• Concepts for U District Station access.
• Gunfight at the Renton Transit Center.
• Two way bikelanes correlated with more injuries.
• SDOT updates us on the long-lost scooter pilot.
• Red lanes finally going in on Rainier Ave.
• Artwork for South Link stations.
• Renton has plans for when the Transit Center moves out of downtown.
• Limebike batteries now catching fire — perhaps due to vandalism.
• A thoughful discussion about the future of bikeshare.
• Seattle Council may crack down on improperly parked bikes.
• A concise rundown of the Seattle Green New Deal.
• USDOT sends WSDOT $37.5m for new rail cars.
• Tacoma business owners unhappy about Link construction.
• Ever wanted to drive Caltrain? Now there’s a game for that.
• Josh Cohen’s deep dive into Via for Crosscut has numbers on ridership and cost per rider
• How the Mayor’s Seattle Squeeze point person spends his days

This is an open thread.

Sound Transit:

We’re laying the groundwork to open the Blue Line, a new Link line that will begin taking riders from Northgate to Redmond in 2023.

As part of that work, we need to reduce Link service for three weekends this fall. On the weekends of October 12-13, October 26-27, and November 9-10, there will be no Link service between SODO-Capitol Hill.

Trains will run from Angle Lake-SODO and UW-Capitol Hill, and free buses will connect the six stations in between. (We chose those particular weekends because there are no Seahawks or Husky games.)

This is prep work. The real Connect 2020 closures start next year. See our previous coverage here.

From Metro’s service advisory email:

From Wednesday, August 21, through Friday, August 30, at all times, Metro routes 31, 32, 65, 67, 75, 78 and 372 will continue to be rerouted off the University of Washington campus, but will be revised to serve the south campus and UW Link Station.

During this time, these routes will travel instead via Montlake Blvd NE, NE Pacific St and 15th Av NE in both directions between NE 45th St and NE Campus Parkway.

Buses will no longer be rerouted via NE 45th St

All regular and temporary stops along the revised routings will be served.

The Route 277 reroute has not been revised. This route will continue to be rerouted off the campus, but is making its regular stops on NE Pacific St and 15th Av NE.

The previous reroute via 45th was the source of some complaints, including some of you in our comment section. Another good sign of Metro being nimble enough to realize that a reroute is not working and might need adjustments.

That this reroute was unacceptable to so many riders shows in part how successful the 2016 U-Link restructure was. Perhaps 5 or 10 years ago it might have been okay to reroute buses off Stevens Way when school was out of session but these days all of NE Seattle is funneling to Husky Stadium (as bad as it is for transfers).

Long term, getting the buses out of campus and on to an exclusive lane on Montlake Blvd NE seems like a better bet, especially if UW moves ahead with 16 story buildings on that street.

This is an open thread.

Pro-transit, pro-bike, pro-density voters might be forgiven for thinking their vote and their input don’t really matter. We vote like-minded candidates into office, we pass taxes to fund forward-thinking transportation projects, and we participate in developing master plans. And then, when it’s time to actually take the road space for buses or bikes, a few neighbors complain, or sue, and SDOT chickens out. A handful of well-resourced reactionaries hold a veto on progress.

One of the more egregious instances of this was the demise of the 35th Avenue NE bike lane. Inspired by this debacle, outgoing Councilmember Mike O’Brien is trying to pass legislation this fall to give these plans force of law. Anytime SDOT spends $1m or more on a street with a bike lane in the master plan, it has to build the bike lane or write a letter to the Council explaining why they didn’t. This is pretty much what our own David Lawson proposed back in March.

Lester Black reports that Mayor Durkan, often blamed for what happened on 35th, supports the rule. So here’s hoping that there’s one less veto point for safe and rapid transportation. What Seattle needs is not more great plans, but reform of the institutions that block progress.

• The engineer that put tracks on the I-90 bridge. It’s not necessarily great that Sound Transit had to commission groundbreaking engineering work, but the people involved should be proud of their achievement.
• Erica Barnett interprets the Seattle Council primary results.
• What can Sound Transit do to cut down on 9 Link crashes per year?
• Limepods a vector for crime?
• Seattle’s e-scooter pilot mysteriously slow to arrive.
• There is no problem with West Seattle buses ($) that can’t be solved immediately with adequate commitment to bus lanes.
• 8th Avenue protected bike lane opens.
• New water taxi terminal opens.
• Metro is just going to try different stuff to fix the West Seattle mess.
• Mayor Durkan, rhetorically, is on the side of the bus lane vigilantes.
• I’ve praised the virtues of elevated trains before, but Bill Savage did it better.
• Sumner wants a pedestrian bridge ($) for Sounder access.
• First Sound Transit came for the burger stands, and I said nothing. Now they’re coming for the produce markets — or at least some of the market’s parking.
• MVET lawsuit rolls on.
• Washington has the intention of building an intercity transit network, though it’s skeletal.
• Seattle considers amending its Comprehensive Plan.
• Kevin Desmond gets a nice pay bump in Vancouver. Portland, too.
• Vandals may have brought down sea-to-sky gondola.
• Rail projects are expensive but Uber’s losses are bigger.

This is an open thread.