Ken in the comments over at Slog asked this question, “Why no light rail station planned for the north end of Broadway?” Well, I don’t really think that is completely necessary, because it’s not that far from Denny & Broadway up to, say, Roy & Broadway (near the kinko’s). But misses the point in my opinion: that there should be a north Capitol Hill Station.
In my preference, the station would be on 15th near Volunteer Park (where I put the red dot on my map). Aparrently there were major budget issues for getting a second station on the Hill, but I think it’s something that should be considered in the future, since it looks like the underground will go by that area anyway, and I am sure that will add a lot of ridership for the park, for the Group Health complex on top of the hill, and the schools (Meany Middle School, Holy Names) near that area.
Well I guess it’s just a dream at this point.
Seattle needs this blog! Good to find you. We started a small discussion about your light rail post over on our blog — hopefully interested readers will keep coming to Seattle Transit and start to share their thoughts here, too. Keep it up!
Costs of adding a stop include construction, plus a longer trip for other riders. Do enough people benefit from a stop there to justify that? Probably not in that neck of the woods; it seems to have much lower density than U-Dist to north, or the Broadway ‘core’ part of Capitol Hill.
Keeping rapid transit rapid means ideally having as few stops as possible to serve as many people as possible. Add too many stops, and you’ve basically built an expensive underground bus service – albeit one with really nice shelters :)
Thanks J.
You’ve got a good point musely, but I think that part of capitol hill west of the park is being developed quite a bit.