All posts by Matt Gangemi

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

I have made my wife excited about ORCA by getting her a card and putting a bit of money on it. Instead of having to buy annoying little tickets all the time, she can just swipe her purse by the scanner, and she’s done. They even let her board free once or twice because the scanner was broken. She loves it.

However, her work just gave her a new stack of “Commuter Checks”. These are a benefit from her work to partially subsidize bus travel. But her administrator told her that she can’t use them for ORCA.

Confused, I called King County Metro to get the scoop. Apparently they have no way of keeping people from putting money in their e-purse using the Commuter Checks, then pulling real money back out of their ORCA cards. So in the end, my wife has to go back to the annoying little tickets.

One more thing. They’re planning on getting rid of the annoying little tickets. Asking the KC representative how they’ll deal with Commuter Checks then, he said he doesn’t think they’ve figured that out yet.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

In this month’s Performance Bicycles catalog there’s a bicycle jersey made of petroleum products with an overweight character symbolizing a non-recyclable petroleum product that’s a key component to internal combustion vehicles, responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions in our region. But he’s touching a plant, so I guess that makes it green. I’m sure the type of person that bicycles in Seattle will pay $85 for that.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Today’s big story at the Daily Journal of Commerce: the parks dept. is considering turning Bell St. into a boulevard with more park and less car. I’d love to read the story, but it’s an exclusive. At least they have a nice large graphic that tells some of the story.

I suppose I’ll be visiting the library today…

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

(sorry this is a bit off topic, but schools are infrastructure too)

I have a three month old son, and I’ve been walking him around the neighborhood near my house, looking at the beautiful old buildings that were built around 100 years ago, when my house was built. Here’s a little tour.

This is the high school he could have attended:

This is the Queen Anne High School, probably the most beautiful school I’ve seen. It’s brick and stone with intricate detailing and a 180 degree view of the city. But our underfunded or poorly run school system has decided he doesn’t need these amenities, and sold the building as condos. Instead, he may go here:

Ok, this is just a stock office photo. But I couldn’t find a photo of the Center School, the closest high school to my house. This school is located above the food court of the Seattle Center and looks like a run-down office. Upon entering you expect cubicles rather than classrooms. The Center House building it is housed in was designed as a temporary structure over 40 years ago. The lunchroom is the Seattle Center food court.

This is the middle school he could have attended:

This is the West Queen Anne Public School. It’s another beautiful brick building designed to last at least 200 years. But it was also sold as condos. Instead, he’ll probably go here:

Built in the 60’s, this cheaply constructed mess of concrete and brick facade looks run down already.

This is the elementary school he could have attended:

Not brick, but still a beautiful building. It hasn’t been sold as condos yet, but isn’t being used as the elementary school. Instead he’ll probably go here:

Ok, this one’s a bit nicer than the others. But then it’s new – we’ll see how it holds up in a hundred years or two.

Where did we go wrong? How come we used to build great monuments to our children designed to last hundreds of years and now build cheap, short term classrooms? Were previous Seattlites just much more wealthy than we are, or did our priorities change? Imagine what our schools would look like if spent our road building taxes on our children instead.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

I’ve been reading Suburban Nation (available at the library once I turn it back in), which has inspired me to come up with a few ideas for Seattle. One section discusses how to bring some of the successful features of malls to downtown. Malls always have anchor stores on opposite sides of the mall, requiring at least two walks through the mall past every store to see both anchors. However, cities put parking right at major destinations (arenas, convention center, etc.), completely ignoring this potential foot traffic.

Here’s the idea. With Link and Sounder we have less demand for parking at our stadiums. How about removing the North parking lot (which is single-level anyway) and put in small-footprint 5-story buildings complete with pedestrian-only streets? Instead of walking from Link or Sounder through a (boring and dangerous) parking lot, we could be walking past dozens of stores and restaurants. When there’s no game, this becomes transit oriented development and extra shopping for downtown.

On top, put offices or condos. Who wouldn’t want to live or work a block from transit?

(second image is my attempt at laying out what this would look like. ok, so I’m no architect, but it’s a start.)

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Walking home from the grocery store the other day, it started to rain. Right then I saw an empty bus ride past me. I didn’t think of flagging it down and riding it home. Why? Because that would have cost me $2, and a 6-block trip isn’t worth $2 to me, even in the rain.

Does this situation seem strange to anyone else? A bus paid for mostly with sales taxes (not fares) driving by empty when it could have saved a citizen several minutes and some comfort?

The problem, as I see it, is the fare model. We have a flat fare for simplicity, and we’ve chosen $2 as a rate that will attract the average rider and keep them out of their car. But that makes short-distance bus trips a bad buy while giving long-distance trips a great value.

I propose that once we have ORCA we should consider distance-based fares. Four blocks costs, say, $0.10. Four miles would be around $1. 12 miles would be $3. This not only encourages bus use for those that live close to their workplace, but also encourages using the bus for something other than commuting.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

I listen to PBS’s NOW* podcast weekly, and this week’s show had a fairly sharp focus on mass transit and the stimulus package.

* It was watered down for a while after the previous administration removed Bill Moyers, but it consistently has thoughtful in-depth journalism and has recently found some of its edge again. Of course, I also recommend the Bill Moyers Journal podcast.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Downtown Seattle has around 79,574 parking stalls, with an average occupancy rate of 65%, which means we have at least 54,500 cars parked in lots downtown. Traffic flow downtown is around 96,400 cars per day. If we assume that 90% of these cars drive in and out of the city every day, that means that 96% of car traffic in the city can disappear if we remove the parking lots.

You might call this idea insane. How will people go to work, or the movies, or go shopping? That’s where the idea gets interesting. You probably recall that we’re almost done building a light rail line through the city to the south, and we’ll soon continue it northward. What if we built a giant parking structure south of the city, and another one north of the city, and located them both right at our new light rail line?

For every new stall we build, let’s remove one from downtown. This will free up room downtown for more retail, more businesses, and more residential units. As traffic declines we can add streetcars and make some areas pedestrian-only areas. The freeway will clear up as fewer cars queue up at exit ramps on I-5.

We’ll keep some cars around – they’re great for delivering goods to businesses, or if you need to get through downtown to somewhere else less accessible by rail/bus. But our downtown is very walkable, so it’s a shame we’ve given up so much to cars.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Was apparently electric. And was driven all the way from Chicago in 1900. This appears to be a photograph of its arrival, and the HistoryLink article is here.

(update) Oops. I was wrong about the picture. That’s the Shawmut, the winner of the AYP race nine years later.