Ricky Beavers, the Metro driver who sold cocaine on his route, has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison in King County prison after pleading guilty.
55 Days
55 mph is Link’s top speed. That’s lot faster than a car stuck in traffic.
In 1955, the Seattle Transit Commission asked for transit right-of-way to be included in the I-5 design in Seattle. At $16 million, it was deemed to expensive. The freeway opened about ten years later.
WA-CA HSR?
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Our people are meeting with their people, McClatchy says:
Scott Witt, director of the Washington state Department of Transportation’s rail and marine program, said that though he and others are focused on the “here and now,” high-speed trains running nearly the length of the West Coast aren’t just a fantasy.
“They would go like a son of a gun,” he said.
Witt envisions trains like the Shinkansen, the bullet trains in Japan, or France’s TGV trains that regularly travel at near 190 mph. The bullet trains, in tests, have traveled at 277 mph, and the TGV trains have been tested at 320 mph. Both countries and others are working on Maglev or electromagnetic propulsion trains that could cruise at speeds approaching 400 mph.
Constructing a truly high-speed West Coast rail corridor wouldn’t be easy. It would require entirely new rails and a new corridor that smoothed out grades and corners. Picking a route and deciding where the trains would stop would be politically bruising. And the cost could be astronomical.
The 1,500-mile line, by some estimates, could cost between $10 million and $45 million per mile to build.
Witt said he has been talking with his counterpart in California for about three weeks.
“It’s very, very preliminary,” Witt said. “But it makes a lot of sense.”
Indeed.
Creative Ideas for Metro Funding
King County Councilman Larry Phillips wants to tap into the “entrepreneurial energy” of King County to find creative ways to help with Metro’s massive funding gap. We’ve cover the funding gap a lot, for backround, here’s a story on the gap, here’s a story on one way to cover a portion of it, here’s a story about how scary it is for bus riders, here’s a story about Olympia’s help with closing part of it, and here’s a story about the Govenor’s veto of part of that help. Here’s Phillips:
“We must harness King County’s entrepreneurial spirit to find ways Metro can reduce costs and generate some cash to keep buses on the streets despite the decline in tax revenue,” said Phillips. “Metro has already tapped into some entrepreneurial efforts such as advertising in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel and service partnerships with cities and businesses, but it’s time to dig deeper and expand those opportunities. For example, can we help pay for implementing RapidRide by allowing companies to buy sponsorships at new RapidRide stations?”
I like the RapidRide station sponsorship idea. We’ve been advocating more advertising in Metro stops for long, long time as a way to bring in revenue. Ads in covered Metro bus stops are practically a no-brainer. How about ads on transfers? I also think you could make a lot of money by opening kiosks for newsvendor/coffee cart folks inside the downtown Transit Tunnel.
Got any great ideas for Metro to make money? Leave them in the comments.
57 Days
BART was born in 1957 – that’s the year the state of California created it.
The older, non-hybrid 60 foot coaches in Sound Transit’s fleet have 57 seats.
1858 was the first time documented that a slip coach was employed. This was essentially insane – instead of having an express train stop at a particular local platform, a car would simply be decoupled at speed and slowed to stop at the platform. I don’t think you’re allowed to do that now.
Service Changes Start Next Saturday
Most of the big light-rail related bus changes don’t occur till September, but the June service change (actually in effect Saturday, May 30) still has tons of important changes. Both Metro and Sound Transit (pdf) are doing these. Highlights:
- New Route 578 operates as a partial “Sounder shadow” providing off-peak service to many South Sounder stations.
- One more South Sounder round trip; many new ST Express trips as a result of Prop. 1 passing last year.
- The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel will be open 20 hours a day, 6 days a week, and 18 hours on Sundays. This affects all of the tunnel routes and matches Link’s operating schedule.
- The Burien Transit Center opens, affecting tons of routes.
- New bay assignments at South Sammamish P&R, Bellevue Transit Center, Aurora Village Transit Center, and Houghton P&R.
- Route changes for 554, 555, 556, 5, 21E, 64, 66, 67, 210, 306, 308, 312, and 358.
Bike Commuting on Portland’s Hawthorne Bridge
Another Streetfilms video, this one really surprised me. Hawthorne Bridge has become a massively popular route for bike commuters:
Since the mid-1990s, for example, vehicle traffic — motorized and pedaled — on the Hawthorne has increased 20 percent. But the volume of auto traffic has increased only a little more than 1 percent. Bus traffic, meanwhile, has held steady.
Cyclists — now about 7,400 a day — account for almost the entire surge.
That’s a lot of bikes.
58 days, plus Videos of Link Testing
The first mass transit service in Seattle began in 1858, with the birth of the mosquito fleet of foot ferries. This steam-powered ferry had service from Alki Point – then known as New York Alki – to present day Pioneer Square – then known as Duwamps. Must have been a short trip, Harbor Island wouldn’t exist for another 51 years. Link is opening 151 years later, in less than two months. Amazing, right?
1958 was also the first year that the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle, aka Metro, was on the ballot. At the time it would not have included Seattle, and suburban voters rejected mass transit, but approved waste water treatment. Metro transit was finally created in 1973.
Videos of link testing below the fold.
Cascades
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Reading this incredibly comprehensive post by Brian Bundridge at STB, I’m reminded again of (a) how far we’ve come, and (b) how incredibly far we have to go to achieve a true rail network in the Northwest.
59 Days…
In 1959, Barcelona opened their fifth subway line.
Sound Transit 2 passed with a 59% yes vote.
And last year, ridership on New York’s subway system hit a 59-year high.
Not too long now… less than two months!