87 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: Gentrification”
So painfully true.
Except that Seattle is proportionally more “white” than most of its “suburbs”.
So, it’s painfully false.
So you missed the last two panels eh?
Seattle whites did not move “back” into the city.
Are you saying that back in the 1970s Seattle was more like Philadelphia?
John, the last two panels are a much more recent phenomenon. Obviously, the comic is an oversimplification and exaggeration, but holds some truths. It’s not until the last Census did we see declines in the minority populations in the Rainier Valley.
John, it’s obviously not a Seattle-specific cartoon.
Tom Toles is from just outside Buffalo, NY, an area this is much more accurate for. They’re having a re-influx of middle class 20 and 30 somethings moving into their downtown areas.
“Despite extremes like that, Seattle is — again according to the census — one of the least racially divided big cities in America.
That’s based on another measure, called dissimilarity, that looks at how different races are distributed across census tracts. Seattle doesn’t rank in the top 50 among big cities for segregation (Milwaukee, New York, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland are the top five most racially segregated).”
Martin: I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this graphic, but it is very offensive to even post.
I know of many minorities who have been priced out of their family homes and forced to move to the suburbs. Central and Rainier districts are good examples of high home prices and even higher property taxes that make the decision to flee to the burbs an economic reality.
That’s exactly what this editorial cartoon is showing. That’s the whole point!
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of political cartooning. They endeavor to illustrate experiences such as the one you describe, hyperbolizing and injecting just enough black humor to attract attention to the issue.
Are you offended by the medium itself?
No, but I can genuinely be sad that so many families have been displaced because they could no longer afford to live or make a living in their multi generational neighborhoods.
But but! It’s the free market! ;-)
Except that exaggeration starts with a kernel of truth.
This cartoon is not true at all…especially in the history of PNW cities (yes, I mixed up the letters on purpose).
This is just a cartoon to play into the fantasies and fallacies of urbists who really..really…want to think things are a certain way because it fits their preconceived prejudices…but has zero to do with any fact based analysis.
Did John Bailo just accuse other people of having a tenuous grip on facts?
Mke, so you believe that anything that could possibly offend anyone should never be printed or posted?
“Central and Rainier districts are good examples of high home prices and even higher property taxes that make the decision to flee to the burbs an economic reality.”
I don’t believe the property tax aspect is entirely accurate. My understanding is that under the Washington Constitution unless your house is going up significantly more in value than other houses in the jurisdiction than there shouldn’t be any noticeable change in tax other than the yearly 1% increase.
That 1% rule only applies to about a third of what’s rolled up in your property tax bill. It doesn’t account for local levies. School levies alone account for another third and even if the levy rate stays the same you pay an increase based on assessed value.
Good point.
Why do all you Seattle racists assume that all non-whites are automatically low income?
In Queens, NYC, my birth place, the average family income for African-Americans is higher than for European-American families.
This cartoon and most of the “dialog” here is very offensive and prejudiced.
Mike, you’re right to be grieved over the reality behind the cartoon- which stems from the assumption this country was born deliberately infected with: the lighter your skin, the bluer your eyes, the blonder your hair, the better you are.
But there’s been a new prejudice added these last thirty years: the less manual work you do and the more abstract whatever you produce, the more money and power you’re entitled to. And the reverse, with a lot more force behind it.
I walked around the Pearl District in Portland day before yesterday. First thought, as always: I hope South Lake Union gets as good on its best day as the Pearl District on its worst.
Second thought: what could make all of Seattle an order of magnitude greater is to create a city like this where people can earn the wages to live- notice I didn’t say “affordable”- making under decent conditions the products currently done by slave labor in China and worse places.
Prejudice: I like atmosphere better when it’s earning its keep. Keep the beautiful old factories. But have at least some of them, under decent wages and conditions, make something.
Mark Dublin
It’s like all biting political cartoons: make a coincidence sound intentional. It still shows the de facto result. Two inaccuracies: (1) the suburban movement started long before white flight (1910s not 1960s). (2) If the whites really wanted to get minorities out of inner cities, they could have skipped directly to the last step by gentrifying without moving to the suburbs and back. More housing would have been built on the edge in any case (due to expanding population and wealth), and the minorities would have just moved there directly — as they did in most other countries.
What do you like about the Pearl district? I rode the streetcar through it and found it too residential. Not enough businesses; not enough reason to go there if you’re not a resident. It’s dense and transit-oriented, yes, but it’s still mostly a bedroom community.
It never ceases to amaze how people will look for any possible reason to be offended. Seems to be worse in Seattle than most places.
Yeah, it’s quite the touchy bunch. I hope their feelings weren’t hurt too badly by a political cartoon that was obviously intended to wound them personally.
sell their homes for a large profit and buy a bigger, newer home in the suburbs, The American Dream. This is an economic issues not a racial one. Unfortunately race and economic welfare are still often related.
I don’t know how the appreciation in housing over the last 10 or 15 years has “forced” anyone out their family homes. In Seattle, property taxes have not been increasing at a dramatic rate. In 2001, the average Seattle homeowner paid $3,033 in property taxes. In 2011, the average Seattle homeowner will pay $4,053 in property taxes. That’s a compound annual increase of only 2.9% per year. Chump change compared to the price increases in transportation and health care.
Anyone who owned a house in Seattle over the last 10 or 15 has made hundreds of thousands of dollars just sitting on their rear end. As someone who will have to work years, in not decades, to build similar wealth, I don’t have any sympathy for Seattle homeowners suffering from the ills>/i> of gentrification.
Metro finally fulfilled my PRR for a spreadsheet of all the raw data behind the ’09 route performance stats. I had vaguely intended to do some interesting analysis of the data and maybe write a guest post on the subject, but for various reasons, I don’t have the time right now. If anyone wants the data they can email me, Bruce Nourish, at gmail.
One thing I did have time to compute, was the cost per boarding for each route, a stat I wish Metro would publish, although it would probably upset too many people if they did. Disregarding DART and routings required operationally, the lowest cost per boarding is the off-peak First Hill turnback routing of the 3-South, at $0.42, closely followed by 4-North peak. The most expensive is the peak 209 at $24.86. The peak 71/2/3X busses are just over a buck per boarding. Surprisingly, the 41 is much more expensive.
Is this posted anywhere or are you going to? And when you say “cost per boarding” that is basically that figure that says how much a fare is supporting that boarding? I don’t believe transit has to “pay for itself” with fares but it’s interesting to see which routes are actually doing so (which is probably counter-intuitive to the typical “buses are subsidized!!!” ranter.)
My calculation was (operating cost – farebox revenue) / boardings. No routes pay for themselves in the ’09 data, but keep in mind that data is a year and a half and two fare increases old (they haven’t released ’10 yet — I’ll ask them when they plan to on Monday).
I’d love to see those cost per boarding numbers broken out. Do those costs include overhead such as Service Quality [supervisors], maintenance, and facilities [Transit centers, Park & Rides, and bases]?
All numbers would be interesting. I suspect a lot of costs for fancy park & rides such as Eastgate or Issaquah highlands would really drive up boarding costs for routes like the 212 and 218. Not including them makes the numbers look better but really isn’t honest. It’s kind of like AAA including the cost of driving but not the cost of all those parking lots out there. Ugh, this could really make your mind spin if you dig into it deeply.
Of course Link has a lot of those costs embedded in it’s cost structure since it includes the stations and track ROW.
I’m not sure how Metro breaks out the operating cost exactly — I’ll ask Monday. Some things like the driver’s wages are obviously per-route, some things like Metro police and administration are obviously not, and some things are unclear like mechanical work.
I did learn at the trolley open house that Metro keeps a LOT of data on busses. For example, trolleys go through fewer tires per thousand miles than diesels because their average speed is slower. So they have the ability to break out costs very closely if they want.
“For example, trolleys go through fewer tires per thousand miles than diesels because their average speed is slower.”
Well, that, and the simple fact that trolley drivers possess a more highly refined set of driving skills than their diesel-driving colleagues. (Just a little bus-driver trash talk to lighten the mood a bit :)
Here’s a Google spreadsheet version. I’ll email the Excel original to those of you that asked for it shortly. The columns with cost/boarding and rides/platform mile are mine, the rest is straight from Metro.
Note that you have to exercise some caution looking at cost/boarding in the Night guide time. If a daytime-only bus has a span of service from 6 AM to (say) 7:30 PM, that last 30 minutes will show up in the “Night” guide time, and it will probably have very few boardings. The 118 and 169 are examples of this.
Also keep in mind that some routes are funded in whole or part by Transit Now partnerships and regional mobility grants, so those costs do not entirely fall on King County.
@Bruce: Just a word of caution on your calculations from the report. Cost is just hours allocated to a route times the average cost for a particular type of bus, and doesn’t really tell much more than that.
Fare revenue per route is not tied to farebox receipts, but rather a best guess as to how similar routes or segments of routes generated income (ons/offs/transfer ratios/pass/cash)in the past.
To say that the 4N or 71x only cost $x.xx per boarding has a lot of built in broad assumptions into that conclusion.
ps. I know we don’t chat that much anymore ‘on-line’;-), but I’ll trade you 2008 for 2009 data.
Sure, just email me at the address above (unless you’re the Michael who already did.)
Thanks for letting us know about this resource. I just sent you an e-mail request the Excel file. I saw boarding cost/route at peak times listed in some of the RTTF data, but all day avg cost/boarding is more useful to me. I’ll do a post on it at Build the City.
Sure! I’m going to put in another request on Monday for information about how the costs, boardings and revenue for each route are computed and I’ll post that info when I get it.
It’s also kinda important to consider differences between peak and off peak. Marginal costs are way higher in the peak.
And, of course, there’s transfers, but I think someone already pointed that one out.
“Amtrak’s Passenger of the Year, 3 decades running…”
15:14
This cartoon is a little off because it implies that (1) whites are the wealthy class and (2) races don’t mix. Both stereotypes are largely a myth, and promote racial biases.
In short, this crap is boring. Can we get back to bashing the Bellevue City Council?
I’m much more interested in Princess Beatrice’s wedding hat:
I thought I was reasonable up to date on East Link news but just learned from reading the Bellevue Reporter that the Council has awarded a $250,000 contract to Hill International (not to be confused with CH2M Hill) to study the projected construction costs for the C9T tunnel. It’s not clear if the $250,000 includes investigation of potential conflict of interest in hiring Hill International.
PAUL SAUVAGE LIVES just a few doors down from the house he grew up in on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, but this neighborhood of houses bursting with bedrooms and lined with towering old trees feels vastly different from the way it was when he was a boy in the 1960s, a truth made all the more stark when he starts to talk about how many kids used to live on his street.
SeaTac Link shuttle.
My friend bought a house in the single-family part of SeaTac (north of the airport) a few years ago. I quickly noticed the lack of buses in the area. The only bus on his street is peak-only within the south end. It’s a mile to the 124, and 1 1/2 miles to TIB stn (with rolling hills in between). The only closer buses are the 122 (half-hourly and hourly) and 128 (to West Seattle and Southcenter; half-hourly till 10pm weekdays, hourly till 10pm Sundays). I considered renting it but couldn’t deal with the so-close-to-Link-and-yet-so-far, and likewise with the 124.
Now the bus on his street has turned into a Link shuttle (#129). It’s peak-only bidirectional but goes directly to TIB stn. It’s a short route — 11 minutes end-to-end, and I think just one bus that circulates back and forth. Why does this neighborhood get a Link shuttle? To replace a previous peak-only route (170).
The route is worth watching because it’s a model for future Link shuttles. It solves the last-mile problem without being a freeway express, and it brings people to Link who might never have considered Link otherwise. I’ve never been there peak hour so I don’t know how much it’s used, but conceptually it’s interesting.
Okay, with all the talk of needing to restructure the fare system to eliminate the RFA (not that Metro ever will) in order to make up for lost revenue, I had this fare restructuring idea–a three-zone fare system.
The existing two-zone fare system is modified to split North and South Seattle into separate fare zones. The zone line would mostly be on Yesler Way, but in Downtown, the two zones overlap west of I-5 between Yesler and Denny. Any trip beginning or eding in this overlapping area would NOT require an extra zone fare. North end buses that originate or terminate in Pioneer Square or the International District are also exempt from an extra zone fare.
In addition, multi-zone trips would apply at ALL times, NOT just during weekday peak hours.
What would the equivalent of Yesler Way be in Bellevue?
The rest of King County would remain unchanged. The fare zones would be:
1. North Seattle
2. South Seattle
3. The rest of King County.
Nicest day of the year so far, and I’ve spent more time stuck on buses on my way to the Arboretum than I’ll actually have to spend at the Arboretum.
Seriously, fuck Metro.
I just can’t stop thinking, “what a lovely day this could have been, if only I had a car and could have made this trip in 12 minutes.”
Instead I’m pissed off and my hands are disgusting.
Incremental improvements will NEVER allay this nightmare. Throw this baby out with the bathwater; make a new baby.
Tell me about it. I watched my 44 go through four light cycles at Market and 24th, before arriving at Ballard Ave twenty minutes late, with the following 44 sitting one light behind it. We then proceeded to make every stop on the way to the U District.
A 45-minute trip from Ballard to the U District should be unconscionable.
“Get in the left lane. Get in the left lane! Get in the left lane!!”
One thing I’m totally over is route selection by seniority. If you don’t know to get the he’ll out of the left lane when driving the 44, you shouldn’t get to drive the 44 anymore!
“…hell out of the right lane!”
And stop auto-correcting my indignation, iPhone!
To be fair, Metro gives us absolutely no guidance on ways to stay on schedule in such circumstances. With the pure emphasis on safety and virtually zero mention of schedule, other than pulling out on time and not arriving early, I suppose there are some drivers who pretty much refuse to change lanes unless absolutely necessary. After all, an accident during an unnecessary lane change will likely be ruled “preventable”. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
For my part, I feel schedule is part of the “service” component in Metro’s “Safety, Service, Schedule” and drive accordingly. I just wish that was emphasized a little bit more in training.
If you’re driving a 30,000 lb. trolley but can’t throw your weight around once in a while, then what good is it?
I used to enjoy cutting off cars to stay on schedule, with enough finesse thrown in that it was never blatant.
Plus, if my riders are late, then so am I. Only difference? They get to get off the bus at the end of the line.
There has to be a safer solution than swerving in and out of the left lane. Maybe a more appropriate solution is to make the right lane HOV/transit/freight priority, and have the SOVs pushed to the left lane.
Brent, the problem on the 44, at both 24th and 15th, is the right-turning cars getting blocked by pedestrians and blocking the whole right lane in turn. This happens EVERY rush hour and most of Sunday. The left (straight-only) lane is ALWAYS free and clear.
So transit-and-turns in the right lane would be a bad idea. In fact, it would be even worse as it would encourage buses to stick in that lane.
The correct answer is for drivers to have enough sense to take the lane that invariably gets through in one cycle as opposed to four!
Metro needs to put habitually slow drivers on the milk routes and make sure drivers on key services are up to it. That should be a BARE MINIMUM expectation.
Here’s another suggestion, d.p.: Bus stop islands, so that the buses can stay in the left lane. It would cost a pretty penny to redesign the sidewalk edges to curve the right-lane traffic around the bus top island, but that’s the sort of capital improvement for high-capacity lines that the TMP is supposed to suggest.
Brent, I’ve never been on a bus that chose the left lane and couldn’t easily get back over in time for the stop (what with the right lane blocked by turners).
Sorry, I’m not budging here. There is no safety concern. Just a stupidity concern.
…And thanks to Vélo and Mark D. for not taking offense. It’s not the majority of drivers, but it is a significant minority. Anybody who rides Metro often enough knows the experience of a bus pulling up, recognizing a habitually lethargic driver at the wheel, and cursing your luck that you’re now guaranteed to be late or miss your connection. Those drivers shouldn’t be on the core, high-volume roots, period. It’s one of the many, many differences in attitude and operational priorities between Metro and other agencies of which I was reminded on a recent trip to Vancouver. Translink clearly doesn’t put crappy drivers on priority routes.
…But now that I’m sitting at a real computer and can type a bit more, I want to move past this one particular #44 bottleneck to explain my outburst today.
Kyle, I was not on your bus.
I was going to be on your bus. The 44->43 is the logical way to get to the Arboretum from Ballard. But OneBusAway told me what you were dealing with, and so I instead rolled the dice and tried the 17->8. (It was the 8 that screwed me, and no, traffic wasn’t to blame.) Maybe I should have gone with the 18->11. Or tried to walk from the 12. But any one of those could have been just as disastrous.
I am sick of playing this game of route roulette. I shouldn’t have to spend one ounce of my energy weighing the above scenarios. On a day as nice as today, I should have been able to walk to a fast, frequent north-south route that works, switch to a fast, frequent east-west route that works, and walked the rest of the way. (On a rainy day, I could do the same, and then choose to wait for a last-mile milk-run or not.)
It brings tears to my exasperated eyes to think of how simple some of the changes could be:
How about eliminating paper transfers, just on these routes? Insist on paying cash? If you must, but no transfer. Want a transfer? Take one of the milk-runs, because this is the fast bus and you obviously don’t care about your own speed or anyone else’s.
Need to know where this bus goes? It goes straight. Major points of interest are listed on the sign. I’m sorry, I don’t have time to answer any of your other questions because this is the fast bus.
That alone would have saved me 20 minutes today.
Metro stole half my afternoon. Metro stole half my afternoon. METRO STOLE HALF MY AFTERNOON. And they’ve done it many, many times before.
Why the fuck should choice riders put up with that — or continue to fund it?
“And thanks to Vélo and Mark D. for not taking offense.”
Actually, I find your finger pointing to be rather offensive. Up to this point though, I’ve kept quiet.
My point regarding Metro training still stands. When your employer [Metro] puts ALL training emphasis on Safety and virtually none on Schedule, you’re lucky to have any of us willing to do what we can to speed service along.
Maybe after I’ve been charged with a preventable accident because I changed lanes unnecessarily to keep service moving I may join the ranks of the “habitually lethargic driver(s)”.
I can picture the drivers you are referring to and they frustrate me too – especially when I’m stuck in a tunnel tube behind one. That said, I understand that they may have very legitimate reasons to be *very* careful. As one driver said to me early on in my career: “We’re all one serious accident away from unemployment”
It’s also worth noting that if Metro ever issued a written policy guidance telling drivers that it was permissible to compromise safety in order to keep on schedule, personal injury lawyers would descend on them like wolves the next time there was a collision.
I’m definitely sorry to hear that I’ve offended you, Vélo. I really try to make clear that competent, thoughtful transit professionals are not the intended targets of my ire.
Speaking to both your and Bruce’s points, there clearly needs to be not only a shift in training priorities, but also a revision in the definition of “preventable.” Making a reasonable lane change to avoid four light cycles, and then getting into an (exceedingly rare but might happen once in a blue moon) fender-bender because another driver floors it through the yellow as you try to merge after the intersection should not be considered unreasonable driver conduct. It is absurd and obscene to discourage it. “Preventable” needs to apply only to truly poor judgment.
Still, I really want to draw attention to my comment about having to play “route roulette” just to get anywhere on Metro. Here’s what I mean when I vent my exasperation on S.T.B.:
I do my part. I pay my $81-$90 per month, every month. I know the system, and I know my way around the city. I board and exit quickly. I’m mindful of other passengers. I’m polite to all drivers and express thanks to the good ones. When wheelchairs are boarding, I flip the seat up to save everyone a few seconds.
So when is Metro going to meet me half-way? When is it going to contribute one single iota to making my life in Seattle easier rather than harder, as public transit is supposed to?
It is a massive waste of mental energy for the customer who has to strategize and scheme and weigh 5 different routes and 25 different things that could go wrong, just to get from point A to point B.
That’s not my job. That’s Metro’s job.
Public transit is a means to an end (mobility). It is not an end in itself (philosophical touchstone or blog fodder), as it is so often treated by transit geeks.
Until Metro starts acting like they realize this, they are a failure of the highest order.
Did any of you call Customer Service to complain about the driver?
Also, Metro isn’t the ones keeping the over-incentivized paper transfers. That’s the county council’s cowardice. Keep writing them every time change fumblers cause you to miss a connection, and maybe they’ll eventually get it. Or at least, they’ll grow tired of hearing from you and do something about it.
I know there’s some number you can call after-hours or on weekends to get a human being (note: it’s not the “customer service” number).
But I’ve never had anything resembling a productive interaction with Metro’s phone-based “accountability” personnel, and I’m not wasting one more moment of my remaining sanity with them.
Also, for all intents and purposes, King County and Metro are synonymous.
If you live in an incorporated municipality, the county does very little of any daily use to you except for running the public transportation system.
Regardless, I don’t even think that’s true. On political matters dealing with service allocations and costs, the parochial Council needs to be appeased. On matters like “paper transfers or no,” my sense is that the Council just rubber stamps Metro’s prevailing/current/frequently asinine way of doing things.
“Get in the left lane. Get in the left lane! Get in the left lane!!”
One thing I’m totally over is route selection by seniority. If you don’t know to get the he’ll out of the left lane when driving the 44, you shouldn’t get to drive the 44 anymore!
Those of you who commented on the 73/41 stop consolidations received the mixed news today.
Dut to poorly-thought-out pressure from save-my-stoppers (or perhaps, car-driving NIMBYs tired of waiting behind stopped buses close to an intersection), Metro is now considering closing the intersectional bus stops at 15th Ave NE and NE 125th St, and instead keeping more closely-spaced stops on both those routes, but away from the transfer point. I urge everyone reading this to contact Metro Customer Service and object to this change of plans. Stops close to transfer points are the most important to keep.
That sucks. Your transfer bus is coming at a right angle to your direction of travel. How the hell can you tell if you need to hurry to the next route, if you’re a block away and can’t see didley squat.
Anybody driving a car in Seattle deserves to sit there behind a bus approaching a bus stop, if there too stupid to pass before they get into that situation.
Or maybe there insane. Repeating the same action and expecting a different result.
I do not disagree that stops close to transfer points are very important nor do I disagree that stop consolidations are bad ideas. Having said that, who is transferring from the 73 (or any of the 15th sve NE routes) to the 41 or vice-versa? Any transfer made there could be made other places better or faster than there.
M,
That double-negative may have come out wrong.
There are several routes that transfer at that corner:
It’s a great opportunity to hop into the Safeway, do some shopping, and come back out in time for one’s second bus.
I was going for the triple negative and came up short. :)
I understand that there are a lot of routes there but, based on where they go and how they get there, is anyone really transferring between the two? (I’m sure someone is but I mean substantially.) If I’m anywhere south of NE 80th Street and I want to get to Lake City, the 72 is going to beat a 73->41 connection most of the time. Same in reverse. If I am between 80th and Northgate way, I’m probably going to transfer to a 75 at N’gate way instead of waiting to get to 125th for a 41. If I am on a 41 to Northgate, I’m not getting off at 15th to take a 347 or 348 that is going to the same place. I could go on and on about all the route combinations.
Yes, if you are in Lake City or along 125th and you want to get to Mountlake Terrace or Richmond Beach then you would transfer at this intersection. How many people are doing that, though? And how many other people would see that and still ride to NTC because they know they can sit down while waiting for the transfer?
Just because this is an intersection of many routes doesn’t mean it is an important transfer point in the grand scheme of things.
Metro could look at the ORCA data and see how many transfers are occuring between those routes.
I’m not sure they can do that. A transfer between the 41 and the 347 or 348 can occur at this intersection or at Northgate Transit Center. Because ORCA doesn’t know where it is on the bus, I don’t think the data can tell the difference.
With the push to eventually remove the Alaskan Way Viaduct, why are there so many construction projects underway to construct new ramps onto the existing structure?
So that people can still use the viaduct while they tear down the southern end next year.
Transit drivers generally learn to think of private automobiles and their drivers as moving fire-plugs. Your work consists of driving around them and not hitting them- but you never put yourself in a position where your safety, schedule, or general performance depends on their driving ability.
I like the idea of basing Metro route and equipment assignments by proven ability, not seniority. It’d be great to have drivers strive to improve their driving skills for fear of losing the coveted Route 124 on Pac Highway, or much-sought-after rush hour and evening runs on the Route 7!
One thing first, however: stipulate that the harder the run, the more it pays. It takes about a year full-time to get fully familiar with a trolleybus, to merit wire overhead, a route must feature steep hills or huge passenger loads, or both.
Trolley instructors should also be paid extra, and selected for proven coach-handling and teaching ability combined.
And a deal: I won’t get offended about anything at all in Seattle ever again on one condition: “Almost Live” gets put back on the air. Would love to see John Keister be Ole Torgeson, chief instructor of the Ballard Academy of Route 44 Driving.
Mark Dublin
Returning to the topic of the post…
Gentrification is foremost a *class* change; not necessarily a racial one (as John B. hinted above). Ballard has gentrified; Belltown has gentrified. That’s not a racial change; it’s a class one.
The cartoon reduces class to race.
Except that class mostly equals race in basically any part of the country that isn’t the Northwest.
Vaguely related to the cartoon. (I highly recommend Vintage Seattle for both great old pictures of Seattle and to strongly tie a sense of history to a sense of place – that corner’s on Aurora just past the Green Lake exit)
Hey, since the Viaduct is (most likely) gonna come down, can’t someone tell a Hollywood studio so they can do a fantastic car chase scene similar to “Ronin” or even “French Connection” (but the viaduct instead of rail!)? Or maybe even “Live Free and Die Hard” where the viaduct gets blown to bits by the military? A couple of car crashes on the viaduct, cars going between different levels, smashing through the barriers and crashing onto the old waterfront streetcar tracks…YEAH!!!
Via.
So painfully true.
Except that Seattle is proportionally more “white” than most of its “suburbs”.
So, it’s painfully false.
So you missed the last two panels eh?
Seattle whites did not move “back” into the city.
Are you saying that back in the 1970s Seattle was more like Philadelphia?
John, the last two panels are a much more recent phenomenon. Obviously, the comic is an oversimplification and exaggeration, but holds some truths. It’s not until the last Census did we see declines in the minority populations in the Rainier Valley.
John, it’s obviously not a Seattle-specific cartoon.
Tom Toles is from just outside Buffalo, NY, an area this is much more accurate for. They’re having a re-influx of middle class 20 and 30 somethings moving into their downtown areas.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2014923586_danny01.html
“Despite extremes like that, Seattle is — again according to the census — one of the least racially divided big cities in America.
That’s based on another measure, called dissimilarity, that looks at how different races are distributed across census tracts. Seattle doesn’t rank in the top 50 among big cities for segregation (Milwaukee, New York, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland are the top five most racially segregated).”
Martin: I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this graphic, but it is very offensive to even post.
I know of many minorities who have been priced out of their family homes and forced to move to the suburbs. Central and Rainier districts are good examples of high home prices and even higher property taxes that make the decision to flee to the burbs an economic reality.
That’s exactly what this editorial cartoon is showing. That’s the whole point!
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of political cartooning. They endeavor to illustrate experiences such as the one you describe, hyperbolizing and injecting just enough black humor to attract attention to the issue.
Are you offended by the medium itself?
No, but I can genuinely be sad that so many families have been displaced because they could no longer afford to live or make a living in their multi generational neighborhoods.
But but! It’s the free market! ;-)
Except that exaggeration starts with a kernel of truth.
This cartoon is not true at all…especially in the history of PNW cities (yes, I mixed up the letters on purpose).
This is just a cartoon to play into the fantasies and fallacies of urbists who really..really…want to think things are a certain way because it fits their preconceived prejudices…but has zero to do with any fact based analysis.
Did John Bailo just accuse other people of having a tenuous grip on facts?
Mke, so you believe that anything that could possibly offend anyone should never be printed or posted?
“Central and Rainier districts are good examples of high home prices and even higher property taxes that make the decision to flee to the burbs an economic reality.”
I don’t believe the property tax aspect is entirely accurate. My understanding is that under the Washington Constitution unless your house is going up significantly more in value than other houses in the jurisdiction than there shouldn’t be any noticeable change in tax other than the yearly 1% increase.
That 1% rule only applies to about a third of what’s rolled up in your property tax bill. It doesn’t account for local levies. School levies alone account for another third and even if the levy rate stays the same you pay an increase based on assessed value.
Good point.
Why do all you Seattle racists assume that all non-whites are automatically low income?
In Queens, NYC, my birth place, the average family income for African-Americans is higher than for European-American families.
This cartoon and most of the “dialog” here is very offensive and prejudiced.
I’ve posted this before but I highly recommend the video “MOHAI Presents: There Goes the Neighborhood Again 3/2/2005” about the Central Area, available online at the bottom of
http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/watchVideos.asp?program=MOHAI
Mike, you’re right to be grieved over the reality behind the cartoon- which stems from the assumption this country was born deliberately infected with: the lighter your skin, the bluer your eyes, the blonder your hair, the better you are.
But there’s been a new prejudice added these last thirty years: the less manual work you do and the more abstract whatever you produce, the more money and power you’re entitled to. And the reverse, with a lot more force behind it.
I walked around the Pearl District in Portland day before yesterday. First thought, as always: I hope South Lake Union gets as good on its best day as the Pearl District on its worst.
Second thought: what could make all of Seattle an order of magnitude greater is to create a city like this where people can earn the wages to live- notice I didn’t say “affordable”- making under decent conditions the products currently done by slave labor in China and worse places.
Prejudice: I like atmosphere better when it’s earning its keep. Keep the beautiful old factories. But have at least some of them, under decent wages and conditions, make something.
Mark Dublin
It’s like all biting political cartoons: make a coincidence sound intentional. It still shows the de facto result. Two inaccuracies: (1) the suburban movement started long before white flight (1910s not 1960s). (2) If the whites really wanted to get minorities out of inner cities, they could have skipped directly to the last step by gentrifying without moving to the suburbs and back. More housing would have been built on the edge in any case (due to expanding population and wealth), and the minorities would have just moved there directly — as they did in most other countries.
What do you like about the Pearl district? I rode the streetcar through it and found it too residential. Not enough businesses; not enough reason to go there if you’re not a resident. It’s dense and transit-oriented, yes, but it’s still mostly a bedroom community.
It never ceases to amaze how people will look for any possible reason to be offended. Seems to be worse in Seattle than most places.
Yeah, it’s quite the touchy bunch. I hope their feelings weren’t hurt too badly by a political cartoon that was obviously intended to wound them personally.
sell their homes for a large profit and buy a bigger, newer home in the suburbs, The American Dream. This is an economic issues not a racial one. Unfortunately race and economic welfare are still often related.
I don’t know how the appreciation in housing over the last 10 or 15 years has “forced” anyone out their family homes. In Seattle, property taxes have not been increasing at a dramatic rate. In 2001, the average Seattle homeowner paid $3,033 in property taxes. In 2011, the average Seattle homeowner will pay $4,053 in property taxes. That’s a compound annual increase of only 2.9% per year. Chump change compared to the price increases in transportation and health care.
Anyone who owned a house in Seattle over the last 10 or 15 has made hundreds of thousands of dollars just sitting on their rear end. As someone who will have to work years, in not decades, to build similar wealth, I don’t have any sympathy for Seattle homeowners suffering from the ills>/i> of gentrification.
Metro finally fulfilled my PRR for a spreadsheet of all the raw data behind the ’09 route performance stats. I had vaguely intended to do some interesting analysis of the data and maybe write a guest post on the subject, but for various reasons, I don’t have the time right now. If anyone wants the data they can email me, Bruce Nourish, at gmail.
One thing I did have time to compute, was the cost per boarding for each route, a stat I wish Metro would publish, although it would probably upset too many people if they did. Disregarding DART and routings required operationally, the lowest cost per boarding is the off-peak First Hill turnback routing of the 3-South, at $0.42, closely followed by 4-North peak. The most expensive is the peak 209 at $24.86. The peak 71/2/3X busses are just over a buck per boarding. Surprisingly, the 41 is much more expensive.
Is this posted anywhere or are you going to? And when you say “cost per boarding” that is basically that figure that says how much a fare is supporting that boarding? I don’t believe transit has to “pay for itself” with fares but it’s interesting to see which routes are actually doing so (which is probably counter-intuitive to the typical “buses are subsidized!!!” ranter.)
My calculation was (operating cost – farebox revenue) / boardings. No routes pay for themselves in the ’09 data, but keep in mind that data is a year and a half and two fare increases old (they haven’t released ’10 yet — I’ll ask them when they plan to on Monday).
I’d love to see those cost per boarding numbers broken out. Do those costs include overhead such as Service Quality [supervisors], maintenance, and facilities [Transit centers, Park & Rides, and bases]?
All numbers would be interesting. I suspect a lot of costs for fancy park & rides such as Eastgate or Issaquah highlands would really drive up boarding costs for routes like the 212 and 218. Not including them makes the numbers look better but really isn’t honest. It’s kind of like AAA including the cost of driving but not the cost of all those parking lots out there. Ugh, this could really make your mind spin if you dig into it deeply.
Of course Link has a lot of those costs embedded in it’s cost structure since it includes the stations and track ROW.
I’m not sure how Metro breaks out the operating cost exactly — I’ll ask Monday. Some things like the driver’s wages are obviously per-route, some things like Metro police and administration are obviously not, and some things are unclear like mechanical work.
I did learn at the trolley open house that Metro keeps a LOT of data on busses. For example, trolleys go through fewer tires per thousand miles than diesels because their average speed is slower. So they have the ability to break out costs very closely if they want.
“For example, trolleys go through fewer tires per thousand miles than diesels because their average speed is slower.”
Well, that, and the simple fact that trolley drivers possess a more highly refined set of driving skills than their diesel-driving colleagues. (Just a little bus-driver trash talk to lighten the mood a bit :)
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aim_UT0KMRWddF9SbVhjS3JPQkl0ZmVCb29TSndnRlE&hl=en&authkey=CM2OuI4K
Here’s a Google spreadsheet version. I’ll email the Excel original to those of you that asked for it shortly. The columns with cost/boarding and rides/platform mile are mine, the rest is straight from Metro.
Note that you have to exercise some caution looking at cost/boarding in the Night guide time. If a daytime-only bus has a span of service from 6 AM to (say) 7:30 PM, that last 30 minutes will show up in the “Night” guide time, and it will probably have very few boardings. The 118 and 169 are examples of this.
Also keep in mind that some routes are funded in whole or part by Transit Now partnerships and regional mobility grants, so those costs do not entirely fall on King County.
@Bruce: Just a word of caution on your calculations from the report. Cost is just hours allocated to a route times the average cost for a particular type of bus, and doesn’t really tell much more than that.
Fare revenue per route is not tied to farebox receipts, but rather a best guess as to how similar routes or segments of routes generated income (ons/offs/transfer ratios/pass/cash)in the past.
To say that the 4N or 71x only cost $x.xx per boarding has a lot of built in broad assumptions into that conclusion.
ps. I know we don’t chat that much anymore ‘on-line’;-), but I’ll trade you 2008 for 2009 data.
Sure, just email me at the address above (unless you’re the Michael who already did.)
Thanks for letting us know about this resource. I just sent you an e-mail request the Excel file. I saw boarding cost/route at peak times listed in some of the RTTF data, but all day avg cost/boarding is more useful to me. I’ll do a post on it at Build the City.
Sure! I’m going to put in another request on Monday for information about how the costs, boardings and revenue for each route are computed and I’ll post that info when I get it.
It’s also kinda important to consider differences between peak and off peak. Marginal costs are way higher in the peak.
And, of course, there’s transfers, but I think someone already pointed that one out.
“Amtrak’s Passenger of the Year, 3 decades running…”
15:14
This cartoon is a little off because it implies that (1) whites are the wealthy class and (2) races don’t mix. Both stereotypes are largely a myth, and promote racial biases.
In short, this crap is boring. Can we get back to bashing the Bellevue City Council?
I’m much more interested in Princess Beatrice’s wedding hat:
http://cdn.theatlanticwire.com/img/upload/2011/04/29/cat.jpg
That’s a hat!? I thought it was a birth defect.
I thought I was reasonable up to date on East Link news but just learned from reading the Bellevue Reporter that the Council has awarded a $250,000 contract to Hill International (not to be confused with CH2M Hill) to study the projected construction costs for the C9T tunnel. It’s not clear if the $250,000 includes investigation of potential conflict of interest in hiring Hill International.
By odd coincidence…
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2014828752_pacificpcapitolhill01.html
SeaTac Link shuttle.
My friend bought a house in the single-family part of SeaTac (north of the airport) a few years ago. I quickly noticed the lack of buses in the area. The only bus on his street is peak-only within the south end. It’s a mile to the 124, and 1 1/2 miles to TIB stn (with rolling hills in between). The only closer buses are the 122 (half-hourly and hourly) and 128 (to West Seattle and Southcenter; half-hourly till 10pm weekdays, hourly till 10pm Sundays). I considered renting it but couldn’t deal with the so-close-to-Link-and-yet-so-far, and likewise with the 124.
Now the bus on his street has turned into a Link shuttle (#129). It’s peak-only bidirectional but goes directly to TIB stn. It’s a short route — 11 minutes end-to-end, and I think just one bus that circulates back and forth. Why does this neighborhood get a Link shuttle? To replace a previous peak-only route (170).
The route is worth watching because it’s a model for future Link shuttles. It solves the last-mile problem without being a freeway express, and it brings people to Link who might never have considered Link otherwise. I’ve never been there peak hour so I don’t know how much it’s used, but conceptually it’s interesting.
Okay, with all the talk of needing to restructure the fare system to eliminate the RFA (not that Metro ever will) in order to make up for lost revenue, I had this fare restructuring idea–a three-zone fare system.
The existing two-zone fare system is modified to split North and South Seattle into separate fare zones. The zone line would mostly be on Yesler Way, but in Downtown, the two zones overlap west of I-5 between Yesler and Denny. Any trip beginning or eding in this overlapping area would NOT require an extra zone fare. North end buses that originate or terminate in Pioneer Square or the International District are also exempt from an extra zone fare.
In addition, multi-zone trips would apply at ALL times, NOT just during weekday peak hours.
What would the equivalent of Yesler Way be in Bellevue?
The rest of King County would remain unchanged. The fare zones would be:
1. North Seattle
2. South Seattle
3. The rest of King County.
Nicest day of the year so far, and I’ve spent more time stuck on buses on my way to the Arboretum than I’ll actually have to spend at the Arboretum.
Seriously, fuck Metro.
I just can’t stop thinking, “what a lovely day this could have been, if only I had a car and could have made this trip in 12 minutes.”
Instead I’m pissed off and my hands are disgusting.
Incremental improvements will NEVER allay this nightmare. Throw this baby out with the bathwater; make a new baby.
Tell me about it. I watched my 44 go through four light cycles at Market and 24th, before arriving at Ballard Ave twenty minutes late, with the following 44 sitting one light behind it. We then proceeded to make every stop on the way to the U District.
A 45-minute trip from Ballard to the U District should be unconscionable.
“Get in the left lane. Get in the left lane! Get in the left lane!!”
One thing I’m totally over is route selection by seniority. If you don’t know to get the he’ll out of the left lane when driving the 44, you shouldn’t get to drive the 44 anymore!
“…hell out of the right lane!”
And stop auto-correcting my indignation, iPhone!
To be fair, Metro gives us absolutely no guidance on ways to stay on schedule in such circumstances. With the pure emphasis on safety and virtually zero mention of schedule, other than pulling out on time and not arriving early, I suppose there are some drivers who pretty much refuse to change lanes unless absolutely necessary. After all, an accident during an unnecessary lane change will likely be ruled “preventable”. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
For my part, I feel schedule is part of the “service” component in Metro’s “Safety, Service, Schedule” and drive accordingly. I just wish that was emphasized a little bit more in training.
If you’re driving a 30,000 lb. trolley but can’t throw your weight around once in a while, then what good is it?
I used to enjoy cutting off cars to stay on schedule, with enough finesse thrown in that it was never blatant.
Plus, if my riders are late, then so am I. Only difference? They get to get off the bus at the end of the line.
There has to be a safer solution than swerving in and out of the left lane. Maybe a more appropriate solution is to make the right lane HOV/transit/freight priority, and have the SOVs pushed to the left lane.
Brent, the problem on the 44, at both 24th and 15th, is the right-turning cars getting blocked by pedestrians and blocking the whole right lane in turn. This happens EVERY rush hour and most of Sunday. The left (straight-only) lane is ALWAYS free and clear.
So transit-and-turns in the right lane would be a bad idea. In fact, it would be even worse as it would encourage buses to stick in that lane.
The correct answer is for drivers to have enough sense to take the lane that invariably gets through in one cycle as opposed to four!
Metro needs to put habitually slow drivers on the milk routes and make sure drivers on key services are up to it. That should be a BARE MINIMUM expectation.
Here’s another suggestion, d.p.: Bus stop islands, so that the buses can stay in the left lane. It would cost a pretty penny to redesign the sidewalk edges to curve the right-lane traffic around the bus top island, but that’s the sort of capital improvement for high-capacity lines that the TMP is supposed to suggest.
Brent, I’ve never been on a bus that chose the left lane and couldn’t easily get back over in time for the stop (what with the right lane blocked by turners).
Sorry, I’m not budging here. There is no safety concern. Just a stupidity concern.
…And thanks to Vélo and Mark D. for not taking offense. It’s not the majority of drivers, but it is a significant minority. Anybody who rides Metro often enough knows the experience of a bus pulling up, recognizing a habitually lethargic driver at the wheel, and cursing your luck that you’re now guaranteed to be late or miss your connection. Those drivers shouldn’t be on the core, high-volume roots, period. It’s one of the many, many differences in attitude and operational priorities between Metro and other agencies of which I was reminded on a recent trip to Vancouver. Translink clearly doesn’t put crappy drivers on priority routes.
…But now that I’m sitting at a real computer and can type a bit more, I want to move past this one particular #44 bottleneck to explain my outburst today.
Kyle, I was not on your bus.
I was going to be on your bus. The 44->43 is the logical way to get to the Arboretum from Ballard. But OneBusAway told me what you were dealing with, and so I instead rolled the dice and tried the 17->8. (It was the 8 that screwed me, and no, traffic wasn’t to blame.) Maybe I should have gone with the 18->11. Or tried to walk from the 12. But any one of those could have been just as disastrous.
I am sick of playing this game of route roulette. I shouldn’t have to spend one ounce of my energy weighing the above scenarios. On a day as nice as today, I should have been able to walk to a fast, frequent north-south route that works, switch to a fast, frequent east-west route that works, and walked the rest of the way. (On a rainy day, I could do the same, and then choose to wait for a last-mile milk-run or not.)
It brings tears to my exasperated eyes to think of how simple some of the changes could be:
How about eliminating paper transfers, just on these routes? Insist on paying cash? If you must, but no transfer. Want a transfer? Take one of the milk-runs, because this is the fast bus and you obviously don’t care about your own speed or anyone else’s.
Need to know where this bus goes? It goes straight. Major points of interest are listed on the sign. I’m sorry, I don’t have time to answer any of your other questions because this is the fast bus.
That alone would have saved me 20 minutes today.
Metro stole half my afternoon. Metro stole half my afternoon. METRO STOLE HALF MY AFTERNOON. And they’ve done it many, many times before.
Why the fuck should choice riders put up with that — or continue to fund it?
“And thanks to Vélo and Mark D. for not taking offense.”
Actually, I find your finger pointing to be rather offensive. Up to this point though, I’ve kept quiet.
My point regarding Metro training still stands. When your employer [Metro] puts ALL training emphasis on Safety and virtually none on Schedule, you’re lucky to have any of us willing to do what we can to speed service along.
Maybe after I’ve been charged with a preventable accident because I changed lanes unnecessarily to keep service moving I may join the ranks of the “habitually lethargic driver(s)”.
I can picture the drivers you are referring to and they frustrate me too – especially when I’m stuck in a tunnel tube behind one. That said, I understand that they may have very legitimate reasons to be *very* careful. As one driver said to me early on in my career: “We’re all one serious accident away from unemployment”
It’s also worth noting that if Metro ever issued a written policy guidance telling drivers that it was permissible to compromise safety in order to keep on schedule, personal injury lawyers would descend on them like wolves the next time there was a collision.
I’m definitely sorry to hear that I’ve offended you, Vélo. I really try to make clear that competent, thoughtful transit professionals are not the intended targets of my ire.
Speaking to both your and Bruce’s points, there clearly needs to be not only a shift in training priorities, but also a revision in the definition of “preventable.” Making a reasonable lane change to avoid four light cycles, and then getting into an (exceedingly rare but might happen once in a blue moon) fender-bender because another driver floors it through the yellow as you try to merge after the intersection should not be considered unreasonable driver conduct. It is absurd and obscene to discourage it. “Preventable” needs to apply only to truly poor judgment.
Still, I really want to draw attention to my comment about having to play “route roulette” just to get anywhere on Metro. Here’s what I mean when I vent my exasperation on S.T.B.:
I do my part. I pay my $81-$90 per month, every month. I know the system, and I know my way around the city. I board and exit quickly. I’m mindful of other passengers. I’m polite to all drivers and express thanks to the good ones. When wheelchairs are boarding, I flip the seat up to save everyone a few seconds.
So when is Metro going to meet me half-way? When is it going to contribute one single iota to making my life in Seattle easier rather than harder, as public transit is supposed to?
It is a massive waste of mental energy for the customer who has to strategize and scheme and weigh 5 different routes and 25 different things that could go wrong, just to get from point A to point B.
That’s not my job. That’s Metro’s job.
Public transit is a means to an end (mobility). It is not an end in itself (philosophical touchstone or blog fodder), as it is so often treated by transit geeks.
Until Metro starts acting like they realize this, they are a failure of the highest order.
Did any of you call Customer Service to complain about the driver?
Also, Metro isn’t the ones keeping the over-incentivized paper transfers. That’s the county council’s cowardice. Keep writing them every time change fumblers cause you to miss a connection, and maybe they’ll eventually get it. Or at least, they’ll grow tired of hearing from you and do something about it.
I know there’s some number you can call after-hours or on weekends to get a human being (note: it’s not the “customer service” number).
But I’ve never had anything resembling a productive interaction with Metro’s phone-based “accountability” personnel, and I’m not wasting one more moment of my remaining sanity with them.
Also, for all intents and purposes, King County and Metro are synonymous.
If you live in an incorporated municipality, the county does very little of any daily use to you except for running the public transportation system.
Regardless, I don’t even think that’s true. On political matters dealing with service allocations and costs, the parochial Council needs to be appeased. On matters like “paper transfers or no,” my sense is that the Council just rubber stamps Metro’s prevailing/current/frequently asinine way of doing things.
“Get in the left lane. Get in the left lane! Get in the left lane!!”
One thing I’m totally over is route selection by seniority. If you don’t know to get the he’ll out of the left lane when driving the 44, you shouldn’t get to drive the 44 anymore!
Those of you who commented on the 73/41 stop consolidations received the mixed news today.
Dut to poorly-thought-out pressure from save-my-stoppers (or perhaps, car-driving NIMBYs tired of waiting behind stopped buses close to an intersection), Metro is now considering closing the intersectional bus stops at 15th Ave NE and NE 125th St, and instead keeping more closely-spaced stops on both those routes, but away from the transfer point. I urge everyone reading this to contact Metro Customer Service and object to this change of plans. Stops close to transfer points are the most important to keep.
That sucks. Your transfer bus is coming at a right angle to your direction of travel. How the hell can you tell if you need to hurry to the next route, if you’re a block away and can’t see didley squat.
Anybody driving a car in Seattle deserves to sit there behind a bus approaching a bus stop, if there too stupid to pass before they get into that situation.
Or maybe there insane. Repeating the same action and expecting a different result.
I do not disagree that stops close to transfer points are very important nor do I disagree that stop consolidations are bad ideas. Having said that, who is transferring from the 73 (or any of the 15th sve NE routes) to the 41 or vice-versa? Any transfer made there could be made other places better or faster than there.
M,
That double-negative may have come out wrong.
There are several routes that transfer at that corner:
http://metro.kingcounty.gov/cftemplates/show_map.cfm?BUS_ROUTE=041&DAY_NAV=WSU
It’s a great opportunity to hop into the Safeway, do some shopping, and come back out in time for one’s second bus.
I was going for the triple negative and came up short. :)
I understand that there are a lot of routes there but, based on where they go and how they get there, is anyone really transferring between the two? (I’m sure someone is but I mean substantially.) If I’m anywhere south of NE 80th Street and I want to get to Lake City, the 72 is going to beat a 73->41 connection most of the time. Same in reverse. If I am between 80th and Northgate way, I’m probably going to transfer to a 75 at N’gate way instead of waiting to get to 125th for a 41. If I am on a 41 to Northgate, I’m not getting off at 15th to take a 347 or 348 that is going to the same place. I could go on and on about all the route combinations.
Yes, if you are in Lake City or along 125th and you want to get to Mountlake Terrace or Richmond Beach then you would transfer at this intersection. How many people are doing that, though? And how many other people would see that and still ride to NTC because they know they can sit down while waiting for the transfer?
Just because this is an intersection of many routes doesn’t mean it is an important transfer point in the grand scheme of things.
Metro could look at the ORCA data and see how many transfers are occuring between those routes.
I’m not sure they can do that. A transfer between the 41 and the 347 or 348 can occur at this intersection or at Northgate Transit Center. Because ORCA doesn’t know where it is on the bus, I don’t think the data can tell the difference.
With the push to eventually remove the Alaskan Way Viaduct, why are there so many construction projects underway to construct new ramps onto the existing structure?
So that people can still use the viaduct while they tear down the southern end next year.
Transit drivers generally learn to think of private automobiles and their drivers as moving fire-plugs. Your work consists of driving around them and not hitting them- but you never put yourself in a position where your safety, schedule, or general performance depends on their driving ability.
I like the idea of basing Metro route and equipment assignments by proven ability, not seniority. It’d be great to have drivers strive to improve their driving skills for fear of losing the coveted Route 124 on Pac Highway, or much-sought-after rush hour and evening runs on the Route 7!
One thing first, however: stipulate that the harder the run, the more it pays. It takes about a year full-time to get fully familiar with a trolleybus, to merit wire overhead, a route must feature steep hills or huge passenger loads, or both.
Trolley instructors should also be paid extra, and selected for proven coach-handling and teaching ability combined.
And a deal: I won’t get offended about anything at all in Seattle ever again on one condition: “Almost Live” gets put back on the air. Would love to see John Keister be Ole Torgeson, chief instructor of the Ballard Academy of Route 44 Driving.
Mark Dublin
Returning to the topic of the post…
Gentrification is foremost a *class* change; not necessarily a racial one (as John B. hinted above). Ballard has gentrified; Belltown has gentrified. That’s not a racial change; it’s a class one.
The cartoon reduces class to race.
Except that class mostly equals race in basically any part of the country that isn’t the Northwest.
Vaguely related to the cartoon. (I highly recommend Vintage Seattle for both great old pictures of Seattle and to strongly tie a sense of history to a sense of place – that corner’s on Aurora just past the Green Lake exit)
Hey, since the Viaduct is (most likely) gonna come down, can’t someone tell a Hollywood studio so they can do a fantastic car chase scene similar to “Ronin” or even “French Connection” (but the viaduct instead of rail!)? Or maybe even “Live Free and Die Hard” where the viaduct gets blown to bits by the military? A couple of car crashes on the viaduct, cars going between different levels, smashing through the barriers and crashing onto the old waterfront streetcar tracks…YEAH!!!