The snow keeps on coming to Seattle and life as normal just seems to halt entirely. Here’s your list of links:
- Metro Service Status – Many routes suspended. Most others have re-routes. Expect delays throughout the system.
- Sound Transit Weather Alerts – Routes 540, 555, 556, and 564 canceled. 560 not operating in West Seattle. Sounder on a holiday schedule. Expect delays.
- Pierce Transit Snow Re-routes – All routes re-routed. Expect delays.
- Community Transit Rider Alerts – Many re-routes. Expect delays.
- Seattle Streetcar – Shut down due to frozen switches. We’ll have word when service is back.
- Seattle DOT and WashDOT are Twittering the latest.
So, basically, expect delays. And a lot of walking on icy sidewalks. Aren’t things looking lovely, though?
Things are looking lovely! I have been looking at your blog for updates on Amtrak, do you know the status for the trains today?
Here are some amtrak details At this link/
The Wx Gods have been angered. It’s time to start pushing a hummer into the sound every hour until they have been appeased.
Good morning and welcome to the day after tomorrow!
hugeasscity has a post which I say is looking on the bright side of things about people rediscovering walking and the joy of carless streets, much like how high gas prices has people switching to transit and sticking with it.
I commuted via snowshoe today. After many near-fall incidents trying to get down Queen Anne hill on Friday, I tried showshoes today. They worked great. I took them off in Uptown and walked the rest of the way to work (gave up on the buses completely).
Oh, and thanks STB for the tip about the streetcar. That saved me quite a detour, as I was planning on catching it into the city.
Kitsap Transit’s only running six routes today: http://kitsaptransit.com/LimitedBusSnowRoutes.html
Somebody on this blog said yesterday that the reason that the Streetcar isn’t running is because the workers who would fix the frozen switches aren’t working on Sunday. Well, it’s Monday now, so presumably they would be working today, so why isn’t the Streetcar running today?
Oh, Sam– you take everything so seriously. The world needs to stop drinking your milkshake!
Even I’m staying home. Me and my (manual) wheelchair are not getting along with Bellevue’s NE 8th
AJ, me asking why the Streetcar isn’t running today is “me taking everything so seriously?” Um, I’m curious why the Streetcar isn’t running today. And I figured a Seattle transit blog would be the place to ask the question. I’m not sure where your anger is coming from.
Just checked the Metro website. Over 125 Metro and ST routes suspended. Not sure what routes start with 900. Maybe DART. They are in there too.
Haha, oh Sam.
Yes, the maintaners work Sunday…. 7 days a week…..
Streetcar isnt running because of a bad switch……
The 900 routes are DART, yes.
With the 540 and the 242 cancelled, I have the choice of hoofing it to montlake to get a 545, or to just stay home… I guess I iwll stay home.
Absolutely no bus service to my neighborhood– 2, 3, 4, 48, 10, 11 and 12 all canceled. C’mon, Metro, I live so close to the city! You can’t even get up here? Not being able to get the Streetcar running is excusable, that thing’s been around for so little time– but an entire neighborhood’s worth of buses?
Shaaaaaame.
Isn’t that capitol hill? That’s definitely part of the “city”.
It’s pretty crazy, but that’s a lot of snow. It’s not really worth spending the money for the one week a decade that we’re in Snowpacolypse.
The buses AJ lists are more First Hill, but Capitol Hill is no better. All CapHill buses essentially shut down, including 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 43, 48. Snow routes 14, 60. The 49 runs on Eastlake, not on the hill.
Well First Hill is definitely the city.
At least you can always walk downtown. I had to walk from 23rd to Broadway when the 43 was blocked by an accident and it wasn’t too bad. I live way too far to walk to work. I could bike down the Burke-Gilman but I need to get snow tires for my bike.
I bet these bus chains don’t come off so easily.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/3133300_837522a9a5.jpg?v=0
I saw one of those busted and littered along the street, buried in snow on Renton Highlands.
Two things Metro could do to prevent this kind of meltdown in the future: Have their own sanding trucks. And invest in better chains.
I understand many people’s arguments against salting roads and for the most part I agree. But if we are truly talking once per decade, or even once per year, why not have a policy to only salt the major road up the steep hills (ie Queen Anne Ave N, Capitol Hill) so that we don’t have neighborhoods cut off from the rest of the city?
The problem is ice, snow, and hills. There is no way a little salt would allow buses to make it up Queen Anne Ave. I say we just provide good, frequent service to the base of these hills, shuttles to the top just for those not able to walk, and call it good. It took me 15 minutes to walk down the hill from the top of Queen Anne, and 45 minutes to walk downtown from there. It would have been nice if there was a bus at the bottom to meet me, not the slow and infrequent #1 that tries to climb up part of the hill (friday I waited 45 minutes just to catch this bus).
Or we could just bring everyone off the hill and back up using my Galer Ski Lift (meant for year-round service to the streetcar, but quite useful in the winter).
Or how about providing service to the bottom of the hill on the other (east) side of Queen Anne? I live on the east side of Queen Anne and it would be nice to have some bus service over here. At least run the 3/4 to 5th & Aloha.
Also, at some points this weekend the 3 was running to the top of the hill but the 4 wasn’t. They run pretty much the same route until you get to Boston & Queen Anne Ave (by Safeway). Can anyone explain why the 4 was turning around at 5th & Aloha but the 3 was running all the way up the hill?
Made it into work on the 311 within an acceptable travel time of 1 hour which is what it would normally take if I took the local and not the freeway express. The walk to the bus stop was tough but I caught my bus just in time. There was more than a foot of snow was on the sidewalks and the snow plows certainly didn’t help us walkers.
Wow, looking at Busview, it looks like there is no bus service at all for the CD and beyond. I see almost no buses with the boundaries of 1-90 to the south, 520 to the north, lake washington to the east, and 1-5 to the west.
Pretty much. I think the 7, north half of the 14, and 36 are running, but that is just the edges of that area.
BTW just heard on the radio that buses are getting stuck on the hill between 15th NE and University Way NE on 45th.
Wow, I think I live on one of the few bus routes (66/67) in the city that haven’t seen significant delays or re-routes.
Getting anywhere not along that route looks to be a bit of a challenge though. Still I can run some errands in Northgate, Downtown, and the U-District.
I live right there too, but I haven’t braved it. I did drive Saturday, which was a hair-raising experience.
Other than that, I’m walking to the supermarket when we need diapers or whatever.
I went out on Friday and had no problem with the 66/67. Walked down to Whole Foods and back on Saturday. Had some friends stop by Saturday Evening who almost got stuck at our house. Didn’t go any further than the park or corner store yesterday.
I’m going to try another expedition today as I’m planning on leaving town Tuesday Night/Wednesday Morning. Hopefully Amtrak is up and running by then as I’d rather not try to drive and if Amtrak is having problems the airports are going to be worse.
Hi Chris,
Are the 66/67 running their snow route coming via 5th Ave n bound, Northgate Way and down Roosevelt?
On Friday the Metro page said it was doing just that and my wife waited by our home at 88th and Roosevelt for over an hour trying to get a bus downtown. She gave up and instead did errands at Northgate walking there. Coming home she got a 67 on the normal route despite what Metro was saying on their site.
Pis poor communication on Metro’s part if you ask me.
YEs definitely poor communication.
Sounds more like the 68 which was canceled Friday though it was running Saturday. The 66/67 don’t serve Roosevelt North of NE 80th even on normal routing.
http://transit.metrokc.gov/up/rr/adverseweather.html
It is still up there today saying the re-route is in effect. Can anyone verify this?
DOH! Didn’t realize there was a re-route. The 66 and 67 were on their normal routing when I rode them late Friday.
Best I can figure is the driver didn’t know they were supposed to pick people up on the re-route or didn’t feel that stop was safe to stop at.
I am amazed at how bad some of the secondary arterials still are such as East Marginal Way.
As I said in a post to Brian in his other message, we are moving towards a ‘blame game’ right now. I don’t think ST needs to cancel so many of the routes it has done or put Sounder on a holiday schedule. Predictability is key to the success of mass transit – not that it necessarily has to be on time, but if you are timetabled to run 8 trains on the south line to Tacoma, then you should try and run 8 trains. If trains can work a holiday schedule, they can work a full schedule surely? More kudos to ST if they tried!
As for Amtrak, the railroads need to start freeing up the line of debris or frozen switches. I am sure they are trying and all and all credit to them, but we lose the mass transit argument if we start to lose the predictability and resilience of the alternatives we all hope for our region on this blog.
Tim
Just in from WSDOT twitter:
Edmonds/Kingston Route Cancellations: Extreme weather conditions have delayed fuel service to the Hyak. There will be no 10:50am, 12:10p
Is WSF running out of diesel?
Apparently the snow is here until at the weekend.
Is it just me or is ths:
http://busview.org/busview_launch.jsp
The most useful thing in the world right about now?
Walked into work at 7:45am without a care in the world. The snow did not even make my work (office) shoes wet. The streets were nice and quiet, and the SOV commuters I did see were sliding all over the place, but did not hit anything. I even get some extra time for my projects because so many people could not get here.
Go Capitol Hill!
Does anyone know how the Community Transit “Double Tall” is doing? Seems to me Metro & Sound Transit should be ordering a bunch of double deckers. Park them outside if the maintenance barns aren’t tall enough!
I think Metro parks most of their fleet outside anyway. They still need a way for mechanics to work under the bus, though.
This from the latest RPIN update:
That doesn’t sound very good.
I noticed that the standard and articulated diesels were running in the tunnel. Is it equipped to handle all of that exhaust?
I saw a 40-ft diesel ST bus in the tunnel on my way to work. I was wondering why ST isn’t using it’s (one and only) low floor 40-ft hybrid bus in this case. I saw this bus once in 2006 and thought I was seeing things. Any one know where this bus is and where it operates?
I usually see ST Coach 9200 (the 40-ft low-floor hybrid) operate on Route 560 (Bellevue-Airport-West Seattle). Possibly the low floors have trouble with chains or snow?
The reason why ST hasn’t purchased any more of these is because of the low seating capacity.
KOMO news just did a spot on Metro’s new snow policy. Rather than try to put out as many buses as possible they have identified core routes which they will concentrate on. Basically Kevin Desmond said there will be some 70 routes but if they can’t operate those safely and reliably they will cut back even further. No bus left behind :=