Bus mockup at the Seattle Children's Museum (photo by joshuadf)
- New route, PT 446, serves South Hill Mall area.
- Federal money for RapidRide C (West Seattle). I believe this was already factored into the budget and shouldn’t impact Metro’s budget crisis.
- Arguing over the C Line’s route.
- County Council finalizes the guidelines for the Regional Transit Task Force.
- Eastside HOT Lane study is complete.
- Bellevue just beginning to think about redesigning the I-90 corridor around Eastgate.
- Suspicious package at the Burien Transit Center.
- Dow Constantine sticking with A+ on the 520 bridge, not taking Seattle’s bait.
- Neighborhoods always regret keeping light rail away.
- Goldy rips in to Kemper Freeman.
- FTA now looking at local financial commitment more, cost-effectiveness less. I think this once again is good news for Sound Transit, and probably not so good for crisis-ridden Metro.
- Amtrak to the Olympics is filling up fast.
- Chicago Transit Authority authorizes mobile gardens.
Martin, you have the link to the Chicago mobile garden at ‘Money for Rapid Ride C’.
Thanks, fixed.
On the CTA mobile garden thing… No wonder the CTA is about to have a massive service cut and layoff of 1000 union jobs. Such putzes.
It does seem a bit tone deaf when CTA is having a budget crisis.
Are you sure CTA’s paying for those mobile gardens?
No, I don’t know if CTA is paying for it, but if they aren’t they need to make sure everyone knows that as it could be perceived as a way they are wasting money rather than providing transit service.
That said this is kind of neat.
As someone who knows transportation planners who have spent time at CTA, I have a real problem with the “such putzes” claim. They have super-smart and progressive folks doing a lot of great work over there. CTA is in a perpetual budget crisis due to a totally jacked-up funding structure that conservative and suburban/rural interests refuse to amend. Sound vaguely familiar to anyone?
More to the point, five seconds on google reveals that the UIC grad student is bearing all the costs of the (sweet) mobile garden project. So step off.
Thanks for linking to my tiny phone pic. I think that’s the only truly low-floor bus in the Metro fleet.
Truly low floor. That’s really funny. :)
I remember that from when I was little at my brother’s 5th birthday party. It had a different paint scheme then. And it was probably the only low floor bus in the fleet, too.
On the “neighborhoods trying to keep light rail away” – I agree that this article. It always amazes me that anyone tries to project the negatives that will surely follow. When you could go to any number of cities ( I lived in Portland ) to see what “actually” happens. The development and property values in Portland have been very positive. There is no need for fear of the unknown, when you can go and look at it in operation.
A rethink of the RR Route in West Seattle?
http://westseattleblog.com/2010/02/rethink-the-west-seattle-rapidride-route-sw-district-council-says#comment-722077
Ah, you already had this link.
It looks like the Eastside HOT study didn’t include converting general purpose lanes into HOT lanes, which is too bad — that’s a way the HOT folks might be able to pull in support from the transit-supporting side of the world. (Or maybe it just wouldn’t work — I don’t know…)
Do HOT lanes work? They were big news 2 years ago when they converted 167. However, my own experience is that they are almost never used except by the few 2+ cars.
I know! Why don’t more people use them? I’m a broke student making $11 an hour yet I don’t mind paying the $1.00 or $2.50 to bypass the 10 miles of stop and go. I use it each morning and I love it.
Converting a general purpose lane to HOT isn’t a good idea because 405 only has 2 general purpose lanes per direction. If they were to convert one of them to HOT, might as well toll the entire freeway??
All else equal, would that (a fully-tolled 405) be the worst possible outcome?
Won’t a two-lane express tollway take a general purpose lane from 405?
WSDOT is studying express toll lanes on 405. What bothered me about that article is they didn’t even link to the report!
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/tolling/eastsidecorridor
Financial commitment…great idea!
No longer will projects be done simply to bring in Fed money regardless of whether they’re needed or not.
If only highways were held to the same standard…
I heartily agree.
There are way too many bridges and tunnels as well.
Infrastructure should be removed; not rebuilt; in many places.
“Neighborhoods always regret keeping light rail away.” I clicked the link, read the article, which talked a little about Gresham’s MAX line, and I wanted to learn more, so I googled Gresham MAX, and up popped this article:
75 year old man beaten on Gresham MAX platform by two teenagers with a baseball bat will get $75,000.
http://www.oregonlive.com/gresham/index.ssf/2010/01/sandy_man_beaten_on_gresham_ma.html
More on Bellevue’s “vision line”:
http://www.publicola.net/2010/02/05/dont-put-a-light-rail-station-next-to-a-freeway-data-edition/
Just beginning to think about it is certainly a misrepresentation. This was a study session which presented a lot of work that has been on going for years and the next step in preparing something akin to the Bel-Red development plan. My recollection from the meeting was the study area represented about 25,000 jobs. Downtown Bellevue is about 40,000 jobs. Percentage wise that means Eastgate at ~20% puts downtown Bellevue at a little over 30% of all the jobs in the City of Bellevue. In contrast, downtown Seattle employment represents something like 50% of the jobs in the entire City of Seattle (2% of it’s land area and more than double the jobs in all of Bellevue). Sort of tells you why a tunnel with, what five underground stations, makes sense in Seattle and any sort of tunnel under Bellevue is dubious.