Brooklyn Access Plan
Brooklyn Access Plan

On Wednesday evening, 6-8:30 PM in the Neptune Theatre, Sound Transit is hosting an open house to present, and obtain public feedback on, the 60% design of Brooklyn Station. ST staff tell me there is “nothing earth-shattering” in the changes to the station itself since 30% design. Long-time readers will recall that due to very strong public feedback about ST’s initial choice to use a single entrance, ST revised the design to provide two entrances while maintaining minimal cost and construction risk. With no pitched battles about parking (there won’t be any) or overbuilding (it’ll be designed for at least 65′ overbuild), the public has been reduced to arguing over the station name.

There is a fairly significant change to the construction process. Sound Transit has decided to add a one-lane access road around the University Manor Apartments, from Brooklyn Ave to 43rd St, supported by a deck overhanging the construction pit, as shown on the map above. This strikes me as a not-inexpensive addition to the project, but the neighboring businesses and residents apparently made a compelling case to ST that this vehicular connection was extremely important to the neighborhood; ST staff declined to make public the cost, citing the preliminary nature of cost estimates at this point. ST also floated the possibility of a pedestrian path around the southwest corner of the site, also shown on the map above.

102 Replies to “Brooklyn Station 60% Design Open House”

  1. What is the latest plan for how the TBMs will go? Does UW Station have to wait for Brooklyn Station tunneling to be complete before UW Station can finish construction or open for service?

    1. Which station are you referring to? The one down by Husky Stadium? That station will open in 2016 along with the rest of the U-Link line through Cap Hill.

      It’s opening date is not related to the construction schedule for North Link.

    2. A TBM arrival area/retrieval shaft was engineered (see page 8) into UW station so they don’t have to interrupt U-Link operations to accomodate tunneling.

  2. The question is whether “University of Washington Station” is the final name. Since most UW riders will use the station on 45th St., not the one at Husky Stadium, it would make sense to name the UW South station “Husky Stadium” or “Montlake.” and the northern one any of the things previously discussed, such as “Brooklyn/45th” or just “University District.”

    My guess is that there’s still time: at this point in Central Link construction, we still had a Henderson Station. But I’ll ask at the meeting.

    1. The words “Stadium” and “University” can’t be used in any new station names since we already have stations by those names.

      2. Anyway, if you want an ugly name, but a distinctive one, how about “Ship Canal Station” :-)

    2. I don’t think “University of Washington” station is a good name by itself for either place. However, why not “University of Washington/Montlake” and “University of Washington/Brooklyn 45th” or something? They name stations this way in Japan, which is why you have a Shinjuku station, a Minami Shinjuku station, a Shinjuku sanchome station, a Nishi Shinjuku station, etc. Because both bits of information are there, no one is confused.

      The stupidest thing they could possibly do is have a University of Washington station, a University Street station and a University District station. Just so, so dumb.

      1. “Brooklyn Station — University District” is a decent name, but “University District” by itself would be bad even without the other “university” stations. The U-District is currently a place that is a lot larger than the station area, and you get to a confusing synecdoche if you try to simultaneously maintain two names for the same place.

        The same is true of the “Capitol Hill” station. That should be called “Broadway Station” otherwise, over time, the meaning of “Capitol Hill” be unclear and other names will have to be developed.

      2. Indeed, do NOT follow the model of the DC Metro, which now has some ridiculous double-hyphenated six word station names.

      2. Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, and the station names should reflect this. The streets can be added as a subtitle. “Brooklyn” is not about the street; it’s the original name for the neighborhood so it ties into Seattle’s history. “New York” was one of Seattle’s original names, and “Brooklyn” is fitting as the second-largest “borough”. It’s also fitting as a commitment to urbanism. The name Brooklyn is almost forgotten, so this is just the kind of high-visibility monument to preserve it.

        PS. I lived in the U-district for 18 years, I transfer through it every weekday, and I may again move to it someday. So I’m not just imposing an outsider’s opinion, but looking at one of my primary stations.

      3. Mike O. puts forth the most compelling argument for Brooklyn Station. I’d also point out it’s advantage in not being confused with any other point on the line. Similarly Sundodge Station evokes the history of the UW and although it’s close to the Montlake Cut it’s purpose it primarily to serve the UW and not the Montlake Neighborhood. There’s already a Sundodger statue there which is commonly used as a meet-up point.

      5. Every city is a city of neighborhoods and every city has history. Transit stations should have names that are useful — they should tell you where the station is, not try to push a new old name on the station’s vicinity. Brooklyn is two things: an obsolete neighborhood name and the name of a north-south street, which is not useful at all for telling you where you’re going on a light rail line that travels primarily north-south. Sundodger is… well, actually, I have no damn idea what a “sundodger” is.

        The “Brooklyn” station ought to have 43rd St. prominently in its name (Perhaps Brooklyn/43rd? Spoken, “Brooklyn Avenue Northeast and 43rd Street”). For one, to help people find the entrances that are conveniently located away from the most important streets in the area. And, for another, because that gives you a pretty unambiguous idea how far north/south you are on a north-south transit line.

        The naming for the southern U District station is fraught, since it’s sort of off the street grid and near the University’s stadiums but University and Stadium are already stations. I might call it Pacific/Montlake or Montlake Bridge Station or something but I don’t care much. I like my station names full of street names. Maybe that’s because I’m from another “city of neighborhoods” that has a real rapid transit system that has many neighborhoods with multiple stops in them, and that’s been around long enough to see the neighborhoods shift and change names.

      6. Transit stations should have names that are useful — they should tell you where the station is, not try to push a new old name on the station’s vicinity

        Because people would have an easier time navigating the Underground if they renamed Charing Cross as Strand/Whitehall Station?

      7. Hmm, since the stadium station is kinda in the u district, but kinda to the south, how about “South U-District” …? People understand what “south” means, and this makes the general locus clear as well.

        Then the Ave station can be called “Central U-District” …

        In the end, for regular users they’re just labels, but for occasional users, a general form of “neighborhood + modifer” is pretty useful…

      9. @Bernie: Neither of those names tells me anything, I’ve never been to London.

        But you’re being purposefully dense. In Seattle today 43rd is an east-west street and Brooklyn is a north-south street (Sundodger is nothing, and furthermore it’s nothing that’s hard to type).

        The difficulty of naming multiple transit stops in the same neighborhood is precisely the reason that naming stops after neighborhoods is wrong. Maybe it works if you have really granular place names, maybe that’s the case in an old city like London, but it ain’t true here. We run into this problem after just two U District stops in Seattle.

        Seattle may be a city of neighborhoods. Some of those neighborhoods have nice unambiguous names and some of them only have one logical place for a train station. But some of those neighborhoods have multiple worthy station sites. Some neighborhoods are centered along the boundary between two official, named neighborhoods. And Seattle is also a city of corridors. With our hills and lakes and canals and rivers, the power of corridors is enormous.

      10. @Al —

        This is a common issue (certainly not unique to Seattle), and easily handled by the “neighborhood + modifier” form—which additionally tends to result in much more intuitive names than using street locations (which many people don’t know!).

        The key is to use names which reflect how people already already talk about the area. For stations where that’s a street name, use the street name; for stations where it’s a neighborhood name, use that. In either case, you may need to add something to disambiguate the result.

        [Note that a probable effect of a node-oriented transit system (like Link) is to make people think of locations in a node oriented (i.e. neighborhood) way, and to reinforce neighborhood identity, so it makes some sense to make names that reflect that.]

      11. @Al, there are not two U-District stops. You clearly have as much understanding of the area as you do London. It’s a long hike up and over a hill to get from the station at Husky Stadium to the U-Dist. The UW campus is not the U-District, University Village is not the U-District, Greek Row is not the U-District and Montlake is not the U-District. Everyone would know where Husky Station is since U-Dub football is so big but I’ve heard there are licensing problems with using the name Husky. If you’re taking light rail, who cares where the cars go? Sundodger or Sun Dodgers has a long and enduring history intertwined with the student body and athletics at the UW. Many/most people probably don’t know, or care, what a bumbershoot is but they know it’s Seattle’s Labor Day arts festival. Outside of DT Seattle the stations just aren’t so close that they overlap neighborhoods. Although, I’ll grant you that East Link’s insane number of stops between Wilburton and Overlake present a problem; mostly because the majority are designed to serve something that doesn’t exist yet. Likewise South 200th is nothing but a P&R Palace so it makes sense to use the street name.

      12. The main street is 45th, not 43rd. People want to know, “How do I get to 45th?” or “How do I get to the U-district?” or “How do I get to bus 44? (On 45th)”. Not, “How do I get to 43rd Street?” That could even mislead them into assuming 43rd is the major street. It would not make sense to call it “43rd station” any more than it would to call Beacon Hill station “17th Avenue station”, which is its actual address. (Surprisingly, because it looks like it’s directly on Beacon Avenue.)

        Chicago has street-name stations but I’d call that a disadvantage.

      13. Station names become neighborhood names over time, if they’re not that already. It’s hard for me not to say the “Arbatskaya” neighborhood or “Belmont” neighborhood even though those are not really the neighborhood names. Likewise “Othello” is becoming a neighborhood name because there’s no existing name for that area. (Hillman City is more centered on Rainier, not MLK.) In Tokyo the stations are named after the major tourist attractions, so I hear. Capitol Hill, well, Broadway & John is the center of Capitol Hill; the place people are most likely going to and the best transfer point, even if 15th wishes it were the center.

      14. I have to eat a serving of humble pie here as according to the Seattle City Clerk’s Geographic Indexing Atlas the University District encompasses the entire area surrounding the UW campus. Of course “officially” Portage Bay and Montlake are part of Capitol Hill and all the homes in Madrona and Leschi are part of the Central “Area” as the Central District or CD doesn’t “officially” exist.

      15. The main street is 45th, not 43rd.

        Then why is it the 43rd Annual Streetfair? Don’t answer that := Seriously, how come it’s called “The Ave” when officially there is no University Avenue in Seattle. There’s a University Street and a University Way but no Avenue.

      16. “The Ave” is an old-fashioned term for the main street. I’ve heard Queen Anne residents call Queen Anne Avenue “the ave”. But University Way is the only one that’s consistently called “The Ave” by a lot more people. Still, it’s too informal and ambiguous term for a station.

      17. My understanding of the U-district is from I-5 to around 20th, and the Ship Canal to Ravenna Boulevard. The frats and boarding houses around 47th and 52nd are definitely “in” the U-district, as was my apartment on 56th. The campus itself is more ambiguous: people think of it as part of the U-district when going to it, but when going from campus they’re more likely to say they’re going to the U-district. The part east of Montlake Boulevard is not usually considered the U-district and it would be funny to call it that, because the District is on the other side of campus. University Village is the few blocks around the mall, stopping short of the Montlake parking lot. Capitol Hill is the entire hill which goes down to Montlake, but ends somewhere east of 23rd.

        There’s also the difference between popular names, census-tract regions (which are small), the regions in Bernie’s link (which are large), and real-estate driven terms. “The Central District” sounds black/ghetto/unsafe, so it’s euphamized to “Central Area”, and its corners are renamed or annexed to surrounding neighborhoods. So “Capitol Hill” has expanded into the CD, and the dip between Capitol Hill and Madison Park was renamed to “Madison Valley” (a real-estate term from the late 90s). Likewise, “Squire Park” has become popular to avoid saying “Central District”.

      18. @Mike, I think we’re on the same page as to what the “official” designations are vs. what “everyone”, at least everyone that’s actually there, calls things. I’m perhaps a little… very little, less conspiratorial about the “official” names of things like the CD. I think the City is just looking expediently at geographic boundaries. Things like I-5 and the canal from Shilshole to Lake Washington make for convenient boundaries. Realistically Portage Bay is just if not more relevant on the north side than the south. But the Seattle Yacht Club is in Montlake and not part of the Portage Bay Neighborhood. But Jensen Marine was definitely part of Portage Bay. So is Queen City even though they are a short row from Seattle Yacht Club.

      19. “Seriously, how come it’s called “The Ave” when officially there is no University Avenue in Seattle. There’s a University Street and a University Way but no Avenue.”

        IIRC it dates back to the original name of the street, which was 14th Ave.

      20. The difficulty of naming multiple transit stops in the same neighborhood is precisely the reason that naming stops after neighborhoods is wrong. Maybe it works if you have really granular place names, maybe that’s the case in an old city like London, but it ain’t true here. We run into this problem after just two U District stops in Seattle.

        I have to disagree here. One of the great things about the London Underground and subway systems in other great cities is that the station comes to define the neighborhood. Especially in a city like London where the streets are incredibly confusing, a network of stations with unique and memorable names make navigating the city much easier, especially for tourists. They also number the station entrances, making giving directions all the easier. Chicago rather infamously has several stations named “Western,” two of which are on the same line.

        The way Sound Transit is building it, having more than one station in a neighborhood probably isn’t something we have to worry about. But even then there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of specific names for parts of more generic neighborhoods. Are you going to “Capitol Hill”, or are you going to “Broadway,” “Pike/Pine,” “Hilltop,” or “Stevens?” Metro isn’t afraid of using these kinds of names. Consider that we don’t have a bus from downtown to “Ballard,” but rather to “Blue Ridge,” “North Beach,” and “Sunset Hill.” And apparently Sunset Hill isn’t the same as Loyal Heights, even though the 17 and 48 terminals are only a few hundred feet apart.

        In short, I think naming stations after a single street is ambiguous and after an intersection is cumbersome.

        I say “Brooklyn Station” and “University of Washington/Medical Center” or “Rainier Vista.”

      21. it dates back to the original name of the street

        That makes sense. Any links to old time maps that would show it as 14th Ave? If true, I’d like to know what genius on City staff then decided to rename it University Way.

      22. If recent trends are any guide the station will sport an unstable name tracking the acquisition/bankruptcy history of a corporation. Cognitively dissonant real-world behavior versus stated civic objectives are no barrier to claiming the name.

  3. I can’t make the meeting, but will someone suggest a helical slide from the surface to the platform? It would both be fun, and save a huge amount of escalator time.

      2. Not ADA accessible, but might increase the number of folks that will need ADA accessibility.

    2. Back in the ’90s, I visted a customer in Silicon Valley who had decided to install a slide in their offices ( a 3-story building ). They ended being forced by in-house Counsel to close it after an IT guy decided it was prudent to move computers by holding them in his lap as he went down the slide…

      I miss the dot-com days ;-)

      2. This is why America is broken. You can have a slide for fear of getting sued, but you can eat an icecream cone on the subway without anyone caring. :)

      3. I just don’t believe slides are off-limits, legally. We let children use them, right here in America.

      4. But as a means of conveyance in a workplace can open yourself up to OSHA violations as well unintended worker’s comp claims…

  4. There was an activist table at the U-district streetfair pushing both to rename the station to “University District station” and for a new campaign, to build an open-air plaza over the station. The drawings are just conceptual but they envison two little phone-booth style entrances like in Paris. I wouldn’t mind a plaza but there are two major reasons I can’t support this plan.

    One, ST would have to forego the money it would have received selling development rights, which means less money for the rest of Link. Two, this is the only place we’ve been promised a large TOD development at the station itself. UW station, nope. Roosevelt, nope. Beacon Hill, nope. “You’ll get it at Brooklyn.” OK, so let’s not throw away that opportunity.

    2. Why do people have such an appetite for public plazas everywhere? In a few places they make some sense, but in the U-District it would immediately turn into a hobo campground.

      2. IT would also not feel like a safe place to be once you got off the train.

      3. Why do you guys feel it would be so different than Capitol Hill? While the U-District sees less activity summer quarter that’s when a pedestrian plaza would be most conducive for street fairs, buskers and farmers markets. A plaza can most certainly be a vibrant commercial zone. Keep in mind that the UW is planning a number of student housing projects at that end of campus which I believe will include grad student and married housing.

      4. Much of the U District is already TOD…unless, of course, your idea of TOD is an off-route transfer center and a pile of apartments atop a garage, all surrounded by acres of free P&R.

      5. I’m not sure what the current plans are for CHS, but yes, I’d rather see overbuild than open space there, although I do like the idea of a festival street / Nagle Place extension. I see them as fairly similar urban spaces, although the U-District has more public order problems, and public spaces in areas like that can be hotspots for problems.

        The U-District farmers market currently uses a small private lot at 50th/University. Long term, I’d like to see transit moved off University and onto 15th Ave NE, and then the Ave itself could be closed down more easily for larger public events.

      7. Right, and if you look at document page 8 on here…

        http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cms/groups/pan/@pan/@plan/@capitolhilllightrail/documents/web_informational/dpdp021537.pdf

        … the proposed plaza is actually somewhat smaller than the station box at Brooklyn. More importantly, the new buildings there will presumably have some retail frontage or other activation with respect to that plaza, and the plaza would serve as a pedestrian thoroughfare to and from Cal Anderson. Such a plaza on the Brooklyn station box would only have frontage onto the arse end of the Nepune and the dumpsters in that alley.

      8. To be clear I was honestly asking about the difference between open area at Brooklyn vs. Capitol Hill. As an eastsider all of Seattle is “sketchy” but having graduated from the U and having had much more reason to frequent the U-Dist over the last three decades than Capitol Hill I personally feel much safer there. A perception that may well be wrong; but ignorance is bliss :=. @Bruce, what’s to say that an open plaza wouldn’t open up development facing the square? It’s an alley now because, well, it’s an alley. I’d love to see the Neptune be viable 20 years from now. Couldn’t a “Back Stage” area play into making that more viable? On the flip side; why shouldn’t Capitol Hill be commercial development? Seems like in a high demand area like that a 65′ zoning would more in keeping with the neighborhood than the “campus” and historic lowrise theme of the U-District. Again, I’m not pushing either choice at either location. Just trying to understand and put forth honest debate.

      9. In terms of their urban design parameters (street grid density, street width, (general lack of) setbacks, mixture of uses, lots of prewar development without assigned parking, scale and massing etc) I think the areas around CHS and Brooklyn are quite similar, yes. Where they differ is in demographics and the general safety and sense of the public space; these things are related, of course.

        While the popular image of Capitol Hill is of penniless hipsters riding fixies, it’s actually a very economically diverse and somewhat middle class sort of place now. There’s a full spectrum of housing from subsidized, to shitty old market-rate apartments, to impossibly-expensive vintage houses and luxury condos; consequently there’s a full spectrum of people living there. Crucially, there’s a middle class who can afford to own property but aren’t so well off that they could live anywhere; they are thus invested in the neighborhood. The U-District skews overwhelmingly towards students, who tend to be lower income, relatively transient, and not invested in the neighborhood. There’s also a lot of run-down rental property near the Ave which I suspect is just waiting for Brooklyn Station to be built, so it can be redeveloped.

        Capitol Hill, particularly on that north end of Broadway, doesn’t strike me as a particularly sketchy place. Yes, on Friday and Saturday nights it has lots of drunk people roaming around, but I don’t worry that someone’s going to steal the seat off my bike if I park it outside QFC at night for 20 minutes. Down by (say) Pine and Broadway, it’s a little rougher around the edges but still not bad. Around the Ave is worse than any of that. There’s far more panhandlers and drug dealers, they’re more aggressive and no-one who lives there really seems to care much about it. It’s worth noting that the current home of the UD farmers market is a paved lot with 6′ fence of iron railings around it.

        It’s possible, I suppose, that such a plaza in the U-District might lead to development facing it, but doing so would probably entail knocking down a bunch of the older buildings that currently face the Ave, and rebuilding them with public entrances both sides (and internal storage rooms for dumpsters). I’m reluctant to tear down prewar multistory buildings as they’re the last refuge of small local stores and restaurants that need cheap rents to survive. I honestly don’t see the viability of the Neptune as in any doubt; to the contrary, the scuttlebutt in the Seattle music scene is the the refurbished Neptune is eating the lunches of many other local mid-size venues like the Crocodile.

        I’d personally like to see CHS and Brooklyn overbuilt with mixed-used residential with ground floor retail. Giving that new development at CHS a central plaza probably makes sense, as it will have lots of activation from day one, the farmers market could really use a new home, and the area just isn’t as sketchy. I just don’t see it working at Brooklyn.

      10. Fair points. I could certainly see either location being developed. I wonder how much of the opening for business facing a plaza at CHS is because of what was demolished to make way for construction. Are any buildings being taken and leveled for building at Brooklyn? With respect to income I get the starving student thing but OTOH they are attending the highest cost public institution in the State. Many, if not most have the deep pockets of mommy and daddy behind them. And there’s no denying that those of privilege have the upper hand when applying for the very competitive spots at the UW. Capitol Hill is more diverse but between Seattle U and Seattle Central CC there’s almost 18k students. As to crime the statistics bear out what you say for the station area. But partially because Brooklyn is in the worst neighborhood surrounding the UW and the hot bed of crime starts just south of CHS.

    3. There was an activist table at the U-district streetfair pushing both to rename the station to “University District station” and for a new campaign, to build an open-air plaza over the station.

      Yikes. I wish those people knew they are working for pretty much exactly the opposite of what is good for them.

      1. When I went to the last Brooklyn open house last month, there was a man in a suit at front door handing out what I thought was some official Sound Transit material but turns out was a petition for station renaming.

    4. Then they will start an #OccupyBrooklyn to prevent the groundbreaking.
      Seriously, though, isn’t there already a plaza across the street by the UW Tower?

  5. Is TBM dirt actually being hauled away from the Brooklyn staging area? Or are we closing nearly three square blocks just to dig the station itself?

    When I saw the volume of material being carted off of Capitol Hill, the size of that staging area finally made sense to me. But in the absence of that, I can’t understand the need for such a huge and disruptive construction site.

      2. The hill dumped into Elliott Bay

        Brings a (w)hole new meaning to the term “in-fill station” :=

      3. Sounds to me like new sellable and taxable waterfront property to me.

      4. Brilliant: create a bit of land in magnolia or harbor island or where ever. Sell the land to developers/the devil/amazon/etc. take the money and build the Seattle Subway. Rinse repeat with that dirt.

      5. Heck, we don’t need the Seattle Subway, why not just a network of conveyor belts? No need to worry about headways, just hop on the belt!

        I think Robert Heinlein wrote some short stories about conveyor belts like that…

      6. Maybe an island in Elliott Bay for the new home of King County Juvenile Detention? It would increase year ’round ridership on the Water Taxi.

      7. The staging area isn’t particularly large.

        The actual station box — east of Brooklyn and north of 43rd, behind the lot lines — takes up less than 1/3 of that closed orange-shaded perimeter. That’s not even taking into account the additional orange staging square off of 12th.

        Again, if this were for the tunneling, I might understand. But simply constructing the station box should require no more space than digging the foundation and basement levels of a medium-height skyscraper — something which happens all the time without interrupting the world outside the building’s footprint.

        New York famously requires that sidewalks on both sides of streets remain essentially unimpeded throughout a construction project, except on a very temporary basis. (The construction industry has made great strides in safe frame erection and cladding methods thanks to the potential liability of steel or glass falling directly on pedestrians.) The common Seattle experience of having to cross the street three times just to keep going straight (especially if disabled) because some minor condo project has chosen to block its sidewalk for a year straight could never happen in NY.

        My question is serious: why such a huge disruption for what is essentially a basement?

      8. What are they disrupting? A vacant IHOP and a parking lot? Constraining the construction site would just increase the construction cost.

      9. What are they disrupting?

        The street and the sidewalk. They’re disrupting the ability to walk in a straight line, without ridiculous detours. They’re disrupting a complete and functional street grid, and impeding 43rd and Brooklyn’s abilities to take pressure off the traffic-choked (and bus-filled) 45th and University Way.

        What evidence do you have that a smaller site is a more expensive site? There’s a hell of a lot less to pay in takings and mitigations. “We’ve done it this way at the other stations” is not a valid precedent if what you’re doing (i.e. not removing miles of bored dirt) is totally different!

        When did you become the “if Seattle’s doing it, it must be without flaw” guy, Zed?

      10. I get tired of construction closing sidewalks every time I turn around. Yes, you have to walk across the street, then back, potentially adding two traffic lights to your trip and making you miss your bus. Sometimes the construction block does not have a crosswalk, so you have to turn at the block before that or backtrack. You have to keep a mental map of where all the construction is, and that doesn’t help if you’re in an unfamiliar neighborhood or the construction just started today. There should be a higher priority on keeping all sidewalks open or providing an alternative scaffolding tunnel.

      11. This. If it feels safe to do so, I generally just take a traffic lane. I’ve actually done this about 5 times in as many days. Cars can wait the extra 20 seconds it takes me to walk around the construction, rather than me taking several minutes to cross two streets. I do wish we made construction companies take lanes for us though. Just having a few orange cones would feel safer than just walking in the street.

      12. “When did you become the “if Seattle’s doing it, it must be without flaw” guy, Zed?”

        You come to that conclusion because I asked you a simple question? When did you become an egomaniac?

        “They’re disrupting the ability to walk in a straight line, without ridiculous detours.”

        OMG! The horror.

        “They’re disrupting a complete and functional street grid, and impeding 43rd and Brooklyn”

        The station box is under Brooklyn and 43rd, and they’re providing access to 43rd from Brooklyn by building a bridge above the pit in order to retain some access, something that is obviously going to cost a bit of money. You can see the excavation plan here; http://youtu.be/IH2tWbIrtZ8

      13. Indeed. The box has gotten a little longer and moved a little to the left since prior designs: http://projects.soundtransit.org/Projects-Home/North-Link/Brooklyn-Station.xml I won’t presume to know why.

        There’s still a tiny fraction of the blockage in that map than the Giant Walled Construction City above is destined to create.

        You come to that conclusion because…

        Because you invariably defend stuff that we do here that makes no sense and runs counter to the way things work (well) the world over. That’s a cumulative observation, not an isolated one.

        You can see the excavation plan here:

        Nice graphic. And doing all of that is “cheaper” than digging from within the footprint itself (like every other construction project on earth) because why?

      15. “The box has gotten a little longer and moved a little to the left since prior designs”

        Actually it’s moved to the east and gotten shorter.

        https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2011/01/28/brooklyn-station-open-house-report/
        https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2011/04/15/brooklyn-station-design-improves/

        “Because you invariably defend stuff that we do here”

        And you invariably think you know better than the people who actually do this stuff for a living.

      16. And doing all of that is “cheaper” than digging from within the footprint itself (like every other construction project on earth) because why?

        I’m not a construction expert and don’t play one on TV but how does the size of the station box compare to the size of the foundation on a building? Could it be that there is simply some magic size which is a minimum that is required in order for the construction equipment to operate? That is, even if the station box were half it’s current size would the construction area still need to be just as big?

      17. …know better than [the people in charge]

        – Our one and only subway line is being designed to someday provide unnecessary frequent, all-day, high-speed service to the tiny city of Everett — service that no one will ever use — at the expense of being able to get around the desperately transit-starved central city.

        – Our new RapidRide lines, which were supposed to become the major arteries of urban transit service, will operate at a base frequency of 15 minutes, and will call that “so frequent you don’t need a schedule.”

        – The precious service hours we just saved by cutting only the most horrendously underperforming routes are being squandered “padding” the schedules on core routes — i.e. enforcing their slowness under all circumstances: http://twitpic.com/9lu6n6

        Insane.
        Abhorrent.
        And WTF?

        Anybody from a real transit city knows better!!!!

        Actually it’s moved to the east…

        Putting the station box east of Brooklyn was always one of the options. I thought I remembered that option being entirely out from under the street’s ROW, though from those past diagrams it looks like I was wrong. Sorry.

        FWIW, I actually supported the directly-under-street option, because it would have allowed them to put an entrance right on 45th Street. That would have been worth closing Brooklyn for. (It doesn’t look like it would have required closing 43th, and again, there’s no good reason it couldn’t have been dug in place. If the reasoning behind off-streeting it and nixing the 45th entry was wanting a gigantic staging area… I’m sorry, but that’s indefensible.)

        Could it be that there is simply some magic size which is a minimum that is required in order for the construction equipment to operate?

        No, there isn’t. Perhaps a smaller footprint means removing fill via lift rather than ramp, but pretty much anything is possible in 2012 if you’re willing to make the effort.

      18. “New York famously requires that sidewalks on both sides of streets remain essentially unimpeded throughout a construction project, except on a very temporary basis. ”

        The reconstruction of sidewalks is of course the notable exception to this rule. Even then, they require a sheltered temporary sidewalk (usually carved out from the street).

      19. Note that Minneapolis/St. Paul is creating massive sidewalk disruption during the construction of the Central Corridor along University Avenue, but that is largely because they are *replacing all the sidewalks* as a city improvement project. The actual rail construction isn’t disrupting sidewalk routes much.

  6. Still like the idea of calling it Neptune station. Its evocative, tells you right where you are.

    1. I think they have rules about naming stations after private organizations.

      1. Like Westlake? The street is at least 2 blocks away from any station entrance so it is clearly indicating the shopping center.

      3. Sure. Tacoma Dome station? Point being, they seem to neither care about existing station names that they serve nor when they create new ones. Not saying Neptune is a great name for it but a privately-owned landmark shouldn’t be ignored in a station name if it is the best for way-finding.

      4. Westlake; the mall, park and station, are named after Westlake Avenue. A portion of it was vacated to build all three.

      5. The Tacoma Dome is owned by the City of Tacoma. That’s not a private organization. (The UW is owned by the state of washington, etc.)

      6. I understand the privately-owned argument (and if you want to be precise, the Neptune Theater is owned by the Seattle Theater Group, a non-profit) – you don’t want to play favorites, you want to keep it classy and you want the name to be meaningful for many years.

        Landmark status is a bit more permanent. I suggested “Neptune” not “Neptune Theater” evocative of it. Just like it is “Brooklyn” not “Brooklyn Street” or horror of horrors … “Last Exit on Brooklyn”.

      7. “I think they have rules about naming stations after private organizations.”

        Wouldn’t that make naming Northgate problematic?

      8. baselle.

        Northgate Mall is named after the part of Seattle called Northgate. Not the other way around.

    2. Neptune station would make sense to you, me and some others … but it would tell 99.9999999% of potential riders absolutely nothing about where they are

  7. I would propose naming the husky stadium site “Hospital Station” and the brooklyn site “Safeco” – that should clear things up. [repeat and sarcasm]

    1. But, but, but; “we” want to call Whole Foods Station Hospital Station. What a Seattle centric name grab! As for Brooklyn I’d be OK with “The Station Formerly Known as Safeco” :=

  8. Don’t forget the Med Center. Why not “UW/Med Center”?

    Maybe if we emphasize the close proximity to it ST will realize the GREAT need for a tunnel underneath the Montlake/Pacific intersection to it.

  9. I like the UW Medical Center idea. Or to name the next-to-Husky-Stadium station Pacific or Montlake Cut or Montlake Bridge?

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