I was recently asked to participate in a survey about a statewide law Uber and Lyft are working on. They want to enshrine in the law that drivers are independent contractors, I don’t know of any other private business in this state that effectively bans unions by law. Uber and Lyft exist entirely because they’re able to offload externalities to the rest of us – don’t let them fool you.
I’m African American and I don’t trust the union. They have a policy of 10 percent of the black workers allowed in the work force and of that percentage only 10 percent goes out to work. Unionizing the independent drivers would put a lot of my people out work. Uber and Lyft should stay independent drivers. I know from past experience with the unions.
I’m finding myself quite grumpy about the county council prioritizing the Harborview project over much-needed transit. I’m not sure I’d vote No on Harborview out of spite (if transit fails in August), but I might.
Grumpy Steve: is it not common for transit to wait in line? Here are recent examples. in 2007, ST2 and the RTID were joined at the hip. In 2009, the three executives reached agreement on the SR-99 deep bore; Executive Sims included a one percent MVET for transit; Governor Gregoire backed out of that part of the deal; the Legislative leaders did not support it; for several years, a Metro local option was pursued until it was not in 2015 and ask shifted to ST3; the south end pathway was not open until this week. the 2015 statewide package funded freeways and allowed us to vote on ST3 (note difference). The Executive sold CPS to the convention center, heading joint operation prematurely and leading to the period of maximum constraint. Now, the Executive and Council are placing Harborview on the General Election and the TBD on the Primary. we have to get high turnout if the TBD makes the ballot.
Yes, it is common, and I’m getting sick of it. That’s my point.
Like the Route 43, the Route 9 needs to be put back. Good to ride, good to drive, and really good for the Link bus bridge it’s always good to have ready at a moment’s notice.
Somebody straighten me out, though: did I really hear someone say there’s no wire on most of Broadway? Hope nobody went and took that down when I wasn’t looking.
Also wish people would stop inevitabilitizing driverless car-shares and buses. ‘Nother absolute guiding formula of mine: “What is the cost of one unemployed human being?” Forced to work but not paid to, even worse.
First adventure with a pre-credit-card cab payment problem was in Robert Heinlein’s “Between Planets” in, like, 1954. When the cab stopped in the tube at the home of his rich Uncle Dudley, hero Don Harvey, soon to leave for Venus, was panicked because he couldn’t get the cab to sniff his uncle’s Letter of Credit.
No fear. Don gets to Venus in plenty of time to end up in a POW camp when Federation storm-troopers who probably all have glasses like bureaucrats invade to crush a colonists’ rebellion against guess what?
Great posting.
Mark Dublin
Route 9 should be modified to got to South Lake Union, not Capitol Hill. If you want to go to Capitol Hill, you should be taking Link.
Route 9, as is, made sense back in the day, when Link didn’t exist and SLU was a dump. Times have changed.
Of course, SLU via First Hill, not downtown. The 7 is already there to go downtown.
I’ve wondered why RapidRide R hasn’t been overlaid on Route 7 between Jackson and Henderson but ended at Rainier Beach Link — and run like Route 9X then routed on Pike-Pine to SLU. That would provide the badly needed linkage between Judkins Park, First Hill with hospitals, a bit of Capitol Hill and SLU. Then Route 7 could have service reduced but it would still serve the Prentice St/ Tamill area SE of the heart of Rainier Beach as well as all of Downtown.
Another radical idea would be to interline RapidRide R with RapidRide G and put some stops on Rainier in the median!
The 7/48 originated in Seattle’s Transit Master Plan in 2012, making the 48 a 23rd-Rainier line and truncating the 7 at Mt Baker. I had reservations about it because it would break up Rainier service; it would be like having one route on Aurora south of 105th and another route north of it. Rainier is like Aurora with mixed use and commercial the entire wayand two-way ridership. 23rd is more residential so it’s more one-way ridership, people living in the area but not visiting it, so it should arguably be on a separate route as it is now. How do you explain the logic of transferring to continue on Rainier? At the same time, the 48 is a faster way to the U-District, and I could see some people in south Rainier liking it for that reason. The 7/48 concept dropped out of the later plans, maybe because of concerns about breaking up the Rainier-Jackson corridor. I don’t think they’re just waiting for 23rd to be electrified and then they’ll revive it. Metro Connects and Move Seattle are intended to show the ultimate goal, not a temporary phase.
The 7 was a route back in the mid to late 1990s. Nothing about it originated with a 2012 Master Plan. It was renowned back then for being one of the three most violent Metro routes.
The 7 has been a Seattle bus route since sometime before 1940 when it became a trolley line. Before that it was a streetcar line with a branch at Genessee. I realize that was BSB (Before Saint Bernard), but this IS the Seattle Transit Blog. We kind of know things like this.
Mike is talking about the proposed 7/48 throughrouting, not the 7’s existence as a whole.
Yes, I rode the 7 in 1980 from the I-90/Rainier stop to Value Village at the future Mt Baker station. Go Zoners! The 2012 corridor would have split the 7 at Mt Baker, reassigning the southern part to the 48. That’s what I had reservations about. The city was also considering making north Rainier a streetcar. Murray killed the streetcar alternatives but the corridors remained a little longer. At some point they disappeared from later plans and the corridors reverted to the traditional 7 and 48.
One thing that’s easy to forget: Judkins Park station has entrances on both Rainier and 23rd, so you don’t need to be on Rainier to get to the station.
Re the 48: in the 1980s it terminated somewhere in mid Rainier Valley I think, and was extended on MLK to Rainier Beach. The 42 remained on MLK/Renton Ave, while the 48 stayed on MLK. In 2009 when Link started the MLK part of the 48 was reassigned to the 8. Later the 8 was split at Mt Baker and a new route 38 took over the southern part. Meanwhile some North Rainier activists had been clamoring for a route to replace the 42, and others noticed the 106 could be extended on MLK to connect Renton to much of Rainier Valley, which it has family/shopping/church ties with. Metro did both by extending the 106 north on MLK-Rainier-Jackson replacing the 38.
I think a good argument could be made for a route to go through both residential and commercial areas.
All-commercial-corridor routes tend to do great like Route 7; it’s the all-residential routes that can suffer from low ridership like Route 50. That’s because it’s not easy to get to many places other than residences without a transfer if a route is in an all residential area, so residents tend to consider driving or using other modes rather than transit.
In that sense, having Route 48 continue from 23rd to the MBTC gives it one end in a commercial area — and the commercial districts at major corners in the CD help too. This makes the 48 successful at attracting ridership.
Route 8 on MLK doesn’t go through many commercial districts in contrast. It’s ridership is generally much lower. It does deviate for the 23rd/Jackson connection and ends at the MBTC commercial district, but the mostly residential nature of it brings much lower ridership.
Uber and Lyft create more problems than they solve.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/03/02/study-uber-lyft-create-more-pollution-in-net/
I was recently asked to participate in a survey about a statewide law Uber and Lyft are working on. They want to enshrine in the law that drivers are independent contractors, I don’t know of any other private business in this state that effectively bans unions by law. Uber and Lyft exist entirely because they’re able to offload externalities to the rest of us – don’t let them fool you.
I’m African American and I don’t trust the union. They have a policy of 10 percent of the black workers allowed in the work force and of that percentage only 10 percent goes out to work. Unionizing the independent drivers would put a lot of my people out work. Uber and Lyft should stay independent drivers. I know from past experience with the unions.
I’m finding myself quite grumpy about the county council prioritizing the Harborview project over much-needed transit. I’m not sure I’d vote No on Harborview out of spite (if transit fails in August), but I might.
Grumpy Steve: is it not common for transit to wait in line? Here are recent examples. in 2007, ST2 and the RTID were joined at the hip. In 2009, the three executives reached agreement on the SR-99 deep bore; Executive Sims included a one percent MVET for transit; Governor Gregoire backed out of that part of the deal; the Legislative leaders did not support it; for several years, a Metro local option was pursued until it was not in 2015 and ask shifted to ST3; the south end pathway was not open until this week. the 2015 statewide package funded freeways and allowed us to vote on ST3 (note difference). The Executive sold CPS to the convention center, heading joint operation prematurely and leading to the period of maximum constraint. Now, the Executive and Council are placing Harborview on the General Election and the TBD on the Primary. we have to get high turnout if the TBD makes the ballot.
Yes, it is common, and I’m getting sick of it. That’s my point.
Like the Route 43, the Route 9 needs to be put back. Good to ride, good to drive, and really good for the Link bus bridge it’s always good to have ready at a moment’s notice.
Somebody straighten me out, though: did I really hear someone say there’s no wire on most of Broadway? Hope nobody went and took that down when I wasn’t looking.
Also wish people would stop inevitabilitizing driverless car-shares and buses. ‘Nother absolute guiding formula of mine: “What is the cost of one unemployed human being?” Forced to work but not paid to, even worse.
First adventure with a pre-credit-card cab payment problem was in Robert Heinlein’s “Between Planets” in, like, 1954. When the cab stopped in the tube at the home of his rich Uncle Dudley, hero Don Harvey, soon to leave for Venus, was panicked because he couldn’t get the cab to sniff his uncle’s Letter of Credit.
No fear. Don gets to Venus in plenty of time to end up in a POW camp when Federation storm-troopers who probably all have glasses like bureaucrats invade to crush a colonists’ rebellion against guess what?
Great posting.
Mark Dublin
Route 9 should be modified to got to South Lake Union, not Capitol Hill. If you want to go to Capitol Hill, you should be taking Link.
Route 9, as is, made sense back in the day, when Link didn’t exist and SLU was a dump. Times have changed.
Of course, SLU via First Hill, not downtown. The 7 is already there to go downtown.
I’ve wondered why RapidRide R hasn’t been overlaid on Route 7 between Jackson and Henderson but ended at Rainier Beach Link — and run like Route 9X then routed on Pike-Pine to SLU. That would provide the badly needed linkage between Judkins Park, First Hill with hospitals, a bit of Capitol Hill and SLU. Then Route 7 could have service reduced but it would still serve the Prentice St/ Tamill area SE of the heart of Rainier Beach as well as all of Downtown.
Another radical idea would be to interline RapidRide R with RapidRide G and put some stops on Rainier in the median!
The 7/48 originated in Seattle’s Transit Master Plan in 2012, making the 48 a 23rd-Rainier line and truncating the 7 at Mt Baker. I had reservations about it because it would break up Rainier service; it would be like having one route on Aurora south of 105th and another route north of it. Rainier is like Aurora with mixed use and commercial the entire wayand two-way ridership. 23rd is more residential so it’s more one-way ridership, people living in the area but not visiting it, so it should arguably be on a separate route as it is now. How do you explain the logic of transferring to continue on Rainier? At the same time, the 48 is a faster way to the U-District, and I could see some people in south Rainier liking it for that reason. The 7/48 concept dropped out of the later plans, maybe because of concerns about breaking up the Rainier-Jackson corridor. I don’t think they’re just waiting for 23rd to be electrified and then they’ll revive it. Metro Connects and Move Seattle are intended to show the ultimate goal, not a temporary phase.
The 7 was a route back in the mid to late 1990s. Nothing about it originated with a 2012 Master Plan. It was renowned back then for being one of the three most violent Metro routes.
The 7 has been a Seattle bus route since sometime before 1940 when it became a trolley line. Before that it was a streetcar line with a branch at Genessee. I realize that was BSB (Before Saint Bernard), but this IS the Seattle Transit Blog. We kind of know things like this.
Mike is talking about the proposed 7/48 throughrouting, not the 7’s existence as a whole.
Yes, I rode the 7 in 1980 from the I-90/Rainier stop to Value Village at the future Mt Baker station. Go Zoners! The 2012 corridor would have split the 7 at Mt Baker, reassigning the southern part to the 48. That’s what I had reservations about. The city was also considering making north Rainier a streetcar. Murray killed the streetcar alternatives but the corridors remained a little longer. At some point they disappeared from later plans and the corridors reverted to the traditional 7 and 48.
One thing that’s easy to forget: Judkins Park station has entrances on both Rainier and 23rd, so you don’t need to be on Rainier to get to the station.
Re the 48: in the 1980s it terminated somewhere in mid Rainier Valley I think, and was extended on MLK to Rainier Beach. The 42 remained on MLK/Renton Ave, while the 48 stayed on MLK. In 2009 when Link started the MLK part of the 48 was reassigned to the 8. Later the 8 was split at Mt Baker and a new route 38 took over the southern part. Meanwhile some North Rainier activists had been clamoring for a route to replace the 42, and others noticed the 106 could be extended on MLK to connect Renton to much of Rainier Valley, which it has family/shopping/church ties with. Metro did both by extending the 106 north on MLK-Rainier-Jackson replacing the 38.
I think a good argument could be made for a route to go through both residential and commercial areas.
All-commercial-corridor routes tend to do great like Route 7; it’s the all-residential routes that can suffer from low ridership like Route 50. That’s because it’s not easy to get to many places other than residences without a transfer if a route is in an all residential area, so residents tend to consider driving or using other modes rather than transit.
In that sense, having Route 48 continue from 23rd to the MBTC gives it one end in a commercial area — and the commercial districts at major corners in the CD help too. This makes the 48 successful at attracting ridership.
Route 8 on MLK doesn’t go through many commercial districts in contrast. It’s ridership is generally much lower. It does deviate for the 23rd/Jackson connection and ends at the MBTC commercial district, but the mostly residential nature of it brings much lower ridership.