Midweek Roundup: wire theft

46 Replies to “Midweek Roundup: wire theft”

1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/seattle-residents-tire-of-unsafe-rainier-avenue-slow-city-response/

   I drive this stretch of road regularly and I can confirm it’s a shit show. It needs enforcement. It’s already channelized to one lane in each direction, with a turn lane and bike lanes. But I would never ride a bike there due to the insane drivers. In my car I’ve been aggressively tailgated and overtaken in the turn lane — while I was going five over the limit. Drive the limit and someone might actually pull a gun on you.

   We need actual traffic enforcement on city streets (and freeways and everywhere else) but the Safe Streets people are mostly #ACAB types who’ve convinced themselves that enforcing laws is racist, and I’m done with them.

   1. Jumping straight to enforcement without implementing actual street redesigns is treating the symptom, not the disease. The street is simply too easy to drive unsafely.

      That being said, traffic enforcement is one area where automation (in the form of cameras and centralized processing) and delegation to “civilians” could actually do some good. Of course, the system would have to be rolled out in coordination between the City and the County to manage equity concerns associated with targeting historically under-invested neighborhoods like Rainier Beach and Bryn Mawr-Skyway.

      1. Oh, heaven forbid we target these historically underinvested neighborhoods with safety improvements.

         No one is “jumping straight to enforcement” we’ve done redesigns. Bruce is specifically referring to a redesigned stretch.

         Many of these reckless speeders are not members of these underinvested communities. They are selfish sh1tb@gs from the suburbs who want to commute through the neighborhood at highway speeds – everyone else’s safety be damned.

         I’m with Bruce. We NEED enforcement. There is zero and people act accordingly. Automated is great and should absolutely be part of the solution.

      2. Increasing enforcement is neither a safety improvement nor an investment.

         The City and the County need to decide if Rainier needs to be designed for vehicle throughput like a highway or for safe use by non-drivers. If the City and County want Rainier to be safe, there are many well-published design manuals for doing that, but it comes at the cost of total vehicle throughput.

         The article is good and I regret missing it in this week’s Roundup. The minor safety improvements implemented by SDOT appear to be a good start but are not sufficient. SDOT has been implementing more robust safety improvements along other sections of Rainier, but there is significant opposition to reducing vehicle speeds and slowing down traffic. Perhaps if there were transit service along the coastal sections of Rainier between Rainier Beach and Renton, SDOT and King County be more justified in reducing vehicle speeds.

      3. Increasing enforcement is neither a safety improvement nor an investment.

         Yes it is! Spending money on speed cameras would be an investment in safety. There is plenty of evidence that it works (https://ssti.us/2024/03/11/speed-cameras-lower-speeds-and-prevent-crashes-new-research-confirms/). Of course there are other things they can do. But the things you usually do (chicanes, speed bumps narrowing the roadway) would make it tougher on the buses. This is not an empty two lane highway in the middle of nowhere. There is a reason why speed cameras are common in European cities.

      4. Just because a thing costs money doesn’t mean it’s an investment. An investment pays off passively over time. Enforcement only discourages behaviors by those who can afford to pay the fines – it results in a system that only meaningfully punishes the poor.

         It’s all about the hierarchy of safety controls: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/hierarchy-of-controls/about/index.html

         Hazard: People crashing their vehicles
         #1: Elimination: Pedestrianize the street (most effective, infeasible for this section of Rainier)
         #2: Substitution: Limit access to buses, commercial vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians (less effective, still infeasible)
         #3: Engineering Controls: Add physical barriers to prevent unsafe driving (less effective, feasible; I am here)
         #4: Administrative Controls: Enforce laws to stop unsafe driving (even less effective, status-quo)
         #5: PPE Put hi-vis vests on the… houses? (obviously ineffective)

         Speed cameras are common in Europe only in places where there is a serious barrier to implementing proper engineering controls against unsafe driving. It needs to be barriers first, enforcement second.

      5. Also, the segment of Rainier described in the article (57th Ave S to Renton) has no bus service.

      6. ” the segment of Rainier described in the article (57th Ave S to Renton) has no bus service.”

         Ah, that segment. The western part along the Lake Washington shore did have bus service but lost it. In the 1990 DSTT restructure, the 107 was created from the tunnel to SODO, I-5, the Swift exit, Myrtle-Othello, Rainier, to something north-south (86th?), to Renton TC. Before that, there may have been another route in that segment. The route remained in that segment for years, maybe until the 2009 Link restructure. Then the Lake Washington shore (which has apartments) lost bus service. Metro Connects 2050 envisions restoring service there sometime in the distant future.

      7. Just because a thing costs money doesn’t mean it’s an investment. An investment pays off passively over time.

         Yes, like automated cameras. Spend money on them, ticket people, watch how drivers slow down. They tend to pay for themselves *and* reduce speeding.

         It’s all about the hierarchy of safety controls

         Heaven forbid we do things in the wrong order. Seriously, what is the harm in ticketing people that are endangering the lives of their fellow citizens? That is like people talking about how we shouldn’t do gun control first because the most effective thing is to change the culture of fear that leads people to use guns irresponsibly. We should reform our education system and add more social workers and blah, blah, blah. Sure, do all that. That probably is more effective in the long term. But how about in the mean time we make it harder to get guns (like it is in every country that does done all those other things)? It isn’t like Sweden says “Great job. We’ve eliminated the core of the problem. Now let’s make guns cheap and easy to get like they are in the U. S.”.

         The same logic applies here. Adding speeding cameras would change the way people use the road almost immediately. It is quite possible it would be the most cost effective and quickest thing to implement.

      8. I never understood the equity argument when it comes to camera enforcement. Camera enforcement is inherently objective, unlike police officers. If you want, require that for every camera in a BIPOC neighborhood, you also put one up in a white neighborhood. Fine. You can also require that the revenue be spend on physical infrastructure safety improvements within the neighborhood. Also fine. But it’s not a valid excuse to do nothing. Besides a lot if not most of the traffic on Rainier is going to be thru traffic not local neighborhood traffic anyway.

      9. >Heaven forbid we do things in the wrong order.

         The same could be said about building transit project in the wrong place when the money would be better spent elsewhere.

         >But it’s not a valid excuse to do nothing.

         Who is saying “do nothing”?

         My point is that in this situation, the reasonable thing to do is demand safety improvements first. It’s ridiculous to assume that safety safety improvements are completely infeasible. The likely reality is that the most effective solution would be to compromise and do both!

         I think the pro-enforcement crowd in this thread would look less silly if they had any reasonable arguments against prioritizing safety improvements over increased enforcement.

      10. Because they do not have a real argument. What they want is the right to drive too fast when there’s no cop around to see them do it. But, they can’t just say that out loud, so they make up some equity excuse that satisfies all the liberal buzzwords, figuring it will garner more sympathy.

      11. Where’s the accident data for Rainier Ave south of Rainier Beach? What are the causes of accidents? How does it compare to other streets in Seattle?

          Here’s a link to SDOT’s Vision Zero 2024 report with a map showing the dangerous major street segments within it (pdf pages 54 and 55):

          https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/VisionZero/VZ_Action_Plan.pdf

          The segment that you’re recommending speed enforcement cameras if half in orange (middle category) and half in yellow (safest category). Yet literally most of Downtown is in red, as are nearby areas.

          So you’re just shooting from the hip and not doing research. Without presenting how Rainier is dangerous there and that physical safety improvements don’t address the problem, your endorsement of speed violation ticketing here is just a knee-jerk wish. And I suspect some of you have some latent hatred for Renton residents (many of whom are foreign born and need vehicles to do menial low-paying jobs like lawn service) or want to charge fees for non-residents to come into Seattle.

          If you believe in speed camera ticketing put them on all of the red street segments first — and then only when excessive speeding is a significant contributing factor to the high accident rate.

      12. > So you’re just shooting from the hip and not doing research. Without presenting how Rainier is dangerous there and that physical safety improvements don’t address the problem

          The map you are looking at lumps together injuries and fatalities . also it ends up semi just being a density map

          https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/VisionZero/SDOT-Vision-Zero-TopToBottomReview-FullReport.pdf#page=16

          if you look at the map of fatalities it is along Aurora, Rainier, and a bunch of places in SODO.

      13. My point is that in this situation, the reasonable thing to do is demand safety improvements first.

          My point is that automated speed cameras *are* a safety improvement! They are simply another (very useful) way to slow people down. Unlike speed humps they work for the entire street. You don’t have to have them at every block, either. Once you get a ticket you assume the cameras are on the entire street. You can have fake ones mixed in with the real ones.

          I know two people who have gotten a ticket for going too fast in a school zone. They both felt like they could have talked their way out of a ticket. There were no kids around and visibility was outstanding (day time, no rain, etc.). They could have easily fought the ticket in court but they didn’t bother. But guess what? They never go above the speed limit in a school zone. Never. They assume there are cameras at each and every school zone.

          >>Heaven forbid we do things in the wrong order.

          The same could be said about building transit project in the wrong place when the money would be better spent elsewhere.

          Yes, and we did. They built the train to SeaTac before building the train to the UW. Oh, the horror! The city never recovered.

          Come on. We are not talking about multi-billion dollar projects. You are putting speeding cameras in a weird category when it is basically the same as any other safety improvement. Consider speed bumps. Some people ignore them. Like speeding cameras if you go too fast it can cost you money in the form of a damaged suspension. The folks who are more likely to care are those who are low income. So we shouldn’t put speed bumps on the road because we are concerned about the impact on low-income drivers? Meanwhile truck drivers often don’t slow down at all. They have a more rugged suspension and can handle it. That means they are least effective on the most dangerous vehicles.

          Cameras are just another tool. But they can be installed very quickly and they are effective.

          If you are really worried about the impact on low-income riders then just increase the cost each time you get a ticket. Have a warning for the first one if you must.

      14. “if you look at the map of fatalities it is along Aurora, Rainier, and a bunch of places in SODO.”

          I read itge linked report. The data is a prior year. And it still shows that the section of Rainier south of Rainier Beach does not have a safety problem. The part of Rainier that’s dangerous is further north. Rainier is a very long street — and any speed enforcement camera is better placed where there are lots more pedestrians and recorded collisions rather than at the southern city limits.

          Curiously, the data also point to intersections and turning vehicles as the situations with greater risk rather than straight line segments as the points of concern.

          I wish the reporting would dig a bit deeper into the analysis. How much is visibility when it’s dark, when it’s wet or when more drivers are impaired a factor? Would adding better pedestrian level lighting at high pedestrian locations help? Would requiring better corner landscape maintenance help? Would requiring corner building setbacks (better sight lines for all modes) help? Map location alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

      15. I am not necessarily commenting the specific Rainier Ave segment Seattle Times was covering, but just from my occasional watch of Seattle traffic cam Youtube channel, I wonder how many of those crashes are due to DUI rather than correctable road safety hazard.

      16. The Rainier Speedway seems to have achieved “emphasis patrol” status since the article was published. There have been motorcycle cops every time I’ve driven that road in the last few days.

          As the Times article pointed out, the number of accidents has increased since SDOT rechannelized Rainier. Yes, there are plenty of crazy drivers using that road, but this project has been a complete design failure by SDOT.
          *The bike lanes are just paint and a few floppy plastic bollards that don’t protect anyone on a bike. SDOT needs to harden the barriers between the bike lanes and the traffic lanes.
          *The pedestrian crossing infrastructure is slightly better than it was before, but it isn’t adequate to protect anyone crossing near the athletic fields.
          *There’s absolutely no need for the center left turn lane on most of the route. It just encourages drivers to use it as a high speed passing lane.

          My recommendations would be to harden the bike lane protection, install crossing lights at the places they are needed, and raise the speed limit to 30 mph in the traffic lanes.

      17. “raise the speed limit to 30 mph in the traffic lanes.”

          It won’t do that. The city lowered the speed limit to 25 on many arterials as part of Vision Zero.

      18. I know Seattle has an official 25 mph speed limit on most arterials, but there are exceptions, and I think there is a good case for Rainier (south of Rainier Beach). There is very little pedestrian activity except at 2 points, there are virtually no side streets intersecting, and Renton allows 35 with the same street layout. Combined with hardened bike infrastructure, 30 would be fine on the Seattle portion.

      19. I get that cameras can be effective, but how are they better than roadway design changes first?

          For example, if the city were setting up a new school zone with limited funds, would it be better to only install cameras, or to only install speed bumps/curb bulbs/crossing signals? Like I said, I’m not opposed to automated enforcement, but I don’t think that should be the only thing folks should advocate for. I don’t think it’s crazy to try to get SDOT and KC Local Services to put in some actual safety improvements before giving up and cracking down with law enforcement.

      20. I think a real improvement would be to put in planted medians with low shrubbery every few hundred feet in the center turn lane. It would prevent high-speed passing, but still allow for left turns as needed.

      21. I get that cameras can be effective, but how are they better than roadway design changes first?

          I don’t think we can assume anything should be done first. That is my point. They are all basically the same category and each have their advantages and disadvantages. It is quite likely that speed cameras could be installed very quickly while other changes take endless meetings to decide whether people are OK with the new design.

   2. Saying somebody would pull a gun on you for driving the speed limit is hyperbole and very unlikely. It may happen to one person sometime, but not to 100,000 others.

      Saying Safe Streets people are mostly ACAB is an ad hominem attack and is unacceptable per the blog’s comment policy; further occurrences may be moderated and the commentator banned. It’s also false because many pedestrian/bicycle safety advocates want all road users to coexist safely and peacefully, want law enforcement, and don’t want people provoking the police for ideological reasons. Parents who just want their children to be able to walk to school without getting run over are unlikely to be ACAB.

      1. I googled ad hominem so now I know what that means. So my “learn one thing a day” goal is met. Thanks. But isn’t this entire forum basically one long ad hominem attack on suburbanites and cagers? To save you the Google, that’s motorcycle lingo for car drivers, you don’t want to know what we call bus riders..

      2. I googled ad hominem so now I know what that means. So my “learn one thing a day” goal is met. Thanks. But isn’t this entire forum basically one long ad hominem attack on suburbanites and cagers?

         No. I don’t know why you are confused. Maybe you should make sure you have really learned what an ad hominem logical fallacy is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem. Here is a nice comic if that is your style: https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/logical-fallacies/logical-fallacies-ad-hominem/

      3. NoneOfTheAbove, if you’re accusing the entire Seattle Transit Blog of being a ad hominem attack, you should re-read that definition before claiming you know what it means. I recommend reading an structured actual explanation, such the wikipedia article, and not just an AI summary.

      4. The moderators get to moderate comments however they see fit. I think they’ve made themselves clear.

         Armchair debates about the moderation have traditionally been considered unwelcome.

   3. Rainier Ave south of Rainier Beach is a narrow corridor with Lake Washington on one side and a steep hill with few intersecting local streets on the other. It’s almost entirely single family homes except for Stonehouse, Puccinella’s and the Lakeridge playfields. That makes adding a bus there not very strong as a local need.

      If Metro wanted to run a bus between Renton Landing and Link in SE Seattle on this street it could provide a faster connection. I’m sure the Rainier Beach residents would appreciate having more discount retail options as well as the other things at Renton Landing. Still, I don’t see such a service as getting high ridership and it would likely be run at a 20-30 minute frequency.

      I’d rather see Seattle focus traffic safety improvements in high pedestrian activity areas. This isn’t one.

   4. “I get that cameras can be effective, but how are they better than roadway design changes first?”

      I don’t think those are two things competing against each other. Typical safety works like Roadway Safety Audit only aims at fixable crash event. Meaning if the crashes is caused by drivers doing donut at intersection or ignoring speed limit, those are not fixable by safety improvement. The remaining goes to the enforcement. People can argue the downside of traffic camera or more enforcement from other angle and I would support some of those points, but roadway safety improvement simply cannot replace enforcement and traffic camera.

      That’s why we have rules, and also jail. If rules always work, we won’t need jail.

2. A picture of a 1976 route 60 paper bus schedule. Back then it was a much shorter route.

   Also, click forward or backward to see other old route schedules.

   https://www.flickr.com/photos/126713233@N04/14782791529/in/photostream/

   1. Wow, only four trips a day. So much for frequency!

   2. When I started riding Metro in 1979 I’m pretty sure the 60 was already an all-day route to Georgetown. A lot of things changed between 1976 and 1979, as in that mid 1970s system map I think you posted earlier.

      The first time I rode Metro to Seattle, it was around 1979 in junior high. I took the 226 from east Bellevue to downtown Seattle, and the 7 to Broadway & Denny to go to the Record Library at the Broadway Arcade (a 2-story building that’s no longer there). That was a company where you could rent records before buying them or to tape them.

      The 7 was running like the 49 now, and the 43 was on John-23rd, like they were until the 2010s. The first time I noticed the 60 it was going to Georgetown and running half-hourly. I don’t remember it starting like I do the 8; it was just already there. The 9, if it was running then, was an express between the U-District, Broadway, and Rainier Valley, not the 9 in the schedule that was the only route on 10th and probably terminated at Eastlake.

      1. Mike,
         Route 226 was greatly improved in fall 1997; it was consolidated; it was shifted to the DSTT; Route 253 became an intra Eastside route. Shortly thereafter, Route 550 absorbed Route 226.

         Route 49 was formed in 2005 when Route 7 was split and Route 9 became a diesel express; Route 7 had two variants, one to the U District and one to East Aloha Street; Route 9 was an ETB between the U District and South Rose Street. The southbound trips of routes 7 and 9 were evenly spaced from the U District; the northbound trips tended to be bunched.

         Route 43 was destroyed in March 2016. The hope was that Route 48 would become ETB in 2017. Ha!

   3. That’s my #60 at its birth? The sched only calls it “the Yesler-Broadway bus” — and it runs four times daily, and not at all on Sundays. Yow!

      I do love that it’s a straight shot down Broadway, instead of the meandering twisty-turny route of today.

3. Suggestion: the “Brainstorming Fixes” could’ve been posted after the Route 8 Series. It kinda felt like a random interruption. Or de-series the Route 8 fixes and combine it all into a single post, so the comments aren’t redundant.

   1. We wanted to publish it Saturday right after the Past Plans article but it needed some last-minute updates and wasn’t ready until Monday. I’d already said it was coming and people were holding their ST3 comments for it so I didn’t want to postpone it further. We’ve got articles every day for the next two weeks. At the same time I wanted to give the first L8 article at least a half day alone, especially since it was a major contribution by a guest author. So I published it Monday at 5pm. Hopefully there won’t be any more conflicts with two major articles on the same day.

      The L8 article was originally one, but it was split into three because it was so long.

4. WMATA just rolled out some major operational and branding changes.

   https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/wayfinding/#:~:text=Silver%20Line%20Service%20Changes,replaced%20to%20reflect%20this%20information.

   The big operational change is that the Silver line (the third line in this core tunnel) trains will reverse half at the Blue Line end station and half at the Orange Line end station. That makes the rail system easier to operate (as opposed to all trains sharing a terminus with another line).

   They also now refer to colors with a single letter rather than two letters.

   They also are making lots of signage changes — both fixed and electronic.

   1. I’ll also highlight that trains will now run to 2 AM every Friday and Saturday night. No more midnight last trains (aka Cinderella trains).

5. Another update on the Saturday morning Link reduction, June 28.

   “This closure is necessary to accommodate routine WSDOT inspections of I-90 overpasses near SODO station.”

   So it’s not the bridge as I’d assumed, but overpasses too close to SODO to keep it open.

   Westlake-SODO will have shuttle buses every 10-15 minutes until 9am. Link beyond that will run every 12 minutes.

6. I saw a social media post from SDOT announcing that Route 40 bus lane installing will start as soon as June 30th.

   1. I rode the 40 yesterday and there was construction on Fremont Avenue, which may have been part of the project. Earlier there was construction on 36th.

      1. I think it is part of Route 40 project. SPU is replacing watermain there and rerouted westbound buses on N 35th to N 34th since May 12th.
         SDOT put a note that Fremont area bus-only lanes will be installed after the construction is done.

         https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2025/06/26/bus-only-lanes-route-40-project/

7. Why do people steal copper wire from transit infrastructure? Who’s buying it? Why don’t they buy legitimately-sourced wire?

   1. Copper is a high-value material commonly recycled from construction waste. Wiring is often the first thing to be stolen from abandoned structures, and thieves have become emboldened in stealing material from active infrastructure, including lighting systems, signals, and, apparently, overhead power wire.

      There is, apparently, no efficient way to crack down on recycling of stolen material. It’s similar to catalytic converters.

   2. I don’t know who, but it should obviously be cheaper if it’s stolen.

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