When I went to college in DC (Foggy Bottom) everyone had one of those grocery carts like old ladies used to use to go to the grocery store. Those things are incredibly convenient when you’re grocery shopping without a car–so much nicer than those plastic or paper bags cutting into your hands as you walk home. Can’t say that I’ve seen anyone using one in Seattle, seems like most folks drive to grocery stores even if they live pretty close.

Many people thought Nickels was OK but not great. They voted for McGinn or Mallahan thinking Nickels was sure to get the other slot on the ballot and they could reconsider him later, but it didn’t work out that way.

I joined his facebook page last week and got accepted!!

Pike Place Market is great and a big tourist draw but it’s rather wanting when compared to the English Market in Cork.

Off the top of my head I know Albertson’s has closed their Sand Point, Greenlake, Jackson Park and Crossroads stores in recent years. The remaining stores in the area are pretty run down and sad.

As for Target they have a store at Northgate. I’m not sure how interested in opening further stores in Seattle they are. IF they do open another store I suspect it will be as part of a big-box retail center like the proposed Goodwill site development was.

If an incumbent is so unpopular that he or she can’t come in #1 or #2 in a primary election then it is probably times for them to go.

He was good on his “new” streetcar network, but he didn’t do anything for the Waterfront Streetcar and may have actively sabotaged it behind the scenes since he saw it as competition for the Central Line.

As Mayor of Seattle he should have been at the table for the 520 discussions, the Eastside communities were involved from early on. If you shrug your shoulders and say “it’s a state project” then you get whatever WSDOT decides to give you.

He also was AWOL on the South Park bridge (though every Executive, Mayor and member of both the county and city councils for the past 20 years is guilty of this). The bridge has been a known problem for a long time. There is a reason neither Seattle nor Tukwilla annexed the land around the bridge.

I don’t doubt that if he thought it would help get his streetcar network built he’d be helping to kill the trolleybuses too.

Nickels didn’t exactly play well with the legislature or the state, but I can’t think of a mayor that has.

Don’t get me wrong, the 25 years of hard work he put in for light rail were greatly appreciated. The work he did on the SLUT and the streetcar plan were good too. He did a pretty good job of raising the bar for city funded pedestrian and bike improvements too.

Unfortunately, the divergent approaches are creating their own safety risk: That sidewalks will only be built within the neighborhood, and bike paths will be built to get out of the neighborhood, only to have those bike paths clogged with pedestrians who have no sidewalks.

I’d like the city council and the mayor to move South Park to the front of the list for sidewalk and bike path improvements. It is the least the city can do after sitting on its hands all these years regarding replacement of the South Park Bridge (which mostly serves Seattleites). When the bridge is removed, there will be *zero* safe pedestrian paths to get out of South Park. For non-car-drivers, the neighborhood will literally be a prison.

The foot path on the 1st Ave Bridge drops into a junkyard on the north end. You can’t find that path from Georgetown without already having been on it to know which junkyard to enter.

Walking up the hill to Highland Park is a bad idea if it isn’t perfectly bright and perfectly dry. Be prepared to step into the ditch to let cars pass.

Walking up the hill to White Center is even more perilous. Sidewalks do start up around the Olsen-Meyer Park&Ride and continue up the hill, but do not continue down the hill to Cloverdale. It is an exercise in staying on the shoulder where that exists and staying close to a ditch otherwise.

Every time I cross the 14th Ave S bridge to Boulevard Park, I keep expecting to be pulled over (if there were an “over” to pull over into) and given a ticket for walking on a no-pedestrian bridge. There is a stretch where I make sure no cars will be coming for a while, and then sprint across the bridge to the next ditch.

Yes, I understand that the 14th Ave S bridge isn’t properly in Seattle. But those other paths are. City of Seattle: Since you have done zilch to save the last remaining sidewalk out of South Park (on the South Park Bridge), give us some other sidewalks out of the neighborhood as remediation.

Seattle’s contribution to replacing the South Park Bridge can come, in part, by financing redesign of the new bridge to have outer HOV lanes (to ensure dependably timely bus passage), and inner SOV toll lanes. Since nobody is stepping up with funding sources, I’m afraid tolling is the only realistic option on the table. But Seattle is also going to have to come up with some up-front money, or the feds will see Seattle as not really supporting the TIGER grant application.

He talked about the need to get the legislature to fund more transit. I look forward to him doing that.

But even with little funding, there are things we can do in the here and now, such as re-stripe the future BRT lanes to start letting the buses run faster, raise parking rates (especially downtown), and dedicate a big chunk of the airport parking lot to Link riders. Go for some of that low-hanging fruit!

The Sound Transit Board can also find $3 million of capital spending to put off in other zones to provide the $3 million needed to make 200th St Station “shovel ready” and eligible for TIGER grants.