Not much going on today!
- The California High-Speed Rail project thinks they’re going to get some of that stimulus dough – maybe $15 to $20 billion. Good.
- In what reads like an extended real estate ad, the Seattle Times notes that Northgate is growing up.
- Gov. Gregoire is supposed to decide on the Viaduct by Jan. 1, and the lobbying is in full force.
- Weather is bad, Metro in disarray, blah blah blah.
- 18 volunteers from my neighborhood shoveled out perhaps a quarter mile of a hilly side street this afternoon. Self-reliance, people.
I would like to know what the hell is still wrong with the Streetcar.
UPDATE: We have numerous reports in the comments that the Streetcar is running, but on Saturday morning the Metro website still reports it as down. In a way that’s almost worse.
UPDATE 2: As of 1 PM the Streetcar is no longer reported as out of service.
Streetcar has been running– NextBus shows it as running and I’ve seen it on the Valley/Fairview webcam at least 3 times today.
They just don’t have anyone to update the website.
Still no buses in my neighborhood, even though it’s plowed up here.
Check the flickr group. It’s been running for at least 6 hours.
Last time I e-mailed someone at SDOT, asking them to go in and change the streetcar website to mention it’s broken (it had been out of service for 3 days), and they were fairly responsive. I just sent an e-mail asking to have that message removed, but it’s a friday night so I’m guessing it’ll be updated on monday.
Sadly, this was the last free ride day.
The website was last updated around 8 pm today yet it still says the streetcar is suspended. So if it is running today, what’s going on? This is shameful and unbelievable that even Metro has no idea what’s going on in the field.
The last 311 of the day is back to running a hybrid artic without chains as usual. Good riddance to chains. What’s keeping Metro from restoring full service to the 255 and 257 when other routes have been using the same streets, which are maintained by King County by the way, just fine?
Been watching it off and on (well, seeing it at random) on the street cams for hours. Metro is a little bit of lazy.
I was in the University St station this morning (6 am) and there was a thick haze. Does anyone know if it was a diesel exhaust or what? If so, absolutely disgusting.
The holiday schedule for the 194 forced me to catch a cab. 30 minute frequency to the airport? Riiggghttt. Another airport trip that made me want Link.
Try getting off work at 11pm and catching the 194…
They were running non-hybrid buses in the tunnel today. The non-hybrids don’t have “hush mode” (not to mention batteries), so they’re running diesel the whole time. The tunnel’s ventilation system isn’t made to handle this.
The tunnel is made to handle situations where regular buses (non-hybrid) can run in the tunnel. They do their best not to do it though to reduce fumes to people.
The Streetcar was running for the most part all day yesterday. I saw it early morning yesterday and later that afternoon and evening. Metro is just being lazy, best to check NextBus to see what the actual status is of the Streetcar.
Looking at NextBus right now – The Red and Orange vehicles are running on scheduled service.
Several news articles about the Opening Day of light rail in Phoenix (20 miles in 4 years, at $1.4bn…flat land does have its advantages).
Here’s one about an enterprising group that has an online web site with real estate data on every parcel within one mile of the rail line.
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/12/29/story10.html
A few days ago I emailed Metro and complained about the way they list the update time on their Adverse weather page. I said I didn’t think many of their riders would be able to easily understand when the page was actually last updated. This is an example of how they used to list it: “The information below was last updated Fri, 26 Dec 2008 14:59:48 GMT. Subtract eight hours for Pacific Time Zone time.” They now do it like this: “The information below was last updated 12/27/08 5:59 PM.” Just as I suggested.
Am I hero? I suppose that’s for history to decide.
You’re welcome, citizens of King County.
Ummm – the times on that page on my browser has always been Pacific Standard Time with a note that said if your browser shows GMT…
But thanks.
My browser has been alternating between 24-hour GMT, 24-hour local time, and 12-hour local time formats. Don’t know why. How hard would it be to code it to convert it the desired format? I know it’s pretty easy in PHP and Javascript, assuming your input is in the correct format.
They could make it easier and say “The information below was last updated 1 hour and 33 minutes ago” so I don’t have to do the math to find out how fresh the page is. That would solve the whole time zone and format issue but be a little harder to implement.
I noticed the comment timestamps here show as “2008-12-27 18:02:50”, which is actually my preferred format for dates and time, while the blog post timestamp is the more traditional “December 26, 2008 at 8:05 pm”.