55 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: The Secret Station”
Has there been anything new regarding Metro’s funding? I’ve been pestering my reps regularly and a coworker who still lives in State Sen. Tom’s district e-mails and calls about once a week. All of the responses have dropped to generic “our state needs a strong and sustainable funding mechanism for all types of transit”-style responses. I saw the survey from the State House Republicans (and filled it out) but I was wondering if anything else was lurking in the background.
Thanks for filling out the survey, important we transit users take advantage!
When I asked why Seattle isn’t considering turning the Seattle-owned 160 acre Jackson Park Golf Course into a Spring District-like TOD development, someone here barked at me, “because it’s open space!” So apparently once something is open/green space, it’s sacred ground, and can’t be developed or repurposed. It’s untouchable. Fine. I can go along with that. Uh oh. Wait a minute. A portion of the old freight rail line that used to run on the eastside recently had its tracks ripped out and is now the open space known as the Cross Kirkland Corridor. So this open space shouldn’t one day be turned into a mass transit corridor, correct?
I had that question too.
What seemed like a perfectly valuable rail corridor having tracks ripped up…and then saying they could add it back in again?!
To be fair, those tracks were dilapidated and in need of a rebuild back in the 90’s. Spirit of Washington and the handful of freights that ran that line absolutely crawled through Kirkland.
But that’s just how railbanking works. Municipal governments can get the corridors for cheap to build trails, but only under the condition that they preserve the ability to restore the rails at an unspecified future date. Because the rails aren’t being used now, so might as well build a bike path, but who knows what the situation will be in 100 years.
In a word, no.
There’s more going on with Jackson Park than just “open space” that makes it a special sacred cow. Too much to go into, but basically it’s historical, has an environmentally sensitive creek running through it, is the only public golf course north of the ship canal, the Olmstead plan dictates a park in the general area, etc etc.
The kirkland rail corridor isn’t afflicted by any of these issues. Unfortunately it’s of minimal use as a future transit corridor. Segments of it could be useful (most notably the southern kirkland/northern Bellevue section), but by and large it veers off into low density areas before reaching the most useful areas to serve (i.e. downtown kirkland)
That’s what makes Freeway BRT the superior option.
Maybe Jackson Park can be redesigned so people can start their golf from the northwest corner.
It doesn’t matter where the track goes between stations as long as it doesn’t zigzag too much, so if it goes through low-density areas, that’s fine.
405 has all the same problems the rail corridor does, plus because almost all the stops would be in the middle of an enormous freeway any potential walkable development would be stunted.
I hardly think the rail corridor is great, and South Kirkland P&R has a pretty awful location… but the P&R appears to be around for the long term as a transfer point, so it’s pretty notable that 405 express buses are essentially incapable of stopping there whatsoever. So the first plausible stop north of downtown Bellevue is, what, a freeway station at 70th? Far from existing and developing mixed-use areas of Kirkland, separated by grade and an often discontinuous pedestrian network. There’s not even any TOD potential there worthy of skepticism. So we look farther north, to Totem Lake, an area centered at and physically dominated by a freeway interchange designed for a future where humans have been genetically spliced with cars (like centaurs with wheels instead of hooves).
North of 132nd the next crossing of 405 for any mode of travel is at 160th, yet another enormous interchange but without even Totem Lake’s hope for TOD. A moderate deviation gets you to Bothell, probably the best stop location yet.
The rail corridor and 405 are equivalent north of downtown Kirkland and probably south of Bellevue generally. But if there’s some way to combine the existing HOV ROW of 405 with the rail corridor’s ability to make two useful stops in Kirkland (one at South Kirkland P&R and one in the already developing commercial area at the southeastern fringe of downtown Kirkland) it should be investigated. It may be that the regrade necessary to allow two-way transit use on the rail corridor is prohibitively expensive (or a litigation risk, or a safety problem). Or it might be a way to bring fast, reliable transit to a part of the eastside that’s very walkable but limited by traffic congestion.
Using the rail corridor as a trail is not a waste. Feet and bikes are as legitimate forms of transportation as anything. And, unlike rail, it has minimal construction and operating costs and is already getting good use today, even though it isn’t even paved yet.
Ask yourself this question:
Do you see the Burke-Gilman trail returning to use for a rail line through Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, Bothell, and Woodinville?
Sound Transit’s analysis for the North Corridor HCT project had a curious short term horizon on the cost/benefit analysis. This resulted in a Hwy99/Interurban alignment, (which has superior long term development potential), having a c/b ratio worse than their choice of the current freeway alignment. This is coupled with Shoreline’s vague ‘if it doesn’t impact the development we’ve already finished’ statement. (i.e. we’ve completed this 7-lane highway beautification program, isn’t it pretty?)
The Interurban Trail will remain a trail.
History has proven – once the tracks are removed, HCT of any form is NOT coming back to that given ROW.
Freeway BRT is not the superior option. It has all the same downsides as the rail corridor, plus a few more.
For the rail corridor to be useful as anything other than an express from Bellevue to Woodinville (now THERE’S a high priority line), it’ll need some changes.
Coming north out of Bellevue, somewhere around 68th it would need to deviate from the existing corridor, and swing west into downtown Kirkland. Assuming the LRVs could negotiate the grade decending into the valley, this actually wouldn’t be that bad to make happen. State Street has ROW to spare, so for the cost of some street parking, we could probably have surface rail a la MLK into the existing Kirkland Transit Center, or at least somewhere only a few blocks from the downtown core.
Coming north out of the Transit Center, though, it gets hairy. The grade is worse on the north side of the valley here, and going straight up 6th (with a few regraded intersections) and rejoining the existing corridor at Peter Kirk Elementary is basically the only practical option, short of bulldozing a path through developed neighborhoods and possibly elevating the whole mess. There’s plenty of room in the ROW, but it means surface running for 1/2 mile smack through the middle of a quiet, affluent, single family neighborhood, with front yards a dozen feet from the rails. I do not see either of those options being politically viable in Kirkland during my lifetime. So unless we’re going to dead-end it at downtown Kirkland and write off the connection to Totem Lake / Woodinville (for which there is an argument to be made), what’s the flippin’ point?
The exercise you’re describing is what Sound Transit was pencilling out for the I-405 Corridor Program Study back in 2002.
That’s how they came up with $4.5 Billion as the prelimary estimate the Cost/Benefit analysis was based on. The other deviations were south of Bellevue towards Factoria, and staying roughly in the freeway ROW over the Kennydale Hill.
It means a lot of elevated travel.
The big question is, what will Sound Transit include in ST3 for the Eastside sub-area? This, or the ~$1.6 Billion WSDOT Freeway BRT option. Sound Transit’s Eastside HCT analysis for the BRT portion came out higher than the WSDOT version per mile, but with higher performance (i.e. LRT convertible operating in exclusive ROW), but did not cover north of Totem Lake (or south of I-90).
@Lack: State Street has “ROW to spare” for MLK-style light rail? MLK is enormously wide, with room for significant separation between the trains and other vehicles. It also has few cross streets, which makes the limited number of track crossings acceptable (sort of). State Street currently has two GP lanes (not even a center turn lane), bike lanes, and parking. None of these features are especially wide; all are about as narrow as they can be while serving their purpose as exclusive lanes. They don’t get much wider as they navigate the curves on the hill south of the Kirkland TC.
So let’s say there’s no need for stops anywhere on State. We either have to find a train that can safely operate in a space as narrow as a parking lane, or eliminate the bike lanes. I think that means, “Buh-bye bike lanes,” which is sad for me, but I’ll take it to keep the hypothetical going. North of 7th Ave S the blocks are short, and blocking off direct pedestrian routes in this part of town (between Kirkland’s little waterfront downtown and the growing business district along 6th St S, on a street that wouldn’t be a bad place for more diverse land uses itself) to nearly the degree done on MLK sounds like bad urbanism to me. Downtown Kirkland’s greatest virtue is that it’s avoided that kind of stuff (its greatest problem is that its weak connections to regional transportation have kept it small… but with the way most places grew in the latter half of the 20th century maybe that isn’t the worst problem to have). We hear “MLK-style light rail” in blog comments often, but there really aren’t many streets where it’s appropriate. SF has lots of surface rail, but only a little of the MLK variety, and only on really big arterials.
As for the “swinging west” part, 85th/Central Way is very congested in downtown Kirkland (just like every other street there), and 68th gets very congested around the freeway interchange (during evening rush hour I’ll beat general traffic up the pretty steep hill from State to the freeway on my bike pretty much every time… unless I get hit, and even then, if the ambulance/hearse continues toward 405 I’ll win anyway). Also, there are lots of turning movements on/off of 68th (I notice all of them when I ride that way), so good luck putting in any kind of separated at-grade ROW that would obstruct them.
So either we’re wasting operational funds sitting in traffic on an awful Kirkland deviation or we’re building the Kirkland L? That’s never going to happen (CKC already has a bridge over 68th… also people around downtown Kirkland oppose that sort of thing more than people around downtown Bellevue because they have much more to lose in terms of pleasantness and views and stuff). Or I guess you could use 6th St instead of State; there’s no more room but there are fewer side streets and every block you loop around in Kirkland traffic adds up. But then we’re not any closer in to downtown Kirkland than the rail corridor and barely faster than a decent bus route on Bellevue Way/LWB (if at all — this extremely hypothetical route would ignore South Kirkland P&R, just as any 405 transit would). So why did we get on 405 from Bellevue in the first place? I’ve nearly asked the same question of someone giving me a ride from Bellevue to Kirkland, but it wouldn’t have been a polite thing to ask of a person whose car was the only thing standing between me and the 234/235.
This all applies equally to buses and trains (substitute “Aurora-style bus lanes” for “MLK-style light rail” and “Kirkland-Pittsburgh busway” for “Kirkland L” for hilarity).
If mass motorized transportation remains as unsustainable as it is today and if we have any real intention of changing our transportation sustainability situation in this region much eastside land use will have to change. Where can the walkable mixed-use neighborhoods of the future be built? If that doesn’t matter at all, then just say the 532/535 connect the eastside north-to-south and call it a day.
The Eastside corridor is a very different situation from the Burke-Gilman Trail, so you can’t assume that just because rail is extremely unlikely on one, it’s just as unlikely on the other.
The BGT was built in the 1970s at a time when nobody thought rail would ever come back, and it was not built to accommodate a rail line. In fact, some of the segments are so narrow and have UW dorms alongside them or are on the side of a hill, that I don’t see how you could put a rail line in again. The bike trail is a major travel corridor and the only dedicated bike trail in north Seattle. The UW has implemented its no-more-cars requirement partly by encouraging bicycles, and Wallingford and Fremont also have a lot of bike riders. The trail is not the best location for fullest North Seattle mobility, but it’s an important way to get to UW for its surrounding neighborhoods. But as a rail line it would be marginal because it’s in an odd corner and misses most of North Seattle’s population centers (even if it serves the biggest one). Its main use would be for trips to Bothell, but the bulk of travel is north-south between Aurora and 15th NE. So it would not be a significant enough rail line to rip out the trail. And that trail has national renown as one of the first rails-to-trails, so it has some historic significance too.
In Kirkland, we already know before trail construction that we might want to put commuter/light rail on it someday. The largest opposition to the trail has been wanting to preseve the option for rail in the next few decades. Kirkland has quieted the opposition only by saying it believes it can install a rail line without disrupting the trail, that the ROW is wide enough for both. The trail can also be designed for coexistence; e.g., not dipping into the future rail’s path at intersections.
” The largest opposition to the trail “
Who opposed the trail through Kirkland?
”
The kirkland rail corridor isn’t afflicted by any of these issues. Unfortunately it’s of minimal use as a future transit corridor. ”
It’s a good intercity corridor for rail from Portland, OR to Vancouver, WA, though. Better than the “on the beach” line, soon to be the “under the water” line, from Seattle to Everett.
Sam,
If you’re looking to hook someone here with your little provocation, you’re about to discover that you’ve cast your lure in the wrong pond.
Everyone here VERY likely believes the corridor is more valuable as a transit ROW than as generic “open space.”
Sound Transit will only pursue using the Woodinville Subdivision for HCT use if there is grass roots support for it.
Question. How come the cities with the greatest percentage of bike commuters are in the norther half of the US? Portland, Minneapolis, D.C., Seattle … That seems counter-intuitive to me. The more miserable the climate, the more people bike to work?
Yeah, try biking in the hot humid southern climates and then get back to me. Also, let me know if you can find any bike friendly communities. I’ve traveled all over the south and lived in Texas and Alabama. However, less than half the year, it’s possible to bike, plus it’s flat down there. The other half, more like 8 months out of the year, it’s too damn humid to get past one block.
Santa Barbara, CA is pretty bike friendly, but I’m sure that really qualifies as “southern”. It certainly doesn’t have the humidity of Texas or Alabama.
Greenville, SC is quite bike friendly and is humid as hell in the summer. ;-)
(that is of course assuming that hell is humid, whereas it might be more like Yuma)
Seems like many who call themselves “bike commuters” are only travelling to a station, and then putting the cycle in a locker, or else throwing it on the bus or train. How many are travelling point to point solely by bike?
You don’t see the throngs of bike riders that you see pictured in European cities.
Bike-n-ride is common throughout the world. I’ve never been to the Netherlands or Japan myself, but rail stations in these countries are particularly famous for having lots of well-used bike parking.
People who regularly commute solely by bike tend to have shorter commutes. All in all, the average bike commuter, whether biking to the station or directly to work is probably biking about the same number of miles.
And Europe does have hoards of people who bike a short distance to a train and ride the train for longer distances.
I am a point to point bicycle comuter, but as asdf suggests, it is indeed a short route (Greenwood to Ballard).
I used a lot of trains though when I was overseas for a few years and will certainly be using a bicycle to reach the central link once it is north of the canal. Bicycles are a vital link for people who are too far from the station to walk.
The less conservative the politics, the more people are willing to embrace alternatives to driving. This seems to be a larger effect than weather and hills.
Most bike commuters are traveling solely by bike, because buses and trains have only a fraction of the onboard racks they’d need if they all used them.
The missing throngs of riders are because of the lack of bike infrastructure. Those European cities have cyclectracks everywhere. That makes biking accessible to the majority of people who aren’t as athletic as American bike commuters.
Even within America there are huge infrastructure differences. In general older cities have prominent old pedestrian and transit infrastructure and compact, walkable neighborhoods dating from before the age of mass motorization, and these contribute to the sorts of short commutes that cycling is convenient for. In the southwest and mountain west cities can’t grow beyond their immediate ability to get drinking water and provide convenient transportation, which grew tremendously in the 20th century. Many southeastern cities and rail networks had to be rebuilt after the Civil War, so they’re effectively as new in construction as many southwestern cities, and they’ve grown later (and built major infrastructure later) due to later rural-urban migrations and immigration.
General political identities may have some impact, and recent bike-specific infrastructure certainly does, but Dutch cities had cyclists before they had cycletracks, and many California cities are full of liberals that support and maybe even fund transit and cycling infrastructure while their larger freeway-centric zoning and development patterns keep ubiquitous driving entrenched.
Yeah, even though I “like” bicycling for recreation, I really find it hard to justify as something that utilitarian or useful in a place that is o wet, often cold and always hilly. I mean at what point do we simply say that we’re trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
We’ve got so many transit modalities…maybe we should really take a deep look at what works and what doesn’t. To me, Sounder is ideal. But at the same time the costs of operation are so high. Buses, great, but get stuck on ice going up hills. Light rail, nice but takes a year and a day to implement.
Somehow all these things still seem…foreign to the Seattle area. We’re know for putting our own spin on things, for doing it different, for coming up with the thing no one has thought of. I don’t know that is happening yet in transit.
“I really find it hard to justify as something that utilitarian or useful in a place that is o wet, often cold and always hilly. I mean at what point do we simply say that we’re trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
This argument is full of problems, but let’s highlight a few of them.
1) The weather varies greatly from day to day and season to season. During the summer, Seattle weather is perfect for biking almost every day. Even during other seasons, just because it often rains doesn’t mean it’s always raining. Even days with a 100% chance of rain in the forecast, rain is off and on, so it may not actually be raining at the specific time you need to travel. Even if it, rain in Seattle is usually light and if you’re got good raingear and distance is short, you really don’t get all that wet. Cold is also a solvable problem with proper gear. And in the summer, you don’t even need any gear beyond shorts and a t-shirt.
Yes, there are some days in Seattle when the weather is just plain miserable for biking all day long. But those days are in the minority and it is crazy to argue that just because some days are unsuitable for cycling that we shouldn’t have infrastructure in place for people to ride all the other days.
2) In practice, hills are not nearly as bad as they seem. First, there are flat bike routes in Seattle. The Burke Gilman trail is flat. Westlake is flat. South Lake Union is flat. The Interurban trail is flat. And the Elliot Bay Trail is flat as well. Even when some hills are unavoidable, it is usually possible to choose a route that avoids the steepest stuff.
With decent gearing, even biking uphill is time-competitive with transit. I have multiple times biked from Montlake up to Capitol Hill, observed a southbound 43 at the bottom of the hill and observed the same #43 at the top of the hill. Downhill, biking is much faster, almost on par with driving.
@John Bailo I bicycle commute year round. The only thing that stops me is snow. Our rain is generally pretty light and even in a downpour, a sturdy rain jacket an fenders on your bicycle make a huge difference.
Yes, our climate severely limits bicycle commuting. Expecting significant mode share here would be like expecting significant mode share in Denmark….
“Even when some hills are unavoidable, it is usually possible to choose a route that avoids the steepest stuff.”
Or conversely, a route where most of the elevation is concentrated in one or two blocks, so you can just walk your bike up that and ride easily the rest of the way.
I think there are several things that determine the amount of bike commuting:
1) The weather
2) The infrastructure
3) The terrain
4) Distance from work (AKA density)
5) The populace — which includes support of the community, including employers
Seattle is a biking town for the same reason it is a soccer town (our soccer team really isn’t that good, but we set attendance records). We have a lot of people who like the idea of biking. For those that want to try it, the bike community does a great job in encouraging people. A lot of companies encourage it (with bike lockers, showers, etc.) because they see it as a (relatively) cheap way to attract or retain good workers.
Our terrain is terrible overall. We have monster hills. Fortunately, we have some really good infrastructure, especially on the relatively flat areas. These tend to balance each other out; basically, if you can commute by bike via something like the Burke Gilman, you will. If you have to go over a few big hills and cross a lot of busy streets, you won’t (there are exceptions, of course). Of course, distance can overwhelm the hills. A twenty mile ride on the Burke plus a hill is worse than two hills and a couple miles on a flat path.
The weather isn’t great, but it isn’t bad. Our weather in general is better than most of the country. California is the only place that has better weather overall. With decent infrastructure, I would expect some California cities to do really well. But, like us, they have some tough hills. A lot of it depends on where the jobs are, and where people live. A lot of the jobs in the Bay Area are in areas that are a long way from where other people live. This is changing, just as it is here. My guess is that more people ride their bike to Amazon than Microsoft. The paths to Microsoft are really good (probably better than the lanes to Amazon) but the distances are too huge for too many people.
After Tuesday, will STB reach out to the Murray campaign, since it appears he will be our next mayor?
All future transit expansions will be required to run on Comcast-owned infrastructure.
“Your train will arrive on Monday sometime between the hours of 12:30 and 4:30pm. Except when it doesn’t.”
What makes you think that he’ll be our next mayor?
Why is it STB’s job to reach out to Murray? He’s an elected official. Their job is to reach out to the people and to a well organized group of activists on a high profile public issue. One of the biggest problems in Seattle is this silly belief, which you don’t find anywhere else in this country, that people need to defer to elected officials when in fact it ought to be the reverse.
I refuse to predict what the outcome of an election will be. It’s an affront to democracy to think that way, because we should be basing things on what voters have said, not predicting what they will say, because they may change their minds at the last minute. At most we’d just need contingency plans for any outcome. I (I can’t speak for STB) will certainly try to cooperate with whoever is in office, and try to reach some common ground between my priorities and theirs.
What, in your view, constitutes “reaching out?”
Getting in contact with his transportation expert (I don’t know who this is, and apparently no one could answer) to meet, get a sense of where he stands; what role does steinbreuck play on terms of policy; explain where we stand– Ballard and other seattlites who need better transit with more people moving in, etc. while we would happy to achieve common goals, but if things don’t improve, we support the most plausible challenger
Crazy idea: How would elevated moving walkways work to connect just-too-far-removed transfer points? A quick web search turns up fast moving walkways moving as quickly as 7 mi/hr. I could see something connecting an SR 520 freeway station with the South Kirkland P&R, or Montlake Freeway Station with UW Link Station. Or, on the smaller scale, we could build one between Bellevue Transit Center and Bellevue TC Link Station, or between International District Station and the First Hill Streetcar stop. Thoughts?
Moving walkways are in use for lengthier transfers around the world, especially in larger and older systems where the transfer has been retroactively installed under less-than-ideal spatial conditions (e.g. New York, Paris).
They are only reasonable, however, when able to be placed within a “closed system” (even if accessible at all hours, and even if partially exposed to the elements). Doing so allows them to be surveilled, secured, and maintained as part of the larger system to which they belong. By contrast, an unprotected moving walkway across an open plaza would be an invitation for vandalism and maltreatment. (And if you need an assistive mechanism to cross a plaza, there’s no question your plaza is too damned large, no spatial constraint can be blamed, and you screwed up.)
Even in such a closed system, the usefulness of such walkways maxes out at a block or two. The UW/Montlake connection is simply too far for this. Ditto S.Kirkland/520. The latter needs to cease existing as a transfer point.
I assume a moving walkway becomes too expensive after a block or two (might as well add a train). That makes sense (given what I’ve seen in airports).
For UW/Montlake, you would also have to contend with the bridge. You could build another tunnel, but that becomes silly. You might as well just add a stop in Montlake. An elevated tram would be fairly cheap and fast, but it would have to go way up in the air and then back down again (I think the lines would have to be above 160 feet, like the Aurora bridge). I think another station probably makes the most sense (in Montlake). The area is ripe for what I would call “real BRT”. By that I mean:
1) Grade separated (or close to it). There are transit lanes on 520, so this qualifies as long as you add a few dedicated stations.
2) Fair is collected in the station, not the bus. This costs some extra, but delivers much faster, more reliable service.
BRT has its place, especially when we can take advantage of existing infrastructure (miles and miles of freeway that is reserved for buses and carpools). But it is silly to think that all you have to do is paint a bus red and then it automatically becomes “BRT”. It costs money — substantial money. But is no where near as expensive as running new rail or digging new tunnels (or building new freeways, etc.).
In this case, the interaction between 520 and Link seems to be just thrown together. Are we expecting folks to just walk across the bridge and take buses that resemble the current buses? That seems like a shame considering that 520 is a ditch and so is the train station (in other words, people have to go up and over and then back down again). Or do people really think we will have light rail across 520. Even if we do, where will it connect to the Husky Stadium station? It would have to deviate from 520. If you are doing that, you might as well add another station (in Montlake).
Yes, I enthusiastically support another station in Montlake, too – on its own merits, frankly, in addition to connecting with 520. Tragically, I don’t think U-Link is designed for that any more than for a West Capitol Hill station.
Perhaps a gondala? Just throwing out ideas…
What other transfer point would be better than the South Kirkland P&R? Is there a place that would serve the needs of all express and local buses going N-S and E-W?
A freeway station at Bellevue Way and 520? If only the rebuild had included that…
Exactly what William said. That would make for infinitely better core-route transfers.
Certain commuter routes could continue to stop outside — not loop endlessly through — the existing park-and-ride, for those who absolutely must have a one-seat ride from their cars to downtown Seattle. But S. Kirkland should cease to be an impediment to major core routes that don’t truly need to pass that way.
Yes, WSDOT in their infinite wisdom managed to put freeway stations at Evergreen Point and at 92nd/520 (Yarrow Point); both of these single family neighborhoods are clearly ripe for rezoning to mid/highrise TOD. ;-) However, where it would actually seem to do some good (Bellevue Way) they seemed to have missed the opportunity.
Add in a replacement freeway station at Montlake and try to figure out how to add one at 10th and you might have something for a freeway rapid bus line.
With the 520 rebuild, what we really should have done is get rid of the Yarrow Point freeway station and build a freeway station by a new transfer point at either Bellevue Way or 108th, then another one somewhere in Bel-Red (there’s no other direct service to Seattle there, and the freeway is no more a barrier than the rest of the street network).
It’s hard to blame WSDOT for not doing this when nobody locally stood up for it when it mattered.
I like the idea of a Bel Red freeway station, in theory. However, it would be rather technically difficult to build, given how 520 is right on the hillside in that region. What’s more, if you’re moving the HOV lanes to the inside, you’d need to rebuild the entire eastbound lanes to fit the station into the currently-nonexistent median. I’m not going to fault WSDOT if they decided against that, especially given that East Link is going to be coming to the area in another decade or so.
The polla suggest a new mayor. As a ballard resident, the downtown commute is getting longer and buses are getting more crowded. There has been some talk that Steinbruck gets a position in a Murray administration. What move? DoSTB try to push Murray on St3 onto 2016 ballot??
Has there been anything new regarding Metro’s funding? I’ve been pestering my reps regularly and a coworker who still lives in State Sen. Tom’s district e-mails and calls about once a week. All of the responses have dropped to generic “our state needs a strong and sustainable funding mechanism for all types of transit”-style responses. I saw the survey from the State House Republicans (and filled it out) but I was wondering if anything else was lurking in the background.
Thanks for filling out the survey, important we transit users take advantage!
When I asked why Seattle isn’t considering turning the Seattle-owned 160 acre Jackson Park Golf Course into a Spring District-like TOD development, someone here barked at me, “because it’s open space!” So apparently once something is open/green space, it’s sacred ground, and can’t be developed or repurposed. It’s untouchable. Fine. I can go along with that. Uh oh. Wait a minute. A portion of the old freight rail line that used to run on the eastside recently had its tracks ripped out and is now the open space known as the Cross Kirkland Corridor. So this open space shouldn’t one day be turned into a mass transit corridor, correct?
I had that question too.
What seemed like a perfectly valuable rail corridor having tracks ripped up…and then saying they could add it back in again?!
To be fair, those tracks were dilapidated and in need of a rebuild back in the 90’s. Spirit of Washington and the handful of freights that ran that line absolutely crawled through Kirkland.
But that’s just how railbanking works. Municipal governments can get the corridors for cheap to build trails, but only under the condition that they preserve the ability to restore the rails at an unspecified future date. Because the rails aren’t being used now, so might as well build a bike path, but who knows what the situation will be in 100 years.
In a word, no.
There’s more going on with Jackson Park than just “open space” that makes it a special sacred cow. Too much to go into, but basically it’s historical, has an environmentally sensitive creek running through it, is the only public golf course north of the ship canal, the Olmstead plan dictates a park in the general area, etc etc.
The kirkland rail corridor isn’t afflicted by any of these issues. Unfortunately it’s of minimal use as a future transit corridor. Segments of it could be useful (most notably the southern kirkland/northern Bellevue section), but by and large it veers off into low density areas before reaching the most useful areas to serve (i.e. downtown kirkland)
That’s what makes Freeway BRT the superior option.
Maybe Jackson Park can be redesigned so people can start their golf from the northwest corner.
It doesn’t matter where the track goes between stations as long as it doesn’t zigzag too much, so if it goes through low-density areas, that’s fine.
405 has all the same problems the rail corridor does, plus because almost all the stops would be in the middle of an enormous freeway any potential walkable development would be stunted.
I hardly think the rail corridor is great, and South Kirkland P&R has a pretty awful location… but the P&R appears to be around for the long term as a transfer point, so it’s pretty notable that 405 express buses are essentially incapable of stopping there whatsoever. So the first plausible stop north of downtown Bellevue is, what, a freeway station at 70th? Far from existing and developing mixed-use areas of Kirkland, separated by grade and an often discontinuous pedestrian network. There’s not even any TOD potential there worthy of skepticism. So we look farther north, to Totem Lake, an area centered at and physically dominated by a freeway interchange designed for a future where humans have been genetically spliced with cars (like centaurs with wheels instead of hooves).
North of 132nd the next crossing of 405 for any mode of travel is at 160th, yet another enormous interchange but without even Totem Lake’s hope for TOD. A moderate deviation gets you to Bothell, probably the best stop location yet.
The rail corridor and 405 are equivalent north of downtown Kirkland and probably south of Bellevue generally. But if there’s some way to combine the existing HOV ROW of 405 with the rail corridor’s ability to make two useful stops in Kirkland (one at South Kirkland P&R and one in the already developing commercial area at the southeastern fringe of downtown Kirkland) it should be investigated. It may be that the regrade necessary to allow two-way transit use on the rail corridor is prohibitively expensive (or a litigation risk, or a safety problem). Or it might be a way to bring fast, reliable transit to a part of the eastside that’s very walkable but limited by traffic congestion.
Using the rail corridor as a trail is not a waste. Feet and bikes are as legitimate forms of transportation as anything. And, unlike rail, it has minimal construction and operating costs and is already getting good use today, even though it isn’t even paved yet.
Ask yourself this question:
Do you see the Burke-Gilman trail returning to use for a rail line through Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, Bothell, and Woodinville?
Sound Transit’s analysis for the North Corridor HCT project had a curious short term horizon on the cost/benefit analysis. This resulted in a Hwy99/Interurban alignment, (which has superior long term development potential), having a c/b ratio worse than their choice of the current freeway alignment. This is coupled with Shoreline’s vague ‘if it doesn’t impact the development we’ve already finished’ statement. (i.e. we’ve completed this 7-lane highway beautification program, isn’t it pretty?)
The Interurban Trail will remain a trail.
History has proven – once the tracks are removed, HCT of any form is NOT coming back to that given ROW.
Freeway BRT is not the superior option. It has all the same downsides as the rail corridor, plus a few more.
For the rail corridor to be useful as anything other than an express from Bellevue to Woodinville (now THERE’S a high priority line), it’ll need some changes.
Coming north out of Bellevue, somewhere around 68th it would need to deviate from the existing corridor, and swing west into downtown Kirkland. Assuming the LRVs could negotiate the grade decending into the valley, this actually wouldn’t be that bad to make happen. State Street has ROW to spare, so for the cost of some street parking, we could probably have surface rail a la MLK into the existing Kirkland Transit Center, or at least somewhere only a few blocks from the downtown core.
Coming north out of the Transit Center, though, it gets hairy. The grade is worse on the north side of the valley here, and going straight up 6th (with a few regraded intersections) and rejoining the existing corridor at Peter Kirk Elementary is basically the only practical option, short of bulldozing a path through developed neighborhoods and possibly elevating the whole mess. There’s plenty of room in the ROW, but it means surface running for 1/2 mile smack through the middle of a quiet, affluent, single family neighborhood, with front yards a dozen feet from the rails. I do not see either of those options being politically viable in Kirkland during my lifetime. So unless we’re going to dead-end it at downtown Kirkland and write off the connection to Totem Lake / Woodinville (for which there is an argument to be made), what’s the flippin’ point?
The exercise you’re describing is what Sound Transit was pencilling out for the I-405 Corridor Program Study back in 2002.
That’s how they came up with $4.5 Billion as the prelimary estimate the Cost/Benefit analysis was based on. The other deviations were south of Bellevue towards Factoria, and staying roughly in the freeway ROW over the Kennydale Hill.
It means a lot of elevated travel.
The big question is, what will Sound Transit include in ST3 for the Eastside sub-area? This, or the ~$1.6 Billion WSDOT Freeway BRT option. Sound Transit’s Eastside HCT analysis for the BRT portion came out higher than the WSDOT version per mile, but with higher performance (i.e. LRT convertible operating in exclusive ROW), but did not cover north of Totem Lake (or south of I-90).
@Lack: State Street has “ROW to spare” for MLK-style light rail? MLK is enormously wide, with room for significant separation between the trains and other vehicles. It also has few cross streets, which makes the limited number of track crossings acceptable (sort of). State Street currently has two GP lanes (not even a center turn lane), bike lanes, and parking. None of these features are especially wide; all are about as narrow as they can be while serving their purpose as exclusive lanes. They don’t get much wider as they navigate the curves on the hill south of the Kirkland TC.
So let’s say there’s no need for stops anywhere on State. We either have to find a train that can safely operate in a space as narrow as a parking lane, or eliminate the bike lanes. I think that means, “Buh-bye bike lanes,” which is sad for me, but I’ll take it to keep the hypothetical going. North of 7th Ave S the blocks are short, and blocking off direct pedestrian routes in this part of town (between Kirkland’s little waterfront downtown and the growing business district along 6th St S, on a street that wouldn’t be a bad place for more diverse land uses itself) to nearly the degree done on MLK sounds like bad urbanism to me. Downtown Kirkland’s greatest virtue is that it’s avoided that kind of stuff (its greatest problem is that its weak connections to regional transportation have kept it small… but with the way most places grew in the latter half of the 20th century maybe that isn’t the worst problem to have). We hear “MLK-style light rail” in blog comments often, but there really aren’t many streets where it’s appropriate. SF has lots of surface rail, but only a little of the MLK variety, and only on really big arterials.
As for the “swinging west” part, 85th/Central Way is very congested in downtown Kirkland (just like every other street there), and 68th gets very congested around the freeway interchange (during evening rush hour I’ll beat general traffic up the pretty steep hill from State to the freeway on my bike pretty much every time… unless I get hit, and even then, if the ambulance/hearse continues toward 405 I’ll win anyway). Also, there are lots of turning movements on/off of 68th (I notice all of them when I ride that way), so good luck putting in any kind of separated at-grade ROW that would obstruct them.
So either we’re wasting operational funds sitting in traffic on an awful Kirkland deviation or we’re building the Kirkland L? That’s never going to happen (CKC already has a bridge over 68th… also people around downtown Kirkland oppose that sort of thing more than people around downtown Bellevue because they have much more to lose in terms of pleasantness and views and stuff). Or I guess you could use 6th St instead of State; there’s no more room but there are fewer side streets and every block you loop around in Kirkland traffic adds up. But then we’re not any closer in to downtown Kirkland than the rail corridor and barely faster than a decent bus route on Bellevue Way/LWB (if at all — this extremely hypothetical route would ignore South Kirkland P&R, just as any 405 transit would). So why did we get on 405 from Bellevue in the first place? I’ve nearly asked the same question of someone giving me a ride from Bellevue to Kirkland, but it wouldn’t have been a polite thing to ask of a person whose car was the only thing standing between me and the 234/235.
This all applies equally to buses and trains (substitute “Aurora-style bus lanes” for “MLK-style light rail” and “Kirkland-Pittsburgh busway” for “Kirkland L” for hilarity).
If mass motorized transportation remains as unsustainable as it is today and if we have any real intention of changing our transportation sustainability situation in this region much eastside land use will have to change. Where can the walkable mixed-use neighborhoods of the future be built? If that doesn’t matter at all, then just say the 532/535 connect the eastside north-to-south and call it a day.
The Eastside corridor is a very different situation from the Burke-Gilman Trail, so you can’t assume that just because rail is extremely unlikely on one, it’s just as unlikely on the other.
The BGT was built in the 1970s at a time when nobody thought rail would ever come back, and it was not built to accommodate a rail line. In fact, some of the segments are so narrow and have UW dorms alongside them or are on the side of a hill, that I don’t see how you could put a rail line in again. The bike trail is a major travel corridor and the only dedicated bike trail in north Seattle. The UW has implemented its no-more-cars requirement partly by encouraging bicycles, and Wallingford and Fremont also have a lot of bike riders. The trail is not the best location for fullest North Seattle mobility, but it’s an important way to get to UW for its surrounding neighborhoods. But as a rail line it would be marginal because it’s in an odd corner and misses most of North Seattle’s population centers (even if it serves the biggest one). Its main use would be for trips to Bothell, but the bulk of travel is north-south between Aurora and 15th NE. So it would not be a significant enough rail line to rip out the trail. And that trail has national renown as one of the first rails-to-trails, so it has some historic significance too.
In Kirkland, we already know before trail construction that we might want to put commuter/light rail on it someday. The largest opposition to the trail has been wanting to preseve the option for rail in the next few decades. Kirkland has quieted the opposition only by saying it believes it can install a rail line without disrupting the trail, that the ROW is wide enough for both. The trail can also be designed for coexistence; e.g., not dipping into the future rail’s path at intersections.
” The largest opposition to the trail “
Who opposed the trail through Kirkland?
”
The kirkland rail corridor isn’t afflicted by any of these issues. Unfortunately it’s of minimal use as a future transit corridor. ”
It’s a good intercity corridor for rail from Portland, OR to Vancouver, WA, though. Better than the “on the beach” line, soon to be the “under the water” line, from Seattle to Everett.
Sam,
If you’re looking to hook someone here with your little provocation, you’re about to discover that you’ve cast your lure in the wrong pond.
Everyone here VERY likely believes the corridor is more valuable as a transit ROW than as generic “open space.”
Sound Transit will only pursue using the Woodinville Subdivision for HCT use if there is grass roots support for it.
Question. How come the cities with the greatest percentage of bike commuters are in the norther half of the US? Portland, Minneapolis, D.C., Seattle … That seems counter-intuitive to me. The more miserable the climate, the more people bike to work?
Yeah, try biking in the hot humid southern climates and then get back to me. Also, let me know if you can find any bike friendly communities. I’ve traveled all over the south and lived in Texas and Alabama. However, less than half the year, it’s possible to bike, plus it’s flat down there. The other half, more like 8 months out of the year, it’s too damn humid to get past one block.
Santa Barbara, CA is pretty bike friendly, but I’m sure that really qualifies as “southern”. It certainly doesn’t have the humidity of Texas or Alabama.
Greenville, SC is quite bike friendly and is humid as hell in the summer. ;-)
(that is of course assuming that hell is humid, whereas it might be more like Yuma)
Seems like many who call themselves “bike commuters” are only travelling to a station, and then putting the cycle in a locker, or else throwing it on the bus or train. How many are travelling point to point solely by bike?
You don’t see the throngs of bike riders that you see pictured in European cities.
Bike-n-ride is common throughout the world. I’ve never been to the Netherlands or Japan myself, but rail stations in these countries are particularly famous for having lots of well-used bike parking.
People who regularly commute solely by bike tend to have shorter commutes. All in all, the average bike commuter, whether biking to the station or directly to work is probably biking about the same number of miles.
And Europe does have hoards of people who bike a short distance to a train and ride the train for longer distances.
I am a point to point bicycle comuter, but as asdf suggests, it is indeed a short route (Greenwood to Ballard).
I used a lot of trains though when I was overseas for a few years and will certainly be using a bicycle to reach the central link once it is north of the canal. Bicycles are a vital link for people who are too far from the station to walk.
The less conservative the politics, the more people are willing to embrace alternatives to driving. This seems to be a larger effect than weather and hills.
Most bike commuters are traveling solely by bike, because buses and trains have only a fraction of the onboard racks they’d need if they all used them.
The missing throngs of riders are because of the lack of bike infrastructure. Those European cities have cyclectracks everywhere. That makes biking accessible to the majority of people who aren’t as athletic as American bike commuters.
Even within America there are huge infrastructure differences. In general older cities have prominent old pedestrian and transit infrastructure and compact, walkable neighborhoods dating from before the age of mass motorization, and these contribute to the sorts of short commutes that cycling is convenient for. In the southwest and mountain west cities can’t grow beyond their immediate ability to get drinking water and provide convenient transportation, which grew tremendously in the 20th century. Many southeastern cities and rail networks had to be rebuilt after the Civil War, so they’re effectively as new in construction as many southwestern cities, and they’ve grown later (and built major infrastructure later) due to later rural-urban migrations and immigration.
General political identities may have some impact, and recent bike-specific infrastructure certainly does, but Dutch cities had cyclists before they had cycletracks, and many California cities are full of liberals that support and maybe even fund transit and cycling infrastructure while their larger freeway-centric zoning and development patterns keep ubiquitous driving entrenched.
Yeah, even though I “like” bicycling for recreation, I really find it hard to justify as something that utilitarian or useful in a place that is o wet, often cold and always hilly. I mean at what point do we simply say that we’re trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
We’ve got so many transit modalities…maybe we should really take a deep look at what works and what doesn’t. To me, Sounder is ideal. But at the same time the costs of operation are so high. Buses, great, but get stuck on ice going up hills. Light rail, nice but takes a year and a day to implement.
Somehow all these things still seem…foreign to the Seattle area. We’re know for putting our own spin on things, for doing it different, for coming up with the thing no one has thought of. I don’t know that is happening yet in transit.
“I really find it hard to justify as something that utilitarian or useful in a place that is o wet, often cold and always hilly. I mean at what point do we simply say that we’re trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
This argument is full of problems, but let’s highlight a few of them.
1) The weather varies greatly from day to day and season to season. During the summer, Seattle weather is perfect for biking almost every day. Even during other seasons, just because it often rains doesn’t mean it’s always raining. Even days with a 100% chance of rain in the forecast, rain is off and on, so it may not actually be raining at the specific time you need to travel. Even if it, rain in Seattle is usually light and if you’re got good raingear and distance is short, you really don’t get all that wet. Cold is also a solvable problem with proper gear. And in the summer, you don’t even need any gear beyond shorts and a t-shirt.
Yes, there are some days in Seattle when the weather is just plain miserable for biking all day long. But those days are in the minority and it is crazy to argue that just because some days are unsuitable for cycling that we shouldn’t have infrastructure in place for people to ride all the other days.
2) In practice, hills are not nearly as bad as they seem. First, there are flat bike routes in Seattle. The Burke Gilman trail is flat. Westlake is flat. South Lake Union is flat. The Interurban trail is flat. And the Elliot Bay Trail is flat as well. Even when some hills are unavoidable, it is usually possible to choose a route that avoids the steepest stuff.
With decent gearing, even biking uphill is time-competitive with transit. I have multiple times biked from Montlake up to Capitol Hill, observed a southbound 43 at the bottom of the hill and observed the same #43 at the top of the hill. Downhill, biking is much faster, almost on par with driving.
@John Bailo I bicycle commute year round. The only thing that stops me is snow. Our rain is generally pretty light and even in a downpour, a sturdy rain jacket an fenders on your bicycle make a huge difference.
Yes, our climate severely limits bicycle commuting. Expecting significant mode share here would be like expecting significant mode share in Denmark….
“Even when some hills are unavoidable, it is usually possible to choose a route that avoids the steepest stuff.”
Or conversely, a route where most of the elevation is concentrated in one or two blocks, so you can just walk your bike up that and ride easily the rest of the way.
I think there are several things that determine the amount of bike commuting:
1) The weather
2) The infrastructure
3) The terrain
4) Distance from work (AKA density)
5) The populace — which includes support of the community, including employers
Seattle is a biking town for the same reason it is a soccer town (our soccer team really isn’t that good, but we set attendance records). We have a lot of people who like the idea of biking. For those that want to try it, the bike community does a great job in encouraging people. A lot of companies encourage it (with bike lockers, showers, etc.) because they see it as a (relatively) cheap way to attract or retain good workers.
Our terrain is terrible overall. We have monster hills. Fortunately, we have some really good infrastructure, especially on the relatively flat areas. These tend to balance each other out; basically, if you can commute by bike via something like the Burke Gilman, you will. If you have to go over a few big hills and cross a lot of busy streets, you won’t (there are exceptions, of course). Of course, distance can overwhelm the hills. A twenty mile ride on the Burke plus a hill is worse than two hills and a couple miles on a flat path.
The weather isn’t great, but it isn’t bad. Our weather in general is better than most of the country. California is the only place that has better weather overall. With decent infrastructure, I would expect some California cities to do really well. But, like us, they have some tough hills. A lot of it depends on where the jobs are, and where people live. A lot of the jobs in the Bay Area are in areas that are a long way from where other people live. This is changing, just as it is here. My guess is that more people ride their bike to Amazon than Microsoft. The paths to Microsoft are really good (probably better than the lanes to Amazon) but the distances are too huge for too many people.
After Tuesday, will STB reach out to the Murray campaign, since it appears he will be our next mayor?
All future transit expansions will be required to run on Comcast-owned infrastructure.
“Your train will arrive on Monday sometime between the hours of 12:30 and 4:30pm. Except when it doesn’t.”
What makes you think that he’ll be our next mayor?
Why is it STB’s job to reach out to Murray? He’s an elected official. Their job is to reach out to the people and to a well organized group of activists on a high profile public issue. One of the biggest problems in Seattle is this silly belief, which you don’t find anywhere else in this country, that people need to defer to elected officials when in fact it ought to be the reverse.
I refuse to predict what the outcome of an election will be. It’s an affront to democracy to think that way, because we should be basing things on what voters have said, not predicting what they will say, because they may change their minds at the last minute. At most we’d just need contingency plans for any outcome. I (I can’t speak for STB) will certainly try to cooperate with whoever is in office, and try to reach some common ground between my priorities and theirs.
What, in your view, constitutes “reaching out?”
Getting in contact with his transportation expert (I don’t know who this is, and apparently no one could answer) to meet, get a sense of where he stands; what role does steinbreuck play on terms of policy; explain where we stand– Ballard and other seattlites who need better transit with more people moving in, etc. while we would happy to achieve common goals, but if things don’t improve, we support the most plausible challenger
Crazy idea: How would elevated moving walkways work to connect just-too-far-removed transfer points? A quick web search turns up fast moving walkways moving as quickly as 7 mi/hr. I could see something connecting an SR 520 freeway station with the South Kirkland P&R, or Montlake Freeway Station with UW Link Station. Or, on the smaller scale, we could build one between Bellevue Transit Center and Bellevue TC Link Station, or between International District Station and the First Hill Streetcar stop. Thoughts?
Moving walkways are in use for lengthier transfers around the world, especially in larger and older systems where the transfer has been retroactively installed under less-than-ideal spatial conditions (e.g. New York, Paris).
They are only reasonable, however, when able to be placed within a “closed system” (even if accessible at all hours, and even if partially exposed to the elements). Doing so allows them to be surveilled, secured, and maintained as part of the larger system to which they belong. By contrast, an unprotected moving walkway across an open plaza would be an invitation for vandalism and maltreatment. (And if you need an assistive mechanism to cross a plaza, there’s no question your plaza is too damned large, no spatial constraint can be blamed, and you screwed up.)
Even in such a closed system, the usefulness of such walkways maxes out at a block or two. The UW/Montlake connection is simply too far for this. Ditto S.Kirkland/520. The latter needs to cease existing as a transfer point.
I assume a moving walkway becomes too expensive after a block or two (might as well add a train). That makes sense (given what I’ve seen in airports).
For UW/Montlake, you would also have to contend with the bridge. You could build another tunnel, but that becomes silly. You might as well just add a stop in Montlake. An elevated tram would be fairly cheap and fast, but it would have to go way up in the air and then back down again (I think the lines would have to be above 160 feet, like the Aurora bridge). I think another station probably makes the most sense (in Montlake). The area is ripe for what I would call “real BRT”. By that I mean:
1) Grade separated (or close to it). There are transit lanes on 520, so this qualifies as long as you add a few dedicated stations.
2) Fair is collected in the station, not the bus. This costs some extra, but delivers much faster, more reliable service.
BRT has its place, especially when we can take advantage of existing infrastructure (miles and miles of freeway that is reserved for buses and carpools). But it is silly to think that all you have to do is paint a bus red and then it automatically becomes “BRT”. It costs money — substantial money. But is no where near as expensive as running new rail or digging new tunnels (or building new freeways, etc.).
In this case, the interaction between 520 and Link seems to be just thrown together. Are we expecting folks to just walk across the bridge and take buses that resemble the current buses? That seems like a shame considering that 520 is a ditch and so is the train station (in other words, people have to go up and over and then back down again). Or do people really think we will have light rail across 520. Even if we do, where will it connect to the Husky Stadium station? It would have to deviate from 520. If you are doing that, you might as well add another station (in Montlake).
Yes, I enthusiastically support another station in Montlake, too – on its own merits, frankly, in addition to connecting with 520. Tragically, I don’t think U-Link is designed for that any more than for a West Capitol Hill station.
Perhaps a gondala? Just throwing out ideas…
What other transfer point would be better than the South Kirkland P&R? Is there a place that would serve the needs of all express and local buses going N-S and E-W?
A freeway station at Bellevue Way and 520? If only the rebuild had included that…
Exactly what William said. That would make for infinitely better core-route transfers.
Certain commuter routes could continue to stop outside — not loop endlessly through — the existing park-and-ride, for those who absolutely must have a one-seat ride from their cars to downtown Seattle. But S. Kirkland should cease to be an impediment to major core routes that don’t truly need to pass that way.
Yes, WSDOT in their infinite wisdom managed to put freeway stations at Evergreen Point and at 92nd/520 (Yarrow Point); both of these single family neighborhoods are clearly ripe for rezoning to mid/highrise TOD. ;-) However, where it would actually seem to do some good (Bellevue Way) they seemed to have missed the opportunity.
Add in a replacement freeway station at Montlake and try to figure out how to add one at 10th and you might have something for a freeway rapid bus line.
With the 520 rebuild, what we really should have done is get rid of the Yarrow Point freeway station and build a freeway station by a new transfer point at either Bellevue Way or 108th, then another one somewhere in Bel-Red (there’s no other direct service to Seattle there, and the freeway is no more a barrier than the rest of the street network).
It’s hard to blame WSDOT for not doing this when nobody locally stood up for it when it mattered.
I like the idea of a Bel Red freeway station, in theory. However, it would be rather technically difficult to build, given how 520 is right on the hillside in that region. What’s more, if you’re moving the HOV lanes to the inside, you’d need to rebuild the entire eastbound lanes to fit the station into the currently-nonexistent median. I’m not going to fault WSDOT if they decided against that, especially given that East Link is going to be coming to the area in another decade or so.
The polla suggest a new mayor. As a ballard resident, the downtown commute is getting longer and buses are getting more crowded. There has been some talk that Steinbruck gets a position in a Murray administration. What move? DoSTB try to push Murray on St3 onto 2016 ballot??