Jane’s Walk & Mercer Slough Walk

71 Replies to “Jane’s Walk & Mercer Slough Walk”

1. If you like local history, and want to know the backstory to Mercer Slough, this is an interesting article. You’ll learn: Why it’s named Mercer Slough, and why it’s called a slough. Why the neighborhood is called Wilburton. How the men behind the names Wilburton and Hewitt (think Everett), are connected. And why a business in Wilburton sued King County for lowering Lake Washington by 9 feet. And more.

   https://www.historylink.org/File/20201

   1. There’s a placard in the Slough with some similar information. I was surprised to see a Mercer there, and wondered if it was related to Mercer Island.

   2. I liked this paragraph:

      King County Superior Court Judge J. T. Ronald rejected the case in 1919, ruling that “the lowering of the waters of Mercer slough was caused by King [C]ounty under authority of the state, and by virtue of the state’s power to improve the navigability of navigable waters of the state,” and that therefore “the state has the power to inflict the injury complained of without compensation”

      I know it’s technically about state authority, but to me it represents the access right of many people taking priority over the access right of a few people.

      1. I wouldn’t get your inner Communist too excited.

         The lake was lowered and the locks built primarily so that ocean-going wooden ships could enter fresh-water berths. This kills off marine growth that is deadly to wooden boats. Besides benefiting ship owners, it benefited the landowners (mostly timber companies at that time) around the lake who got more property. It did an incalculable amount of environmental damage, destroying fish runs and an entire river (the Black), harming a lot of people, most particularly the natives. Throw in the regrades and the filling of Elliot Bay, the channelization of the Duwamish, and it is arguable that Seattle may be the single greatest environmental disaster ever to befall North America. Yet we choose to accomodate ever more people and build ever more infrastructure in it, even as salmon runs continue to collapse.

         1. I think the relevant point of analysis is that there are specific regulatory powers relating to navigable waterways which have historically been ruled in the public good and not generally subject to the takings clause for work done as a result of making the waterway navigable. And yes, that is tied up in the strong historical commercial interest in navigable waterways.

            It’s true that the regrades, ship canal, and channelization of the Duwamish are environmental catastrophes but there have been a lot of those since the dawn of colonization in what is now the United States. I wouldn’t compare the industrialization of the Duwamish to the destruction of the tallgrass prairies in the Midwest, or the near extermination of the bison, or the industrialization of the Chicago and Calumet Rivers, or the urbanization of New York; they all represent environmental catastrophes of nearly unfathomable depth and ranking them is pointless. But I think it’s worth saying that the Northwest still has salmon runs that never stopped, while the Northeast faced 100 year plus gaps between wild runs going extinct in the 1800s and restoration efforts starting in the 1960s.

            It is entirely possible for the Seattle region to accommodate more people while maintaining healthy habitat for salmon, just not within the current social and economic climate. Luckily, society and the economy are human creations that we have the power (and responsibility) to control. Each salmon bearing creek, stream, and river in the Seattle area faces unique localized challenges to retaining a healthy run (and there are other interlocking issues relating to ocean health too). None of those are issues that need be solved by refusing to accommodate more people too.

         2. “…Seattle may be the single greatest environmental disaster ever to befall North America.”

            Good lord… dial back the hyperbole by a factor of 10.

            And yet, this “environmental disaster” didn’t bring about the end of the world or human civilization.

         3. Battery electric buses will solve everything!

         4. “… Seattle may be the single greatest environmental disaster ever to befall North America.“

            While it was major, environmental damage has been pretty extensive nationwide. From contaminated superfund sites to atomic bomb testing to massive water management projects to swamp fills in Boston, New York, Florida and other places to abandoned strip mines to the Dust Bowl period, our country has and has had lots of massive environmental damage episodes. Just looking at Phoenix and Las Vegas keep growing amidst water supply shortages and extreme heat gives me pause on whether enough people care.

      2. Yet it also says that property owners who were directly harmed should be compensated. That’s the same issue as now: if a Link project takes a private lot, it has to compensate the owner for property loss. In this case the court found that the damage in the Sough was only indirectly related to the Ship Canal project (it wasn’t built in the Slough), and that the claim of the loss of a timber market was invalid because most of the facility’s production had already wound down and most of the trees were already cut down. I can’t think of any comparable situation with a transit project.

         1. The relevant comparison for Link would be if they closed a road which lead to a loss of revenue for a business already struggling to survive. Not a Link project, but if the Fremont Bridge were to become car free, and that lead to a loss of business from one of the few legacy auto mechanics on Stone Way, I think they would be hard-pressed to show in a lawsuit that that one instance is the only relevant thing when land use changes and construction in the past decade has appreciably changed the area around the shop. In order for there to be a taking, there has to be an essential nexus between the public project and the private interest. Secondary effects are not generally subject to litigation.

   3. Various things around this area are named Mercer. But, it’s not all from one person. There were three brothers. Thomas, Asa, and Aaron. Mercer Slough is named after Aaron. Mercer Island is named after Thomas.

      When walking through the park in the slough, imagine the lake being 9 feet higher. Most parts of the slough would have been under water. And so it was used by the lumber mill (approximate location is next to the Wilburton P&R) to barge logs from the mill to Lake Washington.

      1. Another fun placename fact: it is unclear who Elliott Bay was named for as there were several crewmembers on the Wilkes Expedition with the name “Elliott”.

      2. The water covered that much? Where did the Eastside shore begin? Would downtown Bellevue have a waterfront beach? Would Bellevue Square be next to the beach?

         1. I got that from here:

            https://historylink.org/Content/education/downloads/Hewitt.pdf

            “The slough and bog originally formed a large bay of the lake of considerable depth. In time, winter
            freshets washed roots, tree trunks and snags with quantities of light soil down into the bay, where, because of
            its flat gradient, they were gradually deposited, building up the bog and partially obstructing the slough. When
            the waters of the lake reached their winter levels, prior to its lowering with the opening of the Lake Washington
            Canal, the bog was entirely submerged, forming a large bay of the lake.”

            This makes it sound that before the lake was lowered, especially during the rainy months, the slough area would be almost completely submerged. Still, I think there was just one, main, deeper channel they used to travel from the mill to the lake.

         2. Mike, the Burke Museum produced a map of the historical shorelines around Seattle (including Lake Washington) in with their Waterlines project: https://www.burkemuseum.org/static/waterlines/images/maps-and-images/WaterlinesMap-print.pdf (warning: 50MB pdf)

            The white line shows the current shoreline, and the imagery is an interpretation of how the Seattle area likely appeared in the mid-1800s.

            One slight misrepresentation is the color of the Duwamish river delta, which would have been darker and more grey instead of beige/buff colored. The true riverbed color is still visible in many places along the Duwamish today.

         3. Thanks for the historic map. The shoreline east of Mercer Island looks similar to now. I can’t tell how far inland downtown Bellevue is. There’s a house icon for a native village, but the city didn’t necessarily start there. The city started at Bellevue Way & Main Street I think.

      3. The lowering of Lake Washington affected lots of things. Genesee Park would not have been a landfill then a park. Renton Airport would be part of the lake and Lake Washington would drain to the south. All the piers and boat launches would be positioned differently.

         1. And Seward Park was an island!

2. Jane Jacob’s legacy is definitely facing a re-evaluation these days. Ezra Klein and other have argued that the culture of community engagement in city planning she helped launch has been a major contributing factor to why we can’t build anything in our cities anymore, including new housing. A recent episode of the 99% Invisible podcast about New York’s Co-op City made mention of Jane Jacob’s certainty that large tower blocks could not possibly foster a sense of community among their residents. Time proved her wrong. This is all to say that there are still some things we can learn from her, but she turned out to only be half-right.

   1. If you are talking about large tower blocks like Cabrini Green or Robert Taylor Homes, time proved her right.

   2. The fact that Ezra Klein thinks public input is bad doesn’t make him right or her wrong. It fascinates me that so-called progressives have embraced the idea that government regulation, environmental rules and public engagement are the reason for high housing costs – especially when he writes that under a chart that shows five years of stalled housing starts after the great recession. The fact that we’re living in an epicenter of inequality and the people moving here have a very high willingness to pay is completely unexamined in his one-dimensional argument for market urbanism.

      Turning every policy discussion into a culture war isn’t helping us solve problems. Anyone who thinks selfish NIMBYs or greedy developers is the problem isn’t seriously grappling with the issue. Housing costs started skyrocketing here at the point when Microsoft employees first looked in their sock drawer at their stock option prices and were shocked to find they didn’t have to live in a shack anymore.

      1. > so-called progressives have embraced the idea that government regulation, environmental rules and public engagement are the reason for high housing costs

         I think it’s disingenuous when folks use terms like “government regulation” to describe extremely restrictive zoning, or “environmental rules” to describe onerous environmental impact lawsuits about shadows and visual impacts, and “public engagement” to describe things like design review.

         >The fact that we’re living in an epicenter of inequality and the people moving here have a very high willingness to pay is completely unexamined in his one-dimensional argument for market urbanism.

         What? This is like saying “the fact that things fall down and gravity exists is completely unexamined in the argument for structural engineering”. Complete nonsense.

         >Turning every policy discussion into a culture war isn’t helping us solve problems.

         True…

         >Housing costs started skyrocketing here at the point when Microsoft employees first looked in their sock drawer at their stock option prices…

         So the problem isn’t “selfish NIMBYs” but wealthy ones. Got it.

         (For the record, I’m not here to defend Ezra Klein or the “Abundance Agenda” but in a government where we can barely raise progressive taxes to fund basic services, it’s completely unreasonable to refuse market-rate development and wait for some magical legislative session to pass fully funding for democratic socialism)

   3. Yes, Jacobs’s impact is ambiguous. She’s both an urbanist and a NIMBY in some ways, and both sides are now citing her as justification for their positions. This has happened a few times in Seattle in the past decade.

      It all comes down to your interpretation of what fulfills her vision of a well-functioning neighborhood, and the specific historic context she lived in in Greenwich Village in the 1960s and 70s, and the specific challenges she faced then.

      19th-century American cities were industrial centers, with manufacturing right in and adjacent to Greenwich Village and Lower Manhattan in general. These declined after WWII, when technological changes made those facilities obsolete, companies moved to larger facilities further out, and workers moved to the suburbs and drove to the new factories, and inner-city neighborhoods were redlined if they had more than 25% minorities visible when the federal assessor visited. The neighborhoods were walkable because cars hadn’t become common or affordable yet.

      So 1960 featured these semi-depopulated inner-city neighborhoods, where housing was cheap, everything was in walking distance, and subway stations were around, and apartments were typically 5-floor walk-ups (meaning no elevator, which made them more affordable). People in the 1960s probably assumed this would continue forever, not realizing it was due to an unusual confluence of Depression + WWII + redlining + cars + suburban flight that reached that stage in the 1950s but later evolved. My mom sold her Bellevue house in 1982, when none of us had any idea housing prices would explode in twenty years and even apartments would become unaffordable.

      Greenwich Village had all those convenient bones and a stable population, but it was seen as undesirable because it didn’t have all the suburban hotness and detached houses and car-oriented shopping centers and 99% whiteness. So it was seen as a throwaway neighborhood, and new expressways and highrises and rebuilding the rest in a suburban style was seen as an improvement.

      Jacobs objected to all that, and said, “Wait, there there is a viable neighborhood and quality of life here. It shouldn’t be obliterated, instead we should understand how it succeeds and replicate that elsewhere.” In one place she wrote (paraphrasing), “Automobiles do much damage to cities, but the problem isn’t automobiles, the problem is the planners don’t understand how to design a city with or without automobiles.” In other words, they don’t understand her principles, and if they designed a city without automobiles, it would be bad too. (Imagine having a store too far away, with too much open space around it, and infrequent buses or no buses, so it was hard to get to, and you couldn’t even drive to it, but it was praised as having “monumental, iconic, contemporary, sleek” architecture.)

      But which specific design features lead to her vision? How do you weigh changes existing residents would suffer compared to allowing more people to live there? What changes are acceptable? This depends on your interpretation of her vision and your values. Different people disagree, and see Jane as supporting different things.

      Jane praised 5-story walk-ups as ideal, because they allowed a lot of people to live in the neighborhood, and they were more affordable than elevator-enjoying buildings. And Greenwich Village has corner stores and small shops and parks, which Jane also praised. So that suggests a medium-density ideal, like parts of Paris or Edinburgh or Boston. So that’s one reference point.

      But if a neighborhood is less dense, does it have to go up to that level? Later she moved to Toronto, and her son David lived in The Annex, a 2-story walkable neighborhood. She liked that too, and admitted that she may have overestimated the minimum acceptable density. (Even 2-4 story neighborhoods can fit a lot of people and services if there’s no excessive open space/parking lots, too wide streets, or segregated land use — as in Paris et al.)

      Robert Moses wanted to build an expressway through the neighborhood and “urban renewal” projects. Jane organized her neighbors to oppose it, and successfully got it canceled. Was that urbanist or NIMBY? It can be interpreted either way, and different people are increasingly interpreting it both ways.

      The environmental review process was an outgrowth of her movement, but at the same time it had loopholes that NIMBYs would later weaponize to block improvements. I’m not sure her generation could have foreseen that, any more than they could foresee her favorite “undesirable” neighborhoods rising in price so much only the top 20% could afford them.

      But the problem there is not having enough of those neighborhoods to go around. If 80% of American neighborhoods were like that now, there would be no price premium on them.

   4. Ezra Klein is a bit of a strange kind of progressive. He’s been thinking out of the box since 2020 and entertaining some contrarian ideas. I respect him in general and his research and analysis, while having reservations about some of his conclusions.

   5. The most productive way to engage with these issues is probably to start with her “10 big ideas” (link below), and discuss whether they’re right or wrong, and what kinds of project proposals would or would not fulfill them or be compatible with them.

3. Jane Jacobs’s 10 big ideas about cities.

   This link was meant to be in the article but it got inadvertently edited out.

   1. I love Jane Jacobs, I’ve read most of her books. I’ll indulge myself and talk about my current opinions on her “10 big ideas”.

      1. Eyes on the Street – yes, in my opinion this is beyond proven. I even feel safer walking on streets with some homeless people on them vs. the complete human abandonment you find in many suburbs. If there are any non-homeless people walking about, that means the area is GREAT!

      2. Social Capital – As a renter, and one who’s had to move locations for various reasons an average of once every 18 months, I’ve never experienced this. My history is by now a painful one of starting to establish ties, only to have them ripped away and starting from scratch all over again. With family help our family is moving into a house next month which the in-laws will own, while we rent from them – I’m hopeful that permanent residence will start giving dividends in this regard. It’s an old streetcar suburb, incredibly walkable, and people commonly work and socialize in their front yards, so I’m optimistic! We’ll invite everyone for blocks around to our open house, and see how things go.

      3. Generators of Diversity – yes, I think this one is also bang-on. I’ve been walking around the new neighborhood and the grocery stores, shops and cafes tucked in between the homes are amazing. My kids love them too! The houses are so old many of them were knocked down 70 years ago and cheap apartment buildings built in between the existing Craftsmans – it means we had a cheap rental option to live in while we were getting our feet under us here. Small blocks mean that I can walk up and down and all over, and the grid makes it easy to get around – the freeway on one side of the neighborhood is the only “block” to access. And honestly, there could be more density, because I would love for there to be more restaurants! But maybe that will come in time, the bones are good :)

      4. Form still follows Function – I’d say so. I’ll compare my new neighborhood to the one I grew up in, a 1950s suburb. The new neighborhood was meant for residents to be able to access downtown easily on foot or in horse-drawn carriage (really) and has more corner stores than are strictly needed in the modern day. Therefore, I can still easily access downtown (though I have to walk under the damn freeway to do so) and I’m already wondering if an empty corner store I walked past the other day might become a community center with a little elbow grease. Also, it has pretty good bus coverage along the old streetcar tracks – one goes right in front of the new house! The neighborhood I grew up in has huge blocks and services that are completely separate, making it a hike to get anywhere on foot, therefore the area is completely auto-dependent, meaning that people fight against increased density with all their might because they already spend enough time sitting in traffic and density just means more of that. The little downtown core has been spiffed up in recent years but the biggest public discussion is parking, parking, parking. I think that both neighborhoods were built for a set number of people – my new one for a higher number from the get-go than it has today, and my old one for a lower number than it has today, and therefore my old neighborhood is really struggling right now. When I was there last, the suburban road had been paved recently so that cars could drive through faster, and as a result, no one went out in their front yards anymore. Boy I could go on all day about this. Spokane is pretty great, guys!!

      5. Local Economies – I’m going to finally push back a little on this one. From observing the economy of Spokane, I am forced to conclude that it is almost entirely government largess. It’s an area whose great lifestyle floats on taxes from Seattle, eds and meds. Heck, I could even argue it’s a type of communism, if you squint. I’ll agree with Jane that it’s inherently fragile, and if I think too much on it I get nervous; however, the quality of life that can be had here anyway is GREAT. In my opinion, Seattle greatly suffered from its economic boom – the ultimate outcome for most citizens was the wrecking of their communities while life became much more expensive and difficult. I expect my sons will go work there or some other megacity when they come of age, but I can only pray that Spokane stays out of the “good economy” cross-fire, or they’ll end up like I did – they’ll try to come home and raise a family, but will find everything they remember swept away by “progress”.

      6. Innovation – I don’t know if this is directly related to cities or not, but I pick up temp work in the downtown hotels for pocket money (I can walk there) and every single person I chat with while there has some sort of interesting side hustle. It makes me think I should do something too! Maybe after the move LOL.

      7. Make Many Little Plans – I have yet to prove this point, but I might! :) I feel like in my new neighborhood, there is space, time, neighbors, and possibility. And at least from my work example, lots of people are doing cool things already!

      8. Gradual Money – Again I will push back a little – I think floods of government money is the only thing keeping Spokane afloat. Then again, it gets way less than Seattle – that useless new freeway in the east they’ve tried to build for over 40 years isn’t scheduled for completion until 2035. (May it never be finished, and not because of the apocalypse but because people come to their senses somehow, amen.)

      9. Cities as Organized Complexity – My only pushback to this obvious fact is that not even reasoning and observation can completely capture everything that happens in a city. I admit to liking Chuck Marohn’s principles from Strong Towns about doing the next obvious small thing, instead of big things, but I also think that’s best in a city that’s already mostly working (like Spokane). I don’t know how my old neighborhood can be helped – either by increments, or by big actions, neither have a clear path forward to anything I think of as a good life. I honestly hope that people abandon it someday, the beavers rebuild their nests, and it becomes a lake again.

      10. Citizen Science – I admit to mixed feelings about this. I have noticed that most ‘involved citizens’ tend to be passionate NIMBYs, determined to protect their privilege and prevent even the slightest change. More reasonable people don’t pay any attention. Also, I think that people nowadays don’t really comprehend the inputs and outputs of their lifestyle; given how removed from reality we all are, that would require an ability to observe that I think most people just never cultivate (and everyone desperately trying to distract themselves with screens or drugs at all times doesn’t help). Having lived abroad, I know that American culture exacerbates this. Americans are raised too independent to know how to sacrifice a little of their own comfort for the whole – or even to understand why it might be a good idea. Nothing is going to change this, sadly, except a long period of grinding poverty, where the ability to cooperate with others will be selected for by Nature… red-tooth-and-claw style.

      Uh – but never mind that tangent!! Right now, the government largess flows, the town of Spokane coasts on its good bones, the people have more space than they need, children walk and ride scooters to the neighborhood school, and my in-laws are generous enough to grant my kids this same wonderful lifestyle :) This is still the Golden Age of our civilization, and I’ve vowed to appreciate every last moment of it that we get. And on that note, time to sign off and take my kids to a public library and park!

   2. I’ve only been to Spokane a few times so I don’t know much about it, but responding to a few points you raised.

      1. Homeless people on the street: This didn’t exist in the mid 20th century when Jacobs was writing. It started in the 1970s in New York City, and then spread to Seattle and the rest of the country in the 1980s. It was because the federal government turned away from the “Great Society” improvements, and Reagan closed inpatient mental health institutions. There was supposed to be community services to replace those institutions, but those never appeared, so people were left on the streets with little help.

      Seattle had a specific change too: There used to be a lot of SRO hotels on 1st and 2nd Avenues and in southwest Capitol Hill, that were the cheap apartments of last resort. (They had shared bathrooms on each floor.) In 1970 the city condemned them after a fire and concerns about their fire-escape adequacy. The city never replaced the SROs with anything else, so many of the people who had been in them became homeless, and started appearing on the streets.

      2. Social Capital: That’s a larger concept that goes beyond Jacobs. “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam has a lot to say about it. Social capital can be built in any community, if the members allow it to. It’s harder if you move a lot. Still, maybe there are contacts from previous places. There’s also social capital in the sense of a government like Finland investing in all its citizens’ education and social services, so that they can be the most productive and entrepreneurial without the worry that they may have bad luck and get financially devastated.

      5. Local Economies: I don’t know much about Spokane as I said, but it probably has some of this. When I first went to Spokane in the early 80s through a high school club that had sister clubs in Spokane, I was struck by how most of the businesses and restaurants were local: there weren’t many chains. And Riverfront Park and Browne’s Addition and vicinity were a wonderful, pleasant, walkable area. Spokane was one of my favorite places on earth then. Later in the 2000s as I went through on Greyhound, I saw that the chains had come. Spokane activists might want to start approaching it by looking at, what bits of local economy does Spokane have now, and how can that be built on incrementally. The last time I visited around 2017, we walked on the trail between Riverfront Park and the WSU campus. Neither the trail nor the campus existed when I was there earlier. Both of those are “import replacements”, local economy, and local cultural life. Even if the campus was established by the state and gets state funding, it’s still a local asset too. There are probably other things working well in Spokane too, things that wouldn’t in Eastern Washington if Spokane weren’t there or were a small town.

      As for being dependent on the federal government, I think that’s partly related to larger American trends that Spokane has no control over. Jacobs couldn’t have foreseen the changes that would happen in the late 20th century and early 21st century. Corporate consolidation drove out or absorbed local companies, so the profits were shipped out, and so support to keep things functioning had to be shipped in. Agricultural consolidation and seed patents turned family farms into national agribusinesses. These farms do monoculture, using imported fertilizer, planting climate-incompatible crops that need lots of irrigated water, straining the soil, and having to be replanted every year with patented seeds (they aren’t perennial or you’re not allowed to use them that way) — instead of polyculture and regenerative farming, which when established would largely take care of itself without the tons of imports. Corporate lobbyists have practically bought Congress and the Presidency, so they do what serves their narrow interests nationally, and it’s harder for independent businesses in Spokane to remain viable. And the crisis in housing and transit: people are being priced out of houses and apartments in Spokane and everywhere, and transit is skeletal so it doesn’t meet most people’s needs so they have to have a car or take ubers. These are all because of national trends that are afflicting Spokane, not Spokane failing because it’s a loser.

      Spokane doesn’t have as much creativity and churning out new businesses and replacing imports as Seattle, but that’s partly the point: it doesn’t because it’s a smaller city. It has more than a small town, but not as much as a large city.

      I used to think Seattle didn’t have enough creativity to churn out new businesses and create new industries, but the explosion of those in the 1990s and ever since proved that wrong. Most of the American cell phone companies derive from companies Craig McCaw started in Bellevue. Microsoft spawned itself and other companies. Most of the splashy names are tech, but there are a lot of other things too. A colleague was a programmer, then joined a company that sells and installs solar panels. That’s in Seattle, but other solar-panel manufacturers are in Eastern Washington; we’re a hotspot in the US for that. Now Seattle is in the top 10 for spawning so many companies and new industries that it becomes laughable to not acknowledge this. And Spokane and the rest of the state can partner with what Seattle’s doing it to get more of that happening statewide.

4. I found a Bellevue school district chronology last year. It says the second school in 1884 was “a shanty on Mercer Island” for 9 students. The first school on Main Street seems to be in 1887. It has the names of teachers and administrators whom buildings are named after now; I never knew who the people were (or even that some like Odle was a person). It also has some non-school milestones.

   1907-1909 FIRST AUTOMOBILES ON THE EASTSIDE

   1913 FERRYBOATS REPLACE STEAMERS FOR OVERLAKE. “People could take their motor vehicles with them to Seattle and to the Eastside.”

   1942 Three hundred local Japanese-Americans were evacuated to internment camps

   1950 Dr. George Brain becomes school superintendent.

   1950 Due to Bellevue’s rapid change from a rural to a residential area, the agricultural department and the FFA close at Bellevue High.

   Bellevue High School apparently moved to its current location in 1949. When I attended in the 1980s, it looked so modern that I assumed it had been built much later.

   1971 Bennett Elementary opened. That’s my elementary school. I started in 1973 probably. It was called Richard Bennett then. had no idea the school had just opened two years earlier. Actually, I thought our house had been built then, 1-2 years before we moved into it, because that’s what I’d heard then. It was a split-level style, so you go in the front door and there are stairs up to the main floor and stairs down to the basement. A few other houses in the neighborhood were like that. It seemed modern to me (unlike a traditional house), so I assumed it had just been built around 1970,. But I did a real estate search recently, and that suggests it was built much earlier, in the 1950s. I can’t imagine such a modern tract house in the 1950s, or that those tract neighborhoods east of Crossroads even existed that early. But that’s what the entry seems to say.

   1. Just visited MOHAI with relatives from England. It has a part where they explain the rise of the eastside. The I-90 bridge was of course first so the original subdivisions were south of there. Bridle Trails remained horse territory since the 520 bridge wasn’t put in until the the mid 60’s.

      It’s remarkable that transit was saved by the creation of Metro which bailed out Seattle Transit by sucking in the rest of King County as a tax base. If Seattle wants to split now and go it alone I’m all for it. Be careful what you wish for; Everett is trying to get the ‘burbs to bail them out.

      1. At the moment, the city of Seattle effectively pays for ~5% of all suburban Metro service hours.

         Everett Transit’s inadequacy c.f. Community Transit is because the Everett Transit tax rate is much lower than CT’s tax rate, not necessarily because Everett needs taxes from the adjacent suburbs.

         1. That’s false. You’re only considering the sales tax ratio.

            Metro is also funded by the CCA tax which is largely absorbed from suburbs. Those extra 5% and possibly more are from the CCA, which explicitly is used to fund some of the service in S King County.

         2. While Seattle routes carry most of the passengers, the city itself provides roughly 42% of Metro’s total revenue (largely through its share of sales tax) while receiving about 58% of Metro’s service hours

            This is when you account for grants, fares, CCA, and other funding sources. Sales tax is only 60% of the funding.

         3. > While Seattle routes carry most of the passengers, the city itself provides roughly 42% of Metro’s total revenue (largely through its share of sales tax) while receiving about 58% of Metro’s service hours

            Seattle routes (i.e., two-digit routes) consist of 36.6% of the 2024 service hours according to Appendix D of the 2025 Metro System Evaluation (5132 platform hours for Seattle vs 8820 for the rest of the county, which is an underestimate given that it includes STM-funded hours), which is consistent with the city subsidizing the suburbs by roughly 5%.

         4. That 36.6% figure doesn’t capture the 100-300 routes that operate all day within downtown. Those are Seattle hours even though they ultimately service a suburb.

            For example the 101/150 provides up and down service within Seattle all day before heading out to Renton/Kent. Your figure doesn’t include that.

         5. Other examples would be the 124, 125, 342…

            Some of these operate primarily within Seattle City limits but because they touch the suburbs it’s not counted.

         6. *372 not 342

         7. I can keep listing more. 106, 107, 113… Lol

         8. Yes, there are lots of suburban routes that operate downtown, but if they went away tomorrow most of them would hardly impact connectivity inside Seattle―connectivity is already very well-served by two-digit routes and the Link downtown. These are not Seattle hours.

            The 101, 113, and 150 skip most of the city by going on the highway and are therefore thoroughly in the category of “essential to the suburbs but not to the city” (for the 113, remember that White Center is not incorporated). The 106 and 107 are also essential to the suburbs but not the city, in the sense that they largely duplicate the 7 and the 1 Line inside the city. The 372 is right in between the 65 and the 1/2 Lines and serves basically the same destinations within the city.

            I agree that the 124, 125, and 322 provide mostly unique service inside the city. I would say that the 131 and 132 also provide unique service inside the city. I will include the 372 just to remove any doubt that I am undercounting. Collectively, they add 657 platform hours total, which means the city receives 41% of the platform hours even though it pays for 42% of Metro’s budget. Note that this includes hours funded by the Seattle Transit Measure, so the amount Seattle subsidizes suburban transit is greater than 1%―this is just a lower bound.

         9. Ok, looks like the STM provides at least 391 platform hours (this is likely a bit of an undercount.) If I add all of the routes you listed, even the highly questionable ones I pointed out that duplicate robust service inside the city, plus the extra three-digit routes I identified by looking at all the 100 and 300 route maps, then there are 1038 extra platform hours of “maybe” Seattle routes. This means that after you include every route that even tenuously brushes the city, Seattle receives only 41% of the non-STM platform hours, even though it pays for 42% of Metro’s budget.

            Will you finally drop the suburban grievance politics on this one? There is just no question that Seattle is subsidizing suburban transit service.

         10. Lol you so excluded the 106/107 and 101/150 to fit your narrative. The time it spends in Seattle is in fact Seattle hours, if a large portion of the ridership stays in Seattle. I would say the 101/150 can belong to the suburbs even though it’s added frequency in downtown for Seattle riders

             But the 106/107 are absolutely Seattle heavy routes. It just touches Renton but most of the riders are from Seattle. Rainier Valley is part of Seattle.

         11. At the moment, we’re not subsidizing Seattle heavily but if ST3 cuts Tacoma or Everett, it sure is.

         12. If you include ALL of the hours in Seattle including the 106/107/124/125/131/132/372 and DART routes… Plus the water taxi.

             Undoubtedly the suburbs are getting slightly less service than Seattle does just based on the sales tax share. On top of that, Seattle has more expensive Rapid Ride, bus lane, and electric trolley infrastructure. Let’s say that’s funded by their extra tax that they pay.

             And apparently by Metro’s own admission, S King County transit is not funded by the sales tax… And relies on grants and Climate Change Act (gas tax) funding. They threaten without the CCA, they’d have to cut S King’s rightful share of basic transit routes. So where is the sales tax money *actually* going?

         13. The trolley buses are cheaper to operate on a per hour basis than the diesel buses. The only reason the diesel buses show up as being cheaper on a per mile basis is there are more routes through less congested areas, so they don’t spend as much time stuck in traffic.

             Obviously, if you string a bunch of wire for a route only operating several times a day, diesel is going to be cheaper. However, trollsy buses aren’t just automatically more expensive because of the overhead wire.

             https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2024/00001.pdf

         14. > Lol you so excluded the 106/107 and 101/150 to fit your narrative.
             > If you include ALL of the hours in Seattle including the 106/107/124/125/131/132/372 and DART routes… Plus the water taxi.

             I’m late to respond so you might never see this, but you completely ignored my comment (perhaps because it shows you’re wrong?) where I did include every single one of those routes, and I already was including DART routes. I showed that if you deduct STM-funded hours and include every one of those routes, then Seattle is still subsiding the suburbs by more than 1%.

             As for the water taxi―you are moving the goalposts, plus there’s a Vashon route and the West Seattle route receives a lot of SDOT funding. In any case, my methodology involves showing that Seattle’s proportional contribution to Metro’s budget is greater than proportion of the bus service hours it receives.

      2. The RTA tax and gas tax is more unfair for suburbs. That’s on ST. Metro isn’t too imbalanced though the CCA tax is one concern and the whole state is paying for us technically.

         1. “The RTA tax and gas tax is more unfair for suburbs. That’s on ST. ”

            The suburbs wanted it that way. Sound Transit could have been a King County endeavor like Forward Thrust was. But Snohomish and Pierce insisted on being included, so that Seattle’s yes votes would overcome their no votes. That was the only way they could get regional transit, because if they tried to go it alone in Pierce or Snohomish, it would fail they thought. That’s not just Link, but ST Express and Sounder too. Before ST there were no all-day inter-county expresses. CT had the 4xx, but only one or two of those ran midday (to Edmonds) and none on weekend. Pierce County had no expresses to King County at all.

         2. The gas tax has nothing to do with Sound Transit or Metro. It all goes to highways, a lot of it to suburban freeway expansion. Highway 509, 18, and 167 have all gotten expansions through that recently. And the 405 HOT lanes. And a freeway in Spokane. And the proposed Cross-Base Highway in Pierce County. All of that is in the suburbs and exurbs. Even where WSDOT cooperates to add bus capacity, as in the HOT lanes on 405, the overall project is for cars, wouldn’t be built if it it didn’t increase car capacity, and Sound Transit is paying for the direct transit facilities (flyer stations). And ST is paying for that 85th interchange in Kirkland: ST wanted to make it BRT-compatible, so it had to pay for the entire interchange upgrade even though most of the benefits go to cars.

         3. “The RTA tax and gas tax is more unfair for suburbs”

            That’s easily disproven.

            The RTA vehicle tax is assessed at the car tag address, which is mostly at people’s’ homes. As long as Seattle has more commuting in rather than out, that money is under suburban control as an ST subarea.

            And ST collects sales taxes but doesn’t collect gas/ fuel taxes specifically. Seattle’s share of sales taxes is not unreasonably high and may be proportionally lower than other places on the region. That’s because the purchases outside of localized things like food are made in suburban areas like in malls and big box stores and at car dealers. Seattle’s retail share has fallen in the past 20 years compared to its population. Numbers vary, but in 2025, Seattle is reported to be the location of about 1/4 of the county’s total sales taxes receipts, even thru Seattle contains over 1/3 of King County residents.

            So I can’t see how anyone can say that Seattle has been granted tax favoritism. To me, the evidence instead points to other areas.

         4. You have to shop in the suburbs now if Macy’s is the only place that has your thing, or JC Penney, or Hot Topic, or those tons of stores south of Southcenter Mall that have no counterpart in Seattle.

         5. You have to shop in the suburbs now if Macy’s is the only place that has your thing

            Largely a problem of Seattle’s own making. First with the high cost of doing business; high taxes and special minimum wage. But mostly the defund the police/all cops are bastards mentality. Seattle has like 7 detectives to work on all crime. So unless someone gets killed property crime just doesn’t get investigated. And even if they catch the crooks there is very little prosecution so the beat officers have little incentive when they know the courts are a catch and release game.

         6. The point is everyone is paying for Sound Transit but Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond disproportionately gets more service (bang for the buck).

            Pierce / Snohomish suburbs, or parts of King like Bothell / Fairwood are paying the same RTA tax and sales tax for Metro but getting almost zero benefit in return proportional to what they’re contributing.

         7. The point is everyone is paying for Sound Transit but Seattle… Bothell / Fairwood are paying the same RTA tax and sales tax for Metro but getting almost zero benefit

            Clearly and demonstrably false statements like that mean everything you post has zero credibility. Seattle pays in big time to ST. And Bothell for example is getting a huge return on investment with ST bus service and capital improvements to SR-522. In general the areas outside of Seattle are what is driving the huge cost of Link expansion by requiring P&R lots at every station. And not only is it the stupid cost per rider of providing the structured parking but all the road improvements that get tacked on to transit projects.

            Sub area equity does pencil out. It’s just that on the eastside we end up spending stupid amounts of those tax dollars on really stupid projects like the big dig in Kirkland to create the triple-decker bus stop that nobody is going to use.

         8. “The point is everyone is paying for Sound Transit but Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond disproportionately gets more service (bang for the buck).”

            ST pays a huge amount per rider to bring Sounder to the suburbs. ST Express has been running for decades to the suburbs. Even Link on a per capita basis has more stations in Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, Mercer Island, Lynnwood, Tukwila, Bellevue and Redmond than in Seattle right now.

         9. “First with the high cost of doing business; high taxes and special minimum wage.”

            How else can workers afford the cost of housing without a reasonable minimum wage? They also have the cost of education, healthcare, saving for retirement, and even a car if that’s a reasonable necessity for their circumstances. The pre-covid minimum wage was not sustainable: too many people were working full time and couldn’t make ends meet. Likewise, those “high taxes” are needed to fund basic services every city should have, and the taxes are still lower than cities who do it well.

            Where the city creates unnecessary costs, those should be eliminated. Building permits should take a couple months, not years, and design review shouldn’t be a way to pile on expensive demands or give NIMBYs a way to veto or delay a project.

         10. “ST pays a huge amount per rider to bring Sounder to the suburbs. ST Express has been running for decades to the suburbs”

             And the suburbs are paying for them. North King doesn’t pay anything. The travel patterns show that it’s the suburbs who overwhelmingly benefit from them, to access jobs and things in Seattle that they have no equivalent of.

             The only exception is the 550 and 545, where the Eastside has so many jobs and shopping and cultural/recreational destinations that the demand is pretty even two-way. That wasn’t the case when ST Express was designed in the early 1990s, but it has happened since. But it’s only those routes, and Link is replacing all or part of them, and Link is funded by all subareas. But then you go to the 554, and see that not many Seattlites go to Issaquah. Ditto for the 522 and the north and south routes and Sounder. The suburbs get 80-90% of the benefit of them, so that’s why the suburbs pay for them.

         11. “The gas tax has nothing to do with Sound Transit or Metro”

             Not the entire gas tax. But part of the CCA (Climate Commitment Act) which is a state wide gas tax is used to fund King County Metro… In particular their bizarre BEB and electric bus base investment that could’ve been used towards more service hours instead.

         12. “Link on a per capita basis has more stations in Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, Mercer Island, Lynnwood, Tukwila, Bellevue and Redmond than in Seattle right now.”

             But those stations are (expected to be) used by more people/cities in surrounding areas.

             If you consider the number of people paying taxes in the suburbs, that money is being absorbed into just a few areas within that “subarea”

             That’s fine but they aren’t even delivering basic quality services to some of the biggest cities in the state…

         13. “But part of the CCA (Climate Commitment Act) which is a state wide gas tax is used to fund King County Metro… In particular their bizarre BEB and electric bus base investment that could’ve been used towards more service hours instead.”

             The conversion to battery buses and free youth fares are a state policy. The state is compensating Metro for doing what the state wants and complying with state law. That’s not “subsidizing” Metro. It’s mitigation for a burden the state imposed, and it applies to all transit agencies, not just Metro.

      3. Metro was a bailout for Seattle Transit when it was formed. There were no bus routes outside of Seattle except I’ve been told there was private service running between Redmond and Bellevue. The big problem Seattle Transit was facing was funding it’s pension plan. For years there were routes added to the eastside that were often buses to nowhere just because there was a mandate to increase eastside service every year to even out the imbalance. I think that point has been reached and Seattle has become a big enough city and overcome the auto crazy of the 40’s, 50’s & 60’s.

         It may be time for Seattle to establish it’s own transit service again. But it has risks. OTOH, with eastside growth outpacing Seattle more resources are going to go to county or regional projects than Seattle Centric projects like W. Seattle & Ballard.

      4. It’s remarkable that transit was saved by the creation of Metro which bailed out Seattle Transit by sucking in the rest of King County as a tax base.

         Bullshit. Get your facts straight. From Wikipedia:

         The bus system was known as Metro Transit and began operations on January 1, 1973; other suggested names included King Area Rapid Transit (KART) and Seattle Metropolitan Area Rapid Transit (SMART).[11] Its operations subsumed the Seattle Transit System, formerly under the purview of the City of Seattle and the Metropolitan Transit Corporation, a private company serving suburban cities in King County. In the early 1970s, the private Metropolitan faced bankruptcy because of low ridership.

         Thus it was the Metropolitan — a private company serving the suburbs — that was rescued. If not for King County Metro the City of Seattle would have just continued to run their buses, leaving the suburbs with nothing. Thus Metro rescued suburban service.

         Of course it did. This is transit. Transit is always more cost effective inside the city. It is also more popular — people are willing to pay for it. Thus if you are trying to save money the last thing you do is expand to include areas with far fewer people. The main reason they expanded was to help the region. Remember what transit was like back then — downtown focused. By running more buses to downtown you help the economic engine of the region. Business leaders — including those who lived in the the suburbs — knew that a strong downtown was essential.

         This is an important factor that is lost in the discussion. It isn’t clear whether the suburbs actually contribute much (if anything) to Seattle transit. But it is quite reasonable to argue that they should. Seattle can live without the suburbs. The suburbs can not live without Seattle. If Downtown Seattle collapses then the region will fall apart like Detroit. In contrast, Auburn or Lynnwood could completely disappear tomorrow and it wouldn’t really matter to Seattle. The only suburban areas that would have a significant impact on the economy are in Bellevue and Redmond. These were tiny cities when King County Metro was established.

         You are also wrong about Everett Transit, as June pointed out. This idea of a poor, struggling inner-city being bailed out by the generous people in suburbs is just complete bullshit. If anything it is the opposite. That’s because a normal city (i. e. not one that is collapsing) is just a lot more cost effective. The cost advantages of density go beyond just transit. It applies to numerous public services. Police, fire, health service — you name it. The closer you are the easier it is to provide a service. Thus it is quite common for cities to subsidize the suburbs, not the other way around. The only exception to this general rule would be high-income suburbs, like Medina and Yarrow Point. Now if you want to argue that this is unfair to the poor folks in Medina and Yarrow Point, be my guest. Don’t expect many people to support your cause.

         1. The whole which tax base save what is a pointless argument. Metro recused both Seattle’s public transit bus service, and the suburban bus service. Both were operating in red, but the suburban service was in a much more dire state.

            “The Seattle Transit System’s ridership sank to 33 million at the start of the 1970s — a whopping 100 million below what it had been at its peak in 1944. The system was in a “spiral of failure,” in the words of transit journalist and historian Bob Lane (Lane, Better Than Promised). It was continually forced to cut service, which bit into ridership even more. In the suburbs, the transit situation was even more desperate. By 1970 only about 4,000 people in the suburbs commuted by bus — a number that explains not only why the Metropolitan Transit Corporation was losing money, but also why the county’s freeways and highways were jammed. That year King County was forced to subsidize the Metropolitan Transit Corporation’s “ragtag fleet” of coaches in order to keep them afloat (Lane, Better Than Promised).”

            https://www.historylink.org/File/20968

5. Mercer Slough walkers: my leg is doing worse than usual today so I’m not sure I can make it to the park entrance, much less walk through the park. If y’all want to go to the Slough anyway I can go partway and turn back. Or we could still meet at 10 and go anywhere else, somewhere with less walking.

   1. The destination for the walk is now up in the air. I’ve changed the post accordingly. If you are interested in joining us, please add a comment and we’ll let you know where we are headed.

   2. Change of plans: We’ll meet at 10:30 in Cal Anderson Park at the north end of the fountain, where it looks like a pyramid.

      https://www.google.com/maps/place/47%C2%B037'05.4%22N+122%C2%B019'10.1%22W/@47.61817,-122.319478,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d47.61817!4d-122.319478?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDQyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

   3. We ended up going to Cal Anderson Park, Pike Place Market, and the waterfront. Martin, Michael, Ross, Alex, and a friend of mine and I attended. It was a good experience, although a different one than Mercer Slough.

      At Pike Place Market I was struck at how the mass of people is really the “urban ballet” and “eyes on the street” that Jacobs talks about. The people in the park, on the bus, on the sidewalk, and in the market and waterfront. And with the market you can add “local economy” and “replacing imports”.

      Local economy: Woodrings makes and sells their own jam, honey, and kimchi, from ingredients the owner gathers himself. Somebody else makes paintings on woodblocks with laser etchings.

      Replacing imports: This refers both to manufacturing things locally that used to be imported or would otherwise be imported, and the way being a tourist hub “exports” tourism and a university exports education.

6. I finally got over a recent medical related slow down and some of the family accompanied me on my first bridge trip across the floating bridge. I pointed out all the weird/odd signage issues that I have noticed and you folks have really noticed. It was like a game we played for the day.

   The first was where to get off the elevator at S Bellevue Station in the parking ramp to get to the station entrance. It’s not the 1st level, it’s the third level and inside the elevator there’s no hint at what level the station is at, luckily I knew from earlier trips.

   The classic was at Pioneer Square where as coming down the steps to the SB platform there is the epitome of the signage discussion! There we are in Downtown, one sign saying “Federal Way Downtown” and below it “Downtown Redmond”!

   It was a beautiful day yesterday and the train was comfortably busy! Lots of people meeting up on platforms for get togethers and others heading for the big park just north of MIS.

   A late lunch at the Dragon and Fenix Pub (my name, actually Bellevue Brewing) at Spring District Station on the sunny patio with the neighborhood bustling with families playing in the parks water feature sure made that TOD look like it’s filling in well.

   Years ago I had written a little Op Ed piece for the old Journal American about how the Bellevue neighborhood in Berlin had a station called “Bellevue” and that maybe some day we could also have a Bellevue station here. We got off at “Bellevue Downtown” to try a recreate the older picture but I’ll need to do some more work on it.

   1. I too had a recent Eastside Line 2 excursion but on Sunday. I went from SE Seattle via Judkins Park to Bellevue Square.

      The 2 Line was getting lots of Sunday riders! It’s clear that the service is much more than a commuter service. There were lots of teens and young adults on the train. Many were traveling together in groups of 2 to 4. I noticed too that these young riders were from many different ethnicities — with these small groups even being ethnically diverse within them. I think I saw 2 or 3 pieces of rolling luggage, presumably airport travelers.

      It seems that ST may have positioned station security permanently at the Rainier exits at Judkins Park. It’s a little bit of a walk from the Link platform there and the path can feel confining (like a place where someone could be cornered and assaulted), especially when going across to the west side of Rainier. I noticed that lots more Judkins Park riders exited towards 23rd rather than Rainier.

      At Bellevue Downtown, I don’t think I saw anyone use the 112th exits. (That could easily change in the long term if Bellevue makes the Grand Connection a reality years from now.) Everyone from my train exited towards the Bellevue TC, and most seemed to keep walking rather than catch a bus there.

      All the interim stops had decent stop activity too. Mercer Island seemed the busiest of the three. (Yes Bellevue Downtown is just four stops from Judkins Park — identical in number of stops to Westlake).

      ST seems to be putting lots of security staff on 2 Line. I’m not sure if that’s a long-term strategy or if ST is just wanting new 2 Line riders to feel safe for the spring.

      I-90 traffic westbound was crawling before it reach the Seattle end. The loop ramp at Rainier was also badly backed up. The transit part trip for me was about 45 minutes each way in total including the waiting — but if I had driven I wouldn’t have gained any time westbound. Plus I can do things on my smart phone while traveling.

      1. I’ve used the Bellevue Downtown Station regularly, and I don’t remember seeing anyone ever using the 112th exits.

   2. Excellent in-person reporting. I don’t have a problem with suburban cities using the name downtown for their city centers. What I do have a problem with is the lack of a via in destinations signs. If I’m waiting at a 2 Line station to go to Seattle, there’s no mention of Seattle, it only says to Lynnwood. Seattle isn’t on any station signage, and it’s not on the train’s destination signage, only Lynnwood is mentioned.

   3. I’m always amused at the emergency call button located beyond the secured gate at the north end of the South Bellevue platform. How is that useful?

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