Pike Place Market with cars in 2022, and without cars in 2025. (Juan Rodriguez)

Cars were removed from Pike Place in April due to a building construction project blocking a lane. They were supposed to return this month but Mayor Harrell extended the ban to spring 2026. The city is taking advantage of this temporary pedestrianization to study how people are voting with their feet and cars; e.g., any changes in foot traffic or vendor sales. Some people have long advocated for a permanent ban, while some drivers complain about losing the ability to quickly drop into a shop and leave. Some vendors are concerned they may be losing sales as people walk in the middle of the street and don’t see the shop rather than being forced to walk directly in front of the shop. But there’s is a great opportunity to create a truly pedestrianized street to complement the early-1900s market and new overlook walk and waterfront renovation.

Serfaus, Austria, population 1000, has the second-smallest subway in the world. (TFS Transport via RMTransit) Why does it have it? Skiers! Cars are banned in the village. The U-Bahn runs from the consolidated parking garage through the village center to the ski lift.

The smallest subway according to some criteria is the Carmelit in Haifa, Israel. It’s 1.1 miles long with 6 stations. Other contenders can be found by doing a web search for “smallest subway in the world”. It partly depends on the criteria: shortest length, fewest stations, lowest capacity, smallest host city, and whether funiculars (steep-incline services) are eligible.

This is an open thread.

56 Replies to “Sunday Movie: Pike Place Market With and Without Cars”

  1. Isn’t the World’s smallest subway actually the Tünel in Istanbul? It’s less than 2000 ft in length.

    1. That was one of the contenders. I tried to list them all but gave up, partly because it depends on what criteria you use to rank them. I’m also skeptical that underground funiculars are really subways. They address a different need: steep hill climbing. The purpose of a subway is to connect population/activity centers, and the ground they cover is generally flat (like the original London Underground), even if some of them also have hills and elevators (like Seattle). So I see a difference between a regular subway that’s primarily metropolitan rail even if a line is short, and an underground funicular whose primary purpose is to go up/down and is usually short.

      1. @Mike Orr,

        “The purpose of a subway is to connect population/activity centers”

        Exactly, and isn’t that why the Tünel should qualify? Because it was built specifically to connect the financial and commercial centers of Istanbul. Which is a very practical and transit like thing to do.

        Ya, with modern development and the rise of the automobile, things are now a little more amorphous, but the Tünel still basically serves the same purpose.

      2. “The purpose of a subway is to connect population/activity centers”

        Several centers, not just two.

      3. @Mike Orr,

        I’ve never seen any definition of a subway that specifies how many stops it must have to be a “subway”.

        And I’ve certainly never seen a definition of a subway that specifies that it must include low ridership stops in addition to key high ridership stops.

        Now the Tünel might not qualify as a subway because it is rubber tired. But that is a whole different distinction.

      4. The term “subway” literally is short for a subterranean way. Any transit line that goes underground is a “subway” for the segment underground. It doesn’t matter how it’s powered or pulled or whether the wheels are steel or rubber. . Portions of link can even be called subways.

        It’s common for some entire systems to be called subways like NYC’s. But I tend to steer away from using the term because I’m usually discussing entire lines and not just their underground segments.

      5. @ Lazarus:

        Paris and Montreal Metros have several rubber-tired underground lines. Most people call them subways.

        Haifa’s Carmelit underground funicular is also often called a subway by travel guides and others.

      6. Like I wrote, semantics.

        Any transit line that goes underground is a “subway” for the segment underground.

        Using that argument, Seattle opened its first subway line in 1990, when the first buses used the transit tunnel. If your definition has to include rail but is based on the part that is underground than we used to have a really tiny subway (that same tunnel). In fact, we still do. The Beacon Hill tunnel is pretty tiny and so is the new tunnel for Downtown Bellevue.

        But in this context most people are talking about the entire line. Having a tunnel for part of your line does not make it a subway. No one calls Sounder a subway. The terms are rough, like the difference between a creek and a river. But in general a “metro” is an urban line with trains running grade-separated. If it is mostly underground it is considered a subway. If it is mostly above ground, it is often called an “elevated” or an “L”. Thus the New York City Subway is a subway as is the Paris Metro. The Chicago “L” is an “L”. SkyTrain is probably something in between, but definitely a metro. What about Link? Because Link runs on the ground and is not entirely grade-separated, people often refer to it as “light rail”. But in my opinion it is a metro that just happens to have bits and pieces on the surface like light rail.

        Oh, and I’ve never heard anyone make a distinction regarding rubber tires. The Paris Metro is obviously a metro. But they often make a distinction with regards to funiculars. Again, folks are missing the big picture here. The city of Istanbul does *not* call it a subway. Look at that map again. They have about a dozen lines labeled “Metro Subway”. They have the letter “M” in front (for Metro). They have four lines for “funicular”, labeled with the letter “F”. If Istanbul doesn’t call their funicular line a subway, why should we?

      7. “But in this context most people are talking about the entire line.”

        That’s why those are called “subway lines” that have “subway trains” that stop at “subway stations”.

        I’ve visited places that even call pedestrian underpasses “subways”. It’s common in the UK. At first I thought it was odd because it wasn’t what I was personally taught was a “subway” as a child — but over time I’ve come to see it as a design treatment more than a vehicle using it.

        Certainly popular usage can end up changing definitions. And frankly I almost never hear the term used much locally unless it’s in the context of another big city. I tend to see the word “tunnel” or “underground” used more often.

        The tunnels under Market Street in San Francisco are relatively new (1970’s and funded by BART). People there will call it the Market Street Subway from time to time because some remember a time before its construction and opening and because there are Muni rail lines on Market Street that also run on the surface and not in the “subway”.

      8. @Al S,

        “I’ve visited places that even call pedestrian underpasses “subways”.”

        You are correct. In the UK the term “subway” is most often used to refer to a simple pedestrian undercrossing. It can be very confusing to Americans who go to the “subway” expecting to find a transit system with rails.

        Glad to see that at least someone on this blog actually gets out to see the world occasionally.

      10. Glad to see that at least someone on this blog actually gets out to see the world occasionally.

        What the fuck is that supposed to mean? The rest of us are provincial rubes that never left town?

        Look, you picked a stupid semantic argument and you lost. Mike was explicit in his wording:

        It partly depends on the criteria: shortest length, fewest stations, lowest capacity, smallest host city, and whether funiculars (steep-incline services) are eligible.

        Then you wrote about a funicular! Some consider a funicular a subway, some don’t. The people who who actually run *that funicular* don’t consider it a subway. So now you are busy making backhanded insults. Good God, you are arrogant.

      11. I’m talking about the role a metro/subway has in a city’s transportation. Its purpose is to connect several nodes so that somebody can theoretically live, work, and go to the supermarket and other activities all along that one line, and other people can do at least one or two of those. If it only has two stations, my question is, “Does the city really have only two places?” Marginal shuttles like New York’s 42nd Street shuttle are just that: marginal.

        A funicular’s purpose is to ascend a steep hill. It’s not general citywide mobility. That’s why it may be underground but it’s not a “subway” or “metro”. It’s a hill-climbing device like an escalator.

      12. If somebody says, “X city has a subway.”, what do you think of? Something with several stations and one or more lines that allows people to get to a wide variety of destinations and activities. If the T Line in Tacoma were underground or otherwise faster and more frequent, it would minimally be that.

        In the late 80s my college classmate from Germany eagerly reported about his hometown: “Little Bielefeld has a subway!” The city of 326K then had added a downtown tunnel like DSTT for its trams. In Germany the term “U-Bahn” was extended to trams with downtown tunnels. And it fulfills the typical image of a subway: something with several stations that allows people to get to a wide variety of destinations and activities.

        If somebody says “X city has a subway” and it turns out to be only in the airport (e.g., Seattle from the 1960s to 2000s) or just a two-station funicular (like from 3rd Avenue to First Hill but Link didn’t exist), then you’d be disappointed and feel misled. If you were depending on the “subway” to get around an unknown city and avoid infrequent buses caught in car congestion, you’d be angry too that the person misled you into thinking the city had a subway.

      13. I used to joke about Seattle’s amenities at the time. “We have a monorail! (Between two stations.) We have a subway! (In the airport.)”

      14. @Mike Orr,

        “I used to joke about Seattle’s amenities at the time”

        I used to joke about Seattle’s transit system all the time, mainly as a means of deflecting the inevitable criticism that would usually follow.

        “We have a monorail”.

        “We have a people mover at the airport – and it speaks Japanese!”

        “We have a buses!”

        I’d try not to mention the bus tunnel because it always resulted in too many questions and a lot of confusion.

        But hey, no need to joke about Seattle’s transit system anymore. We have Light Rail! And it works really well.

        It ain’t the 80’s anymore.

    2. A very long time ago, I rode one of the open top cars used on the United States Capitol Subway between the Capitol and the Russell Office Building. I can’t find the length but it’s extremely short.

      At the time, constituents visiting the Capitol building could use the subway to get to the office of their Senator. Apparently that’s not allowed now.

      The airport people mover at Kahului, Hawaii is maybe 800 feet, but it’s not underground so can’t really be a subway.

    3. It is a bit of a semantics issue. If you look at the Instanbul mass transit map they make a distinction between some of the modes: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Istanbul_Railway_Systems_Network_Map.svg. Note that they list Metro/Subway and the funiculars as being different. From a user standpoint they are similar but you could say the same thing with a busway and a subway — but they are usually considered two different things.

    4. The other semantics part of “smallest subway” is not just length, but the size of the trains.

      The Glasgow Subway is 6 miles long, so not a record holder in that regard, but the tunnel diameter is only 11 feet. This results in some really small diameter trains.
      Eg: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?126111

  2. There has been lots of discussions going on in California this month about the Sepulveda Line EIS/ EIR now on the street.

    Sone YouTube videos reviewing it are here:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7l9GrGCI_wA
    (Nandert)

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H3CpR1-9gIs&pp=0gcJCfwAo7VqN5tD
    (Rallying for Rail)

    For those used to the very limited alternative studies for Link, there are some things to note that LA Metro but ST often does not or does in a very limited way.

    1. Alternatives that look at two different rail technologies.
    2. Alternatives that add or subtract entire stations (not merely relocate them).
    3. Analysis tables that describe anticipated transfer walk times for every alternative.

    These are more what a rail line EIS should be.

    It breaks my heart that the ST planning is so controlling and limited that their EIS documents are little more than slanted PR documents to justify what was de used behind closed doors, effectively wasting money and time. And even when an ST EIS clearly describes how little positive impact some projects have, the Board members summarily ignore it.

    1. Al S.

      Well, let’s start with admitting that we got exactly what we voted for back in 2016. Elections have consequences and we have to live with them. There’s no legal way to change the structure of Sound Transit. Anybody who thought Sound Transit wasn’t going to devolve into back room deals with the board and big construction companies doesn’t understand the politics of The Puget Sound very well.

      On the subject of elections…. the GOP controls the US Senate and is making moves to wrap up control of the US House by redistricting Texas. I think there was a window for big transit projects to get built and now it’s closing.

      1. “we got exactly what we voted for back in 2016. ”

        We didn’t vote for ultra-long transfers downtown, ultra-deep tunnels downtown, a Ballard 14th station, or tunnels in West Seattle and Ballard.

        The ultra-long transfers are unbelievable: it should be obvious that that’s not part of a normal multi-line subway. Voters didn’t expect it, there are no precedents among ST’s peers between the primary core lines, and ST’s past actions had never done anything like that. Everybody was expecting DSTT2 to be the same depth as DSTT1 and to have straight-across transfers. Even ST expected it: the changes came out of post-vote engineering. If those engineers are right that a tunnel on 5th must be ultra-deep and must have such ultra-long transfers, ST should have said that’s unacceptable for passenger impacts, and should have gone back to the drawing board to reevaluate whether to build DSTT2 or what alternative alignments might be possible.

        The budget was scaled for elevated in West Seattle and Ballard, not tunnels. If stakeholders were going to demand extra tunnels, they should have done so before the ballot measure was written, and since they didn’t, ST shouldn’t have given in to them so easily.

        Ballard 15th station was already a compromise. Ballard 14th station emerged post-vote and is significantly worse for passengers, because the walking distance between 15th and 14th is three blocks, not one block. And no, West Woodland is unlikely to ever have comparable density, destinations, or pedestrian ambience as Real Ballard.

      2. Actually backroom dealmaking happens in LA too. The monorail alternative is being pushed strongly by some behind the scenes. Some neighbors are up in arms about a tunnel bored several hundred feet under their homes. The videos have a running theme to them — don’t build the monorail (Alts 1 and 3)! The big difference is just that the EIS process there is objective enough to report on the impacts so that it’s harder to bend the project to favor those stakeholders. And the dispersed nature of power in LA makes it harder to ignore analytics and instead bend to a mayor or county executive.

        The structure of ST was developed with good intentions. That to me isn’t the problem. I see that the biggest problem is that there are way too many people in positions of power (including even some local transit advocates and ST senior staff) unfamiliar with how a sustainable rail system should actually function. They don’t realize how to spend capital dollars effectively, doing things like overbuilding parking garages and spending hundreds of millions for mitigations to ease fears of a wealthy landowner and designing hundreds of feet in 3D underground rat mazes while skimping on down escalators or looking at how to achieve better farebox recovery. Or they cling to a slower rail vehicle but want it to extend further out to places that the technology is not only overly expensive, but actually moves slower than express buses do today.

        You would think that ST would recruit from mature transit systems and make sure that board members at least bring in longtime-transit CFO’s and COO’s from elsewhere to learn from — but no! They’re too arrogant and naive to get beyond their ignorance and poor leadership — thinking that their status as progressive liberals is all that is needed. Sometimes I wish that ST Board members would have to spend two weeks living in Chicago or NYC or Boston without a car just to get first hand experience as a rider — with a follow-up workshop with their CFO and COO to learn what their challenges and mistakes are.

        When a transit system runs on whims and not on analytics, it’s not as good as it could be. It empowers the nay-sayers and whiners when there is no comprehensive analysis to refute them. It sets up a poorly-built system that will need expensive, remedial fixes once it’s running — if it ever runs in the first place (unfunded promises).

        I honestly do believe that within the next four years, ST will be judged — both on good and bad points — by the tens of thousands of new riders coming into the system. Rider experiences will drown out the wishful dreamers and “stakeholders” trying to make the most money they can off the investment. And those riders will increasingly pressure their elected officials to work beyond the platitudes of “I’m pro—transit” and do things that actually reflect the nuances of riding dependable transit every day.

        I don’t think that we are there yet. The literature for tomorrow’s ejection contains only a few platitudes about transit. They say that they want more transit riders to reduce environmental impacts — but they don’t ever critically look at what a lousy job ST3 actually does to achieve that compared to what it could do.

      3. “[The ST board] thinking that their status as progressive liberals is all that is needed”

        Progressive liberals don’t build light rail to Everett, Tacoma, or Issaquah. Progressive liberals don’t keep density low around stations to cater to nimbys — except the Marin County kind of “environmentalists” who think cities are evil and everybody should live on farms. The Surrey Downs and Mt Baker nimbys aren’t likely to be disproportionately progressive; they’re more likely moderate and politically diverse. Progressive liberals don’t get elected in the Eastside, Snohomish, or Pierce Counties — or who has been? Seattle is 1/5 of the region’s population and the ST board, so even if all Seattle boardmembers and mayor/councilmembers were progressive (which they’re not), they’d still be heavily outvoted.

      4. Re. Link moving slower than express busses do today, what you really mean is off-peak and/or on good traffic days, right? And traffic congestion will surely be worse by the time the Tacoma and Everett extensions are built. Imagine running the 510/511/512 busses between Everett and downtown with the Revive I5 construction going on. Much slower than the schedule they ran on prior to Link! And Revive I5 should be regarded as a preview of traffic congestion 20-30 years from now. Now these extensions wouldn’t necessarily be my top priorities, nor are they the best bang for our buck. But they nevertheless will perform better and have higher ridership than if we had just kept running the express busses.

      5. Mike Orr,

        About “progressive liberals” in Greater Seattle. Currently the Tacoma City Council is more liberal than the Seattle City Council. Ryan Mello is a huge Lefty! Pierce County Executive and Sound Transit board member. https://www.piercecountywa.gov/100/Executive

        Go ahead and email Ryan and tell him real “progressive liberals” don’t build light rail to Tacoma. Shit, ask him for write his opinion on why light rail is important to Tacoma and post it here. I bet he will. He’s really a pretty cool dude….

        In my 40 years of fallowing Puget Sound politics…. almost every race is a mere popularity contest because there’s this standard boilerplate liberal check list most candidates can recite from memory. All elected officials are for “more transit and affordable housing”. But all the campaign promises and silly candidate platforms mean very little in the real world.

        Here’s the big con the pols were counting on and never bothered to tell the voters. ST3 was 100% guaranteed to fall short, just like ST2 did. There’s always been this backroom deal about ST4! The problem is now inflation and the Federal Government is controlled by the GOP long term…. ST4 won’t even save Sound Transit at this point.

        The longer it takes to build anything, the more opposition will grow, the higher priced it will become and the more backroom upgrades will be added on. Sound Transit will be crushed under its own weight.

  3. Well…. It was supposed to happen in early July, and before that in June, but now it is early August and there still hasn’t been any real testing of Link across the I-90 FB. As in zero, nothing, nada, zilch, diddly-squat.

    Me thinks Dow spent so much time twisting arms and making backroom deals to secure the ST CEO position, that he forgot about what the people actually want from SR — project delivery!

    So we have at least another months delay in opening Full ELE. Pathetic.

    But at least we get FWLE opening this year. That at least is real regional transit progress. South King isn’t getting ignored anymore.

    1. The delay for 2 Line cross-lake travel is routinely pushed back — over and over again. The last video posted by ST stated that the problem was a calibration problem on the bridge.

      One aspect that really nags at me is that neither track is yet being tested beyond the initial PR stunt on the bridge. I could understand if there was a problem with one track. But both tracks? That really gives me more of a sense of doom about the opening date.

      Are there any sightings of train testing on the Seattle side of the bridge? I have yet to see any or see any reports about it. The problem is reported by ST on the bridge itself, so I would think that regular testing should be visible by now by thousands of people on I-90 east of the Mt Baker tunnel. I’ve not seen any reports of even that.

      1. I took 550 2-3 times a week. The recent scene is generally the same. There are always few workers on the bridge doing something. Most of the time there is no heavy equipment on site, but they are clearly still working on something.
        I haven’t seen any activity at Judkin Park station at least after the dead tow test. I’haven’t seen test train there for a while.

      2. @Al S,

        Last I heard ST was still waiting for WSDOT to give the OK for ST to turn the power on. So I’m guessing that this delay is more bureaucratic than physical. Which basically means it is an interagency management issue, or at least an interagency relations issue.

        So, again, this lands on Dow’s lap. He needs to get it done.

      3. “Last I heard ST was still waiting for WSDOT to give the OK for ST to turn the power on. So I’m guessing that this delay is more bureaucratic than physical.”

        Yet I’ve seen trains on Link tracks next to I-5 for months. I don’t get why WSDOT would have a problem west of the Mt Baker tunnel unless the East Link design plans there were badly done and WSDOT has a concern. But surely that would have been discovered and remedied years ago. And ST would have told the public if the delay was caused by another agency.

  4. Trolleybus routes on 3rd Ave are still not on wire. Is there any construction on the way?

  5. Last Thursday I experienced some very dramatic bunching on Route 40 in the evening. First I waited at least 20 minutes in Fremont before the bus arrived. When I got off at my stop in Ballard, four Route 40 buses arrived almost at the same time. Then less than 3 minutes later, two more 40 buses passed me.

    1. Bunching has been really noticeable on the E and the 5. And then I’m late for work and take an hour for a bus commute that I could run on foot in 40 minutes. I’m just about ready to give up on the bus.

    1. I’m not the least bit surprised. If anything, I would expect buses to get hit harder than cars, simply due to fewer domestic manufacturers and less competition. And, of course, even domestically-made buses are going to have plenty of foreign-made parts inside of them. Transit agencies around the country are going to be paying for this in the form of service cuts.

      My understanding is that the new transit to operate Link to Bellevue and Federal Way have already been ordered, so should be protected from tariffs. I don’t think it will be time to order new trains for any further extensions until well after Trump is out of office (assuming he doesn’t find a workaround for the 2-term limit in the Constitution).

      1. Well, gee, if Tacoma, Everett, Ballard, West Seattle, and Issaquah get delayed due to lack of trains, that’s just fine, because the essential core of Link will be up and running.

        The other projects are either questionable (all except Ballard) or have usability-maiming post-vote design changes (Ballard). A lack of trains would help ST tame its budget and encourage it to focus on alternatives for these areas.

      2. @Mike Orr,

        LOL.

        The article specifically addresses the increased cost of buses and says absolutely nothing about potential increased costs of the other modes. As such, the article is more applicable to bus based transit agencies like Metro and not applicable to modes like Light Rail.

        That said, Drumpf’s tariffs will raise the costs of just about everything. So it is reasonable to assume that Link will eventually feel the effects too.

        But the agencies will respond to these increased costs the way they have always responded to increased costs: delay, re-plan, and delay fleet replacement.

        But the longer term threat to transit is real, and is more ideological based. The current party in power isn’t exactly known for being pro-transit, pro-urban, or pro-social justice.

        Metro checks all those boxes, so at some point I expect them to come after Metro.

    2. The next big ST vehicle purchases are buses! Stride buses!

      The Stride bus base won’t open until late 2027. Stride 1 and 3 is pushed back to 2028 and Stride 2 to 2029. ST could merely reuse some of the soon-to-be-cancelled Express bus fleet for Stride in a pinch.

      I realize that we are talking about vehicles. It’s still relevant to budgets that earlier new steel tariffs will significantly affect ST expansion as well. Steel is not only used for vehicles and tracks, but it is also used in bridges (like the proposed signature bridge over to West Seattle) as well as any piers (rebar encased in concrete) and tunnel walls (end of West Seattle Link). Luckily, the only imminent steel use is for OMF-South — and even that’s not targeted to begin construction until 2027. West Seattle and Tacoma Done extensions could also technically begin construction in 2027 but I don’t see these getting fully underway until 2028 or later at the earliest given the situation. And tariffs seem to bounce up or down weekly skk ok it’s hard to guess the impact.

      2. Maybe. I see a reference to a future Purchase Order (PO) process in the background. I would think that the PO is when a bus is actually ordered and the funds are committed.

      3. Possibly. Since it takes years from procurement to delivery. Big corporation like NFI is probably smart enough to write something in the contract so that this kind of unforeseeable cost hike won’t be completely at their expense.

  9. Back in Seattle, First Impressions

    I’ve been out of the country for most of the summer, but I got back a few days ago and these are my first impressions of our local public transit system.

    Arrived at SEA at 10pm and took light rail back home. Escalators were out of service at SeaTac Airport, TIBS and Mt. Baker Stations–no surprise.

    Link stations are filthy. Most of the time I was in South America where public transit facilities are kept very clean, almost spotless. It was a shock to see so much grime and dirt in our stations. It seems ST spends a lot of money on security, but virtually nothing on routine cleaning. Jane Jacobs might have some advice about ST’s priorities.

    Most of the systems I rode in South America had turnstile access to ride. I know there are pros and cons of turnstiles, but I think ST should convert as many stations as possible to turnstiles. Fare enforcement is almost non-existent on Link and consequences are minimal for fare evasion. The one system that I rode in South America where fare payment was similar to Link (tap to board, on-board spot fare checking), I was fare checked at least 75% of the time.

    Enough complaining!

    The new passenger information signs on the Siemens trains are nice and the new bus-only lanes on Westlake are great. The situation near 12th & Jackson has improved enormously; although I’m not sure if the problem has been solved or just swept away until after the elections.

    1. Thanks for talking about things as a rider!

      Too often the ST and even STB discourse contains lofty, theoretical ideals about building new. Diagrams and renderings abound and they never show a trashed vision. I think it’s increasingly more important to be aware what it’s actually like to use (and to offer) a transit service many hours a week.

      It may not be the most inspiring way to look at transit. But it’s necessary and basic to keep discussions grounded in reality.

      And the more facilities that transit operators build, the more they have to continually maintain at a reasonable level of usability and cleanliness. This applies to every mode — from bus shelters to giant light rail underground stations. New things can become shabby in just a few years if not maintained.

      Finally, a truism I have witnessed is that people naturally take better care of things if they pay as they use them. I view free fare concepts as a way to greatly increase maintenance costs. Certainly turnstiles drive the point home better. But even the honor system that we have encourages some level of cultural responsibility that would not exist if use if the service is advertised and offered as free. While most riders are reasonably responsible by far, the very few that don’t can quickly trash the system. It only takes one rider treating a station or train as a toilet to ruin the experience for hundreds if not thousands.

    2. 12th & Jackson has been going up and down. The city has made a dedicated effort to keep 3rd & Pine clear of loitering salesmen for the most part, so you rarely see a crowd there anymore although I did a couple weeks ago. That has coincided with amenities and activities on Pike between 1st and 2nd, and I think some amenity changes and definitely police parking at Pine just north of 3rd.

      Several 12th & Jackson businesses have been begging for relief, but the city’s approach there seems to be on and off.

    3. ST’s new practice is to deep-clean every station annually. It did several stations over the past year. My friend in north Lynnwood thinks several stations are awful and need cleaning more. During our July 4th Everett trip she asked if I could pass her complaints to ST thinking I had clout with them. I opened an STB comment form and summarized her complaints, and had her check it for accuracy before posting: “My friend in north Lynnwood is with us. She says Intl Dist station is absolutely filthy; the elevator smells like urine. Capitol Hill station is bad too, and Lynnwood station somewhat. We both smelled fentanyl in one of elevators in north Seattle or Capitol Hill. When she sees the security guards, they just stand and talk and don’t do anything about passenger misbehavior. It’s making her a discontented passenger.”

      I have a different threshold for “filthy” so I wouldn’t say the stations have reached that level. But I have smelled urine several times in the elevators.

      She thinks ST should have elevator attendants or at least clean the stations several times a day, and have attended bathrooms, and visible security the whole time the stations are open, and security guards that actually do something when people misbehave. I tried to tell her the first three would cost a huge amount of money that ST doesn’t have, and this is a reflection of larger societal problems, but she still feels like ST should do all these.

    4. 12th & Jackson improves probably because DESC’s Navigation Center at 12th & Weller has finally moved to its permanent location near 3rd & Cherry in Downtown earlier this year

  10. The next DSTT closure will be Saturday, August 23 in the morning until 1pm for East Link testing. A Westlake-SODO shuttle bus will run every 10-15 minutes. Link service north and south of there will be approximately every 12 minutes.

    How far through Revive I-5 are we?

    1. Two more weeks to go on I-5 NB closure. Lane reduction will continue till Aug 14th followed by a full northbound closure over that weekend. All northbound lanes will reopen on Monday Aug 18th.

    2. This was originally scheduled for this Saturday, August 9th but was postponed due to the Revive I-5 project.

  12. Another day, another unplanned Link closure. This time Beacon Hill station due to a “mechanical issue with the station”. ST has ordered SODO-Mt Baker shuttle buses.

    As our own public service, Metro route 36 goes from Beacon Hill station and the middle of the hill southeast of it to downtown. Route 60 goes from the station to Broadway, and the other way to southwest Beacon Hill, Georgetown, South Park, and Westwood Village. If you’re in Rainier Valley and want to avoid the shuttle bus, route 106 on MLK will get you to Jackson Street and Intl Dist station in 15 minutes or so, and route 7 will get you Jackson Street and downtown in around 20 minutes.

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