- It’s Plate of Nations time again in the MLK corridor, now conveniently reachable from Capitol Hill and UW.
- App-based ride services soon allowed at Seatac ($).
- Angle Lake construction allegedly harming local businesses ($).
- Freighthouse Square deal back on track.
- Snohomish County leaders say 25-year ST3 timeline is “unacceptable.” Indeed, dismay at the delivery time is the “loudest message” coming back to ST.
- Dow Constantine says ST3 “The most important decision our generation will be asked to make.”
- The debate about inclusionary zoning.
- Petition to run trains later on weekends, cut into maintenance time.
- REI moving Kent headquarters to Spring District, future light rail.
- Link parking lots, public and private, filling up faster.
- Renovation of Spokane’s STA Plaza begins in April.
- 36-story tower headed to Belltown.
- Second Mukilteo Sounder platform finally opens.
- Debora Juarez very unhappy about 130th St Station omission.
- ST won’t refer to its tunnel boring machines with human names ($) anymore. But one of them breaks through at UW station; one more segment to go!
- Apply for the Seattle Bike Advisory Board.
- HOV project in Tacoma continues.
- The story behind UW Station’s art.
This is an open thread.
Ya, saw a similar SnoCo article earlier. They essentially want the region to prioritize LR to Everett/Paine Field so that they can get LR sooner. Fat chance I’d say…..
The really depressing thing about this though is that SnoCo is highly unlikely to deliver a “yes” vote on ST3 regardless of the time-frame. So, ya, they are basically counting on Seattle to vote “yes” to overcome their own voters, and then somehow for the whole region to prioritize them first so they can get LR before everyone else.
Sort of annoying I’d say (and not my first choice of words)…
On the plus side it is nice that everyone wants LR and wants it *now*. Unfortunately the State Leg didn’t exactly give us the funding tools to build it *now*. At some point though the State will have to get the message.
Well, if ST3 goes down, they can lobby the legislature for their own monorail taxing authority (and have it apply to every locality)
ST should come out and say those sub areas that deliver the biggest YES vote should get there projects first.
I would love that very much Travis…. only fair.
That would be great but it sounds possibly illegal. Agencies can schedule projects based on objective criteria, but basing it on who votes for the agency would lead to people within the same tax district getting unequal value based on their political position.
With exception for the first Sound Transit ballot Snohomish County has voted yes everytime. Seattle proper in fact was the only one to vote yes on the first go around.
I was scoping out the rail line on the west side of Elliott Ave and 15th Ave W as I’m curious whether “at grade” in Interbay necessarily entails MLK-style mixed-traffic operation.
But it got me thinking about short term fixes for some of the pain that the absence of a Ballard line will leave us with for the next generation or so.
I know the mayor has other plans, but couldn’t one extend the First Hill Streetcar to the old Waterfront Streetcar tracks, and extend those to Expedia or even Dravus St? You could serve lower Uptown and Expedia and parts of Magnolia/Interbay with mostly exclusive right of way.
To go a bit further into left field, the WFSC right of way plus a new bridge/tunnel over salmon bay could potentially complete a Ballard-Downtown rail link while the second downtown tunnel is being constructed (albeit with Inekon cars and some mixed-traffic operation along the downtown waterfront).
Frank,
Go to the Archives room of the Downtown Seattle Library and ask for studies on the Waterfront Streetcar. Kaiser study, I think. You’ll find plans for extensions to the Stadiums south of Pioneer Square, and also northward along the Waterfront to a cruise ship terminal I think is at the foot of Magnolia.
The way the streetcar was sneaked away from us, and the ten years when track and catenary were left rusting and corroding for no reason, make anything like this a must-do, both for valuable service and more a more valuable reminder that good transit is not an easy victim.
But don’t think this line would have anywhere near the capacity for mainline transit. Meaning that even for the corridor crossing, I don’t think a streetcar line could be included. Large elevator from north end up to Magnolia- maybe.
Mark
The problem with the Inekon car design is that it is too narrow. You would need to prepare the platforms for being partially removed for wider cars.
Or, maybe build the entire thing for wider light rail cars in the first place, so that late night Link trains could avoid the Transit Tunnel and its after hours charges by running on the surface through downtown. It would have to be limited to two car trains due to the block size, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem late at night.
As to the existing narrow cars on the South Lake Union line, unless you are operating on extra narrow 400 year old cobblestone streets of Europe, nobody builds cars that narrow any more. Any newly built line in Europe uses cars that are Link width unless they need to be backward compatible with streets that can’t be changed. Selling the northwest these extra narrow cars was some sort of scam.
I believe “at-grade” means at the highway level, so no intersections where it goes under the exits. and probably in the center. There are still apparently a couple of intersections at the south end that something would have to be done about.
I posted this in the previous post, but might be somewhat relevant here:
Rob Johnson and Joe McDermott have their own suggestions
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2016/3/31/approving-and-improving-sound-transit-three
Also, we believe there are ways to speed up project delivery in order to meet current and future transit and housing demands. We must work with local governments to change land use near stations to increase density and opportunities for affordable housing and small businesses. We also need to make sure that the surplus property is offered to local non-profit housing developers to build out our regions affordable housing stock (retroactively applying that framework to ST2 projects too!). We need to engage on priority hire issues to ensure that people living in the poorest census tracts in our region are connected to family wage construction jobs. We need to make the 130th Street and Graham Street stations permanent in the first 10 years of the plan, not provisionally at the end of the line. And finally, we need to make the UW-Ballard and West Seattle-Burien light rail studies as close to shovel ready as we can, so that if funds become available we can start construction on those before ST4.
These are nice, but I don’t see how they help the math on the vote. Land use, priority hiring, studies… milquetoast.
What are the ways to speed up project delivery? None of these ideas help speeding up Ballard-downtown or West Seattle-downtown. And even while planning for Ballard-UW and Burien is worthwhile, it won’t advance them closer than 2050 if we assume the construction budget is maxed out through 2041.
130th Street Station.
There would be no risk of jeopardizing federal funding by adding 130th in the plan IF it wasn’t removed from the earlier plans in the first place. That was a huge mistake by Sound Transit.
If we could vote for the ST board, I’m sure some who decided this would be voted out. That was a complete lack of smarts.
And the timeframe for ST3 is absolutely ridiculous, also. Should NEVER take that long, never. That’s how you lose voters.
This is making me think that we must never again allow any station to be ever deleted – if the Board proposes an otherwise-perfect UW-Ballard line that is missing a station at 8th NW, we must still vote it down or never, ever have a chance to correct the mistake.
Seriously. If this’s what ST is thinking, that’s the logical response.
There is nothing wrong with deletion of a station. There is a problem with deletion of a common sense station that shouldn’t even be thought of as not needed.
That is the difference.
The 130th St Station added zero net riders (0) to the system at a total cost of $25M to $50M. As such, it really was a candidate for deletion.
ST can’t just be going around spending that kind of money for no net gain just because. there needs to be a good reason that that money be spent there instead of on something else like the NG I-5 Ped crossing, the Gramm St Station, etc.
ST does not have an infinite amount of money, they have to spend what they have where it makes the most sense.
For the umpteenth time, ST chose to study a mythical world where buses do not exist. Meanwhile, in the real world, 130th St Station makes a whole lot of sense – but ST hasn’t studied that.
William C., not arguing for or against, but good example. 8th NW is at the very bottom of the climb to Phinney Ridge- where trains might absolutely need to be moving fast to gain speed for the incline.
Station could be placed several blocks farther west. Or if there’s reason to curve the track, which might very well be necessary to shallow out the curve, maybe somewhere along 8th itself.
My point is that the late monorail really showed the problem with putting engineering decisions into the hands of anyone who doesn’t understand technical implications.
Citizens and their elected officials who have gained necessary knowledge should be able to sit in with the engineers. Good idea, because, often, beneficial cooperation can be achieved without compromise.
But, also the reason I keep insisting on those section views.
Mark
I wouldn’t be torqueing off ALL of District 5, if I were you. Our voter turnout is quite good.
And, if as you say, we have no “net” riders as Northgate and 145th will be built anyway, in a sense we have no “net” incentive to vote yes on ST3 either.
@William C,
And for the umpteenth time, ST is not free to develop their own ridership forecasting methodology. If they want to apply for Federal grants, they need to follow fellow Federal guidelines when they develop their ridership estimates. And Federal guidelines prohibit (in most circumstances) putting lipstick on the pig .
And it seems to have worked. Instead of spending $50M on a station that generates zero (0) net riders (per Fed guidelines), ST has instead received a pledge of $1.8B in Federal funding. I call that a good thing.
And besides, if your goal is to artificially create ridership by busing large numbers of passengers into a station somewhere, then the system model you would want was one with the fewest possible LR stations. Such a forced busing model would favor stations like 145th and NG and not in-fill stations like 130th.
It aint rocket science.
that should have been “$1.2B” i believe.
Lazarus –
First off, I find it difficult to believe Federal guidelines require absolutely no reroutes of bus routes. For example, take Lynnwood Link itself. The peak-hours 510 doesn’t currently stop anywhere where Link will be; does the Federal funding model require ST to assume the 510 will continue to slog downtown paralleling Link rather than stop to let its riders transfer? If not, then the model allows us to assume some changes to bus routes. If only to routes by the same agency – then fine; say that and run an ST route along 130th.
Secondly, and more seriously – if the Federal guidelines do require no reroutes (or “only reroutes within 500 meters” to allow for the 510 exiting the freeway, or whatever), that’s a rule that yields stupid results. Perhaps it’s justified in some cases, as you point out. But in this case, it’s a stupid result – as we’ve exhaustively shown on this blog before, Lake City and Bitter Lake would be greatly helped by the 130th St Station. So, if Federal guidelines keep us from considering that, that’s a bad thing and should be recognized as such.
Lazarus,
From what I’ve see most successful transit networks work by “bussing large numbers of passengers into a station somewhere”. Indeed this is the model Vancouver BC follows with Skytrain.
For that matter Sound Transit plays that game itself. Look no further than the ridership projected for the Lynnwood TC station in the Lynnwood Link EIS documents. This is one of the key numbers justifying the $1.2B Federal grant. There is simply no way that ridership will be generated by P&R users or by people walking, or biking to the station. Much of that feed will need to come from feeder buses. So why does Sound Transit get to use bus feeder numbers for Lynnwood TC but not 130th? Or for that matter Ballard/UW?
There’s a difference between express routes running parallel to Link, half of them by the same transit agency that has a charter obligation not to run redundant parallel buses, and a crosstown route which has never existed and Metro hasn’t committed to. It’s the same kind of situation as speculative upzones. ST can only count potential ridership based on the zoning that exists or the city council has indicated is pretty certain. So while we can predict lots of ridership if Roosevelt and Mt Baker had 50-story towers or even 10-story towers, ST can’t count it.
Likewise, it can’t count the ridership that would occur if there’s a future social change and people start takjing transit more and driving less. That’s where I think ridership will be higher than anticipated by the next 20-30 years as the generations change and the social change occurs, but it’s not definite so ST can’t count it.
It’s ludicrous to me that nobody would use 130th Station if it there and a bus went to it. It’s also nonsense to think Metro wouldn’t put a bus there if a station was there. Metro has been aggressive in the past couple restructures, and the northeast Seattle one got through mostly intact. People in far north Seattle don’t expect routes as close together or as frequent as on Capitol Hill/First Hill, so there’s no equivalent to the uproar of moving the 11 four blocks to John Street or the 2 two blocks to Madison Street. As long as something remains on around 15th and 25th and to Northgate, there’s an ability to adjust routes to put something on 125th/130th.
And about those diverted riders. Without 130th Station, they’d either be going to Northgate Station or 145th Station. Northgate Station takes an excessively long time to get to, and 145th Station depends on Metro having a route to it. I hope Metro has a route from Lake City to 145th Station, and the 330 could be slightly rerouted to do so (with consideration for the riders at 25th/150th/15th/155th if there are any). Saying that 130th is unnecessary because people can just go to Norfthgate sounds to me like an excessive burden. They may do it under protest, but that’s not the values we should be designing our transit network on.
It was never in earlier plans. It first emerged as an extra station in an Aurora alternative circa 2011. That got activists to start saying maybe ST2 could do something for Lake City after all. So when ST chose the I-5 alignment, activists asked to add the station to it, because if it’s viable in one alignment it should be viable in the other. ST got tons of feedback for it — more than any other issue except for a 500-person petition against siting Lynnwood Station near Scriber Lake Park. And Mayor McGinn and the city council unanimously pressed for it. That was enough to get ST to make it an allowed option in the Lynnwood Link EIS, but it still requires a full EIS study and funding. ST wouldn’t advance the funding in ST2 because it wanted to save all its money for ST3 and have more carrots to hang before voters. So it was never deleted; it was only added as deferred.
Make the name of the 130th Street Station “Lakeside Station” and perhaps Allen/Gates will chip in…
I assume that’s in jest. The Lakeside school is closer to the 145th St. station.
“The 130th St Station added zero net riders (0) to the system at a total cost of $25M to $50M.”
That’s not the only factor. If it makes it more convenient for people to get around the city on transit, that’s a benefit in itself that improves the city’s commerce and health, even if it doesn’t increase the number of riders.
The Portland Streetcar has decided to permanently close five(ish) stops. Some of them might become bikeshare stations when that launches later this summer.
http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2016/03/portland_streetcar_makes_stop.html
I say five-ish, because two of them are on the same island platform. The stops have been closed since February for a trial period. All the stops are within two blocks of another stop.
I don’t understand this mythical maintenance window that prevents Link from operating longer hours. There are 24 hour systems throughout the world and most rail lines operate 24 hours, including single track and double track lines. There is no routine maintenance that needs to be done every night. If there is exceptional maintenance that gets scheduled in a shut down, or 2+ track lines operate with reduced capacity during a maintenance window.
Isn’t the main (only) issue whether to keep the DSTT open longer hours?
Does anybody know where we can get some solid statistics on rail maintenance schedules for subway lines around the world? Because first few rides north of Westlake Station gave me strong impression that we’ve just opened the first section of the railway that the DSTT started. Which will soon have how many miles added?
Which has probably already started a steady increase in train frequency, passenger loads, and speed. Thing present maintenance problems with aging (not a negative term, because it also applies to mountains and continents) systems show that maintenance habits are better early developed than later repaired.
To me, best real transit security is a fast smooth railroad. Would need a walk-through by trained Federal officers to show me why a closed DSTT station can’t be secured in every sense of the word. So very skeptical about cutting service hours on that account.
By same token, would listen with same intensity to an assessment-and tour-with our track-maintenance crews, and leave hours decision to them.
Mark Dublin
Which ones are 24 hours? People say London is but it’s not. New York and Chicago are the 24-hour lines I know of. MUNI has buses at night.
http://transit.511.org/accessible/providers/night.aspx
The Bay Area overnight network is justified as a lifeline service for workers especially.
Also a chance, Lazarus, that money could be spent on undercutting crossing arteries at Columbia City and Othello stations, delivering safety and efficiency that a Graham Street stop will lose.
We are talking about a regional express line serving an International airport. Local bus headways can be shortened a lot easier than any new station built.
Have also heard that sizeable business community at Graham doesn’t completely support the new station. Any comment on that? Any objection from that quarter, very bad sign.
Mark Dublin
There is a u-haul at Graham Street, a couple of used car lots, a car wash, and a gas station. And a few single story businesses with big parking lots or drive-throughs.
I saw a land use bulleting http://web6.seattle.gov/DPD/LUIB/Notice.aspx?BID=1118&NID=21786 that would replace some of those single story building with big lots with two story buildings with big surface lots in an area zoned for 65′.
I can’t say for the other businesses, but I would certainly be more likely to patronize the U-Haul if I could easily get there and back by light rail.
Does anyone have a line on Metro’s choices for the buses they’re choosing to run on the lines connecting with UW station? I’m seeing them run single-length buses at peak, pretty much always crush-loaded. The extra frequency is not quite making up for the fact that lots of people in the middle of the routes (i.e. downtown U District) want to get on and can’t. Meanwhile they’re running articulated buses midday.
I’m sure there’s a reason, but so far it just seems like madness. It can’t be good for Metro’s political capital.
Metro has a limited number of articulated buses and they’re all deployed. Metro suffered twelve years of budget stagnation, three years of cut planning and one year of cuts, and then a very sudden improvement in the economy and Prop 1. That left it with not enough articulated buses for the current demand. The 11 had single buses in the last cycle and it got overcrowded peak hours, so it promised articulated buses this cycle. On other restructure routes Metro has deployed articulated buses where it thinks they may be needed, and in some cases it’s alternating articulated and single buses on the same route. You don’t mention whether your concern is systemwide or just in the UW Station – 45th segment. Metro saturated that gap with lots of routes, including the overlapping 45 and 48, so that there should be a bus every three minutes during peak. That may or may not be enough but it’s what Metro is doing. And I reverse commute on some of the restructure routes during peak and they’re not full or needing more double buses. So it seems to be limited to a few or some locations and times.
I mostly hang out between 55th and 40th, exactly in the halfway point of most of these routes. The 67 was actually the most egregious. They *never* run articulated buses and at peak they’re pretty much always needed.
The 67 I rode on Tuesday leaving Rainier Vista about 3:15 was an articulated bus.
Maybe they thought most peak hours riders were going to stay on the express buses, not take the UWLink buses so soon ?
I’m using the Downtown Transit Tunnel twice a day, now that Capitol Hill Station is open. I can always spot the people waiting for the 550. They’re always to ones lined up at the FRONT of the platform, along the edge of the yellow strip.
I’m not criticizing – I’m just curious. Why this particular behavior on this particular route?
*always the ones*
It’s a suburban route thing. If you were to go to Redmond Transit Center the 545 riders do it too as do many other suburban riders. When I rode the bus between Tacoma and Olympia they did it there too.
Its interesting to me that different buses have different cultures. I like the orderly 550 line way. When the 105, 106 were running in the tunnel both those bus cultures lined up like that also and together. Then if your bus didn’t come, you would take 1/2 step back, let the other bus passengers line up and board their bus, then your line would smooch together and reform back in order. Quite elegant, actually, but it takes a certain amount of enforcement. Still, much better than the 41 dog pile. (I say that as a member of the 41 dog pile).
At Bellevue Transit Center there’s a new 550 culture of lining up for the bus. I often sit on the bench when there’s only five people there, then the bus comes and I look up and there’s thirty people in line and I have to go to the back of it. I’ve never seen that before here; usually people just form a clump and people step in from every part. I’ve seen even longer lines at that transit center for other routes; I think the ones going to Redmond or Lynnwood or something.
It’s not just the 550 at BTC. People do it for the 271 and 555 as well. It can be a little bit unclear which bus people are intending to board when they arrive at the same time, because for some reason Eastside people don’t want to “cut” in the line even if they’re going to a totally different bus.
Sound Transit sent out a text message at 1602 that Light Rail was not serving the Capitol Hill and UW stations because of a blockage on the tracks. But since it is all underground you have to wonder what the blockage would be. At 1658 another text message that the blockage had been cleared and service had been resumed with service delays During the blockage trains were operating between Westlake and SeaTac Stations.
They also advised riders to use Metro route #49 as the alternate service during the blockage and that must have been fun with all of the light rail riders trying to get on those buses.
I was one of those riders. (I was going only as far as Capitol Hill, however.) My theory is a broken bus at Westlake Station.
Not trying to be a smart ass, but it almost seems like buses breakdown in the tunnel more than on the surface.
Except the text mentioned that the trains were running between the Westlake and SeaTac stations meaning that they had to go past Westlake to be able to make the return to SeaTac as they did before the line was extended to the UW station.
I was one of those riders as well. ST had two trains held at UW station (one on each side of the platform). For some reason they let the one with fewer people on it go first, while the more loaded train got to wait another 5 minutes. Would have been nice if the station personnel were directing people to the proper train.
A train stalled apparently…? Sound Transit Twitter:
@rickycourtney Train stalled on interlocking tracks right before UW Station. Techs working on it now. Stay tuned.
https://twitter.com/SoundTransit/status/715682465692528641
A favor, Jeff and anybody else affected. Every time LINK service breaks down north of Westlake Station, make a note of date, time, duration, and how much personal inconvenience you experienced.
Send information to your every elected official responsible for transit- every single time. Get the media interested too. Would also be good to get some figures on the amount of linear copper capital hanging in the air between U-District and Capitol Hill Stations.
The 43 has been gone, and restored, at least once before. 49 works really well for Group Health hospital too, doesn’t it?
Mark Dublin
Vancouver – the one in Clark County – is struggling with increasing housing prices and high rent. This despite the unhindered sprawl that has single family houses scattered as far as Yacolt.
So, the concept that unlimited sprawl reduced housing prices seems to be proving false, even in Clark County.
Glenn, some say that no matter how far, Americans will “drive until they can buy.” So could be an interesting experiment to deliberately “aim” a fast transit line down a “drive-to-buy” corridor, with serious transit-orientated non cul-de-sacs at every stop.
If these developments are cooperative or non-profit, costs could stay lower than for average for-profit places. Thereby not only making “ride to buy” cheaper than “drive-to-” all along the line.
Ideally, leaving sheltered curving tumbleweed farms to become scenic tourist ghost towns with fur trapping company French Canadian names like “Dupont”.
Since one line would go right past JBLM, maybe we could start getting funding rail exactly the Interstates were financed. Greatest thing of all would be to also have a red white and blue emblem shaped like a shield.
Didn’t railroads also get all kinds of land for free, after the Federal Government had also ethnically cleansed the land, at no charge to the railroads, of its original inhabitants? Wonder why this has never been evidence that Federal help is evil? Maybe because in this case, it, and the railroad barons, really were.
Mark Dublin
The drive-to-buy corridor you describe was quite common 80 years ago. They called it a streetcar suburb. A local example is Milton.
Oh, yeah, and here’s part of the mixture of articles and interviews that have been going on:
http://www.opb.org/news/article/vancouver-mayor-homeless-police-affordable-housing/
Why does Mukilteo’s Sounder station need a second platform when it only has 4 trains in each direction per day? Tacoma’s station has only one platform yet is much much busier.
It interferes with freight traffic if the train has to cross from one main line to the other main line just to access a single platform. It basically means occupying both main lines instead of one main line, when the other main line could have had freight traffic on it.
You can hope that SoundTransit could then negotiate a low price for operation with BNSF since they are allowing less freight interference. My guess is that such hopes would be dashed.
Interesting…and good point. You would think that BNSF itself would have helped contribute funding the platform since it serves their interest as well (less interference).
It’s just unfortunate that all this investment into a nice station that is hardly used.
I wish Sound Transit would acquire DMUs to use on Sounder North to help make additional frequencies more economically feasible. The current frequency just seems inadequate.
Not to mention, return trips.
Right now, the train crews only work one trip inbound and one trip outbound each day.
Southbound I-5 afternoon traffic can be really bad as the highway has less capacity going in reverse peak due to the express lanes adding capacity.
It would be nice to have an alternative that avoids I-5.
Is it just me or does the City Councils recent resolution SDOT DR 10-2015 (banning pedestrian reroutes during construction) have no teeth?
After the grace period, I called on a couple major construction projects along my route to work that were diverting pedestrians across multiple intersections instead of providing a bypass, something the resolution intended to curb. The responses I got were along the lines of: this project is exempt because of *same excuses that were given before the resolution passed*.
It seems like the resolution was just something to temporarily placate Seattle citizens who are concerned about SDOT continuing to prioritize developer profits over pedestrian safety.
It may apply only to private buildings. Roosevelt has two cases just south of 65th. The east side has the road margin lane dug out for a utility pipe. The sidewalk is closed but the bus stop (the transier stop from the 62) is closed; Metro’s sign directs people to 63rd or 69th. Across the street there’s a fence around a tree that blocks the sidewalk. You can get to the businesses on either side but you can’t go through the whole block.
DR 10-2015 (which went into effect 1-Jan-2016) only applies to permits issued after the effective date. Those that were already issued a permit prior to the rule going into effect are held to the requirements in place at the time their permit was issued. So going forward, any new projects will have to follow these new rules. However, be aware that there are projects in the pipeline that were granted permits last year that have yet to start construction, so in the short term you may still see a few new construction projects starting that have grandfathered in rules.
I thought that existing permits and projects had something like 60 days to comply with the new regulations. I must’ve been mistaken.
Sadly…”The share of Americans living in urban neighborhoods dropped by 7%, from 21.7% in 2000 to 20.1% in 2014.”
Who do you think is more likely to be in the higher-density urban neighborhoods?
http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/30/urban-revival-not-for-most-americans/
There are two issues with that. One, the slippery definition of “urban”. Two, it describes where people live without comparing it to where they want to live.
Regarding the first issue, they defer to another study which is worth reading in itself.
How Suburban are Big American Cities?
That study defines urban as 2,212 households per square mile, and “high-density urban as 5,000”, based on how residents describe their own neighborhoods (urban, suburban, rural). I have no idea what these numbers mean (How many households are there per mile in the CD west of 23rd, or in Ravenna?) It also says, “Large swaths of many big cities are residential neighborhoods of single-family homes, as car-dependent as any suburb.” and “Outside the largest 10 [cities], San Francisco, Detroit, Seattle, D.C., Baltimore and Boston are also entirely urban or nearly so. [Later it puts Seattle as over 90%.] Los Angeles — despite its reputation for sprawl — is 87 percent urban. But three of the 10 largest cities are mostly suburban, including San Diego (49 percent urban), San Antonio (35 percent urban) and Phoenix (30 percent urban).” So I guess northeast Seattle is urban after all, even though, as the article notes, “Large swaths of many big cities are residential neighborhoods of single-family homes, as car-dependent as any suburb.” (Well, hopefully not so car-dependent starting this week.)
Regarding the second issue, the article mentions it in the conclusion but that’s it. All American groups except white childless college-degreed 39-45 year olds (Generation X) may be suburbanizing, but are they doing so willingly or unwillingly? There’s the rising cost of housing,in cities, the incredible (probably unprecedented) situation that people can’t even afford apartments, etc. Christopher Leinberger said in 2000 that 33% of Americans want to live in walkable urban neighborhoods, 33% want to live in driveable suburban neighborhoods, and 33% could go either way, but the built environment is only 25% walkable urban neighborhoods. So 8% are unhappy with where they live, and 42% would be willing to live in a walkable urban neighborhood if one existed at the right location and price. The numbers are probably better now, but the amount of walkable urban neighborhoods are still not near the 33% or 50% that would be an equilibrium.
I’m asking here because Metro’s alert page has no information. Some bus stops around Roosevelt Way and 65th St are closed for construction (yay communication!). What does this mean for the following transfers:
Ravenna–>Northgate, WB 62–>NB 67 transferring at 11th Ave and 65th St
Northgate–>Ravenna, SB 67–> EB 62 transferring at Roosevelt Ave and 65th St
I know it’s an option to transfer between the 372 and 41/75 at Lake City Way and 125th, but it seems wasteful to go all the way north to 125th, and then go south to Northgate.
The southbound stop at 65th & Roosevelt is closed but the ones at 63rd and 69th are open. If you’re getting off a westbound bus going southbound, you get off at 12th and you can go south on 12th and east on 63rd (around Whole Foods). Beware that on Roosevelt south of 65th, the westernmost lane is dug out for a utility pipe (hence the bus stop closure), and on the other side of the street the sidewalk is closed in the middle because of a fence around a tree. 12th Avenue is clear I think so the bus stop is probably open although I haven’t used it. The eastbound and westbound stops on 65th are open.
Thanks!
Note though that the east bound stop on Roosevelt at 65th is the stop for the 45, even though it’s not listed on the route post (it normally would stop after it turns south onto Roosevelt). The only indication that the 45 stops there is the rider alert.
It’s unfortunate, because that’s the transfer point between the 62 and 45/67, both of which are frequent corridors.
Warning for those visiting Portland and planning to use transit: For the past several days traffic across the Steele Bridge has reached the saturation point. For most of the week afternoon rush hour has resulted in this:
If you need to cross the Steele Bridge at peak afternoon traffic your best bet may be MAX.
Too bad we don’t have a ULink tunnel.
Even the wait on the MAX has been excruciating; I just took the Yellow Line up from Downtown to hang out at Peninsula Park and waited 5 minutes on the northern bridgehead for the intersection to clear of other trains and cars.