Why it’s illegal to walk to the World Cup Final in New Jersey. Hint: It’s not just highways and chain-link fences. (Evan Edinger)
What if we removed the Lexington Avenue subway line in Manhattan? How many car lanes would we need to allow all existing passengers to drive? (CityNerd)
In other news, on Friday afternoon a northbound Sounder “N” Train hit a pedestrian ($) on the track and killed him. Our thoughts are with the victim’s family. STB editor Michael Smith was on an Amtrak Cascades train at that moment, which was behind the Sounder train, and his train was stopped for a few hours south of Carkeek Park because of the incident with the Sounder train.
This is an open thread.
Denny Way bus lane phase 1 was online last week. It took one-lane space from westbound. I don’t know whether it will make westbound Denny Way travel time worse for bus, but I don’t think it will hurt to send Queen Anne-bound 2/13/D back to Broad-1st Ave.
unlike 24/33, those three have no need to form a transfer point with 8 at Denny Way. I’ve noticed that 1’s path via Broad is sometimes faster than the path via Denny Way 2/13 is currently taking.
I guess one drawback is longer walking distance to Seattle Center if those routes were detoured to Broad and 1st Ave
I’m not sure it is worth it. My guess is traffic isn’t that bad. From what I can tell, this is what happened: Before the work, the westbound street went from 2 lanes to 3 lanes at Sue Bird Court. Now it does that at Queen Anne Avenue North. So you don’t have a narrowing you have a widening. All that happened is that it widens later. You do have some additional traffic that enters Denny on that section but not a lot. You have southbound Sue Bird Court and Warren along with northbound First. It doesn’t seem like widening later has much of an impact.
I can see the value of following Broad and First. At least that makes it consistent with the 1. You provide a little more coverage for Belltown. But I’m not sure if it is worth it. It would be a shame not to take advantage of this new and improved pathway on Denny. I could see the bus going the way you describe northbound (from downtown). There are Bat/bus lanes pretty much the whole way that direction. In contrast there is nothing going the other way. An imbalanced route is not ideal (you actually reduce the effective coverage) but it isn’t the end of the world. If traffic is really bad that could be a solution. Personally I wouldn’t mess with it right now. Not unless it really is a big problem. I think in the long run they need to extend the bus mall on Third all the way to Denny. I would like to see westbound BAT lanes on Denny as well (starting at Fairview). Having this as an option in your back pocket could be useful depending on how it all shakes out.
Metro continues to make progress on installing the new wire on Madison and Union for the eventual return of trolley buses to Routes 2 and 13. Switches are currently being installed on the bowtie section near Union and 13th Ave. There still isn’t any wire in the air on the controversial segment on Union between 12th and 11th, but it is scheduled for installation sometime this summer.
For the first time I think, we didn’t bother having an article on holiday service hours. Hint: It’s mostly Sunday schedule today and on major holidays. On minor and newer holidays it’s mostly weekday schedule (a step up from Sunday schedule twenty years ago), because fewer people have them off. How important is it to have articles on this in the 2020s when there’s more public awareness and familiarity with transit?
Just a quick question regarding the planned service outage on the 1 line and the Crosslake during May 30-31. I understand there is a rail replacemet planned in the DSTT, but any idea what the Crosslake “maintenance” issue couild be? Seems odd to shut service die planned maintenance two months after opening?