All posts by Mike Orr

How Portland created a sense of place. (Fourth Place)

Taking one of the last Talgo trains to Vancouver BC. (Classy Whale)

This is an open thread.

Sound Transit’s Executive Committee will have an unusual second meeting this month to further debate the resolution to downscale ST3 to shrink its budget gap. The meeting is today at 1:30-4:00pm. The meeting page has links to the agenda, the resolution, two reports evaluating the Enterprise Initiative, and how to attend the meeting in person or virtually and to give public testimony. There will be no decision today. The vote will be next Thursday in two weeks at the the full monthly ST board meeting May 28, assuming the board doesn’t postpone it.

The first meeting last week has its own article and links. I don’t see a video of the meeting on ST’s YouTube page yet.

Some committee members called for the second meeting because there were more people wanting to testify at the first meeting than there was time for. Members may also continue offering their own opinions on the resolution.

This article is to collect comments about the meeting and its outcome. I’m not expecting much new today, but sometimes events like this generate unexpected news and over a hundred comments, so we’ll see.

Correction: Corrected the date of the full board meeting.

Paris’s ultra-useful transit is getting better. (Transit Tangents)

Stockholm’s beautiful metro stations are “the world’s longest art exhibition”. (Not Just Bikes)

We need visionaries like this, and politicians who can prioritize the right things get it done. Paris has automated trains, platform screen doors, service every 5 minutes on many metro and bus lines, station entrances with a pedestrianized street and walk-up retail at both city and suburban stations, no bias against gondolas or funiculars where appropriate, extensive cycletracks, tram tracks in grass beds, etc.

Both Stockholm and Sound Transit spend 1% of their station budget on art, yet Stockholm has much better art. Each station built since the 1970s has a unique look so you can tell at a glance which station you’re at. In Seattle each of the DSTT stations are unique, but the U-Link/Northgate Link underground stations all look alike, so if you can’t see the signs because they aren’t visible from your viewpoint or people’s heads are blocking the view and you missed the audio announcement, it can be hard to figure out whether this is your station or not, so sometimes you just have to go out and hope it is. Whereas if each station were unique, you could tell at a glance at any part of the wall or floor whether this is your station.

The two guys narrating each taking up half the picture reminds a bit me of West End Girls. London in the 80s, with transit.

This is an open thread.

There won’t be a Friday Roundtable this week, so here’s your open thread. There will be two regular articles Friday and one Saturday.

Sound Transit has an Executive Committee meeting right now (10:30am-12:30pm) to discuss the proposed ST3 system plan changes to reduce costs. The meeting page has links to the agenda, the proposal, a reports on the Enterprise Initiative, a TOD progress report, and a link to watch the meeting live remotely via Zoom. The meeting will start with public testimony for 45 minutes; then the committee members will debate the proposal. There will be no decision today; the decision will be in the May 28th full board meeting.

If you’re at the meeting, feel free to liveblog anything interesting below. A video of the meeting will be posted to ST’s YouTube channel within 48 hours.

Walking the London Underground District Line from end to end. (Let’s Walk!)

Seattle’s annual Jane’s Walk is still going on. The last one is Tuesday at 10am, “Downtown South”. I don’t know if the registrations are full yet.

This is an open thread.

Austria has the most night trains in Europe. This one has “mini cabins” (bed capsules) as well as sleeper rooms and coach seats. (DW Planet A, Deutche Welle’s environmental channel)

The train is an ÖBB Nightjet, a set of overnight routes (in German, with map) serving Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Croatia. EuroNight extends it via partner agencies to more cities in Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.

Soft-spoken bedtime story about a conductor on a night train from Vienna to Naples. (Stephen Dalton Sleep Stories)

This is an open thread.

Jane’s Walk is an annual celebration where volunteers in cities throughout the world host group walks in their neighborhoods to honor Jane Jacobs’s birthday. In Seattle, Feet First will host Seattle’s Jane’s Walks between April 26 and May 6. They will all be guided tours: 6 in central Seattle, 1 in West Seattle, and 1 in Auburn. The Seattle Transit Blog will have our own walk April 25 in Mercer Slough, details below.

Jane Jacobs wrote the groundbreaking book The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961. It revolutionized urban planning and showed the unique contributions to society and the economy that cities and walkable urban neighborhoods bring. Jacobs lived from 1916 to 2006; she would have been 110 this year.

Continue reading “Jane’s Walk & Mercer Slough Walk”

Both the 1 and 2 Lines have closed segments this weekend, April 25-26.

1 Line trains will be reduced Saturday and Sunday until 9pm. Trains will run every 10 minutes between Lynnwood City Center and Rainier Beach. Then shuttle buses will run every 10-15 minutes between Rainier Beach and SeaTac/Airport. Then trains will start again every 10 minutes between SeaTac and Federal Way Downtown. At 9pm, normal evening service will resume.

2 Line trains will be reduced Saturday and Sunday until noon. Trains will run every 20 minutes between Lynnwood City Center and Spring District. Then shuttle buses will run every 10-15 minutes between Spring District and Overlake Village. Then trains will start again every 13 minutes between Overlake Village and Downtown Redmond. At noon, normal 2 Line service will resume.

This is all for multiple maintenance projects: track and power systems maintenance near Tukwila International Boulevard station, and to install new crossing panels near BelRed station.

This is an open thread.

History of high-speed rail in the US. (The B1M)

60 Minutes episode on the current status of high-speed rail in the US. (60 Minutes)

This is an open thread.