It made me think… what’s the “sorriest bus stop in Seattle”? My nomination is this one: http://bit.ly/1DtiI7t
A 3 ft strip of gravel between a highway and an active freight track? Perfect spot for a bus stop!
That track cannot be “an active freight track” because the bus stop sign is directly adjacent to the end of the ties. Locomotives and railcars are a foot or two wider than the ties are long.
There must be just enough space to get by. If you follow the line north you will see where it connects to the UP main line. If you follow the line south on satellite view you will see at least one freight car waiting to get shoved into an industry there.
However, with the track cutting across Diagonal Way like it does I doubt they switch this during the hours buses are running.
I do remember seeing a whole set of tie replacement equipment working in there a couple of years ago.
I think what Anandakos is getting at is that if a train were to run down that track it would run into the bus stop signpole…
… which appears, in that picture, to be stuck into the ground inches from the track! But if you go a couple steps north you see that’s an optical illusion, as the pole is actually at a higher elevation than the track, and this is obscured by the grass in front of it. The pole is actually mounted to a paver, and the softer ground just behind it has eroded, leaving the edges of the paver exposed.
When you back out you can also see there’s a standard Metro bus shelter plopped down… on the other side of the train tracks! IIRC this bus stop is only used during peak commute hours, so hopefully not when a train coming through could get between the shelter and the bus stop!
Ah, but it is an active freight track, and there is plenty of clearance. The pole is on a small mound: perhaps you’re being fooled by the perspective of the streetview photo?
Have actually been in the front row of traffic stopped by a locomotive pulling a fairly long freight train diagonally across the road to the tracks in question.
Though both trees and their shadows take that stop well out of the “worst” category. Assuming that all of those routes haven’t been austeritized out of existence by the latest consultant’s report.
But interesting sidelight: was told by project engineers of the regional agency that preceded Sound Transit that while they’d considered exactly that route as an express line to Sea-Tac, they’d discovered that every elevated pillar would have to be footed in toxic waste that would eat their drills starting six inches down.
They called it “The Superfund Route”. Resulting in the fact that whole project crew would have to wear capes and spandex suits putting final nix on whole idea.
Who says History is boring?
MD
I’ll look around for some other greater-Seattle entries. I don’t think I know of one clearly worse than the one you posted, though… which means we’re in the minor leagues as it goes nationally…
Check the north end. There are sure to be a number of stops that are situated in a few inches of mud somewhere north of Northgate Way.
I always think those bus stops where there are about 30 feet of sidewalk along a street with no sidewalk are kind of sad, and those are all over the north end, on streets where the lack of sidewalks is inexcusable like 3rd Ave NW, 15th Ave NE, I think some on Meridian, etc. These small arterials can be very hard to cross during peak hours and scary at night… but the parts of Aurora without sidewalks are certainly worse. So some E-Line might be contenders, particularly for the juxtaposition of new bus stops and frequent service with poor pedestrian access.
But I’m going to go with a matching pair of stops along the 101: northbound and southbound. My recollection from riding the 101 is that there actually isn’t a closer corresponding stop in the other direction in either case, so even if the stop is fairly convenient in one direction, it isn’t in the other. I think these stops are reasonably popular, too, which means plenty of people have to use the shoulder-cum-sidewalk of MLK to get between them, as the lack of a crosswalk near the southbound stop and general lack of local street connectivity results in no better options.
Actually the SB stop at Oakesdale might actually be worse in terms of having no good place to cross the street.
The Totem Lake freeway station also seems worthy of mention, though it’s not obvious from any one picture. Even though you have sidewalks and marked crosswalks to get you there, you’re actually more likely to be pancaked by a car turning across your path than in a lot of places that don’t have sidewalks or marked crosswalks. There are a lot of high-traffic, low-pedestrian areas like this, but to me Totem Lake feels unusually bad — there’s no break from feeling like you’re about to die anywhere within a half-mile radius of 405/124th, and it’s hard to walk anywhere but arterials with lots of uncontrolled turning traffic. It’s the particularly awful pedestrian environment over such a wide area, the particular location near the epicenter of the awfulness, the unique transit services available at the freeway station, and not-great local connections — these factors all combine so that, in practice, you’re likely to have to do a lot of unusually dangerous walking to access the station, more so than any transit stop around here I can think of.
Totem Lake Freeway Station is actually not so bad. It’s off 128th, not 124th. The freeway entrance/exit ramps are HOV-only, reducing traffic volumes, and the corners are fairly sharp, forcing turning drivers to slow down. Plus, if you’re walking from Kingsgate P&R, it’s a covered walkway all the way to the bus stop.
One of the worst bus stops I’ve seen is actually the old Yarrow Point Freeway Station. The bus pullout was essentially a shoulder with no real separation from the traffic at all, and you had to be extremely careful loading and unloading a bike not to step one foot to the left of the bus if you valued your life. It was also poorly lit, and posed a very real risk that your bus driver would zoom on by without seeing you waiting. And to top it off, the stop was accessible only by stairs.
Today, my Worst Freeway Station award goes to westbound Montlake. About a foot more separation from 60 mph car traffic than the old Yarrow Point Station. Also, an extremely noisy place to wait for a bus. But, at least it does have a shelter.
Now that you mention it, asdf2, I guess I have to nominate the interim Evergreen Point stops, the ones that occasionally moved without the corresponding shelter moving. Rather drizzly; no noise protection.
“128th is well-lit and has proper crosswalks,” I thought. It shone in the distance like an oasis as I trudged up Totem Lake Boulevard, watching for cars pulling into and out of driveways (they certainly weren’t watching for me). So naturally when the walk sign turned on and I stepped out into the last crosswalk to get to the platform, some jackhole moron turning left gunned it straight at me. So I jumped back to the curb again.
I’ve loaded bikes onto buses at the old Yarrow Point station a bunch of times (I also got my shoes drenched a few times while Points Drive was torn up); I’ve crossed I-5 at 164th to get to Ash Way P&R a bunch of times; I’ve crossed 405 at NE 8th a couple times because I don’t know my way around Bellevue. I’ve been stuck at Lynnwood TC during what passes for a snowstorm around here, and took the last bus back to work instead of a bus back home that might never come. I-5/45th used to be my primary bus stop, and these days I often have to make the three-stage crossing at NE 45th/7th while carrying heavy stuff. I appreciate the utility of our freeway buses and also hate a lot of things about our freeways. Totem Lake is relentlessly noisy, dangerous, and noticeably polluted over an area that seems bigger to me than the areas around most freeway interchanges. I don’t think I hate Totem Lake more than I-5/164th, or 405/NE 8th, but I hate it more than the old Yarrow Point station. But I’ll grant, different experiences might have changed that.
I’ll second the nomination for 101 SB at Oakesdale. I got off there once by accident (I was new to the route) and not only is there no good place to cross, there is no good place to walk on either side of the street if you’re heading further south.
There might be worse stops in Seattle, but that’s the worst I’ve ever personally used.
Not Seattle, but 51st Avenue NE & 146th Street NE in North Marysville is pretty bad for a stop that gets half-hourly service and is considered a core route for Community Transit. It’s on a road with a posted speed limit of 35mph with a tiny sliver of a shoulder. The stop probably gets a good few riders, since it is adjacent to a small housing subdivision as well as the navy’s support complex and commissary.
You know, I actually think this sort of example, where it’s still new and shiny, is sorrier than all the run-down ones. The narrative is that we’re turning it back around after a century in the weeds, and then there’s this, which is so new, and so stupid. It looks like they got the developers to build a sidewalk on their side of the street (as they should) and even a bus pullout (and a bike lane just long enough to be disrupted by it), but the fact people use the bus in both directions was an afterthought.
But the bus stop isn’t even the worst part. They also didn’t come up with a local street network plan capable of hosting any kind of public realm or meaningfully support non-motorized access in any direction (toward, say, a place capable of hosting any kind of public realm), but I bet they feel great about that ridiculous bike lane and tiny coffee stand (the tiny corner store of our generation — I guess we all subsist on caffeine and takeout). Better luck next century, America!
“the fact people use the bus in both directions was an afterthought.”
It’s not the developer’s property. :) When the other site gets developed, then it will get sidewalks. Unless Marysville springs for them itself, which it probably can’t afford thanks to the “No taxes” people.
It’s not about property or paying for stuff, it’s about planning. Every building relies on infrastructure and services that extend far beyond the property line. Water, sewage, electricity, gas, garbage pickup. No development would be permitted without a plan. Road access, too — Point Wells development basically hinges on road impacts in a town it isn’t even in!
So the bus pullout and bike lane, those are on public rights-of-way, but the developer probably paid for them. And probably should have paid the tiny amount it costs for a paved place to stand and wait for the bus across the street, or even (gasp) a bench! But it’s bigger than that, and while the “punch-throughs” this particular subdivision needs aren’t that big, the fact that there are fences where they should be means there was never a serious thought of it being anything but a big-ol’ single-use zone full of car commuters forever. Built at a time when we should know that’s not forever.
How about this Community Transit stop? It’s a park-and-ride also.
It seems like I ran into a couple on Kitsap Transit that were pretty bad, but on a par with those shown. Mostly it was due to how busy some of those narrow two lane roads with no shoulder have become.
And this one SB on Aurora: https://goo.gl/maps/X1oKY. Somebody not familiar with Seattle might say at least it has sidewalks, but I think the speed and volume on Aurora makes up for it enough to put it in the runnings.
That’s what I called scary highways in my Snoqualmie Valley bus trip. Some parts are even worse: they have no shoulder at all; the edge of the lane is right next to thick shrubs or a dropoff. If you had to walk on them, it looks like cars would have to go left of the center to go around you, and if one is distracted or drunk, then blammo. I saw these north of Carnation and west of Duvall, and perhaps south of Carnation (but not that far south: Snoqualmie and Fall City were all right).
Aurora and Sand Point Way and 4th Avenue S have white lines well in from the edge, so even though there’s no “sidewalk”, they’re all right as long as the cars stay in the lane, which pretty much all of them do. But some residential streets in north Seattle really have no place to walk except in the car lanes, because there’s a ditch or wall next to the lane.
Epic Bus Commercial – the sequel
Weird ad. Danish bus company trying to convince young men that riding bus is COOL.
You mean riding a bus is not cool? I ride a bus all the time and I’m cool :)
Hey, thanks for alerting NSA and Homeland Security to a terrible (well, not really) new threat:
Cure curly-haired kids from the Western World eating hamburgers tasting suspiciously of falafel, take special buses chartered by Osama Ben Laden’s estate, to the Copenhagen and fleeing to the Middle East.
Where they first get their regional street-cred with Bashir El Assad’s murderous Syrian air force, scattering horrified fundamentalist enemies with barrel bombs stuffed with clouds of girls’ underwear.
They then desert to other beserk terrorist groups, who immediately give them black balaclava’s to wear into battle, so the enemy can’t see how cute they are and not be scared.
After five decades’ deployment to widespread international terror all over the Middle East and Central Asia, when their commanders notice that at seventy they’re not cute anymore and their girls’ underwear box is empty, they are then given business suits and put aboard flights to the United States.
Into which they don’t even have to sneak because of their resemblance, to TSA and Immigration, of Standard and Poors’ executives who by Justice Departments orders are ‘way too guilty to arrest.
Enabling them, after first selling the cute underwear that guys in that income bracket can obtain, even faster than the cutest Danish kid, to the agents of rock stars so old they can’t get themselves gifted with lingerie by anybody- to be showered on their outdoor concerts by Syrian army surplus helicopters.
And finally, while all male and transvestite NSA agents are preoccupied analyzing all the underwear, these returned terrorists begin a nationwide incendiary campaign that swiftly convinces a majority of commuters that transit has advantages over blazing automobiles.
Except for….well, send in some more links on bus stops and the systems they belong to. Die freezing to death because route was canceled last year, or slipping on a filthy linoleum aisle, infidel dogs!
MD
Metro’s Capitol Hill/U District restructuring had some new stuff posted. No restructuring info, but some background on what’s going on now.
Interesting stuff in there. Metro analyzes the U-District/Capitol Hill routes (going as far out as the 16 and 28) from several Service Guidelines perspectives, and come up with the same things passengers have intuitively felt: the 71/72/73X are grossly over capacity, late, and prone to bus bunching, to the tune of 33% of peak trips. The report doesn’t make an conclusions, but it strongly imples Link will be their savior (although not fully until Brooklyn station opens). Other factors are gunning for breaking them up: the articulated 71 and 73 are too big for their narrow tail streets and residential termini, and the 72 lays over in a bus lane on Lake City Way (preventing other buses from using the lane). U-Link will be 6 minutes peak (currently 7.5). So some buses will have to be ejected from the tunnel in September for U-Link testing. That doesn’t necessarily mean the 71/72/73 will be reorganized this round; Metro might eject some other routes from the tunnel instead. But it makes a strong case for reorganizing them soon, and a strong objection to not reorganizing them.
The report also mentions a trolleybus layover space in the Pacific Place triangle and muses that the 49 or 70 might use it. That surprises me because why wouldn’t the 44 use it? Maybe the 44 has another space. It’s also surprising because the only way for the 49 or 70 to get there would be from the University Bridge to Campus Parkway to Pacific Street, which would be backtracking. On the other hand, there will be major demand for shuttles between UW Station and the U-District, so maybe it’ll help with that. But I could see 49/70 riders complaining that their destination is at 43rd or 45th, or it creates a 5-block gap to transfers on 45th, or it forces people to walk across the street to transfer to the 44. So I’m not sure about that routing.
But I do see current 71/72/73X riders saying anything is better than the current problems, including going down to UW Station to transfer, so maybe that will be more popular than I earlier thought, and it could allow just deleting those routes. (And presumably, the 72 and 73 replaced by the 372 and 373, and the 71 replaced by a shuttle or something more elaborate.)
Another interesting thing is that the 76 is in the top 25% of performance, so… maybe replace the 71 midday with the 76? Of course, that would nonplus those going to the U-District, but some of them live near the 65 and 68 and, ahem, we were talking about adding evening/weekend service on the 68.
The report also has a bombshell for the campus routes: UW is considering a cycletrack on Stevens Way, which would preclude two-way bus routes on it. It’s still not certain, so I wouldn’t expect it before 2021, although it may start construction by then. That could give another reason to reroute the 65/67/75/372 to UW Station. But in 2021 if they or the 31/32 want to to go to Brooklyn station, then they’d have to go on 45th, because there’s no other way. I wonder what Metro now thinks about congestion on the 45th viaduct (since I believe it has been trying to keep buses away from there).
In Capitol Hill, not much news, although Metro puts Bellevue Ave and Madison/Broadway within Capitol Hill station’s half-mile walk circle, so it seems to believe it will be attractive for those areas. The station rendering looks like it will be standalone with nothing on top of it. Is this true or am I misinterpreting the drawings?
The report also seems to say the 9X is in the top 25% and should be expanded evenings, while the 60 is the opposite with low evening ridership. But this is “before Link”, so I’m not sure if it really argues for expanding the 9X after Link or that Link would replace it.
There was this bit in the public engagement summary:
Feedback from immigrant communities suggests that many immigrants are used to relying on a service network that is less complex and comes more frequently. Several people talked about how in their native countries, they never used any “system” to plan a trip. They could walk to a bus stop, wait no longer than 15 minutes, and make connections to other modes and services at major transfer points throughout their cities. They would find our bus service easier if it operated in more of a grid and service were frequent enough to not require the use of a schedule. The service would also be easier to use if wayfinding signs were in multiple languages, particularly at major inter-modal transfer points and where people need to know how to get to a key activity center.
This completely counters what many self-styled advocates for immigrant communities claim when they fight against frequent gridded networks.
I was going to mention that quote, although from a different aspect. In Moscow and St Petersburg, all buses, metro lines, and streetcars run every five minutes (ten minutes evening) so there’s no such thing as a schedule. People just go to the stop whenever they’re ready, and they just assume a 5-10 minute transfer overhead for all modes. Except commuter trains, which run every 30-60 minutes.
That “less complex” part deserves more attention too. Foreign large-city networks are usually based on either a grid or a jumble of metro stations. But Metro routes often seem just arbitrary, and transfer at nondescript locations that look the same as non-transfer stops. It’s probably frustrating for a non-English speaker to figure out a trip that involves a transfer. It’s also hard for even English-speaking visitors on some routes (e.g., the 30 and 75) to figure out which side of the street goes toward downtown, because they often end up going the wrong direction.
@ Chris Stefan–
That’s brilliant–great find! Let’s leverage that to the hilt. Great information and Metro obviously jumped on it to place in the summary. I hope it’s something they can run with heading into the future.
I don’t know which “communities” have their opinions included in the study, but SCCC / UW immigrants may not be quite the same cohort as those in other parts of Seattle — there may be class or urban / rural distinctions.
I’m a member of the Link Connections Sounding Board, so I’ve seen some ideas of what might happen. At this point, Metro is presenting us with two alternative networks. Right now, we are simply focusing on understanding them, not choosing between them.
Alternative 1 is the big-bang, whose goal is remake the North Seattle bus network to focus on frequent service corridors all day, every day, rather than providing every neighborhood with a slow, one-seat ride to downtown.
Alternative 2, by contrast, is focused on preserving existing experiences for existing riders, and contains only minor changes from the bus network of today.
I’m not going to spill the beans right now and start a thread of 100+ comments about the good and bad of each of the two networks – they’ll be announced to the public soon enough. But, I will say that alternative 1 yields a bus network that is much easier to understand for anywhere-to-anywhere trips than today’s network, with the neighborhoods east of I-5 and north of the U-district seeing the greatest benefit.
Thank you for the glimpse!
I’m sure many of us have a very strong preference between those two philosophies; is there anything we can do now to help our preferred alternative?
Now, back to leading video. Interesting how little Chicago has changed in the 62 years since I’d take the ‘El from Rogers’ Park- few blocks each way from the north Seattle city line at Howard Street and from Lake Michigan- for my charcoal drawing lessons at the Art Museum half the size of Chicago.
Time of year is familiar too. Especially on sunny winter days, whether the wind comes screaming across the prairie to the west or the lake from the east, it’ll cut your eyeballs out of your head.
People cover their faces with wool scarves, pull their knitted hats over their eyes, and run from building doorway to store front to, say, CTA station like Evil Empire stormtroopers under ray-gun fire from Obiwan Kenobi and those guys.
But- everything else in Chicago is equally energetic. Truly the anti- Seattle. Beautiful video. Terrific pilot. Wonderful composition. The camera caught exactly the right things to define the place from the air.
Would be even better, though, for a sequel of a flight at like third story level through some of the old neighborhoods with three story brick buildings and the old shops of the ‘fifties- except everybody now has espresso and croissants instead of coffee and donuts.
You know, to get the whole picture, this video should always be the “lead-in” to the first Blues Brothers movie. Which captured dozens of howlingly accurate things about Chicago life and culture.
But like the saying goes: “That’s a nice helicopter-thing ya got there. Too bad if somethin’ happened to it…” Like if somebody hung a big net from a clothes line because it would be Christmas in a couple days and the kids had been real good. Or if somebody needed to take another camera to the pawn shop.
Or because the Chicago police…well, see the movie! Meantime, people don’t talk about this in Illinois because the aboriginal peoples had a scary legend. Hit one flying badger with a drone and you’re doomed for all eternity to carry a camera in your mouth through the skies all over Buffalo or the whole galaxy, whichever is colder.
And one more chilling fact: Don’t ever send an over-intense kid to the Chicago Art Institute on the ‘El. Fine particles of carbon and copper get into the bloodstream, so victim spends their life only energized thirteen feet from wire centerline. With their artistic vision reduced to the point where wire, tracks, and curb-lines form a single point in space.
Electrolite addiction. No cure yet, but if you give now…..
Mark
Al, last visit to Totem Lake flyer stop year or two back, noticed one thing that makes a really bad bus stop- even a brand new one with direct access on and off a freeway.
Main danger is not dying from being hit by a car, but of terminal boredom. Hospital has espresso and snack places inside the buildings. But between there and the freeway, there’s nothing but cement and trees.
There’s no “street life” whatsoever- while every single Chicago elevated stop was surrounded with it. Wonder if shops and restaurants and such are forbidden by local building codes- or discouraged by lack of family residences. Or people easily able to drive to a mall that has them.
Personally remembering the years when the suburban freeway culture was new, and exciting for that reason, I don’t think the planners had any idea how lifeless everything would turn out.
I really do think that they really thought, without thinking about it, that the cities, and good public transit, would also be there forever. They definitely did not foresee that a generation or two after the new era started, the mobility and freedom suburban life promised would be choked off by the number of cars themselves.
So this is where we are now. The really exciting thing to me is that those of us seriously into transit right now are in the exact position that the planners were after the Second World War. The culture that used to be new and “cool” has become old, ugly, and boring.
Which itself is probably already inducing young people not only that transit is “cool”- hey, wait a minute, didn’t that go out with “hip”, “square”, and calling guys “Daddy-o”? – but something refreshing and positive. And best of all, will really bug the Older Generation.
Also, though, probably good hygiene-wise that people still use underwear- and carry an extra pair too, in case they see a really cool, cute kid. In spite of how much money Paris Hilton made for awhile just for showing up at parties without any. Probably also paid her even more to leave.
Mark
I happen to have a fascinating inner monologue for just this situation. As I am not a human man but a robotic giant panda (“pandroid”) with no consciousness of my own, my programmers had to build an inner monologue for me, so they trained a Markov Chain-based text generator on the STB comment section (along with selected Internet videos). When I walk through suburbia witty denouncements flow through my positronic brain unheeded (“I hate this! It is revolting!” “More?” “Please!”), juxtaposed with images of giant pandas struggling with basic problems of existence. Boredom poses no danger to me, least of all in the suburbs.
The shops and stuff are in the mall that’s just across from the hospital.
Don’t let the prettiness of the filmed snow fool you. On day two, that’s not at all what it looks like, it looks brown, and like frozen feet as you step in 6 inch puddles of slush at street corners, and bleh. Also, its just incredibly cold.
Streetsblog is doing a “sorriest bus stop in America” contest: http://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/02/06/its-time-to-vote-for-the-sorriest-bus-stop-in-america/
It made me think… what’s the “sorriest bus stop in Seattle”? My nomination is this one: http://bit.ly/1DtiI7t
A 3 ft strip of gravel between a highway and an active freight track? Perfect spot for a bus stop!
That track cannot be “an active freight track” because the bus stop sign is directly adjacent to the end of the ties. Locomotives and railcars are a foot or two wider than the ties are long.
There must be just enough space to get by. If you follow the line north you will see where it connects to the UP main line. If you follow the line south on satellite view you will see at least one freight car waiting to get shoved into an industry there.
However, with the track cutting across Diagonal Way like it does I doubt they switch this during the hours buses are running.
I do remember seeing a whole set of tie replacement equipment working in there a couple of years ago.
I think what Anandakos is getting at is that if a train were to run down that track it would run into the bus stop signpole…
… which appears, in that picture, to be stuck into the ground inches from the track! But if you go a couple steps north you see that’s an optical illusion, as the pole is actually at a higher elevation than the track, and this is obscured by the grass in front of it. The pole is actually mounted to a paver, and the softer ground just behind it has eroded, leaving the edges of the paver exposed.
When you back out you can also see there’s a standard Metro bus shelter plopped down… on the other side of the train tracks! IIRC this bus stop is only used during peak commute hours, so hopefully not when a train coming through could get between the shelter and the bus stop!
Ah, but it is an active freight track, and there is plenty of clearance. The pole is on a small mound: perhaps you’re being fooled by the perspective of the streetview photo?
Have actually been in the front row of traffic stopped by a locomotive pulling a fairly long freight train diagonally across the road to the tracks in question.
Though both trees and their shadows take that stop well out of the “worst” category. Assuming that all of those routes haven’t been austeritized out of existence by the latest consultant’s report.
But interesting sidelight: was told by project engineers of the regional agency that preceded Sound Transit that while they’d considered exactly that route as an express line to Sea-Tac, they’d discovered that every elevated pillar would have to be footed in toxic waste that would eat their drills starting six inches down.
They called it “The Superfund Route”. Resulting in the fact that whole project crew would have to wear capes and spandex suits putting final nix on whole idea.
Who says History is boring?
MD
I’ll look around for some other greater-Seattle entries. I don’t think I know of one clearly worse than the one you posted, though… which means we’re in the minor leagues as it goes nationally…
Check the north end. There are sure to be a number of stops that are situated in a few inches of mud somewhere north of Northgate Way.
I always think those bus stops where there are about 30 feet of sidewalk along a street with no sidewalk are kind of sad, and those are all over the north end, on streets where the lack of sidewalks is inexcusable like 3rd Ave NW, 15th Ave NE, I think some on Meridian, etc. These small arterials can be very hard to cross during peak hours and scary at night… but the parts of Aurora without sidewalks are certainly worse. So some E-Line might be contenders, particularly for the juxtaposition of new bus stops and frequent service with poor pedestrian access.
But I’m going to go with a matching pair of stops along the 101: northbound and southbound. My recollection from riding the 101 is that there actually isn’t a closer corresponding stop in the other direction in either case, so even if the stop is fairly convenient in one direction, it isn’t in the other. I think these stops are reasonably popular, too, which means plenty of people have to use the shoulder-cum-sidewalk of MLK to get between them, as the lack of a crosswalk near the southbound stop and general lack of local street connectivity results in no better options.
Actually the SB stop at Oakesdale might actually be worse in terms of having no good place to cross the street.
The Totem Lake freeway station also seems worthy of mention, though it’s not obvious from any one picture. Even though you have sidewalks and marked crosswalks to get you there, you’re actually more likely to be pancaked by a car turning across your path than in a lot of places that don’t have sidewalks or marked crosswalks. There are a lot of high-traffic, low-pedestrian areas like this, but to me Totem Lake feels unusually bad — there’s no break from feeling like you’re about to die anywhere within a half-mile radius of 405/124th, and it’s hard to walk anywhere but arterials with lots of uncontrolled turning traffic. It’s the particularly awful pedestrian environment over such a wide area, the particular location near the epicenter of the awfulness, the unique transit services available at the freeway station, and not-great local connections — these factors all combine so that, in practice, you’re likely to have to do a lot of unusually dangerous walking to access the station, more so than any transit stop around here I can think of.
Totem Lake Freeway Station is actually not so bad. It’s off 128th, not 124th. The freeway entrance/exit ramps are HOV-only, reducing traffic volumes, and the corners are fairly sharp, forcing turning drivers to slow down. Plus, if you’re walking from Kingsgate P&R, it’s a covered walkway all the way to the bus stop.
One of the worst bus stops I’ve seen is actually the old Yarrow Point Freeway Station. The bus pullout was essentially a shoulder with no real separation from the traffic at all, and you had to be extremely careful loading and unloading a bike not to step one foot to the left of the bus if you valued your life. It was also poorly lit, and posed a very real risk that your bus driver would zoom on by without seeing you waiting. And to top it off, the stop was accessible only by stairs.
Today, my Worst Freeway Station award goes to westbound Montlake. About a foot more separation from 60 mph car traffic than the old Yarrow Point Station. Also, an extremely noisy place to wait for a bus. But, at least it does have a shelter.
Now that you mention it, asdf2, I guess I have to nominate the interim Evergreen Point stops, the ones that occasionally moved without the corresponding shelter moving. Rather drizzly; no noise protection.
“128th is well-lit and has proper crosswalks,” I thought. It shone in the distance like an oasis as I trudged up Totem Lake Boulevard, watching for cars pulling into and out of driveways (they certainly weren’t watching for me). So naturally when the walk sign turned on and I stepped out into the last crosswalk to get to the platform, some jackhole moron turning left gunned it straight at me. So I jumped back to the curb again.
I’ve loaded bikes onto buses at the old Yarrow Point station a bunch of times (I also got my shoes drenched a few times while Points Drive was torn up); I’ve crossed I-5 at 164th to get to Ash Way P&R a bunch of times; I’ve crossed 405 at NE 8th a couple times because I don’t know my way around Bellevue. I’ve been stuck at Lynnwood TC during what passes for a snowstorm around here, and took the last bus back to work instead of a bus back home that might never come. I-5/45th used to be my primary bus stop, and these days I often have to make the three-stage crossing at NE 45th/7th while carrying heavy stuff. I appreciate the utility of our freeway buses and also hate a lot of things about our freeways. Totem Lake is relentlessly noisy, dangerous, and noticeably polluted over an area that seems bigger to me than the areas around most freeway interchanges. I don’t think I hate Totem Lake more than I-5/164th, or 405/NE 8th, but I hate it more than the old Yarrow Point station. But I’ll grant, different experiences might have changed that.
I’ll second the nomination for 101 SB at Oakesdale. I got off there once by accident (I was new to the route) and not only is there no good place to cross, there is no good place to walk on either side of the street if you’re heading further south.
There might be worse stops in Seattle, but that’s the worst I’ve ever personally used.
Not Seattle, but 51st Avenue NE & 146th Street NE in North Marysville is pretty bad for a stop that gets half-hourly service and is considered a core route for Community Transit. It’s on a road with a posted speed limit of 35mph with a tiny sliver of a shoulder. The stop probably gets a good few riders, since it is adjacent to a small housing subdivision as well as the navy’s support complex and commissary.
You know, I actually think this sort of example, where it’s still new and shiny, is sorrier than all the run-down ones. The narrative is that we’re turning it back around after a century in the weeds, and then there’s this, which is so new, and so stupid. It looks like they got the developers to build a sidewalk on their side of the street (as they should) and even a bus pullout (and a bike lane just long enough to be disrupted by it), but the fact people use the bus in both directions was an afterthought.
But the bus stop isn’t even the worst part. They also didn’t come up with a local street network plan capable of hosting any kind of public realm or meaningfully support non-motorized access in any direction (toward, say, a place capable of hosting any kind of public realm), but I bet they feel great about that ridiculous bike lane and tiny coffee stand (the tiny corner store of our generation — I guess we all subsist on caffeine and takeout). Better luck next century, America!
“the fact people use the bus in both directions was an afterthought.”
It’s not the developer’s property. :) When the other site gets developed, then it will get sidewalks. Unless Marysville springs for them itself, which it probably can’t afford thanks to the “No taxes” people.
It’s not about property or paying for stuff, it’s about planning. Every building relies on infrastructure and services that extend far beyond the property line. Water, sewage, electricity, gas, garbage pickup. No development would be permitted without a plan. Road access, too — Point Wells development basically hinges on road impacts in a town it isn’t even in!
So the bus pullout and bike lane, those are on public rights-of-way, but the developer probably paid for them. And probably should have paid the tiny amount it costs for a paved place to stand and wait for the bus across the street, or even (gasp) a bench! But it’s bigger than that, and while the “punch-throughs” this particular subdivision needs aren’t that big, the fact that there are fences where they should be means there was never a serious thought of it being anything but a big-ol’ single-use zone full of car commuters forever. Built at a time when we should know that’s not forever.
How about this Community Transit stop? It’s a park-and-ride also.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/havecanon/3180846233/
It seems like I ran into a couple on Kitsap Transit that were pretty bad, but on a par with those shown. Mostly it was due to how busy some of those narrow two lane roads with no shoulder have become.
There’s this on on the road to Duvall: https://goo.gl/maps/3bGN0
And this one SB on Aurora: https://goo.gl/maps/X1oKY. Somebody not familiar with Seattle might say at least it has sidewalks, but I think the speed and volume on Aurora makes up for it enough to put it in the runnings.
That’s what I called scary highways in my Snoqualmie Valley bus trip. Some parts are even worse: they have no shoulder at all; the edge of the lane is right next to thick shrubs or a dropoff. If you had to walk on them, it looks like cars would have to go left of the center to go around you, and if one is distracted or drunk, then blammo. I saw these north of Carnation and west of Duvall, and perhaps south of Carnation (but not that far south: Snoqualmie and Fall City were all right).
Aurora and Sand Point Way and 4th Avenue S have white lines well in from the edge, so even though there’s no “sidewalk”, they’re all right as long as the cars stay in the lane, which pretty much all of them do. But some residential streets in north Seattle really have no place to walk except in the car lanes, because there’s a ditch or wall next to the lane.
Epic Bus Commercial – the sequel
Weird ad. Danish bus company trying to convince young men that riding bus is COOL.
You mean riding a bus is not cool? I ride a bus all the time and I’m cool :)
Hey, thanks for alerting NSA and Homeland Security to a terrible (well, not really) new threat:
Cure curly-haired kids from the Western World eating hamburgers tasting suspiciously of falafel, take special buses chartered by Osama Ben Laden’s estate, to the Copenhagen and fleeing to the Middle East.
Where they first get their regional street-cred with Bashir El Assad’s murderous Syrian air force, scattering horrified fundamentalist enemies with barrel bombs stuffed with clouds of girls’ underwear.
They then desert to other beserk terrorist groups, who immediately give them black balaclava’s to wear into battle, so the enemy can’t see how cute they are and not be scared.
After five decades’ deployment to widespread international terror all over the Middle East and Central Asia, when their commanders notice that at seventy they’re not cute anymore and their girls’ underwear box is empty, they are then given business suits and put aboard flights to the United States.
Into which they don’t even have to sneak because of their resemblance, to TSA and Immigration, of Standard and Poors’ executives who by Justice Departments orders are ‘way too guilty to arrest.
Enabling them, after first selling the cute underwear that guys in that income bracket can obtain, even faster than the cutest Danish kid, to the agents of rock stars so old they can’t get themselves gifted with lingerie by anybody- to be showered on their outdoor concerts by Syrian army surplus helicopters.
And finally, while all male and transvestite NSA agents are preoccupied analyzing all the underwear, these returned terrorists begin a nationwide incendiary campaign that swiftly convinces a majority of commuters that transit has advantages over blazing automobiles.
Except for….well, send in some more links on bus stops and the systems they belong to. Die freezing to death because route was canceled last year, or slipping on a filthy linoleum aisle, infidel dogs!
MD
Metro’s Capitol Hill/U District restructuring had some new stuff posted. No restructuring info, but some background on what’s going on now.
http://metro.kingcounty.gov/have-a-say/projects/link-connections/
Interesting stuff in there. Metro analyzes the U-District/Capitol Hill routes (going as far out as the 16 and 28) from several Service Guidelines perspectives, and come up with the same things passengers have intuitively felt: the 71/72/73X are grossly over capacity, late, and prone to bus bunching, to the tune of 33% of peak trips. The report doesn’t make an conclusions, but it strongly imples Link will be their savior (although not fully until Brooklyn station opens). Other factors are gunning for breaking them up: the articulated 71 and 73 are too big for their narrow tail streets and residential termini, and the 72 lays over in a bus lane on Lake City Way (preventing other buses from using the lane). U-Link will be 6 minutes peak (currently 7.5). So some buses will have to be ejected from the tunnel in September for U-Link testing. That doesn’t necessarily mean the 71/72/73 will be reorganized this round; Metro might eject some other routes from the tunnel instead. But it makes a strong case for reorganizing them soon, and a strong objection to not reorganizing them.
The report also mentions a trolleybus layover space in the Pacific Place triangle and muses that the 49 or 70 might use it. That surprises me because why wouldn’t the 44 use it? Maybe the 44 has another space. It’s also surprising because the only way for the 49 or 70 to get there would be from the University Bridge to Campus Parkway to Pacific Street, which would be backtracking. On the other hand, there will be major demand for shuttles between UW Station and the U-District, so maybe it’ll help with that. But I could see 49/70 riders complaining that their destination is at 43rd or 45th, or it creates a 5-block gap to transfers on 45th, or it forces people to walk across the street to transfer to the 44. So I’m not sure about that routing.
But I do see current 71/72/73X riders saying anything is better than the current problems, including going down to UW Station to transfer, so maybe that will be more popular than I earlier thought, and it could allow just deleting those routes. (And presumably, the 72 and 73 replaced by the 372 and 373, and the 71 replaced by a shuttle or something more elaborate.)
Another interesting thing is that the 76 is in the top 25% of performance, so… maybe replace the 71 midday with the 76? Of course, that would nonplus those going to the U-District, but some of them live near the 65 and 68 and, ahem, we were talking about adding evening/weekend service on the 68.
The report also has a bombshell for the campus routes: UW is considering a cycletrack on Stevens Way, which would preclude two-way bus routes on it. It’s still not certain, so I wouldn’t expect it before 2021, although it may start construction by then. That could give another reason to reroute the 65/67/75/372 to UW Station. But in 2021 if they or the 31/32 want to to go to Brooklyn station, then they’d have to go on 45th, because there’s no other way. I wonder what Metro now thinks about congestion on the 45th viaduct (since I believe it has been trying to keep buses away from there).
In Capitol Hill, not much news, although Metro puts Bellevue Ave and Madison/Broadway within Capitol Hill station’s half-mile walk circle, so it seems to believe it will be attractive for those areas. The station rendering looks like it will be standalone with nothing on top of it. Is this true or am I misinterpreting the drawings?
The report also seems to say the 9X is in the top 25% and should be expanded evenings, while the 60 is the opposite with low evening ridership. But this is “before Link”, so I’m not sure if it really argues for expanding the 9X after Link or that Link would replace it.
There was this bit in the public engagement summary:
This completely counters what many self-styled advocates for immigrant communities claim when they fight against frequent gridded networks.
I was going to mention that quote, although from a different aspect. In Moscow and St Petersburg, all buses, metro lines, and streetcars run every five minutes (ten minutes evening) so there’s no such thing as a schedule. People just go to the stop whenever they’re ready, and they just assume a 5-10 minute transfer overhead for all modes. Except commuter trains, which run every 30-60 minutes.
That “less complex” part deserves more attention too. Foreign large-city networks are usually based on either a grid or a jumble of metro stations. But Metro routes often seem just arbitrary, and transfer at nondescript locations that look the same as non-transfer stops. It’s probably frustrating for a non-English speaker to figure out a trip that involves a transfer. It’s also hard for even English-speaking visitors on some routes (e.g., the 30 and 75) to figure out which side of the street goes toward downtown, because they often end up going the wrong direction.
@ Chris Stefan–
That’s brilliant–great find! Let’s leverage that to the hilt. Great information and Metro obviously jumped on it to place in the summary. I hope it’s something they can run with heading into the future.
I don’t know which “communities” have their opinions included in the study, but SCCC / UW immigrants may not be quite the same cohort as those in other parts of Seattle — there may be class or urban / rural distinctions.
I’m a member of the Link Connections Sounding Board, so I’ve seen some ideas of what might happen. At this point, Metro is presenting us with two alternative networks. Right now, we are simply focusing on understanding them, not choosing between them.
Alternative 1 is the big-bang, whose goal is remake the North Seattle bus network to focus on frequent service corridors all day, every day, rather than providing every neighborhood with a slow, one-seat ride to downtown.
Alternative 2, by contrast, is focused on preserving existing experiences for existing riders, and contains only minor changes from the bus network of today.
I’m not going to spill the beans right now and start a thread of 100+ comments about the good and bad of each of the two networks – they’ll be announced to the public soon enough. But, I will say that alternative 1 yields a bus network that is much easier to understand for anywhere-to-anywhere trips than today’s network, with the neighborhoods east of I-5 and north of the U-district seeing the greatest benefit.
Thank you for the glimpse!
I’m sure many of us have a very strong preference between those two philosophies; is there anything we can do now to help our preferred alternative?
Now, back to leading video. Interesting how little Chicago has changed in the 62 years since I’d take the ‘El from Rogers’ Park- few blocks each way from the north Seattle city line at Howard Street and from Lake Michigan- for my charcoal drawing lessons at the Art Museum half the size of Chicago.
Time of year is familiar too. Especially on sunny winter days, whether the wind comes screaming across the prairie to the west or the lake from the east, it’ll cut your eyeballs out of your head.
People cover their faces with wool scarves, pull their knitted hats over their eyes, and run from building doorway to store front to, say, CTA station like Evil Empire stormtroopers under ray-gun fire from Obiwan Kenobi and those guys.
But- everything else in Chicago is equally energetic. Truly the anti- Seattle. Beautiful video. Terrific pilot. Wonderful composition. The camera caught exactly the right things to define the place from the air.
Would be even better, though, for a sequel of a flight at like third story level through some of the old neighborhoods with three story brick buildings and the old shops of the ‘fifties- except everybody now has espresso and croissants instead of coffee and donuts.
You know, to get the whole picture, this video should always be the “lead-in” to the first Blues Brothers movie. Which captured dozens of howlingly accurate things about Chicago life and culture.
But like the saying goes: “That’s a nice helicopter-thing ya got there. Too bad if somethin’ happened to it…” Like if somebody hung a big net from a clothes line because it would be Christmas in a couple days and the kids had been real good. Or if somebody needed to take another camera to the pawn shop.
Or because the Chicago police…well, see the movie! Meantime, people don’t talk about this in Illinois because the aboriginal peoples had a scary legend. Hit one flying badger with a drone and you’re doomed for all eternity to carry a camera in your mouth through the skies all over Buffalo or the whole galaxy, whichever is colder.
And one more chilling fact: Don’t ever send an over-intense kid to the Chicago Art Institute on the ‘El. Fine particles of carbon and copper get into the bloodstream, so victim spends their life only energized thirteen feet from wire centerline. With their artistic vision reduced to the point where wire, tracks, and curb-lines form a single point in space.
Electrolite addiction. No cure yet, but if you give now…..
Mark
Al, last visit to Totem Lake flyer stop year or two back, noticed one thing that makes a really bad bus stop- even a brand new one with direct access on and off a freeway.
Main danger is not dying from being hit by a car, but of terminal boredom. Hospital has espresso and snack places inside the buildings. But between there and the freeway, there’s nothing but cement and trees.
There’s no “street life” whatsoever- while every single Chicago elevated stop was surrounded with it. Wonder if shops and restaurants and such are forbidden by local building codes- or discouraged by lack of family residences. Or people easily able to drive to a mall that has them.
Personally remembering the years when the suburban freeway culture was new, and exciting for that reason, I don’t think the planners had any idea how lifeless everything would turn out.
I really do think that they really thought, without thinking about it, that the cities, and good public transit, would also be there forever. They definitely did not foresee that a generation or two after the new era started, the mobility and freedom suburban life promised would be choked off by the number of cars themselves.
So this is where we are now. The really exciting thing to me is that those of us seriously into transit right now are in the exact position that the planners were after the Second World War. The culture that used to be new and “cool” has become old, ugly, and boring.
Which itself is probably already inducing young people not only that transit is “cool”- hey, wait a minute, didn’t that go out with “hip”, “square”, and calling guys “Daddy-o”? – but something refreshing and positive. And best of all, will really bug the Older Generation.
Also, though, probably good hygiene-wise that people still use underwear- and carry an extra pair too, in case they see a really cool, cute kid. In spite of how much money Paris Hilton made for awhile just for showing up at parties without any. Probably also paid her even more to leave.
Mark
I happen to have a fascinating inner monologue for just this situation. As I am not a human man but a robotic giant panda (“pandroid”) with no consciousness of my own, my programmers had to build an inner monologue for me, so they trained a Markov Chain-based text generator on the STB comment section (along with selected Internet videos). When I walk through suburbia witty denouncements flow through my positronic brain unheeded (“I hate this! It is revolting!” “More?” “Please!”), juxtaposed with images of giant pandas struggling with basic problems of existence. Boredom poses no danger to me, least of all in the suburbs.
The shops and stuff are in the mall that’s just across from the hospital.
Don’t let the prettiness of the filmed snow fool you. On day two, that’s not at all what it looks like, it looks brown, and like frozen feet as you step in 6 inch puddles of slush at street corners, and bleh. Also, its just incredibly cold.