Thinking of heading down to the Seafair Hydro races? Take Link! A free shuttle (with standard Link fare) will be running Friday, Saturday, and Sunday between Othello Station and Stan Sayres Memorial Park. More information is available on the Seafair website, which also mentions that the park isn’t too far from Columbia City Station.
It’s going to be a hot weekend, but we’ve heard the air conditioning on the trains is wonderful!
Who is operating the free shuttle, and how did they get past the FTA if it is Metro? Just wondering, other than that, great news, because I live in that area, and the last thing I want is traffic made worse because Starline thought they could gouge race fans, and Seafair said no.
Simple, don’t announce the service until a couple days before the event and nobody has put in a competing bid.
What some of the potential bidders use, won’t work on this particular type of service. If Starline had a fleet of buses like METRO had on hand. I would say, go ahead and bid, but they don’t because they would not be able to use them on their other services.
Not only can you ride it to Seafair, you can do what I did and ride Link to escape the heat! The air conditioning is TOP NOTCH.
I hear it’s First Student with their school buses operating the shuttles. No AC and tiny seats…
Any race fans who have a problem with the bus, a creative way to complain, would be to send the complaints to the FTA, and maybe to your Senators and Congressmembers, and maybe they will change the law. As for First Student, too bad First Transit can’t bid, and offer to use the CT fleet. Unfortunately since they only operate those buses for CT and don’t own them, there might be a problem.
I would add that you can also walk 0.8 mi from Mt. Baker Station to the event’s north gate on Lake Washington Boulevard at Mt. Baker Park.
I actually live just above the pits (NOT in the $4m mansion mind you) and I’ve walked to/from both the Columbia City and Mount Baker stations. They are both roughly 1 mile from my house. The thing is, the 39 will take you right from here to the Columbia City Station. If you walk to the 14 (1/2 mile), it will (almost) take you to Mount Baker Station. Looks as though the wires to re-route the 14 are almost done and should start in a month. You can also walk a 1/2 mile up and over the hill to Rainer and board the 7 to Mount Baker Station.
There’s plenty of ways to get from Seafair to the Link stations and plenty of bus routes serving this area.
In the heat wave we have been having, it may be a long walk to Columbia City Station, but that is uphill. I am not sure if I should be giving this advice, but a walk from Columbia City Station to Genessee Park would be downhill, and possibly walk through Ranier Playfield. I use this route all the time as a shortcut to get to a subway in Columbia City.
I didn’t see it anywhere on the site – does anyone know when the shuttles will be running? I’m heading down to see the fireworks Saturday night but I’m not sure if they’ll only be running for the hydro races/air show.
My friend said she got on a northbound light rail at Othello on Sunday after the Blue Angels around 3 or 4pm and they kicked everybody off at Stadium station due to issues with the tunnel. Did anybody hear anything about this? It was going through the tunnel just fine at about 6pm when I rode it northbound.
I might post this to another thread in case nobody is looking at this one anymore ;)