- This study about the relative greenhouse gas output of suburbs and cities has its problems, most notably that it doesn’t count exurbs as suburbs.
- Friday TCC is hosting a panel on the First Avenue Streetcar.
- Bus driver petition says job is getting more stressful.
- PubliCola updates us on aPodments and taxis.
- Seattle Bubble’s new “Local Development Roundup” feature may save me some typing.
- If you think rent is too high you might fight parking requirements.
- City Council looking at new taxes on development to fund affordable housing.
- Members of Shoreline’s Korean Community give their feedback about light rail. More Shoreline comments here (with video!).
- Here are some public comments from the Mercer Island Station meeting we covered in June.
- Mukilteo’s acquisition of a tank farm — to improve waterfront access — moves along.
- Eric Scigliano suggests cheap ways to make the city more bike-friendly.
- Deep Bore Tunnel moving along slowly.
- King County subsidizes transportation in other counties, but that’s another way of saying that rich counties subsidize poor ones.
- Ridesharing attracts the eye of regulators.
- Unforeseen conservation issues may complicate Link routing in Lynnwood. The quotes are remarkably free of overheated rhetoric, so good for Lynnwood.
- Oregon’s Senate President not on board with the go-it-alone plan for the CRC.
- Gov. Inslee considers a special session for transportation. He’s willing to ditch the CRC to get a deal.
- Windows Phone app will wake you up when approaching your stop.
- DJC profiles developers in Columbia City ($).
- How to sell developers and employers on transit-oriented development.
- APTA finally stops the real-time arrival patent troll in court.
This is an open thread.
Do you think Seattle drivers suck? Allstate Insurance Company might agree with you. Here’s their verdict. (Seattle’s score is on page 5.)
I’d guess this has more to do with road design than driving ability. A grid-system, small street, high density city probably has more accidents than wide curving streets and lower densities. But there’s something fundamentally useless about this report: a dinged mirror is counted the same as killing five pedestrians. Gridded small streets have much, much lower average speeds than wide curving streets, meaning crashes happen at much lower speeds. I have a feeling that per-capita deaths are much lower in Seattle than those cities at the top of that list.
And I’ll bet our deaths cluster at our freeways, highways, and arterials.
Map of every traffic fatality from the last decade:
http://map.itoworld.com/road-casualties-usa
If you zoom in on Seattle, it seems there are many along arterials…however, there are also many randomly spread around neighborhoods like Capitol Hill.
I’d also be curious, with the recent influx of Amazon employees from all over the country and world, how much different driving styles have clashed with each other to create a perfect storm of bad driving.
Fascinating map, John. It is surprising to me to see the big number of pedestrian deaths downtown. I know that is where the pedestrians are (so the rate per pedestrian may actually be low) but whenever I drive downtown, I drive really slowly. Then again, I hardly ever drive downtown, so I guess I’m not the typical driver. The low rate of automobile deaths compared to pedestrian and motorcycle deaths shows how safe cars are these days. Even automobile deaths on Highway 2 (the highway of death) are lower than the number of pedestrians killed downtown.
I hope drivers ed teachers show this map to kids. When you drive downtown, slow down!
We’re curious about some concrete work in the street at the corner of Broadway and E Howell Street, in front of Bonney-Watson. I’m asking here, because it looks transit-related. At first, we assumed it’s going to be a future streetcar stop, but it’s too far away from the tracks. Now we’re wondering if it’s a bus bulb, and the stop on the north side of the intersection is going to be relocated.
That concrete is the broadway cycle track. That part of the cycle track will be raised, hopefully so drivers will look for bikes when using those driveways.
Ah! Thank you.
The Broadway Cycle Track will be crossing the path of a number of driveways for businesses. To improve safety, the cycle track is raised where it passes these driveways. This both indicates to the bicycler to watch out as well as make it easier to access the driveways by vehicles.
photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonwerner/9408933979/in/set-72157630154155804
Similarly, in front of the Kidney Center NW building at Broadway & Cherry St, the cycle track is raised as high as possible to allow for continued wheelchair/vehicle loading as it is a medical establishment and requires access for the disabled.
photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonwerner/9625729376/in/set-72157630154155804
There are also specific locations where a lengthened raised curb will exist to prevent motor vehicle encroachment onto the cycle track (crosswalk at SCCC for instance)
photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonwerner/9681751356/in/set-72157630154155804
Cool! That first photo is exactly what I was referring to. Thank you for the information.
It seems like those ramps will entice drivers to stop in the cycle track while waiting to turn out of the driveways.
also … Bus Stops located on the NB side of Broadway will be located between the motor vehicle lanes and the cycle track (island platforms if you will)
here is the new stop being built at Broadway & Union
photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonwerner/9672527131/in/set-72157630154155804
The following Stops will be built like this:
Broadway/Terrace
Broadway/Columbia
Broadway/Union (new stop is on south side of Union)
Broadway/Pine (where existing stop is now located)
oops forgot.
here are the plans for the entire First Hill Streetcar route … you can see where the cycle track will be raised above the street surface (red speckled sections) (and how the NB bus stops will work)
plans –> http://zoom.it/Ge29
The biggest problem with that first study is that it focused on Halifax (the 14th biggest city in Canada). Run the same study in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver and I think you will get different results.
I’d really like to see the study first.
The Atlantic article’s description left my head spinning. I couldn’t tell if they were comparing “totals” or per person. Also these ridiculous un-quantified terms like “city” and “suburb” (as bad as density and sprawl).
Unless you establish specific metrics like population density, relative nearness of jobs and so on the comparison’s are meaningless. And then are they just comparing personal consumption? What about the cost of delivering goods like product, say to a city? Does that factor in compared to a person using their car to do last mile transport from a warehouse-retail model like Costco?
Yeah, it is a pretty sloppy article. I’m afraid the Atlantic blog pages just don’t match the quality of the magazine articles. There are a few really good ones, but then they will get sloppy as well.
I agree that part of the problem is in the definitions. Using Halifax as your case study seems really silly if you are from Toronto, or even Vancouver. I think it is better if you list specific examples (since there are numerous types of housing) instead of trying to label something as “suburbs” versus “city”. You could then compare the types of housing with each other, as well as with similar types of housing in more suburban locations. For example, do the residents of a 300 unit apartment building in Lynnwood use a lot more energy than the residents of a 300 unit apartment building in Ballard? How do smaller houses compare with bigger ones? Do lot sizes have anything to do with it? What about highrise apartments (which are common in Toronto, but rare in most cities)? Are they efficient, or do you get diminishing returns after a while (does serving the 40th floor requires more energy than serving the 5th)? What about the energy used to build the things?
These are all interesting questions, but they require a lot more work than the researchers were willing to do. That, and they would require looking at places other than Halifax. I’ve been to Halifax and it reminds me of Seattle fifty years ago — more interesting than you would guess from its size, but still rather podunk.
Agree with all this. I’m also very curious how building energy use could possibly be higher in a city – they say because people live alone more often, but the size of homes alone would overwhelm this factor. Adding to this, heating energy is roughly proportional to wall and roof surface area, and cooling energy is roughly proportional to window area – and both are much larger per person in the suburbs.
Anyway, I won’t get too worked up about this – it was a poor summary of a set of technical papers.
Also, we’re completely changing our energy model from polluting and limited to relatively non-polluting and unlimited.
How are our value judgments going to be when using energy isn’t considered a negative and might even be a net plus?
And the moment I agree with you, you head right back into crazy.
Sorry, that was ad-hom. I mean – tell us about this wonderful future where using energy is a benefit to our world.
And I actually don’t have a problem with not counting exurbs as suburbs; that seems more like a way of making closer-in suburbs look worse than actually being more accurate. I might have made exurbs a third category.
@Matt the Engineer
Most of you (I escaped it by a few years) grew up in the Energy Use as Sin era. People were made to feel guilty about everything from burning oil to leaving the lights on. But prior to that…if you can believe it…using energy, consuming, was considered a good and productive thing.
Now I realize that most of the energy we use has severe and detrimental side effects like pollution. But if we were to switch to renewable sources, without pollution, then should we still have guilt. And if for example, we installed so much solar and saved it as hydrogen and increased the efficiency of what we do (and reduced our population), then, would it be bad to use energy? Should we still feel guilty about it?
There’s a long-term issue about changing our attitudes to non-scarce and non-polluting energy. How is it wrong to have the lights on all night and the air conditioner on all day if they’re solar powered and geothermal powered? But you can only apply that to people who actually have solar houses and solar cars. You can’t apply it to people who currently have fossil-fuel cars and fossil-fuel electricity, just because they might theoretically have solar cars and houses in thirty years. That might happen or it might not.
@Morgan: +1, that was my initial reaction to the byline too.
@John Bailo: None of the new energy sources is without negative externalities. As for reducing our population, I don’t see many volunteers.
@Mike Orr. yes, but when planning for the future it makes sense to majke your best guess of what that future is going to look like.
We have to make a guess about the future, but we shouldn’t depend on something prematurely. Mass transit and rail transit have been proven for 150 years. Compact walkable towns and neighborhoods have been proven for millenia. Reducing energy use, or “negatwatts”, is also proven. In contrast, hydrogen fuel cell cars have not yet been proven on a mass scale, yet people like Bailo and the sprawlmongers are touting them as the solution that makes investing in conventional transit and walkable neighborhoods unnecessary. That means, if we pursue that vision, that we’ll be depending on a huge amount of luck that nothing will go wrong and that there are no holes in the vision.
At one time, people thought hybrid cars would be the future, but they turned out to be more expensive, less reliable, and less efficient than people anticipated. At another time, people thought biofuel from corn would be more sustainable than oil, but it ended up gobbling up farmland and pushing food prices higher, and the amount of net energy produced is very low if not negative compared to the energy required to produce it. So we have to be careful about putting all our eggs into a speculative basket.
We should pursue a both strategy, relying primarily on current proven technologies — buses, trains, walkable neighborhoods — while also giving new technologies a chance. But we need the proven-technology infrastructure as a fallback in case the new technologies don’t pan out.
Many might say, as Mike Orr does:
…hydrogen fuel cell cars have not yet been proven on a mass scale, yet people like Bailo and the sprawlmongers are touting them as the solution that makes investing in conventional transit and walkable neighborhoods unnecessary.
That’s not quite what I’m saying…in fact, I might be saying something completely different.
(1) People like homes. Single family homes. To make that possible requires cars, for getting to work, and shopping and moving family members around.
(2) Mass transit is fast and efficient. And getting faster with HSR and MSR!
(3) Short of having a train station at every home, the principal impedance of having our cake and eating it is the “last mile” problem. While we can built trunk lines really well, getting people to the station is a problem. Even a person who is mobility, and lives up a hill two blocks from a LINK station, still will have issues! And the idea of a single person driving a 2 ton vehicle to station even five miles away and leaving it there all day seems like anathema even to a sprawlmonger.
(4) In the near term a confluence of technologies has promise to solve last mile problems. These are, Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Self-Drive (Google Cars). Together these three things offer the possibility of having vehicles that can ferry people, at low cost, and with no pollution, back and forth to fast moving transit.
(5) Even if (4) is right now, only a possibility, that thinking should be studied and integrated into today’s transit planning, and the daily announcements from businesses introducing this technology carefully studied for reasonable timetables and to weed out impossibilities not worth waiting for.
Hydrogen powers Hyundai’s motoring revolution
http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news/9128486/Hydrogen-powers-Hyundais-motoring-revolution
U.S. Department of Transportation Announces $13.6 Million To Advance American-Made Fuel Cell Technology for Transit Industry
http://www.fta.dot.gov/newsroom/12286_15675.html
It seemed to me that the main factor for suburbs using less housing costs were that there were more people in the household. That makes an iota of sense–with only one water heater and fridge, maybe you get some energy savings despite a larger square footage. Hard to believe given the size of the suburban houses I’ve seen and the number of extra fridges to hold soda, but it’s conceivable. But, despite the fact that it might be marginally less energy per each additional kid, creating another person is about the highest impact-decision an individual can make. Comparing those households to individuals who have decided to delay or not have kids and live in the city really misses the point.
This is what you’re going with? City living is greener than suburban living because a city isn’t a fit place to raise children.
I received a reply this morning to my letter to the ST board imploring them to reconsider their center-switchback track design for IDS:
That was a really nice answer to your question.
what email address did you use to contact them about the turnback track?
My personal one.
wow really? no which email at soundtransit?
Oh, derp. The “email all board members” address on this page: http://www.soundtransit.org/About-Sound-Transit/Board-of-Directors/Board-members
“Leaving IDS as a two-platform station still allows for very easy transfers with multiple escalators and elevators on both platforms, and a short and completely sheltered walk from one side of the plaza to the other. These types of transfers are quite common and work very successfully in larger systems with lines running in multiple directions.”
Seriously? To me, this is the basic problem I’ve had with Metro and Sound Transit as long as I’ve lived here (which is as long as I’ve depended on transit, 32 years). It balances today’s funding issues and a couple months’ inconvenience of shutting down a station against the difference between walking across a platform to make a transfer and talking an escalator up, across a plaza and back down again (as well as the distance from the escalator to the train) over the entire future life of the station and reaches the conclusion that the latter is the better choice. This is the same reasoning that led to not completing the access ramps to the south end of the Aurora Bridge in 1932; 81 years of backups on Queen Anne later and no biggie, right? This is the same reasoning that treats all bus stops downtown as fungible, notwithstanding a few hills. And the reasoning that has caused innumerable cyclists to skid on the Westlake trolley tracks.
If we didn’t have to worry about today’s funding issues, then transit and Link in our region would be much further along. But alas, funding limitations are part of the reality we live in.
As for the rest of those problems listed, it’s hard to speak to why they never happened. This can be a bit of a backwards region if you haven’t already noticed.
The federal Rail-To-Trails program has run into unexpected expenses over the last twenty years, since contrary to Congress’s expectations, many railways hadn’t actually purchased their right-of-way but merely gotten an easement on it. Courts have determined that if the rail easement is converted to a trail easement, the government must compensate the landowner for the entire value of the easement, not just the difference between rail and trail.
It still seems a worthwhile program… but this is a little unsettling.
I find it maddening that the Courts have been buying this argument. If the railroad easements paid for a century ago existed in perpetuity and were transferable, then the property owners had no reasonable expectation of ever having that property back to do with as they pleased. The trails modify the value of the easements; by no reasonable logic are they “new” takings.
This is what happens when you let Neocons stack the Courts.
I wonder what those same property owners think of Qwest (then called Southern Pacific Telecom, part of SPRR) coming along and dropping thousands of miles of fiber optic cable in those same easements. Makes me wonder why suing over the trails is worth it but suing Qwest isn’t, especially when those same fiber cables continue to exist in the ROW where the train tracks used to live. (I’ve personally seen Qwest fiber cable markings in Rails-to-Trails areas around Dallas.)
@lakecityrider. There’s a non-trivial chance that the easements actually already allowed QWest to do this (i..e., they include telegraph infrastructure (which as I understand things was extremely common), and are worded just loosely enough to (at least arguably) include any telecommunications infrastructure.
Is the bus stop at 6th & Atlantic generally reliable for catching a bus after stadium events? I’m thinking in terms of whether post-match buses generally run on time there, and how crowded it is.
The reason I ask is because I’m going to the Sounders match vs. Vancouver on October 9, a weeknight, and I want to make sure I can catch the 522 after the match. In past occasions I’ve left my car at Northgate and taken the 41, but I really don’t want to do that again (particularly since I don’t need a car for the 522). The only thing that makes me nervous is that if I miss the 9:26 PM 522, I’m out of luck for an hour.
Generally, yes. The majority of the chaos stays on the other side of the BNSF mainline and that is the 522’s first stop. The 522 lays over at Central / Atlantic base so it should be reliable, providing it isn’t stuck coming into town.
I can’t comment on how crowded the bus will be. I don’t ever recall seeing a group of passengers there that could overwhelm the seating of a 60′ coach but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
I’ve taken the 522 after events and have never had a problem getting on at the Central Base stop. Sometimes people will be turned away at the 4th/Jackson stop after something like a Sounders game, but Central Base should be OK.
First Hill Streetcar S Dearborn St. Car Barn …
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonwerner/9678547961/in/set-72157630154155804/
Nice to see work progressing here. Hopefully it won’t take too much longer to finish up the rest of Jackson as well.
How many cars can this facility hold? It seems to me that if they go ahead and connect the lines along 1st they may need to boost the number of cars a bit to keep the First Hill portion of the line to a car every 10 minutes….
I believe the car barn & storage tracks can hold up to 8 cars … although the line is only starting with 6
here is the site plan for the car barn/yard: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonwerner/9683487704/in/set-72157630154155804
@Gordon Werner
Glad to know they have space for a few more (even if its just two..). Doesn’t the SLU barn also have extra space? I was under the impression they saved some room just West of the current barn (currently it looks like they have some green space and an extension of their parking lot there — at least according to google maps).
Also, I wonder since there is the discussion of making 1st ave exclusive ROW and upgrading the SLU line to make it faster… couldn’t most of Jackson also be converted? They already run center lane platforms for the whole length of Jackson and there are clearly enough lanes… I guess the left turns are the only remaining tough spot.
It seems to me that if we can ensure that most of our streetcars going forward get Rainier Valley level service (exclusive ROW and light priority), we can get a lot more out of them, making the investment worth a lot more than just standard street cars.
what do you mean in with regards to converting Jackson St. ? You mean making the streetcar track lane streetcar only?
if so, Jackson would still have one vehicle lane (although buses need it) … they’d have to redirect a lot of traffic (trucks mostly) to Dearborn then … and while you could technically ban left turns on most streets I think the ID would have a fit over it if they tried.
I think that even with the track lanes being mixed use … Jackson usually flows pretty well between Boren and 5th Ave S already … so it wouldn’t be a problem to increase frequency (even if 50% of trams headed up Rainier instead of to Capitol Hill)
I could see a Rainier Ave extension have streetcar only lanes … but I think it would be impractical on Jackson itself.
@Gordon Werner
By the way, I would like to thank you for your photographic documentary of the construction of the first hill line. It gives a lot of us who can’t go downtown during the week a chance to see how things are progressing.
@Gorden Werner
I see your point about the practicality of exclusive usage on Jackson. I think you’re right though that it could probably take a lot more capacity as it is then Broadway could likely feed it. The center of the road build with median stations seems to be built more for speeding through than the meandering median to curb business up on Broadway.
I like your idea of extending tracks off Jackson down Rainer Ave (or maybe out further east on Jackson?), but I personally suspect an extension of SLU up to Ballard or UW is more likely to come before that and perhaps an extension of 1st ave line up to Seattle Center and/or south down to the stadiums.
if the Center City Connector runs down 1st ave, with the potential 1st ave extension north to Lower Queen Anne … + potential Waterfront Streetcar line connecting at 1st / Yesler … it would make sense to build an extension up Rainier to at least the Mt. Baker Transit Center / Link Station … that would maximize potential through-routing of trams.
As for continuing up Jackson St (east of 14th Ave) … there used to be a streetcar line that ran up there so there is no technical reason why they couldn’t put a line back there … not sure if it could completely replace the #14 bus … but if it could … it would make sense to do so (of course as always that is if $ is not an issue)
here is the Jackson St. streetcar line crossing 14th Ave S back in 1936
http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/03/10/64/822566/3/628×471.jpg
CHARTS:
Over half of the US population lives in these counties (includes King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Spokane)
http://www.businessinsider.com/half-of-the-united-states-lives-in-these-counties-2013-9
That is really eye-opening (and sort of gives the lie to maps showing how much “land” votes for certain candidates; other than those big counties in southern California, none of these counties cover much land at all.
It was also weird to realize that after 57 years, I’ve only lived in four counties in my life (Wayne and Oakland, Michigan, Middlesex, Mass., and King).
I thought I’d give you guys a link, if you haven’t seen it already: http://stopeastlinknow.blogspot.com/. Look at some of the posts, it’s practically propaganda.
sad.
Its always nice to see that they think offer alternatives when they talk about shutting down the biggest transit infrastructure project they are likely to see in a generation.
Oh wait…
I looked at it in the recent primary when he was running for office as a single-issue candidate. I’m glad he lost.
Though actually, he does offer two alternatives: two-way HOV, or two-way bus lanes, on I-90. Admittedly, that would improve things beyond the current situation. No word on whether he understands the capacity difference between buses and trains, though…
Bill Hirt is well known to the blog. (Includes a bit of Norman nostalgia)
Ciudad Juarez might have a vigilante killing bus drivers that sexually assault women.
The Slog just helped me find Seattlish, made up of writers from the long gone Seattlest. Check out the bus driver love section.
I have a Windows Phone and love it, so I am trying to use the bus alarm app, but it doesn’t seem to be compatible with RapidRide. There are no letters on the number pad, and it doesn’t recognize it when I try the internal route number for RapidRide A line (671).
Most Windows Phone developers will respond to feedback and suggestions. Have you tried sending mail to the app developer or putting a note in the app ratings site?
50% of Tacomans don’t think Tacoma Link is worth even a $1 dollar fare.
http://www.king5.com/news/cities/tacoma/Free-rides-could-be-over-on-Tacoma-Link–222064421.html
I see no such numbers listed on the link you posted. Where are the numbers to back up this assertion?
Granted, I think it would be more popular if they actually extended it a few more miles…
In the story, two Tacomans were polled by the reporter. One said he wouldn’t pay a dollar, the other said he would pay.
@Sam
That is hardly a scientific or reliable poll. Reporters always find at least one person for and against on anything in an article.
Hahaha! Well, that is 50%. Interesting that you turned that into a statistic. That’s why it’s good to be wary of numbers like exactly 50% or exactly 25%, and instead trust obscure figures like 13.79%, where you know that there had to be a lot of data taken. Gee, if we took a PT prop 1 poll from the commenters of this blog, then we would get something like “prop 1 expected to pass 96% to 4%,” or something like that.
I polled DP, and he doesn’t think Tacoma Link is worth $1 either. So that’s 100% against in my survey population.
@alexkven
What about 42.86%? It really only takes a denomiator realtively prime to 10 to end up with numbers that sort look lie that.
Tacoma Link is free for a reason. Once it goes somewhere, it will be worth well over $1, but in its current form, where it would be really common to ride for just 1 or two stops, no one’s going to pay a dollar for that. I’m afraid that if that they start charging for it before they extend it, most of the people will only ride it if they are going a relatively long distance, like from TDS to 10 & Commerce or theater district.
It’s not the ride but the parking that adds value. Leave the fare free but start charging a buck to park. Lot still full? Charge $2. Rinse and repeat until you find the market rate for the parking garage.
Metro already charges $.05 per hour for parking. Oh wait… That’s for bikes.
(I’m ok with the fee – I just wish they also had it for cars. Knowing that parking would always be available would be worth it)
@Bernie. I like the idea. But, no chance of it ever happening.
I don’t think it’s worth charging a fare either, not until its extended anyway. ST would be better off having a paid parking system installed at TDS. A real basic system could involve numbering all the parking spots, than reprogram the orca TVMs to allow you to pay for parking. All you do is go up to the machine, type in the slot number, pay however you so choose and off you go. All parking enforcement has to do is get a list of “empty” slots and go check and see if they have anyone in them. An upgrade to this system would be installing a parking system that can identify if a slot is used or not, and correlate that with who’s paid, and than tickets can be issued based on that information. Might have to install an extra orca TVM or two but it would pay for itself. The initial cost of re-programing ORCA could be paid for by spreading this type of installation to other large P&R structures as well. Installing fare collection on LINK will take a LONG time to pay for itself, and might deter riders so a logical point would be to install than when the line is extended.
In Mexico City, people are making a living off of traffic jams.
http://tinyurl.com/kkk83c5
Mainly that they don’t include the huge effect of a) building and maintaining the city infrastructure and b) the cost of waste removal which BTW is never sent off to another city for disposal. Sustainable? How much of the food consumed is grown in the city? How much of the waste is composted and used within the city? It’s not about the individual but the collective. Living green in a dense environment isn’t impossible but it’s economically not viable.
Similar article in the Weekly. In case you missed picking up a copy at your local bus stop, Taxi Demand Study Shows Seattle Digs Ride-Shares .
Dumb
And Dumber
Right, definitely want to keep mass transit away from businesses like hotels. Better to bulldoze the park. I know, pave it and build a P&R; problem solved. Your tax dollars at work! Why even bother to vote.
Here’s your chance to get one of our transit agencies out of the dumper. From CT:
“Please help us spread the word to folks you would recommend for this job opportunity. Application materials can be found at http://www.commtrans.org; follow the quick links to “Employment”. This is a senior level management position that reports to our Corporate Controller and will directly advise Executive Staff, the CEO,and Board of Directors on budget and related financial business. We’re looking for a senior level strategist for short and long range financial advising and also a talented finance generalist to supervise budget and financial staff, oversee financial systems applications in partnership with IT staff, and assist with various senior level financial chores. Salary range is $87 to $124k with an expected hiring point up to $95k depending on qualifications. First consideration will be given to applicants that provide complete applications on or before September 8, 2013. We will continue to accept applications after September 8 until the position is filled. If you know anyone who may be interested and would like to know more about the opportunity please refer them to our web site; or if they’d like to speak with someone please refer them me or to Lori Fox, Controller. Thank you. Emmett http://www.commtrans.org Emmett Heath, Director of Administration, 425-348-7103 Lori Fox, Controller, 425-348-7175″
Pierce Transit also has a number of open positions as well.
A couple weeks ago I was reading an article about how the SLU area is growing due to Amazon, Also a few weeks ago I was riding a #70 through the area and noted a large number of people getting on the bus to go downtown to presumably transfer to other buses. I had a thought, perhaps it might be in Amazon’s, and Sound Transit’s interest to extend some or all of the Seattle Express service (590 592 595) to SLU and terminate somewhere around Mercer Street. The buses could get back on the freeway to head south again for another trip, or to their mid-day layover, etc. Plus it would get some amazon people off the 70 and 98 lines and give them a “one seat ride”. Also did anyone see in the latest ST timetable, that some trips of the 592 now go all the way to Olympia (thanks to a state grant?) I wonder how well this service will do with a 2-2.5 Hr running time through that horrible traffic.