Union Pacific Railroad shows off its track renewal train and group of workers. No other industry in America is as capital intensive as the railroads.

And there is its European counterpart in HD.

It’s not even on STB, and this one requires a little context. Dominic Holden on Slog links to Adam’s last tunnel post, titling the post “How to Piss Off the Transit Community.” Which triggered procupcake’s snide remark:

Transit community? Is that referring to anyone who transits? Ho hum. Next thing you know, the transit community will want representation and marriage equality, but I digress…

But that’s not the winner. It’s MacCrocodile’s response:

@9 – All I want is for the state to recognize the love I share with the 255.

It had me giggling for a good five minutes.

RapidRide C is coming to West Seattle next year, and as with the first two lines Metro will schedule a service restructure to occur at the same time. County transportation advisor Chris Arkills told me that the process will begin this Fall.

I thought about putting together another service restructure proposal as I did for the Rainier Valley (twice) and Zach did for Capitol Hill, but it occurred to me that I don’t actually know anything about West Seattle. So instead, consider this the thread to make your case for how service should change. If there are good ideas I might synthesize them into a coherent proposal.

Not every comment has to be a fully accounted plan. However, here are some useful principles and other thoughts:

• New service is more likely to happen if you can identify old service that could be eliminated to resource it.
• The obvious place for savings it to rely on RapidRide C to get people downtown and not run all of those other buses on the West Seattle Bridge.
• If Rainier Valley buses are redirected to feed Link, the train at least provides a time advantage when far enough from downtown when the speed differential exceeds the transfer penalty. However, since all buses will travel the same speed on the West Seattle bridge, forcing a transfer to RR C is a pure time penalty for the rider, meaning the benefits of doing so should be large.

I have no idea what Metro is going to propose this fall, but it can’t hurt to let them know that there’s support in the community for bold change.

Those of you bursting with feedback on Metro cuts more than our blog comments can handle will be given an opportunity live in-person with three upcoming public hearings held by the county council’s Transportation, Economy and Environment Committee:

Wednesday, July 6, 6:00 p.m.
Kirkland City Council Chambers
123 Fifth Avenue

Tuesday, July 12, 6:00 p.m.
King County Council Chambers
516 Third Avenue, 10th Floor, Seattle

Thursday, July 21, 6:00 p.m.
Burien City Council Chambers
400 S.W. 152nd Street

If you’re more technologically inclined, you have the option of submitting written comments, but I tend to believe that verbal testimonies have an impact that written words don’t.  More of our coverage on the Metro cuts here, here, here, here, and here.

This is pretty cool:

The video was made by Herrenknecht Tunnelling Systems USA, and posted to Youtube by Sound Transit.

Photo by Atomic Taco

Riders who frequent the downtown transit tunnel (DSTT) during peak hours are commonly prone to lapses of frustration and impatience when a slow crawl of buses often lead to increased travel times, and even missed transfers.  A lot of what affects joint operations and just tunnel bus operations in general is the placement of the bus bays.

The current configuration separates buses by origin/destination regardless whether or not the route is inbound or outbound—east King buses stop at Bay B heading north and Bay D heading south, while north and south King buses stop at Bay A heading north and Bay C heading south.

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