The media blitz is settling down.
While waiting for the 48 this morning, I witnessed a car-vs-pedestrian collision. The pedestrian was hurriedly crossing MLK illegally to catch the bus and ended up shattering the windshield of the car. I was first on the scene, and assisted the pedestrian, who was limping, but apparently not really seriously injured, fortunately.
The driver was appropriately mortified, but that may have been because of the police car 20 feet away, parked to observe traffic.
We really ought to elevate or bury the traffic on MLK, to avoid this kind of thing. Anything less would be gross negligence.
That’s all just a long introduction to the P-I‘s nice piece on the state of pedestrian safety in Seattle. Other news items:
A lot has been happening!
Once U-Link construction gets a little further along, Link will accommodate 4-car trains, carrying up to 800 people each.
The are four stations in the Downtown Seattle tunnel.
The local media is in overdrive:
Video by css903
The initial peak headways are a little under 8 minutes.
Route 8 will serve all the Rainier Valley stations, and provide local service along MLK.
Everyone’s publishing their “anticipation of light rail” piece. As the train becomes less theoretical (and the large costs remain abstract in most people’s minds), I think enthusiasm is building, at least among those who aren’t invested in hatred and/or distrust of Sound Transit:
The only thing I might have added to Ben’s comments is to point out that there are useful things to do between a study and actually building the thing. For starters, it’s fairly evident that we’ll have to tunnel under Second Avenue, and a rail-convertible bus tunnel would be a nice down payment that’s useful in the meantime, all for about $1 billion or so.
I was also pleasantly surprised to hear Sigler’s $5 billion figure, which for a total stab in the dark, is both a good guess and not as sugarcoated as most political promises.
Route 38 completes our list of slightly ridiculous single-purpose Metro runs in the wake of Link Light Rail. Currently a route that runs from Sodo to the Mt. Baker neighborhood, allowing a bypass of downtown congestion, it’s been whittled down to a shuttle between Beacon Hill and Mt. Baker stations, allowing those in need to avoid the climbing the extremely steep hill that is S. McClellan St. Luckily, the line is so short that it can be served by a single bus.
Two good tidbits from the TCC Blog:
Perhaps Adam will expound on this site further.
The 42 and 42X are the two routes, along with the 194, that most closely duplicate Central Link. The 42X will be eliminated and the 42 will be dramatically scaled back in route length, service headways, and service span.
The 42 is basically being retained as a shuttle for the Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS) so that they have a door-to-door connection to downtown. They cared enough about transit access to send a bunch of people to the County Council meeting to demand their very special bus line, but not enough to design their brand-new building so that it actually faced the light rail station, or even the nearest bus stop. It has plenty of parking, though.
[UPDATE: Tipper Carl points out that ACRS is so transit-oriented that on the very same webpage, it says to find out about bus service to the Bellevue location by calling Community Transit. Heh.]
The 42 is also infamous as the route where, until recently, you could get your next hit of crack. Even more infamously, it’s a route I take almost every day. Elsewhere in the world: