, and serve our freight networks too?