If they were traveling here directly or expanding in uniform radius at near light speed, yes. But if they're hopping from star to star in a grid network, the distance to travel is much greater. Plus, traveling at near c may not be a practical use of energy at any level of technological sophistication.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if intelligent life, let alone spacefaring life, is rare enough that you would expect to find less than one such species per average galaxy, but I don't think the fact that we haven't been encountered yet is very strong evidence for this.
I wouldn't give up hope on space-faring aliens inside our own galaxy - but the argument still holds pretty well down to c/1,000. Those are some pretty slow-moving aliens. One begins to wonder why they would think they can dawdle around.
In a recent thread, SarahC said:
... so here's the place to float ideas around: is there an area you know a lot about? A topic you've been considering writing about? Here's the place to mention it!
From a poll on what people want to see more of, the most votes went to:
Some that got less votes:
... but there are certainly many more things that would be interesting and useful to the community. So what can you teach us?