A lot of people seem to want GM to start building light rail cars. Personally, I’d prefer transit agencies to buy cars that are efficient, reasonably priced, and pleasant to ride in. When it comes to building cars, which they’ve done for a hundred years, GM’s record is a bit spotty on these characteristics, so I’m not terribly optimistic about a foray into rail. For destroying streetcar lines and defeating rail initiatives, though, they’re your company.
As the title says, it’s an open thread.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
In this month’s Performance Bicycles catalog there’s a bicycle jersey made of petroleum products with an overweight character symbolizing a non-recyclable petroleum product that’s a key component to internal combustion vehicles, responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions in our region. But he’s touching a plant, so I guess that makes it green. I’m sure the type of person that bicycles in Seattle will pay $85 for that.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Last month, in one of several posts on Southeast Seattle service changes, I mentioned Metro’s attitude towards frequent rider requests for a local circulator:
Furthermore, after to talking to some of the Metro planning staff, it’s an article of faith in some quarters there that “circulators don’t work.”
My throwaway remark prompted a comment from Jarrett, linking to his extended response on his blog, “Human Transit”. He critiqued my circulator concept as a way of debunking the entire idea of circulators. In his comment thread a bunch of Metro commenters form an amen corner, pretty much proving the limited point I made above.
Jarrett’s piece, all the way from Australia, is eloquent and informative. Some key grafs: Continue reading “More On Circulators”
Beacon Hill Station’s platforms are 49 meters underground, or 160 feet. That’s pretty deep, and it gives some idea of why the station construction has taken so long. I’ve been trying to get into that tunnel for years now, but I’ve got just 7 weeks to go in any case.
In 1949 two big transit-related legal rulings came down from the courts. In the first, the sentence came down in the Great American Streetcar Scandal. Each of the defending companies in the United States v National City Lines was fined $5,000 and each director was fined $1. In the second, United States v Capital Transit Co., the Supreme Court strengthened the Federal Government’s right to regulate and effect public transit under the Constitution’s Interstate commerce clause. These powers eventually enabled the creation of the Federal Transit Administration.
Here’s some information from a previous post on the bus schedule changes that start tomorrow.
50,000 cubic yards of Earth was removed from under Beacon Hill for each of the two Beacon Hill tunnels. A similar amount of Earth was removed for the Beacon Hill station. That subway section is one mile long, so you could imagine how much soil will be removed from underneath Seattle for the 6+ mile subway from (almost) Westlake to (almost) Northgate.
Here are a couple more 50s. Forward Thrust got 50.8% of the vote in 1968, but 60% was needed to pass. 1950 was the year of the last Kirkland-Madison Park Car Ferry ran. The last passenger-only ferry on that run was a year later and thus ended all ferry service on Lake Washington.
One more random thought: is model train collecting much more popular than I know? I don’t collect them myself (I did collect guitars for a while, but Tamami has made me get rid of many of them), but it’s hugely surprising to me that the Mariners are giving away 20,000 model train cars as a gameday promotion.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Today’s big story at the Daily Journal of Commerce: the parks dept. is considering turning Bell St. into a boulevard with more park and less car. I’d love to read the story, but it’s an exclusive. At least they have a nice large graphic that tells some of the story.
I suppose I’ll be visiting the library today…
This is a fairly complete – to my knowledge – map of the passenger rail network in Tokyo and its suburbs.
Here is pdf map of made by someone else that includes Tokyo and its suburbs, but not the its suburbs’ suburbs. I’ve been looking for a map like this for a long time, since there are more than a dozen train operators in the Tokyo area, and most system maps in Tokyo draw either just the center city subway network or just the map of a specific private rail operator’s network. There are several hundred stations on the map, and it shows the passenger rail network of an area about 1/3 bigger than King County (8,500 km² including water) where about 35 million people live (that’s about 20 times the population of King County). No wonder Tokyo gets away with a small highway system.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Kery Murakami reports:
If it’s seemed darker getting around Seattle, it’s been in part because more streetlights have been out, as I reported in a story back when I worked at the P-I.
Nickels announced today that he’s proposing that $2.1 million authorized in this year’s City Light budget be spent earlier to let crews catch up with the backlog of all the burned out lights on the streets.
Speeding up streetlight repairs? Must be an election year.
