The City Council has unaminously approved the Century 21 committee’s 20 year, $567 million Seattle Center Plan. The transit portion of the plan is from the Seattle Times article on the Seattle Center proposal.
Memorial Stadium. The city and Seattle Public Schools are negotiating an agreement for the future of the 1948 stadium. To create more open, usable space, the city wants to tear down the concrete walls and move the sports field to the eastern side of the current stadium. Those changes would expand the International Fountain area by 4 acres. A 1,300-space parking garage would be built underneath the stadium, and delivery trucks, school buses and Metro buses would access the campus through the garage. This would also allow the existing parking garages on Mercer Street to be razed, and their sites could be redeveloped.
I can’t imagine how this transit-enters-garage system will not be a disaster. Can you imagine the scene there during an event? Hundreds of cars pouring in-and-out of the Center’s garage with the buses stuck behind them, and a ton of miserable riders just hoping desperately to get off as soon as possible before the 2020-version of Beck’s show ends. Other than that, the plan is okay, but I hope they can preserve the more charming parts of the Center in the way I can still remember them: the Center House, the Fountain and the Ampitheatre (my first four live performances as a musician were there).
What do you think? Have you ever been on a bus that entered a parking garage?
Something sounds wrong. There’s no way they would expect Metro buses to serve an underground garage.
Unless there would be a separate part of the garage that’s transit only, like Mall of America or something.
In Mall of America the buses enter a garage?
I think so, since they called the area a transit hub I believe.
The light rail terminates at the Mall of America in the bottom floor of a garage, though.
i think they mean there would be a separate little entrance for metro buses and an underground stop, although i guess i don’t really see the point…
I wish they served the center above ground. That’d be pretty sweet.
Correction: 2030 version of Beck.
Where will the streetcar go?
Some airports have the transit and taxi stands in part of the garage, but this is separated from the traffic trying to get from/to long-term parking.
I think this can work but only if the access for transit, charter/school busses, deliveries, and general parking were kept separate.
In the case of transit I see no good reason to move it into the garage though. I think pulling off the street to enter a transit center would needlessly slow down the mostly through routes servicing the Center area. A layover/holding/turn-around area might not be a bad idea, but is an entirely different thing than what is proposed.
Remember that such “transit” ideas often come from planners and engineers who know little/nothing about transit and how it works in the real world. And who have little/no experience actually riding transit on any kind of regular basis.
The “Transit” section of the plan (page 47/57) is actually pretty exciting. The underground access is described as “direct loading and deliveries to campus venues, school bus parking and close-in ADA access” so I don’t think it’s for cars at all. Also a possible SLUT extension to 5th Avenue N. and Harrison which would also serve the Gates Foundation campus.
That’s interesting, all of the SLUT expansion maps that have been released so far involve going up 1st all the way to Seattle Center. They must know something we don’t.
This is probably just wishful thinking: Bill Gates has money that the city doesn’t and I’m sure he wants the best people to have more commute options to his new campus.
Yeah, I also realized that Harrison is cut in two by Aurora right now. The city’s Mercer Street rebuilding plan involves a bridge there after Aurora is lowered, but that won’t be for a while, if it happens at all.
Please tell me what transit planning consultant firm or group was involved with the plan. I believe “A Transit Guy” is spot on: the planners involved were trying to do transit planning from an urban design perspective. It isn’t supposed to make good transit planning sense.
This actually doesn’t seem too unusual to me. No way are buses going to be mixing with cars, ceiling heights are way too low for that anyway. In Boston (actually Cambridge/Arlington), the end of the red line is at a huge above ground parking garage–subway is below grade, bus service and kiss-and-ride are on the ground level of the parking garage–with their own separate entrances and exits, and then there’s four floors of parking above, with their own separate entrances and exits.
The Disneyland parking garage – transit has its own protected areas with separate entrances and exits.
Ditto the parking structure at the current end of the Los Angeles Gold Line in Pasadena. Transit has its own floor. Can’t remember how many different transit systems all serve the same facility as a hub.
Or think of the rental car only floors at SeaTac. (Been a few years, I know we paid an extra fee towards a new rental car facility, so don’t know if this is still applicable.)
Done well, this is an excellent idea, allowing for weather-proof boarding with elevators or escalators to parking levels for park-n-ride, and a separate weather protected kiss-n-ride area. If only the monorail served as more than an tourist ride (does it?), it would be good to add that to the mix as well and, yeah, you’ve now got yourself a transit hub.