Month: June 2013

Friend of the blog Bill LaBorde has informed us that the Government Performance and Finance Committee meeting scheduled for June 5, at which the Spokane Street savings issues (Ship Canal Crossing and UW-SLU HCT studies) were going to be decided, will be pushed back to June 19.  The reason for the delay is that Councilmember Burgess will be out of town with family.  In addition the council is waiting on more information from the City Budget Office on the savings.

We have written on the studies here and here.  If anyone would like to comment on them, the meeting will be in the Council Chambers (City Hall, up the stairs), Wednesday June 19th, at 9:30am. Come at least half an hour early to ensure you get a chance to testify!

STB’s design has served us well over the past few years, but it was limited by an inability render well on mobile devices (which now account for 20% of visits and rising). Our mobile site was an unattractive short-term patch that got us by for a little while, but wasn’t a viable solution for the long term. So we’ve redesigned the site using a responsive template that should render well on phones, tablets, and desktops.

The site now supports Gravatars in the comments for those of you who would like to make use of them (I know several commenters already do). I don’t have the resources to test the site on every phone, tablet and internet-enabled doodad under the sun, so please do let me know if you’re having trouble viewing content on your particular device and I’ll do my best to fix it. Bear with me as I’m sure there will be some wonkiness in the short term.

Also, due to popular request, we’ve added an event calendar, which we’ll be populating with transit-related events over the coming weeks.

Those of you visiting on desktops will notice a beautiful background photo courtesy of Dave Honan. Many thanks to Dave for the image.

Update 6/4/13: Due to some performance issues, I’ve disabled the background image. I really liked it, but it was causing some erratic behavior on mobile. I’d like to bring it back, but only if I can do so without making performance compromises.

Enjoy MY View – Bus Stop Intervention from prntscreen on Vimeo.

It’s time for agencies to switch to their summer schedules:

ST Express
Route 550: Minor Sunday schedule changes
Route 560: Major schedule and route changes; new stops serving Westwood Village
Route 566: Major schedule changes to accommodate new Route 567
Route 567: New route with service between Kent, Bellevue and Overlake
Route 574: Southbound buses now use SeaTac/Airport Station Bay 2
Route 577: One new southbound weekday afternoon trip added; minor schedule changes
Route 586: Two morning and afternoon trips discontinued until fall

The 567 is the 566 except that it doesn’t serve Auburn or Renton. The 560 will now terminate at the emerging Westwood Village transit hub rather than going all the way to Alaska Junction.

As always, Metro is doing the same, with minor changes to the C, 7, 15, 17, 18, 49, 56, 57, 82, 83, 84, 215, 240, 245, 265, 280, and 384 304.

Pierce Transit is making a few cuts this month but the axe really falls in September. 33 routes are changing, and 32 of them have at least a few deleted trips.