- Rob Johnson drops his push to make Uptown upzone more aggressive due to public comment. Show up to meetings, everyone.
- Ben Franklin Transit (serving the Tri-Cities) launches a restructured network that’s designed to to improve frequency and directness on core routes, and extend the span of service. There is now all-day 15-minute service between four major transit nodes, and service runs until 7 PM on Saturdays, 8 PM on weekdays.
- Also in Tri-town: brakes fail on a potato-hauling truck, it T-bones a transit bus at 55 mph. Amazingly only one person was seriously injured.
- Lyft hires transpo consultants to re-imagine LA’s dense, but way too wide, Wilshire Boulevard. More like this, please.
- Curbed rounds up a selection of Seattle streecar pictures from across the decades.
- Seattle Bike Blog writes up the new One Center City proposal (our coverage here).
- Times covers the City Council hearing on Key Area ($); conflicting messages from the city on whether transpo management money will focus on the real task of moving people, or the folly of achieving “free flowing” car traffic and abundant parking.
- Capitol Hill NSF projects roll on through the design process, notably including reader David Seater’s proposed improvements to John St east of Broadway.
- Times covers ST’s Lynnwood presser ($), some nice Northgate pics.
- Puyallup Eagles members vote to reject Sound Transit’s offer to purchase building, needed for Puyallup station improvements; they want mo’ money.
- Times editorial board has found a hill to die on: $100,000/space park and rides.
- More people will be allowed to busk at light rail stations, but yeah, don’t play Wonderwall.
- Curbed tells you how to work SeaTac Airport.
- Tukwila elevator out of service Sep 18th-22nd.
- Streetsblog plays off Seattle vs Munhall, PA in their Sorriest Bus Stop in America contest. The Times has a sensible response ($) from Metro (the stop is essentially unused, they’re considering removing it).
- Spokane’s East Sprague Street — a business district akin to Seattle’s Aurora Ave, which went sharply downhill after it was bypassed by I-90 — gets a curb-to-curb rebuild, making permanent a prior road diet, and adding high-quality transit and pedestrian facilities.
This is an open thread.
Looks like Metro is beefing up their real-time data be switching to a ‘stop-based scheduling’ system. It goes live tomorrow (9/23), so we’ll see what the improvements are.
See more info in their blog post: ‘Stealth Bus’ No More.
I hope this works; it’s badly needed.
A part of the Capitol Hill NSF projects that may be of particular interest to STB readers: bus bulbs for in-lane stops for the 8 at stops on Thomas at 16th Ave E and 19th Ave E in both directions, at a new/relocated westbound stop on John at 10th Ave E, and at the eastbound stop on Olive Way at Summit.
Directing bikes to go up the hill on Main St. only to go back down it on 6th Ave. is not the best solution. Especially coming towards downtown, one presumably has to merge in front of the car traffic at the top of the slope to be able to make the left turn, and during game days there are lots of cars around. Oh, and there’s all the stop signs on 6th Ave. and the traffic lights. The disadvantage of Jackson St. is the busses and having to deal with the notorious streetcar tracks, I would not necessarily trust that route.
Most straightforward solution I can see is to extend the 2nd Ave. two-way cycle track all the way down to the Weller St. crosswalk and plaza. Bonus: makes it much easier to bike to/from the Sounder trains. Main St. is a great option, however, to connect the 2nd Ave. cycle track, the planned ones on 4th Ave, and the waterfront and ferry docks. This would really help fill in a bike network in the south part of downtown and the ID. The 2nd Ave. extension would have its challenges and may not be a short term fix, but the Main St. connection to the waterfront could be done quickly with just paint, especially if the route to the ID ends up being via 6th and Main.
More sloppy reporting by the Seattle Times….
“Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, spoke Tuesday about her support for $1.1 billion in federal aid, to help fund a $2.9 billion Northgate-to-Lynnwood extension, approved in a 2008 local ballot measure.”
Nope, that’s not what we voted for with the ST2 ballot measure back in 2008.
What part of that did we not vote for in 2008?
The $2.9 billion part.
Anybody else as disgusted as I am about years-long constant failure of two of our most critical, and world-visible elevators? The first transit elevators thousands of arriving passengers ever see?
Let’s just consign exchanges between Sound Transit and the vendors, who, being from Finland ought to know better, to the Dust-bin, which in Marx’s time meant garbage dump, of our legal system.
While we have a mining equipment firm build us something ugly, human operated, and indestructible in the meantime. Maybe one from Russia.
Mark
Hey, ST Express. When are you gonna stop keeping information classified from my fellow 174 passengers – like telling them over the PA- to stay with you to next stop, which happens to be the nice warm airport terminal where they have a wide choice of vertical rides to the same level as the LINK station?
And same for you, RapidRide. Sheesh! What do you think Alexander Graham Bell invented the microphone for? Lucky you’re not in Chicago, where frozen-solid passengers can end up standing on bus stop ’til June, which is Springtime, because regular passengers just think they got nothing to say.
Global Warming will doubtless cure that problem. However, soon as temp hits 90 the next day, next problem with them will arise. So just tell everybody about the elevator, OK?
Mark
I voted for that Seattle bus stop. Kudos to KC Metro to comment on it, but a boo when they wrote that according to their data no one used it. If that’s the case, why have it?
They don’t know if the workers across the street will use it unless they put it in. :)
It’s kind of unbelievable that this stop beat out the stops in a few other cities that are right on a freeway.
Seattle’s voice in the world of online discussions of mass transit and urbansim is… a little outsized.
The stop speaks in its own defense.
That is well-written and pretty darn fully. Thank, Mike.
As a stop, I cannot take all the credit. My fellow stops on route 124 have all done their part for the team to create a series of decrepit, unfindable, dangerous, and therefore unused, bus stops up and down E Marginal Way.
I would like to especially thank the stop that flanks me to the south, where all you can find is a closed stop, pointing to another stop where you are waiting in the shoulder of the highway, with no sidewalk to stand on. This is the stop closest to South Park. (He was jealous that I got nominated for the award, and he did not. But we’ll not talk about that little twitter feud.) He does great credit to the narrative of social injustice in which south end neighborhood stops get redlined from basic safety considerations and design review.
I also want to thank my producer, the City of Tukwila. Hi, Tukwila!
I am honored to be part of a long line of Saddest Stops, all on the same route. Tukwila, and my fellow stops, I could not have won this award without you!
Brent, that was hilarious. Thanks for the chuckle.
I’m wondering when a transit subversive group will steal the bus stop signs of unutilized stops and put them in front of Link station entrances in the middle of the night.
Why we make bus riders ride past entrances, get off, then cross two major streets to get into Capitol Hill Station seems rather cruel! There are times when bus stops on the far sides of intersections are the wrong things to have.
I noticed on the Metro website that there is already a change to the routing that was scheduled to go into effect on September 23rd of the # 62 in the evenings and weekends when NOAA is closed.
Instead of going south on 62nd Ave NE between NE 74th and NE 65th it will instead do a loop on NE 74th and other roads before heading south on Sand Point Way from NE 74th.
According to the website it goes into effect on September 23rd until further notice which makes you wonder what brought this on.
This is the only change I know of. There’s some kind of curb work in the park that has to be finished before Metro can use 62nd Ave NE, so it’s on a temporary route until then.