We'll Trade You Our Entire Baseball Card Collection For Your "Bike Trail"

Barter, trade; the original commerce. You give us this and we give you that which inside we hope is of lesser value somehow, because that's the way we've been trained since we were kids. Our steelie for your catseye, Grandpa. Or how about our Short Fuse for your Storm Shadow? Our royal sampler of never-will-bes and never-weres for your Canseco rookie? No tradebacks, bitch, even though as soon as the deal is done one of us is going to start bragging. You know you don't want Neighborhood Justice to enforce this contract.

How about our airport for your little bike trail? Yeah, at first glance it appears that the Port of Seattle makes out huge in acquiring Boeing Field from the County in exchange for a strip of real estate that's ten feet wide and forty seven miles long. You have to consider that it's not just the land, though; it's not just a potential trail. When you buy a rail corridor you also buy right of way and that's the key component. Buying rail corridors and thus gaining right of way is how a lot of your favorite telecom businesses rose to be the giants they are today. Way back in the day when they traded their cold cash for rail corridors the neighborhood rejoiced at the rip-off perpetrated on little local businesses. Today their fiber runs uninterrupted around the country and their share holders are the ones clinking flutes of Koolaid. We have no idea what King County plans to do with the rail corridor besides create a trail, but it's important to keep in mind that there are other things they can do with the corridor other than, or in addition to, building Burke Gilman II. We call this trade a wash; a heretofore unheard of fair trade.