Month: August 2010

Yesterday, Vulcan Real Estate unveiled an electronic transportation and amenities kiosk in the lobby of Amazon’s Phase 2 building.  The first of its kind, the touch-screen kiosk features both static and real-time information for neighborhood transit services and amenities.  If you want to get a preview on how it works, you can view the kiosk’s testing in the Youtube video above.  The project is the result of a public-private partnership between Vulcan, Metro, and the City of Seattle, which requires a Transportation Management Plan for Vulcan’s properties.  At the bare end of the plan, the City requires racks for paper brochures and schedules.  The kiosk, however, takes it up a few notches.

From the official press release (PDF):

Traditional transportation management plans include racks of brochures in downtown office buildings that display local transit agencies’ schedule information. These materials require regular updating, printing and distribution.  Because the kiosks are automatically updated, they provide a more user-friendly, eco-friendly, and accurate solution for riders. With the touch of a button, users can view real-time arrival times for Metro bus routes, find streetcar stops and arrival times, as well as pinpoint nearby restaurants, shops and services on an interactive neighborhood amenities map.

More below the jump.

Continue reading “Transit & Amenities E-Kiosk Unveiled in South Lake Union”

This week will feature the installation of new RapidRide shelters along the new Pacific Hwy South A Line.  Like Swift, the shelters will be branded differently than normal shelters.  You can check out pictures from the RapidRide blog, which also has other miscellaneous info for the new line.

From the blog:

Metro is installing the first RapidRide shelter frames this week on the A Line corridor, which is also sporting RapidRide banners from light poles to let people know about the new service. Still to come as the launch date draws near: more shelter frames, ORCA fare card readers, real-time arrival signs–and glass in the shelter frames!

The A Line is scheduled to commence service on October 2, 2010 during the fall service change.

Matt over at Orphan Road poses some questions about Seattle’s plans to show the available number of parking spots outside of downtown parking garages:

1. Would knowing the number of stalls available in a parking lot get you off the street any faster?
2. If E-Park does work, would you expect the number of cars in Seattle to increase due to experiencing less congestion (i.e. induced demand)?
3. If the answer to #2 is “yes”, is encouraging driving ok in this circumstance? Why?

I’ll attempt some non-authoritative guesses to advance a conversation.

Continued beyond the jump…

Continue reading “Downtown Parking & Driver Costs”

• Husky Stadium station gets final approval, nighttime work to begin.
• Webcams cover Husky Stadium station and Capitol Hill station construction.
• Bus driver Q&A.
• A new blog just about Walking in Seattle.
• Tell Pierce Transit how you feel about their planned fare increase.
• Mulling over double-track in Edmonds.
• Homeowner fears a Link sinkhole will wreck his Capitol Hill building.
• Dan Savage right, as usual.
• 10-year-old allegedly leads an assault on the 7.
• Support for tolling 167.
• An intro to the local transit system.
• A 60-mile traffic jam in China.
• The high cost of free parking, in the NYT. And this just in: parking minimums drive sprawl.
• No Mariners train on Saturday from Everett.

This is an open thread.

View 125th in a larger map

Over the last few weeks the bicycle community has been frustrated by the “road diet” discussion. The thought is, road diets are implicitly good, so why aren’t more people supportive of them? Why aren’t opponents of plans swayed by the fact that streets that undergo road diets have been shown to have enough capacity? And why don’t opponents seem to care about the safety of pedestrians, cyclist and motorist alike?

Seattle Likes Bikes, Publicola, Seattle Bike Blog, and the SDOT blog have all weighed in, mostly in response to the now infamous article by Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times, although the discussion certainly applies to every project that aims to improve safety. The consensus is that discussion about these projects must not become car vs. bike, both because these projects are not about that and because this construct does not allow for a productive discussion on how to improve the road for all users. Road diets or whatever you want to call them are about making our roads work better and more safely for everyone. It would probably be better to call them “safety and operational enhancement projects” because that really is what they are.

They make left turns easier and safer, make through travel smother, allow pedestrians to safely cross previously dangerous intersections, and allocate space for bicyclist to safely ride out of the way of motorist. As someone who lived close to Stone Way before and after the road diet I can tell you it did wonders regardless of whether I was driving, biking or walking.

Today at 9am KUOW will have a piece on road diets, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be very balanced. Tune in and if you feel so compelled call or e-mail KUOW your comments.

We haven’t posted much about the minor Council/Mayor scrum over the Commercial Parking Tax (CPT) and the seawall. However, this Streets for all Seattle letter of August 5th clarifies the transportation angle:

We are writing today concerning the proposal to fund seawall-related work by raising the existing 10% commercial parking tax (CPT) to 12.5%. While Streets For All Seattle coalition members recognize the City’s obligations on the seawall replacement, we believe that allocation of our limited, flexible transportation funds to a single, capital-intensive project would unnecessarily curtail the opportunity before us to engage in a holistic transportation discussion during the budget process.

As I understand it, the CPT can only be used for transportation improvements and is capped at 20%, 10 points above its current level of 10%. The Mayor would like to have a property tax measure this year to pay for the seawall and dedicate the CPT revenue (according to PubliCola a 5-10 point increase) “toward road maintenance, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure,” in the words of McGinn spokesman Aaron Pickus. More after the jump.

Continue reading “Mayor, Council at Odds Over Seawall”

Seattle, using Bridging the Gap funds, will be implementing “Complete Streets” on 15th Ave S and S Columbian Way on Beacon Hill. The latter will improve connections with the Columbia City Link station. Beacon Hill Blog reports:

You are invited to stop by the Open House and view project plans, provide feedback and chat with the project team. The event is Tuesday, August 24 from 5:00 – 7:00 pm at the Jefferson Community Center Meeting Room, 3801 Beacon Avenue South. You may also email your comments to walkandbike@seattle.gov or call 206-684-7583.

• Work continues on King Street Station.  The remnants of the baggage area and the Jackson St. Plaza have been demolished.  (Slideshow above, picture of the ’empty hole’ here.)
• Body found inside the Great Northern Tunnel.
• Amtrak Cascades ridership between Seattle and Vancouver BC set a record in July, with nearly 25,000 total passengers for the four daily trains.  Ridership is also up 21% on the original trains (510/517).  CBSA has apparently reached a decision whether or not to continue free inspection services, and will be notifying WSDOT shortly.
• To celebrate the popularity of the service (and to put timely pressure on CBSA?), Tourism Vancouver has partnered with Amtrak to offer 25% off Cascades travel between Seattle and Vancouver BC  for all of September, along with discounts on hotels and city attractions.
• Leveling and grading work has begun on the new 3.2 mile bypass track in Vancouver, WA.
• WSDOT and BSNF have received approval to begin work on the Stanwood siding.  On August 17 the Army Corps of Engineers issued the necessary wetland permit, the last major environmental hurdle.
• WSDOT has applied for $80m in additional high-speed rail grants available under the $2.3b USDOT Appropriations Act. A 20% local matching commitment was required in order to apply.
• The new Edmonds Sounder Station groundbreaking ceremony was held on August 18.

This is an open thread.

This weekend citizens, elected officials, WSDOT staff and media had the opportunity to tour the midspan section of the bridge.

The event began with short speeches by Secretry Hammond, Rep. White, and Rep. Eddy. They all emphasized that WSDOT is now “counting down to construction” for the floating and Eastside segments of the project. They also emphasized that transit is important in the project and that pre-construction tolling is starting this spring.

Connie Niva then gave a bit of background on Aubrey Davis, who was then honored by WSDOT for his years of work on trans-lake transportation issues, especially in relation to his work with the Washington State Transportation Commission. He was intimately involved in the creation of Metro in the 70’s. WSDOT is a highway building agency, but it certainly is one of the most progressive DOT’s out there, and Aubrey Davis had a large hand in that.

The rest of the tour was pretty casual, with lots of jokes about how it’s not every day you get to walk and relax on the bridge, despite the fact that everyone has crossed it many, many times. I personally was surprised how quiet it was and it was just a surreal experience.

The bridge maintenance crews opened the draw span and able bodied persons had the chance to climb down into the pontoons. The bridge is four compartments wide, with watertight bulkheads on the outer compartments. A man I spoke to said they were probably added after the first I-90 bridge sunk, although he wasn’t completely sure.