The Great City Initiative is sponsoring a panel on First Hill Streetcar alignments, today:
Upcoming Brownbag: The First Hill Street Car Project
Thursday, November 12th
12:00 – 1:30 pm
GGLO Space at the Steps
1301 First Ave, Level A
Enter through door located about ¼ of the way down the Harbor Steps
Please join Great City this coming Thursday, November 12, for our next brownbag on the First Hill Streetcar and the different alignment proposals. The First Hill Streetcar project – a 2-mile streetcar connector serving Seattle’s Capitol Hill, First Hill and International District areas with connections to Link light rail and Sounder commuter rail — was included in the mass transit system expansion ballot that voters approved in November 2008. Since this time, different alignment proposals have been offered.
Matt Roewe, an architect at Via Architects and Streetcar Alliance member, will be moderating a discussion on the differing proposals for the First Hill Streetcar alignments. Joining Matt will be:
Ethan Melone is Rail Transit Manager for the City’s Department of Transportation. He is responsible for streetcar network development, restoration of King Street Station, and coordination with Sound Transit. He previously worked for City budget and planning offices and for a transportation engineering firm. He holds a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Bill Zosel is a self-described “neighborhood guy”. He has been heavily involved with 12th Avenue Neighborhood Stewardship since that “urban village” was created during Seattle’s neighborhood plan effort ten+ years ago, and also with the Squire Park Community Council, the community organization for the larger neighborhood in which he’s lived for thirty years.
Josh Mahar is a member of the Capitol Hill Community Council.
I’m going to be there!
Eric, give us a short report if you can.
Holy moly, that is short notice. Let us know of any developments!
Man, I didn’t get much of an intro now did I. Its kind of sad that no one from First Hill could make it.
Some people need no intro.
Or at least that is how I would interpret it. :D
Anyone who is anyone should know who you are ;-)
I do find it just a tad ironic that there is no one from First Hill is at the meeting representing First Hill’s interests. After all it is the First Hill streetcar.
Could I float the idea that maybe why the 12th Ave alignment has received so much traction is simply because there isn’t a strong First Hill constituency pushing for a Boren/Broadway alignment?
It was an good discussion. The most interesting point was that with using the couplet option you can choose your Link stop based on what street you want to end up on with minimal walking. Want to go the 12th? Hop off Link at King St station.
Matt, you are counting on a fairly high level of sophistication among transit riders. I prefer more intuitive transit systems that riders can easily figure out, without being a transit junkie like we are.
When transit riders need to make medical appointments at Swedish, they should be able to ride Link to the Capitol Hill Station and transfer in front of the station to the FH streetcar that takes them to Swedish. And for their return trip home, you would have them…do what exactly? Walk all the way across an unfamiliar university campus to catch a NB streetcar? How on earth could an occasional rider figure THAT out? Far far better to have riders be able to simply reverse their trip.
And by the way, didn’t Sound Transit fund the FH streetcar project to offset its inability to build the FH Link Station? Are they going to accept a line that serves First Hill in only one direction?
Well, first of all it serves First Hill in both directions. We’re discussing exactly what streets on First Hill it will serve.
In the case you cite, the occasional rider will have to either: 1. look at a map, 2. get back on just where they got off, and ride a little bit longer (it’s a loop), or 3. figure out that there’s a Link station at either end of the loop (admitedly easier if #1 happens).
I agree it isn’t as straight-forward. But it will allow nearly twice the area in First Hill be be within a 5-minute walk of the streetcar. I think that’s a huge benefit.
+1 on the couplet for getting more people closer to a stop. As to potential confusion, even occasional riders will figure it out—-the Loop in Chicago features four train lines (two running clockwise, two counterclockwise) and folks manage fine. Good wayfinding is helpful, of course.
Matt are you sure it is a TWO way loop? Everything that I have seen shows a ONE way loop. A two way loop is completely different than a one way loop.
It’s not really even a loop, it’s a couplet, just like Lake Union. The only way it would function as a loop is if someone road all the way to the terminus, sat on the streetcar during the layover, and then road back. Or road down one leg of the couplet, got off, walked across the street and caught a streetcar coming in the opposite direction. Not very convenient.
I don’t think couplets are a bad idea when the tracks are only separated by one block, but the proposed couplet on 12th and Broadway is separated by the SU campus, which is 3 blocks wide and on a hill.
You could just have maps on the station/platform exits showing where you are and where the return station is.
It would have been nice to have gotten a little more notice on this meeting!
Well, you got about 20 minutes after I got it.
I strongly favor having a first phase street car alignment that will extend up Broadway as far as Roy Street. Broadway up to Roy Street is experiencing great growth. North Broadway businesses along with area residents need that level of service.
I feel sorry I missed the meeting. In any case, I am wondering if they brought up the idea of using the First Hill barn to house the cars for the Waterfront line (hinted in an earlier thread). Did they?
They did not. There was discussion about extending the SLUT down to King Street, allowing the First Hill line to use the SLUT’s barn.
Extending SLUT would be much more expensive than buying a site somewhere near the First Hill Line for a barn. There is a site just East of I-5 between Jackson and King I’ve seen identified in some documents on the First Hill line.
Right, but extending SLUT would have many more benefits than a barn. We’d have a streetcar downtown, and it would form an interconnected system.
I didn’t catch the part about using the SLUT’s barn. I thought the point was about connecting the SLUT to the FHSC via the Central Streetcar (the one planned for 1st Ave as part of the viaduct replacement/deep-bore tunnel) and creating an interconnected system instead of completely independent lines.
Yes, there’s definitely the possibility for a centralized maintenance facility (and sharing the costs associated with it). But, using the SLUT’s barn won’t work as far as I understand, simply because of it’s limited capacity. The barn has a 5 car capacity; the SLUT already has three cars (I believe one is kept in reserve). Extending the SLUT would require additional cars to maintain headways comparable to today, using up any capacity in the barn.
A new centralized barn in the ID or vicinity would be ideal—it could serve both the FHSC and the Central SC and possibly even the WFSC. Also, it would be well-positioned for future routes east on Jackson and the extension of the Waterfront line out to Interbay. It could also provide additional capacity for the SLUT, or simply preserve the existing capacity in SLU for the future expansion of the SLUT.
Here’s my question. When did everyone start referring to the 12th/Broadway couplet as a loop? I’ve been reading the local blog coverage of the First Hill streetcar today, and all of a sudden everyone is calling the couplet alignment a loop. From a user perspective it is clearly not a loop. The SLUT has a similar layout with the Terry/Westlake couplet, yet no one calls it a loop. One commenter on centraldistrictnews.com was chastised for calling it (correctly) a couplet. What gives? Just my rant for the day. ;-)
Sorry. I used “loop”. I don’t think I heard that anywhere, and didn’t realize it was a transit term – it just looks like a loop to me.
The neighborhood blogs have used the term “loop” extensively and somewhat interchangeably with couplet. Perhaps not technically correct, but the use of “loop” is probably a response to the couplet not being a bona fide couplet, especially when earlier versions proposed staggered stop locations.