Today is Seattle’s annual day of manic, awesomely creative weirdness. Rock and Roll Marathon runners will take to the streets and run on the Viaduct, and thousands of naked cyclists and parade floats will make their annual pilgramage through Fremont. Over 30 bus routes will be detoured from Fremont to the Rainier Valley. There will be no service across the Fremont Bridge, some Viaduct routes (such as the C-Line) will use I-5 in the southbound direction, and tons of routes will have minor detours. Check the full list here, and be ready for delays.
The First Hill Streetcar will terminate at 14th/Washington and not serve the International District or Pioneer Square.
Metro will also operate two shuttles. The Fremont Shuttle will operate every 15 minutes from Downtown to the south side of the Fremont Bridge mostly along the Route 40 alignment. The Rainier Valley Shuttle will run every 20 minutes from Mt Baker to Rainier Beach along Rainier and Seward Park Ave.
I don’t really have a problem with reroutes caused by public/non-profit festivals, but the marathons really really bug me. These are for-profit entities that use our public infrastructure and, even worse, make some of the transit infrastructure we have built (queue jumps, signal priority) useless.
I doubt the fees they pay and sales tax revenue they generate are sufficient to offset the chaos they cause.
C’mon, Skylar! Tell me the UW athletic program has no profit-making connections! Though I’ll always appreciate the spectacular abstract art sculpture entitled “Husky Stadium” they thoughtfully created decades ago to give some dignity to a LINK station that makes every bus shelter look like the Taj Mahal.
Would forgive the Mariners if they’d found an architect who could build a stadium that would let somebody hit the ball out of the park. I know. I know. Nobody likes helmet laws for pedestrians. But has any fan ever caught- well yeah, or been hit by- a fly-ball into the stands in Seattle?
You’re right that, since one percent for the arts doesn’t apply to them, all these profit-makers really have to do is give half that amount to the transit system. And we’ll get Ballard and West Seattle at the same time. Which will carry huge amounts of fans.
Meantime, looking at the pic on this posting, glad to see KC Metro has finally adopted my suggestion that every route have its own distinctive driver’s uniform. Will save a lot of questions starting with “Does this bus go to…?” Ever since Ballard began to putrefy-I mean gentrify-the Route 40 been waiting for this one on its way out of Fremont.
Notice also how Metro is saving money, fuel, and fresh air with new “Base Cars” for road relief. We’re trying, Skylar, we’re trying!
Mark
I think the guy on the bike was recently promoted to Base Chief. Try arguing your way out of a ‘see me’ slip, and keep a straight face with this clown sitting across the desk.
At least Link is immune to disruptions like these.
I would hope so, though I am sure someone is trying to find a way to do a marathon through the DSTT.
Then we’ll build a second tunnel!
Back in 1990, there was a tunnel run and walk event held a few days before the tunnel opened.
And say what you will about streetcars, but at least they don’t get rerouted either.
They do get limited service (stations closed) though, as we saw when the Chinese President visited last year…
Looking ahead to 2035 and beyond, transit has to start thinking bigger. We’re years overdue for Westlake to Sea-Tac event. Beacon Hill and Columbia City festivals can be scheduled to coincide. Having to adjust pace to tracks and cross-ties will add a whole new element of skill to the sport.
If we can keep I-90 track-way grooved rail across floating bridge, Westlake to Snoqualmie Pass will be world-class dual-power Grand Prix. “The 550+!” Think of it! The world will finally be able to see if a Skoda can even keep the tail-lights of a Scania in view. Run can include negotiating a stationary slalom formed by Bredas moving at their own top speed.
Still working on Lynnwood. But meantime, all Everett-Olympia needs is buoys and life-jackets. The miles-wide roostertail behind a hundred screaming railcar-length Baltic passenger hydrofoils will finally herald our decisive conquest of permanent I-5 traffic conditions between Everett and Olympia. Beat the Blue Angels once, and no more quibbles here about ridership projections.
Could also make Intercity Transit start using ORCA cards again.
Hundred years’ overdue trans-mountain trolleybus competition- we can’t even get a rodeo!- still has to wait for wait for better relations with Russia. Money for overhead? The Convention Center owes us big-time for killing Tunnel bus service. Whose current operations might benefit from the Olympic anti-doping supervision the Tunnel had demanded for 25 years!
Marco
Would it were true, Mic! There’s a secret traditional ritual out of “Skull and Bones” where the chief of the chosen firm shows up in business suit shown here to solemnly hand over a signed deliverable for which today’s suit is perfectly in character.
In this case, study results about farebox use in the DSTT. It would be bad enough if this honored jollity was missed by some blameless transit official whose title starts with “Acting.”
But what happened was that the papers were intercepted and signed off on by equally secretive King County Council forces whose skull has fangs instead of crossbones, and for whom the success of anything located in Seattle isn’t funny at all.
So the victimized CEO is on his way to give the suit back to his frat brother “Dubya, or “Bushie”, who’s fled to Fremont “on the lam” from crazed mobs of leaders of both major parties who…well, you know what they want to forcibly turn him into a candidate for. Too bad for him he thinks the clown suit will be a disguise.
Mark
Expect more of the same next week. Obama will be in town for 2 fundraising events – including an event at the Convention Center.
I don’t know what they will do with I-5 while the President is there (part of the WSCC is over the freeway), but expect another huge day for Link ridership.
When the president travels from the airport on I-5 the freeway is closed to all traffic prior to the motorcade do they also block the overpasses during that time and if so what about the Light Rail viaduct across I-5 just south of the Boeing Access Road. Do they allow the trains move above I-5 while it is closed.
Democrats keep walking into this punch term after term, and never learn from the Republicans things like founding Metro Transit even if the average guy really liked cars.
And also that your voters aren’t turned off by not seeing you as much as by not getting home because your visit has the whole region paralyzed. And they still don’t see you.
When was the last time Seattle traffic got held up by Republicans except the ones in the Legislature always holding up funding for transit? Especially after EastLINK comes in, nothing at the Red Lion Inn will make any President a problem.
https://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/kids/inside/html/spring98-2.html
So could be time to go back to the founding of the Secret Service in 1865, last thing Lincoln did before heading for the theater that night. Original duties were to stop counterfeiting. Additional duty of guarding Presidents took Congress 36 years and two more assassinations to initiate.
As the civil war was about to start, anticipating Sound Transit and Securitas, Lincoln hired the Pinkerton company to protect him. Fare inspection was probably less time-consuming on carriages and horse-drawn streetcars. And since it’s now grounds for “no-fly” to use money….
But also because, from the beginning of the Republic, everybody, starting with Presidents, thought that one big difference between a president and king was that by definition, nobody would ever want to kill an ordinary guy who’d gotten hired as a temp for a really bad job.
Fact that so few really did get assassinated shows that our Founding generation was pretty much right. President James Garfield, probably the finest all-around human being in the Office, was killed by an arrogant doctor who, like the whole AMA, didn’t believe in germs.
But mainly, McCain campaign demonstrated fool-and idiot-proof defense measure of correct choice of Vice President. Since the Constitution puts the Speaker of the House next in line, Securitas can stay transit oriented. I like my car, but therefore use transit to keep it out of traffic.
Mark
Democrats do what, have fundraisers downtown? Republicans have fundraisers in the suburbs and exurbs where their base is. That’s why they don’t tie up traffic in the city.
Bush II had a couple of events in Portland. Some of them tied up traffic. I think one of the events happened out by the airport so it wasn’t too bad. Part of it is that he was in such a rush to leave they didn’t do any random restaurant stops to greet locals or whatever.