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 | The 'Spirit of Washington' dinner train. Renton, WA September 22, 2005 |
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November 14, 2009Link's Airport Station Opens Dec. 19The final stage of the initial Link system - the airport station - opens Saturday, December 19. As of 10 AM, you'll be able to ride from Westlake to Sea-Tac in 36 minutes - no bus transfer, no waiting. Can't wait. Who's up for an inaugural ride? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 14, 2009 12:10 PM. July 18, 2009Seattle's Light Rail System Opens At 10 AM TodayOpening day is here! I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Real Cities Have Trains. And it's fantastic to see that we've finally joined the party. Rumor has it that opening weekend is going to be packed (especially true if our opening is anything like the one in Phoenix). The system is free until Monday morning, so feel free to swing on by and take it for a spin. Some important dates to look forward to in Seattle's rail future:
I'm so incredibly happy right now. This is a great day. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 18, 2009 2:39 AM. July 12, 2009"You're About To Be A Light Rail Town"One week before the launch of Link Light Rail, the Seattle Times has a nice, long-form recap of the history of rail in the Puget Sound region, going all the way back to 1891 (electric streetcars!) and culminating in the 1995 Sound Move vote that created Sound Transit. The killer part of the article is the companion map (Flash required) that shows all the stations in the system, as well as the travel times and other data. Slick stuff - and, I daresay, nicer than anything Sound Transit has produced on its own. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 12, 2009 1:15 PM. July 11, 2009Awesome Augmented-Reality NYC Subway AppJeff pointed me to this super-cool, terrifically exciting video on YouTube that shows how you might use the iPhone (along with its GPS and camera) to experience an "augmented reality" that helps you navigate stations in the New York City subway. If you've ever had that moment in a big, complex station where you're wondering where the heck to go to get to the right train (Chatelet-Les Halles, I'm lookin' at you), this will get you all hot and bothered. (It's also a Taste Of Things To Come in the mobile world, I think.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 11, 2009 8:42 PM. June 6, 2009Spotted: Link Trains In The Bus Tunnel
So Elaine and I were downtown today, running errands and getting a bite. We're all wrapped up, heading home, and pop down to the bus tunnel to catch our ride. And then, as we're standing there at Convention Place, I hear a "ding! ding!" about 100 yards behind us. I turn around, and ... it's a Link Light Rail train. For obvious reasons, this made me very excited (and apologies for the crummy iPhone snapshot attached to the post). Sound Transit is just 6 weeks from launch, so it makes complete sense that they're engaged in some serious testing: two trains came by within about 4 minutes of one another. A couple of observations: first, these things are big. The trains are much taller (and wider?) than a standard Metro bus, and a two-car train looks to be about 2x or 3x the length of an articulated Metro. Second, Link trains are quiet as hell. If it weren't for the two bells that went off, that train could have slid up to the platform without anyone being the wiser. It's surprising that something so large could be so stealthy, and doubly surprising because it violates my general notion of transit as being a bit on the noisy and diesel-smelly side. Third, and finally, it's fast. Those Link trains accelerated away from the platform very, very smoothly and very, very quickly. Keep your eyes peeled if you're in the tunnel. I can't wait for July 18. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 6, 2009 4:27 PM. May 31, 2009Who Drives The Vancouver SkyTrain?From the "I love YouTube" department - the Vancouver SkyTrain people have a nifty, 7-minute clip up on the site ("Who drives the Vancouver SkyTrain?") that showcases the SkyTrain operations center and different places in the system (e.g., SkyBridge). It's produced by the agency (and, admittedly, a little cheesy), but it's pretty interesting stuff for transit geeks. Cool side note: SkyTrain uses a live, "rolling block" system to prevent the trains from crashing in to one another. Since the system only dates from the '80s, they were able to embed a digital tracker that knows where every train is at any given moment in time. This allows SkyTrain to keep far more trains running concurrently than does the traditional, 1900-era "fixed block" system, which uses a rough estimation of a train's position (H/T to the Buzzer Blog for the link!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 31, 2009 12:31 PM. March 16, 2009Link Light Rail Opens July 3, But Out Of BufferMorning tranist fix: looks like Link's July 3 opening is still on the schedule, but Sound Transit is out of buffer: When construction began five years ago, the schedule included 180 days of "float," a cushion in case things went wrong. The float is now zero, says a January progress report published this month. ... Meanwhile, Seattle Transit Blog has some great video of the Link trains being tested in the International District station. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 16, 2009 6:07 AM. February 14, 2009Has The Viaduct Collapsed Yet?Finally, a Web site with the answers... Latest update: Nope. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 14, 2009 9:49 AM. February 1, 2009"Tear It Down, Leave It Down", ReloadedAlmost three years ago, I wrote a post called "Tear It Down, Leave It Down" that expressed my feelings on the soon-to-fall-over Seattle Viaduct. (Based on the title of the post, I'm sure you can guess what I was advocating for.) My feelings haven't changed in the intervening 34 months - if anything, I'm mortified that we're still bickering about what to do with the thing - but my sense of the thing got a shot in the arm this week when the always-great Seattle Transit Blog linked to an 11-minute movie about what the removal of the Embarcadero has meant to the city of San Francisco. Elaine and I spent no small amount of time walking around in the Embarcadero's former footprint last month, and I can tell you straight-up that the idea of having a loud, ugly and dirty elevated freeway over that gorgeous, vibrant and wonderful section of town is insane. The movie's worth a watch, if only to get excited about what Seattle's in for once our concrete monstrosity is finally removed. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 1, 2009 11:54 AM. November 11, 2008Seattle Transit: 2023
This means that our soon-to-be-opened Link Light Rail system will be growing from its initial 16 miles to a whopping 55. (We also get a streetcar on First Hill, better bus service, all kinds of crazy stuff - check out the plan.) Well, somebody's been busy envisioning what this new system is likely to look like, and has gone to the trouble of mocking up a transit map from the future - Puget Sound Rail, once everything's been built out, hooked up, and turned on. It's incredible. And incredibly exciting. (Tip 'o the hat to the always-excellent Seattle Transit Blog.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 11, 2008 8:23 PM. July 24, 2008SoundTransit 2 Is Coming To A Vote In NovemberBest news I've heard all day: Voters in November will consider a $17.9 billion plan to extend light rail to Lynnwood, Overlake and north Federal Way, and to expand bus service. This package gets us light rail to Redmond (through Bellevue), Lynnwood (through Northgate), and Federal Way. (Yes!) (I'm voting pro, as you might imagine.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 24, 2008 5:17 PM. July 2, 2008If Seattle Had A Subway When I Was A Kid......I'm sure my parents would have had experiences like these. Seriously. (Thanks, Juli, for the link!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 2, 2008 3:15 PM. June 1, 2008Ride The Lunch Bus Well, Elaine and I managed to catch the tour on Friday, accompanied by my friend Guido. I highly recommend it, and, if you're a transit geek, this is a must-do.
If you can take the time off work (and, judging by the number of folks on the bus, a good number of us can), I'd strongly recommend the tour. You can learn more about it from the Sound Transit site. And, if you're curious, my Flickr photostream is available.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 1, 2008 1:48 PM. May 9, 2008The New CommuteMy commute has changed quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. For starters, I'm on two wheels once in a while. May is here, which is Bike To Work Month (with Bike To Work Day on the 16th). May also represents the last month before the Alcatraz tri, which means that, assuming I don't want to flail spectacularly in San Francisco, I needed to get out, buy a bike, and actually start using it pretty regularly. My solution has been to start riding to work a couple times a week - or, in some cases, ride to work one day and then ride home the next or the day after. I'm very fortunate in that 99% of my ride is along the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River bike trails, which are mostly flat, 100% free of cars, have periodic water stops and bathrooms, and run through some spectacular scenery. The total work-home commute mileage is around 26 (each direction), which takes me just shy of 2 hours. We have lockers and showers in the building adjoining MacBU, which makes it even simpler. It's a easy, gorgeous ride, and a hell of a way to start the morning. I can't recommend it more highly. When I'm not on my bike, I'm on the bus. I've moved from regular Metro transit to Microsoft's private bus service - "The Connector." The company rolled out Phase 1 of the service back in September, and recently kicked off Phase Two, adding a bunch of new routes (one of which is right by our place). I was a bit torn about switching to the Connector. While it's a great perk for people with poor bus service to campus (e.g., you live in the suburbs, or a less commute-friendly part of Seattle, such as Ballard), we've got great bus service where I live. Further, the Connector seemed to be a bit of a push in terms of transit time (it's a private bus, not a private helicopter, so we're still stuck in the same traffic with everyone else), and the system requires advance reservation (through a Web site) to ensure that everyone gets a seat. In fact, the service is amazing. First, in terms of real-world throughput, Connector buses are actually faster than Metro. The shuttles leave precisely on time, which is a godsend if you've ever played the 5 - 15 minute waiting game that sometimes happens with popular Metro bus lines. It's understandable - Connector routes have 3 stops, total, while a typical Metro bus will stop, you know, 14,000 or 15,000 times over a decent-sized route. With such precise timing, you spend less time checking your watch at a Connector stop, and you can rely on the Connector being ready at the same time every day. Second, Connectors all have free WiFi. While this isn't unique (many SoundTransit buses have it, too), the thing that makes it awesome is... Third, Connectors guarantee you a seat, and have space for your bags. This is the big one. Being guaranteed a seat - and knowing that it won't be Sardine Can Seating - means you can walk out the door with your laptop under your arm and be confident that you can do some violence to your e-mail (or Web surf, or whatever) while on the road. It's wonderful, because I know I can defer some of my last-minute work to when I'm on the bus, be confident of getting it done, and walk through the door of my condo with a clear mind and a closed MacBook Pro. Connector Phase Two was just rolled out this week, and the buses are already at capacity - a trend I expect to continue as the good word spreads. Part of this is simple gas-price economics - as BusinessWeek wrote, "Suddenly, It's Cool To Take The Bus", and, indeed I've seen several e-mail threads from car-centric colleagues extolling the virtues of not having to drive in our stop-n-go traffic anymore. More than anything, the biking and the bus-riding have helped me reclaim some of my commute as "me time" - time to get healthy, see my community, get a few more things done in the day - instead of feeling like it's The Great Sucking Sound of emotional energy and patience that I associate with driving. If you're sick of your commute and are ready for a change, try your bike or a bus. You won't regret it. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 9, 2008 12:43 PM. January 1, 2008Riding The SLUT
I have to say, it's actually pretty nice. We started our journey at the Westlake hub (route map here), rode it out to Fairview & Campus Drive, and then came back. The trip took a total of 26 minutes, start to finish, with 11 stops in total. I'm not a big fan of the "streetcar" approach to transit, because it combines the disadvantages of buses (running at-grade, commingled with traffic, stopping for lights) with the disadvantages of rail (special tracks, special cars, higher capital costs, fixed guideways). In fact, the area presently being served by the SLUT has been well-served by other Metro bus routes (the 17 and 70, just to name two). Despite that, I'm now a bit of a SLUT fan. Here's the thing - the cars are clean. The service is good. It does a reasonable job of connecting people in South Lake Union with the downtown core, and vice versa. As we get development in that area (e.g., Amazon), the SLUT will get more riders, and become more essential. This is a Good Thing. The SLUT has more in common with in-city, pedestrian-friendly systems like Denver's 16th Street MallRide than it does with something like SkyTrain. Are there problems? Sure. The SLUT needs more-frequent service (every 10 minutes would be great, instead of every 20), and likely would benefit from better right-of-way at busy intersections like Denny and Westlake. The line should be lengthened, so it's more than the baby system it is today. Connections to the UW, to First Hill, to Downtown - all should be considered. However, I wonder if, in the end, the biggest benefit of the system will just be getting Seattleites used to rail. A lot of people in this city have never been on rail-based mass transit, and for them "transit" = "busses". The SLUT is changing that perception - I even saw one guy give the driver a thumbs-up when he got off at Terry & Mercer. I'll be curious to see what ridership looks like now that people have to pay, and I'll be doubly curious to see how people actually use the system once the novelty has worn off. But for all that, I like it. (Flickr photostream is available, if you're interested.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 1, 2008 5:44 PM. December 6, 2007NY Subway Lines To Be Managed IndividuallyThe New York Times has a bit this morning about changes in how the city subway system will be managed: When the trains are late or trash piles up in a station, straphangers tend to grumble about a faceless “authority.” No one says: That guy who runs the No. 7 line really needs to get his act together. I'm fascinated by this. I wonder how well this model would work in bus-centric cities like Seattle - would it make sense to have a "general manager" of the 48, the 12, or the 43? Hm... Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 6, 2007 9:23 AM. December 5, 2007Seattle Streetcar Opens Dec. 12The Seattle Streeetcar (aka, "The South Lake Union Trolley" or 'SLUT') is opening one week from today - December 12 - at 11:30 AM: Starting at 11:30 a.m. on December 12, city and state elected officials will join the public to commemorate the official start of streetcar operations at the Westlake Hub, located at Westlake Avenue and Olive Way. The map of service is here; basically, the line runs from Westlake Center to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and back. Rides are free through the month of December, so be sure to check it out! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 5, 2007 11:23 AM. November 30, 2007Sound Transit Open House, Dec. 12Sound Transit is holding an open house on Wednesday, December 12 from 5 to 7 PM to talk about the University Link station (the one next to Husky Stadium). The station recently hit the 30% design stage, and they're inviting community input: 30 percent station design is complete for Link’s University of Washington Station. Sound Transit is hosting an open house for the community to learn about the latest progress on the project and provide feedback on the station design. Technical staff will be on hand to answer your questions. It's in the HUB, room 108. Let me know if you're planning to attend, too. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 30, 2007 11:25 AM. November 4, 2007SkyTrain!
Somehow, I managed to talk her in to riding SkyTrain. (I tell you, this woman puts up with everything.) See, I'm a regular reader of Frank Bruno's (excellent) Seattle transit blog, Orphan Road, and he'd recently linked to a movie about Vancouver's forthcoming third SkyTrain line (Canada Line), which will connect Vancouver's waterfront to their airport and the Richmond suburbs. (Movie available here, QuickTime required.) Frank's post put the bug in my ear, and, since we were in town, it felt like a great thing to try riding the Vancouver system end-to-end, just to see what it's like. I was also interested in riding the line on the SkyBridge across the Fraser River. SkyBridge (see associated photo) is a super-cool suspension jobby that was built exclusively for the rail system - in fact, it's the longest transit-only bridge in the world. My notes:
I really, truly, can't wait for Link to open in 2009. Wowza. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 4, 2007 10:19 AM. June 2, 2007Lunch Bus: June 29!Two weeks ago, I blogged about the Sound Transit Lunch Bus: This is a guided bus tour that will take you to and along the current construction sites. At any time during the tour, please feel free to ask questions. The tour is then followed by lunch at a local eating establishment. At the time, the Tour for June 8 was the last one available. Well, this week's Sound Transit e-mail newsletter mentioned a June 29 tour of Rainier Valley & Tukwila: View the newly completed SODO and Stadium light rail stations and the Operations and Maintenance facility – you may even see the first light rail vehicle! Catch a glimpse of the Beacon Hill Station area where miners are excavating the underground station. See the elevated Mount Baker Station and guideway. There's a chance I'm going to be out of town on customer visits that week, but I'm really keen to go on the tour if I can. Who's in? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 2, 2007 11:44 AM. May 21, 2007Get Your Transit Blog OnRegular readers know that I'm something of a transit fanatic (especially, if, you know, it's monorail). Thus, I've have been rather gratified to see an explosion in transit-oriented blogs here in Seattle. Some are more first-person, others are more newsy, still others cater to your inner policy wonk. A few worth checking out:
If you're in to Seattle transit issues, all of these are worthy of adding to your RSS reader. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 21, 2007 5:11 PM. The Light Rail Lunch BusThe Seattle Transit Blog has an interesting write-up of an experience aboard the Sound Transit Lunch Bus. There's a lot of goodness in the short post, including fun facts like this: Beacon Hill is mostly glacial till and sand, so building the tunnel was not as bad as it could have been. Actually, since the machine can only bore 50 feet a day, and they need one tunnel for each direction, it takes almost two years to built one mile of tunnel. That's one reason the connection to the University will take until 2016. The other is that a mile of tunnel costs about $280 million. Of course, if you're like me, you went, "What Sound Transit Lunch Bus?" A quick click over to the ST Web site reveals: Take a tour of Link's initial segment construction. The Community Outreach Division will be hosting the Lunch Bus tour. This is a guided bus tour that will take you to and along the current construction sites. At any time during the tour, please feel free to ask questions. The tour is then followed by lunch at a local eating establishment. Looks like I've missed the window to get on the tour this cycle (Friday is the next - and final - one listed, and the RSVP date is today), but I'm definitely going to keep my eyes open for the next one. Anyone wanna go? It's mid-day (11:30 AM - 1 PM), but could be a blast. And if it's anything like the impromptu Sound Transit Tour Elaine and I did in March, it promises to be excellent. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 21, 2007 4:48 PM. March 17, 2007One Step Closer To 2009Sound Transit's Link Light Rail system is due to open here in 2009, which has pretty much seemed like it was, you know, forever from now. And then I go and see this article in the Times yesterday, which basically says that enough of the system is in place that Sound Transit is testing it. Like, today. Two trains will roll along the one-mile route, mostly at low speeds. Police officers and flaggers will accompany them, until the train signals are certified as reliable, said Ron Lewis, light-rail deputy director. More trains will be delivered and tested as the year goes on. Awesome. (This is pretty damn exciting!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 17, 2007 1:57 PM. March 4, 2007Sound Transit Tour
(Yes, that Sound Transit. The conversation immediately took a veering, hard right turn into transit nerdery.) Martin runs the rail systems (e.g., the Sounder Commuter Train) at ST, and, at one point, offered to "show me and Elaine around a bit sometime." (Oh ... silly man. So totally gonna call you with an offer like that.) Thus, on Thursday, Elaine and I found ourselves taking a super-cool tour of Sound Transit. We met Martin at Union Station (in all its gorgeous, restored splendor - history available here), caught the Sounder down to Tacoma, and then rode the Tacoma Light Rail system for the length of the line. This was both an incredibly cool way to spend an evening, as well as a glimpse into what kinds of transit investments are going on in the community. Specifically:
What's terrifically exciting about all this is the forthcoming Sound Transit 2 vote in November. Today, Sound Transit is underway with construction of the core regional light rail line (airport to Downtown). This line is in the process of being augmented (with a $750M federal grant) to go north and get to Capitol Hill and the University of Washington campus. ST2 will (among many other things) expand the regional light rail system dramatically, boosting the total number of miles to 60. It will connect Seattle's downtown to Lynnwood, Redmond (specifically the Overlake Transit Center, aka "The Microsoft Stop"), and Tacoma -- all through light rail. You can see a map of this on the ST site. As a rail guy, I obviously find the prospect of ST2 incredibly exciting - doubly so after Thursday's tour. I'm telling you, with a comprehensive system like this, people will have a much easier time getting around our region, regardless of how packed the freeways are. Want to get from Bellevue to downtown Seattle? 20 minutes. Seattle to the airport? 25 minutes. And along the way, we'll get economic development and services to accommodate all the new investment. It's one thing to go to London and see the Tube - it's quite another to see it coming together in Seattle. I strongly recommend doing the Tacoma Light Rail thing if you have the opportunity. It's simple, slick, and gives a good taste of what we have to look forward to when Link opens in 2009. Can't wait. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 4, 2007 6:44 PM. February 25, 2007Just Say No. Twice.I voted today, checking the boxes and mailing off my ballot to show "the government" (read: Mayor Nickels, WSDOT, and Gov. Christine Gregoire) that I'd like them to please, pretty please, pretty pretty please quit screwing around and simply tear down the damn Viaduct . Part of me thinks I should have saved the $0.39 stamp. See, today's vote is part of a special election here in Seattle regarding the future of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. We're being asked two questions regarding how best to replace the hulking concrete monstrosity that menaces our shoreline. Specifically:
Now, this vote is nonbinding (your vote doesn't actually require that anyone with any power actually do anything) as well as contradictory (you could, conceivably, vote for both the tunnel and the rebuild, which makes about as much sense as covering a minivan in chocolate sauce). So the city fathers and mothers will be getting a stream of ballots that will need to be held into the light, squinted at, and, ultimately, "interpreted." Not that the interpretation is actually going to mean anything - the State can ignore it, as can the city. Lovely. I've been on record for nearly a year ("Tear It Down, Leave It Down") that replacing the Viaduct is a terrible idea. It's not only expensive -- it's unnecessary: But interestingly, it turns out that, in order to build the tunnel, you have to close the Viaduct for four years. Read that again: four years. Those poor folks in West Seattle? That economically-necessary through traffic? Well, they're going to lose their transit methods for more than a thousand days. In the subsequent 11 months since I wrote that piece, we've come to find out that mayor's tunnel is dead (no funding) and that the State is proposing we replace the current big, hulking Viaduct with a big, hulking Viaduct that's even bigger and hulk-ier. Yikes. Naturally, the cats over at The Stranger are all over this, urging everyone to vote "No and Hell No" on the ballot. The "surface" option finally seems to be getting traction -- King County Executive Ron Sims is now behind it, and I imagine Greg Nickels will be a believer as soon as it looks like the state is serious about building a new-and-expanded concrete freeway in the sky through his downtown. So I voted ("No and Hell No"), and it's all political theater, and I'm a little disgusted by it. However, I'm still optimistic that we'll tear it down and leave it down ... if only because the idea of putting a new Viaduct in place is so ridiculously stupid. I do love this town, but sometimes, I tell ya... Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 25, 2007 8:33 PM. Free! Printable! Subway! Maps!Jeff sent me a link this morning to some un-bee-lee-vable hotness: maps of subway systems across the world. If you're a hardcore transit nerd like Yours Truly, this is one of those things that just makes the day, y'know? Jeff's appropriate bit 'o snark: Don't bonk your head on the keyboard when you pass out. :) This is soooo awesome. (Check out London! Or Boston! Or Munich! Or...) My next trip to Europe will be a little more fun, methinks... Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 25, 2007 5:25 PM. January 14, 2007A To B Without A CA number of my friends have been asking lately about how to get around in Seattle without a car. My colleague Steve made a New Year's resolution to ride the bus more often; more dramatically, Adrian recently sold his ride and is now hoofin' it around the Puget Sound with the aid of Metro. Now, our transit systems are good for getting around ... provided you know where to look to find routes, connectors, and the like. For a transit geek like me, it's fairly easy ("Oh, we'll just take the 8 up the hill [looks at watch] it should be at Denny and Westlake in about 10 minutes."). For regular Joes and Janes, however, it's a bit more daunting. Hence, a quick rundown of resources and advice:
So there you go. If you're trying to kick your automotive habit (or just trying to put some more dollars in your pocket by not driving as much), give a few of these handy options a try. Let me know how it goes! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 14, 2007 2:20 PM. November 19, 2006Viaduct: Not As Valuable As We ThoughtThe Stranger's Erica C. Barnett has an article in this week's Stranger ("Fuzzy Math") that has more bad news for proponents of the expensive, boondoggle-y tunnel replacement. See, a core piece of the argument for replacing the current Viaduct with a multibillion-dollar, brand-spankin' new tunnel (or even simply rebuilding it) is predicated on the Viaduct being an essential, north-south transit corridor that carries hundreds of thousands of cars a day. Without a good, high-speed route through the city (such as would be facilitated by said tunnel), the thinking goes, those cars will wind up on the streets of Seattle, clogging arteries and causing citywide gridlock. The number that has been bandied around as the average daily "flow" on the Viaduct is 110,000 cars. It turns out that number may be, um, high: The 110,000 figure is based on traffic models and hasn’t changed since at least 2002, when newspapers first began reporting the figure. A look at WSDOT’s actual traffic counts, as measured by a computerized sensor on the roadway itself, however, shows “annual average daily traffic” of only 74,700 vehicles—just 68 percent of WSDOT’s inflated number. In general, actual traffic counts are far more reliable than computerized models in estimating traffic flow. In other words, the Viaduct may not be nearly as vital to Seattle as previously thought. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 19, 2006 7:54 AM. October 13, 2006Light Rail PhotosSoundTransit has a "resident photographer", Peter deLory, who "was commissioned in 1999 to produce a collection of photographs that chronicle and interpret the building of the regional transit system." Anyhow, his work is amazing, and there's a bunch of new photos showing Link Light Rail under construction. SoundTransit sent me an e-mail notice earlier today, and I was floored when I clicked through. As I've zoomed to and from the airport in recent months, one thing I always look forward to is seeing how far along the elevated tracks along I-5 (at 405) have come. The system is getting more and more concrete by the day, and it's excellent. Check it out. 2009 isn't that far away, is it? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated October 13, 2006 7:02 PM. September 30, 2006Google Transit Does SeattleBus riders, rejoice! Google Transit has just added a whole host of new cities to its route-planning system ... including Seattle: The Google Transit Trip Planner, online at http://google.com/transit, uses data from King County to map bus routes and calculate how long the trip would take. It also compares the cost with what you would spend if you made the trip by car. Google Transit complements the venerable (and awesome) BusMonster mashup, and provides the usual, clean, Google-y interface. It's slick. Mad, map props to King County, who, according to the Seattle Times, drove the relationship with Google: King County Executive Ron Sims said he directed his staff to contact Google. The county's own transit-planning site was seeing steady traffic — it planned 7.5 million trips for users last year — and Sims wanted more sources of information online. My tax dollars at work, and I couldn't be happier. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated September 30, 2006 9:16 AM. September 20, 2006Earth To Nickels: It's OverIt's official: The Seattle Times reports that replacing the Viaduct is going to be really, really expensive: The price tag for a new, elevated structure to replace the aging Alaskan Way viaduct has grown from $2.4 billion to $2.8 billion... But you know what's worse? The Mayor's prized replacement option - a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront - is even more expensive: ... and the cost of building a tunnel has gone from a high of $3.6 billion to an estimated $4.6 billion, according to a report released today by the state. The difference between replacing the Viaduct and the tunnel is now $800M to $2,200M, depending on which set of cost estimate ranges you believe. For the sake of simplicity, I'm splitting the difference and calling it $1,500M. One point five billion dollars. With numbers like these, it's time for City Hall to slow down, take a deep breath, and take a very, very long moment. I've been on record since March ("Tear It Down, Leave It Down") that we should simply detonate the Viaduct and call it a day. It's aging, it's breaking, it's going to kill people. If it comes down outside of our control, it'll cause the loss of life, limb, property and do serious economic damage to our region. The tunnel is the gosh-it-would-be-nice solution to this problem. But the Mayor, rather than see the handwriting on the wall regarding the tunnel, has devised a cunning plan: raise the cost of the Viaduct rebuild so the tunnel is more cost-competitve! Seriously: Seattle believes it has control over street-use and other permits needed for construction. By obstructing an elevated project, the city thinks it can drive up the cost another $1.6 billion, to nearly $5 billion, according to a chart issued this morning by Seattle Department of Transportation director Grace Crunican. That would put the elevated structure close to the cost of a tunnel. This is insanity. Only in the strange, BizarroWorld of a dysfunctional public servant with an Ozymandias complex does this make any kind of sense. Here's the deal, Mayor Nickels: we have real transit problems in this state, and they're going to take real money to fix. Our roads have a major maintenance backlog. 520 needs to be replaced. I-5 could use a lot of rework. We want a Light Rail extension to pass on the 2007 ballot. And every day we waste dicking around with this tunnel fantasy is one less day that we can talk about things that will actually solve transit problems. Tear it down, leave it down, and let go of the tunnel fantasy. It's not going to happen, and the goodwill and credibility you're squandering - yes, even with with tax-friendly liberals like Yours Truly - with your pointless, juvenile brinksmanship is going to be sorely needed when Sound Transit 2 goes to the polls next year. Throw in the towel, Greg. Gracefully. This one's not going to happen. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated September 20, 2006 4:27 PM. August 22, 2006Animals On The UndergroundTom (one of my fellow Planners) sent me a link to this cool site: AnimalsOnTheUnderground.com. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like - using the London Underground map, the site draws animal shapes with the various Tube lines. It's cool! They've got birds, cats, baby rhinos, sperm whales, you name it. Hours of fun for the whole family. I love the Internets. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 22, 2006 6:06 PM. August 1, 2006Guaranteed Ride HomeLast night was a late one at the Empire - a system I manage broke unexpectedly, and needed some emergency TLC to get back on its feet. By the time I'd wrapped up with my obligations, it was 11:30 at night. The last 545 to Seattle leaves Redmond at 10:44 PM. Now, it's down a ways on the Microsoft Benefits list, but "Guaranteed Ride Home" is one of those things you don't think about until you use it. In English, it means that if you carpool, vanpool or bus to work - and can't get home using same because of working late - the company will put you in a cab at their expense. A cynical person might observe that this policy is just a way for the company to keep its employees past their dinner time (and that's certainly true). That said, it's still a nice, comforting thing. (And let me tell ya, the inside of a taxi never looked so good.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 1, 2006 6:23 PM. July 31, 2006Monorail Service To ResumeThe monorail cars were zooming down 5th avenue this last weekend - but empty. Turns out that they're still in test mode, and should reopen soon: Spokesman David Heurtel (hur-TEL') says crews are working on final tests and officials should know in a day or two when the monorail can return to service. This is very good news, and I'll be in line to ride 'em once they're officially re-opened. The new trains look good, too - nice new paint, cleaned up. Certainly they're a damn sight prettier than they were after the accident in November. UPDATE, September 4, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 31, 2006 4:09 PM. June 25, 2006London, Reloaded: Day One
Truth be told, getting here this time was far, far easier than last April. And I credit this entirely on my decision to fly business class. Now, I'm not much of a big spender when it comes to airlines. Although I'm reasonably tall, I can handle cramped quarters for flights of four hours or so, and am therefore fine saving money by going coach. The tradeoff, it seems, is sleep: I can't crash in coach, which means that I can have a hard time adjusting to local time zones when making extended trips. I've flown first class before (on an Alaskan flight from LA to Seattle), and it was nice but not spectacular. But with my need to be awake and alert when I hit the ground in London (I'm attending a conference, and we know how thrilling those can be), I decided to throw 30,000 frequent-flyer miles at United, go business class from O'Hare to Heathrow, and see what all the fuss was about. Hoo, boy: I may not be able to go back. I'd previously equated "business class" with "more legroom", but man, was that an understatement. A few notes on the perks:
I may have to talk with 'ol Jeff about (ahem) changing our travel policy (ahem)... Thanks to the in-flight nap, I was able to stay awake upon arrival in London. I took the Piccadilly line out of the airport, transferred, and made it to my hotel in good time. I was early enough that my room wasn't ready, so I dropped my bags and decided to cruise around town. Specifically, I wanted to hit the London Transport Museum and ride all the lines on the Tube. Turns out my timing couldn't have been worse for either - the Transport museum is closed for refurbishment, and large sections of the Tube system were closed for major engineering work. But I made do. From my starting point (Edgware Road), here's what I did (you might want a map of the system - opens in a new window):
(Sadly, the entire Hammersmith & City and Waterloo & City lines were closed for construction, and the original segment of the system - Metropolitan between Baker Street and King's Cross - was also shut down. Ah, well.) The entire trip - with photos, lunches, sightseeing - took about 5 hours. And I have to say that it was an incredibly fun, interesting and cool way to spend an afternoon. I got to see all manner of different stations, from the original, cut-and-cover tunnels of the Metropolitan and District lines, to the new, sleek, state-of-the-art stuff of the Jubilee Line Extension (the mall at Canary Wharf, for instance, is modern and clean). The rail cars, too, change as they get newer: the original tracks use, effectively, electrified heavy rail; the newer lines use rounder, smaller and faster cars. In all, Transit Geek Heaven. It's so cool to be back. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 25, 2006 10:30 AM. May 23, 2006Real Cities Have TrainsI'm safely ensconced here in my Chicago hotel, and I have just four words to say. Real cities have trains. Wow, the El is cool. Like, wow, wow, wow. I landed at the airport, fetched my bag, and, for the princely sum of $2, was able to get a safe, stable and easy ride right into the heart of downtown (near the Sears Tower) in, like, 40 minutes. (I can hear the collective disbelief in Seattle from two time zones away.) So this is the second city I've been to in the last two months where the citizens have invested in fixed-rail systems. People freely admit that traffic sucks in both Chicago and London, but the big difference between these cities and Seattle is that Londoners and Chicagoans have options. If you want to get around, you can. (And, if you want to sit in traffic, you can do that, too.) Traffic is inevitable. I think this is a critical part of the transit picture that a lot of people overlook. During the Monorail debate (with so many votes on that puppy, the specific time period escapes me...), a number of people would say things like, "The monorail is a waste of money - it isn't going to take a single car off the streets!" Well, no kidding. Traffic congestion is here to stay. If you've got any kind of density, you've got congestion. Congestion is the price cities pay for being popular places to live. And, given the 'natural equilibrium' of driving (when traffic levels drop for any length of time, congestion is only temporarily relieved - people notice fewer cars on the road and switch from transit back to private cars, and - boom! - congestion returns), it's a permanent state of affairs. The transit debate needs to be about recognizing that you can't build enough freeways to relieve congestion (Exhibit A: Houston), so the trick instead is to give people alternatives. Let them ride the train, be it above ground, underground, whatever. Seattle, to its credit, has figured this out, and light rail is being built right now to get from SeaTac to downtown. I'm getting bounce-in-my-seat excited for this thing to open ... even though it's still 3 years away. (On my way to the airport this morning, I was pretty pumped to see the under-construction stations and tracks in Georgetown and along the spur to the airport). But airport-downtown light rail is just a first, delicate step into making Seattle a real city with a real transit system. We need more, and we need it now. And you know what? It's not going to relieve congestion at all. If you're in your car, you're still stuck in traffic. Sorry. Instead, trains will merely offer us the ability to keep growing beyond the limits of our clogged freeways. Say it with me: Real cities have trains. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 23, 2006 7:12 PM. May 12, 2006Ride The Bus, Get $50A lot of people ask me about taking the bus to work. Many are surprised ("You ride the bus?"), some are incredulous ("You ride the bus?"), and some are genuinely intrigued. For many, though, interest in taking the bus wanes quickly, as it seems too complicated ("I need to catch the 48 at 7:05, and then transfer to the 7:25 Eastbound 545 at Montlake?"), or like one would have to sit next to smelly people (Dan Savage has recently referred to Metro buses as "rolling homeless shelters"). So, despite the endless (and, IMHO, non-reversible) rise in fuel prices (the gas station at 99 and Denny listed Premium for $3.74 yesterday), people climb into their cars and inch their way along the 520, oblivious to the fact that There Is A Better Way. The save-money-on-gas incentive to give up the 'ol daily grind just isn't enough. But what if someone paid you to take the bus? Microsoft, for example, is offering 50 bucks. Like many large employers, Microsoft is worried about the expense and logistic nightmare that is the Single-Occupant Vehicle. If everyone who worked in Redmond drove to work, the place would be one big, gridlocked mess. So while we employees get free bus passes (which is my second-favorite benefit, by the way, after the health care), and parking is an utter nightmare at fast-growing sections of the company (rumor has it that MSN is now offering free valet parking to prevent employees from burning 20 minutes looking for a space) it's apparently not enough to get people to change their behavior. Enter bribery. If an employee takes "alternate transportation" to work (carpool, vanpool, bike or bus) just 15 times between May 1 and June 30, Microsoft will cut you a check for $50. And if we do it 15 more, the city of Redmond will cut another check for $50. (Check out redmond.gov for more information.) For an already-riding transit guy like me, this is found money. But for many of my co-workers, I suspect this will be the nudge they need to finally try the bus. People are creatures of habit, yes? And it takes time to get new habits, whether that's flossing or exercising or changing our diet or ... busing to work. And sometimes, people need a good reason to break out of the same-old, same-old. $50? In my book, that's a good reason. I've noticed, anecdotally, that the buses have been pretty full these last couple weeks. I wonder how long that'll last... UPDATE, May 6, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 12, 2006 1:40 PM. April 20, 2006MyBus + SMS = Crazy Delicious!I have recently discovered that you can get up-to-the-minute, real-time bus information from Metro and Sound Transit sent to your cell phone through SMS. This totally rocks. Yes, it rocks. It rocks because it solves an all-too-common problem for bus riders, namely: finding out when the hell the next bus is due to arrive. The service is relatively easy (and time-consuming) to set up (read: geeks only for the moment), but at a high level, it works like this:
I’ve been using this since Monday, and I must confess that it is wonderfully useful. One tip: since formatting and addressing the message can be pretty time-consuming with the triple-tap cell keyboards most folks are using, just keep your finished message in your phone's outbox and re-send it whenever you want up-to-date information. If you're a regular Metro rider, be sure to check it out! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated April 20, 2006 10:13 AM. March 24, 2006Tear It Down, Leave It DownAllie and I have been going back and forth in e-mail these last few weeks (and, briefly, at last nights' Confab) about the best way to deal with Seattle's aging (and increasingly unsafe) Alaskan Way Viaduct along SR99. (The Viaduct, in case you don't know, is a double-decker concrete freeway that runs along the Seattle waterfront, much like San Francisco's old Embarcadero freeway.) Option #1 is to simply replace the thing, building a new, modern Viaduct in its stead. Allie hates this option, and so do I. Option #2 is to tear down the Viaduct and replace it with a tunnel, conveying cars and trucks underground and reconnecting Seattle with its waterfront. Mayor Nickels loves this proposal, and Allie thinks it's the right one as well. Option #3 - the one I favor - is to tear the Viaduct down and replace it with ... nothing. Yep, that's right. Let's get rid of the Viaduct. We don't need it. First, let's be frank about something: the Viaduct is coming down. It was damaged in the Nisqually earthquake of 2001, and the thing is currently listing. WSDOT predicts that the failure rate of the Viaduct increases by 5% for each year it stays up. The road carries about 120,000 cars per day, which means that the failure of the Viaduct - either through its own, natural decline or hastened by another earthquake - will kill a lot of people and disrupt Seattle's economy. It's also an eyesore (as well as an earsore). If you've ever walked along Seattle's waterfront, you've been treated to the sight of this sprawling, 50-foot-high concrete monstrosity running from one end of the city to the other. The noise is considerable - I mean, you have a frickin' freeway running over your head, and the concrete construction gives the already-considerable noise this wonderful amplification/reverb effect. You can think of the Viaduct as the ultimate conversation killer - if only because you can't hear anything else. The Washington State legislature recognizes the increasing risk to life, limb and property, and has allocated $2.2 billion to replace the Viaduct with ... another Viaduct. While we certainly need to deal with the current Viaduct's considerable structural issues, replacing one loud eyesore with another - especially one that's going to be 50% wider than the current design - is insane. Mayor Nickels (quite correctly) recognizes that the need to tear down the Viaduct is an opportunity to reshape Seattle's skyline for the better. Hence: his tunnel solution. Problem is, tunnels are expensive. Like, nearly a billion dollars more than the straight-up Viaduct rebuild. So Nickels is engaging in political brinksmanship to get the project built, and state legislators are pushing back. Meanwhile, the Viaduct continues to decay. Tick, tick, tick, tick... Interestingly, the collapse of San Francisco's Embarcadero freeway may provide us with an insight about the Viaduct that could save us a few billion bucks - namely, if the Viaduct vanishes ... so does a lot of traffic. In other words, if we simply remove the Viaduct, well, it may not have a negative impact on traffic at all. The Stranger went to SF in December, and came back with the following: In 1989, San Francisco faced a similar dilemma: The two-level elevated Embarcadero Freeway, which citizens voted to preserve in 1986, was badly damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake, leading city leaders to close it down and forcing car traffic to find another way through the city. In the earthquake's immediate aftermath, officials predicted gridlock for miles in each direction; but that gridlock never materialized, and eventually, Mayor Art Agnos (seconded by a closely divided San Francisco Board of Supervisors) decided to tear it down, reducing car capacity on the waterfront and distributing Embarcadero traffic onto city streets. Interestingly, a local group, the People's Waterfront Coalition, has spring up to sell this exact solution to Seattle. They point out that, economically, for the same money as a tunnel we could "purchase 10,000 helicopters, one for every dozen Viaduct commuters and fly them downtown instead" ... or simply write every Viaduct commuter a check for $50,000. Now, as I've been in heated arguments about this with pro-tunnel friends, they often will tell me that "Seattle isn't like San Francisco" (translation: we should not expect the removal of the Viaduct to work for us as it did for them). The pro-tunnel forces will tell me that the poor people who work in West Seattle need the Viaduct to get to work every day, or that the through traffic carried on the Viaduct absolutely depends on its continued operation in order to make Seattle's economy work. Fair enough. But interestingly, it turns out that, in order to build the tunnel, you have to close the Viaduct for four years. Read that again: four years. Those poor folks in West Seattle? That economically-necessary through traffic? Well, they're going to lose their transit methods for more than a thousand days. You know what? Over a thousand days, a "new normal" appears. People find accommodations with their environment. They get to work differently. They move to new houses. Businesses relocate. Things sort out. In other words, if you're going to close it for four years anyway, why reopen it at all? Hell, it'll be a new freeway at that point, right? People will have to re-learn to take the shiny new tunnel, because they'll be so used to working around its absence. Would I like a tunnel? Of course: tunnels are cool. Problem is, we just have other, more pressing issues that demand our dollars. So take the $2.2Bn from the state and pump it into other transit problems, like replacing 520 or untangling Interstate 5.Let's tear it down and leave it down - 'cause after four years, who'll know the difference, anyway? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 24, 2006 4:05 PM. February 10, 2006The Monorail Will RiseIt's official: the Seattle Center Monorail is going to be put back in service after getting $4M worth of repairs: An estimated repair cost of $3 million to $4 million will be paid by a combination of insurance funds, future operating income, and possibly grants, all without diverting money from other city services, officials said. Timeline? This summer. All I can say is ... thank God. When the monorail blew up on us back in November, I thought we might be monorail-less forever. Now, at least, I'll be able to still pay my buck-seventy-five to ride the 1.2 miles from downtown to a Storm home game. Whoo-hoo! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 10, 2006 11:55 AM. December 9, 2005Photographs Of The Damaged MonorailGood buddy Patrick (aka, "He Who Turned Me - And Therefore, My Entire Office - On To Pandora") makes his living working for Team Nickels down at Seattle's City Hall. Working for the Mayor has some advantages, of course, one of which is an "access all areas" pass for parts of the city that we mortals can't get to. One great example of this is that Patrick got to take a tour of the damaged monorails as they lay in their barn at the Seattle Center. Photos from his trip can be found on Flickr. They're amazing. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 9, 2005 8:55 AM. December 8, 2005Google Transit Trip PlannerCNET reports this morning that Google has launched a new Transit Trip Planner: The Google trip planner asks people to enter their preferred itinerary, such as location of departure and arrival, as well as dates and time of travel. The site then gleans all available information on public-transportation schedules to produce a trip planner. You can check it out at google.com/transit. I use (and love) Seattle-centric Google hack BusMonster, whose phenomenal usefulness was undoubtedly a nudge for Google to brew its own version. BusMonster, however, doesn't actually do the trip planning piece for you (e.g., "Take route 10 to 7th and Pike; catch the 194 to Sea-Tac at 6:20 AM"), while Google's does. As an example, check out these directions from Portland's airport to the Westin downtown. The site currently just supports Portland, Oregon, but it's a pretty simple mental move to see this supporting other cities in the near future. My favorite feature? The "Cost calculator" on the bottom ("$1.80 (vs. $4.49 driving!)"). Awesome. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 8, 2005 10:27 AM. November 30, 2005"Nobody Bikes In L.A."I've been behind on my podcasts, but as it turns out the Slate Daily Podcast ran a great piece on Monday's episode ("Nobody Bikes In L.A.", MP3 Available) where columnist Andy Bowers tries riding his bicycle to and from work in Los Angeles: Instead of the major thoroughfares I use when driving, I cycled quiet back streets - the kind that infuriate me in a car because of all the stop signs and the impossibility of crossing major streets without a signal. I found my commute so easy that I soon started looking for other short trips I could make on the bike - picking up a few groceries, going to the gym, returning library books - then longer ones. I plotted new stealth routes no driver would ever take. The article really touched a nerve with me, because Bowers's experiences with L.A. on his bicycle are so similar to mine as I walk around Seattle. It's such a great thing to get out of your car, off the main drag, and around your local community. It's invigorating, educational, and, in many cases, much more rewarding than you might think. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 30, 2005 12:59 PM. November 27, 2005"The End Of Suburbia"I recommend that you add "The End Of Suburbia" to your NetFlix queue. (And thanks to Richard for the tip!) In the vein of pop-documentaries like "Super Size Me" and "The Corporation", "The End Of Suburbia" talks about what the end of inexpensive, plentiful oil is going to do the American economy and way of life. One of the things it does quite well is make the case that the suburbs, as we have known (and come to revere) them, are in real danger of being depopulated as transportation costs begin rising. It's a quickie, 90-minute flick, and the interviews are with some pretty heavyweight folks. There's not a lot of "new news" in it (after all, most rational folks would recognize that people commuting 50 or 100 miles from their jobs is a totally untenable, unsustainable activity). As the world hits peak oil production and the economies of China and India come online, we Americans are going to find ourselves paying ever-higher prices for ever-dwindling supplies of irreplaceable fuels - and our lifestyles will need to adapt in a hurry. It's sobering and eye-opening. Not a "date movie", but watch it anyhow. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 27, 2005 5:45 PM. Alweg Monorail: Hosed
The photo you're seeing was taken by Yours Truly as I walked down 5th Avenue this morning. The Times has a bit on it ("Monorail trains collide") with some of the facts: The crash at about 7:10 p.m. sent glass flying to the street. It took nearly an hour to evacuate the 84 passengers on board the two trains. Firefighters escorted them individually down fire-truck ladders extended to the trains about 25 feet above the sidewalk. (Boy, when we say "no monorail" in this town, the universe listens, huh?) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 27, 2005 5:36 PM. November 25, 2005One More Thing To Do On The BusI've blogged before about the many, many distractions I enjoy while commuting on the bus, from magazines to podcasts to Rocketboom. Well, I've added another item to the list: cell phone games. When I switched to Cingular and upgraded my phone, I initially focused on the basic stuff: good reception and battery life, iSync compatibility, Bluetooth. I didn't give much thought to the "other" stuff like text messaging, Web browsing, e-mail, camera (although the 551 has one), or custom ringtones. Recently, however, I found myself spelunking the innards of the phone, playing with this and that option, and decided to give the 'ol "Games" folder a look-see. The 551 ships with a demo of "Bejeweled", and so I gave it a try. And, dammit, I got hooked. So I bought the full version through the Cingular game store (not a bad experience; could be better), downloaded it to my phone, and now, well, there's one more thing I can do on the bus. Bejeweled isn't exactly the fastest, sexiest game out there - it's a Tetris knockoff - but it's fun and almost totally mindless ... mental floss, if you will. And the really nice thing about it is that you can play it with a single thumb on either hand, which means it's ideal for busses; you can stand on an overfull 545, hanging on to the overhead rail with one hand, chimpanzee-like, while playing the game with the other. I am finding that cell phone games are perfect for those 3-to-10-minute windows when you're waiting for something: the bus to arrive, the next bank teller, an open kiosk at the airport, the "please turn off all electronic devices" warning, you name it. Games are terrific little distractions ... especially when you're traveling for the holidays. Not that, you know, that's relevant this time of year. Thumbs-up. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 25, 2005 4:54 PM. November 9, 2005RIP, MonorailAfter five citywide votes and countless hours of debates in taverns, public meetings and City Hall, Seattle residents finally called a halt to the embattled monorail project. This was expected, but it's still a sad day. Our city transportation problems aren't over by a long shot; all we've done is kill one specific way of helping to solve them. (sigh) At least the gas tax was upheld, which means we're not going to completely gut our infrastructure. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 9, 2005 6:46 AM. October 31, 2005One. Last. Time.I vote absentee. And tonight, for the fifth time, I voted in favor of the Seattle Monorail Project. Yes, the line is shorter. Yes, it's expensive. But you know what? We still need it. So once more into the breach, dear friends... Sadly, I suspect this is the voter equivalent of throwing a snowball into hell. We'll know after the 8th. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated October 31, 2005 8:45 PM. October 26, 2005Eastside Mass TransitI had a work function in downtown Bellevue tonight, and, rather than carpooling with one of my coworkers, I thought it was high time I took the bus. Now, the service quality of the bus system on Seattle's Eastside is vastly different than it is downtown. Commuter busses (like my usual route to/from work, the 545) are high-frequency, high-occupancy, straight-shot affairs that run from between the downtown cores (and major employers) of Seattle and the 'burb cities of Redmond, Kirkland, and so on. They're wonderful and reliable, and primarily operate during peak commuter hours. If you're heading from the 'burbs to downtown Seattle, you can step off your commuter bus and quickly get around town on Metro. That's because the bus service is comprehensive and reasonably reliable in downtown Seattle: frequencies are also pretty good, tending toward 15- or 30-minute intervals. A lot of this is simple economics: the density of people in city means that a given route will invariably attract enough riders along its travels to make the route worthwhile. If you're a downtown-dweller heading to the 'burbs, however, you're in for some asymmetric transit options. Communities are stretched out on the Eastside, and densities drop. So the inter-Eastside bus frequencies stretch out, too - it's not uncommon for a bus to come every 60 or 90 minutes. I vividly remember living in Woodinville and attending Bellevue Community College in '92; as a bus rider, it would take me two hours to get to or from campus each way. Most of this time was spent sitting on cold, hard benches in bus shelters (and this in the days before ubiquitous laptops and iPods ... the horror!) waiting for the next bus to arrive. Not exactly a fun memory. However, as a car-free guy who doesn't want to be known as He Who Will Always Mooch A Ride, I thought it was high time that the Eastside bus system and I get re-acquainted. (And, you know, I'd packed both my TabletPC and my iPod. So I took a deep breath, and was ready for anything.) As it happens, I needn't have worried. A quick trip to Metro's Trip Planner and BusMonster surprised me - turns out the 233 runs right from campus to the Bellevue Transit Center (and every 30 minutes, too!), while the 271 got me from the transit center back into the city. In all, it took a bit more preliminary planning than I was used to, but the execution was absolutely no problem. I guess some things do get better over 13 years How cool is that? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated October 26, 2005 8:30 PM. September 24, 2005The Monorail Soap Opera ContinuesMy head's been down with work this week, so it's a little surreal to see how much the Monorail has been in the news while my attention's been diverted. It's a freakin' soap opera! First, as I said last week, Nickels has come out against the Monorail. On Friday (yesterday), the City Council (in its infinite wisdom) then voted unanimously to put the monorail on November's ballot. If the ballot measure fails, the city council will pull the project's permits. Game over. (BTW, HorsesAss.org has a funny proposal for a new Seattle mass-transit system. I'd ride it.) Despite the Council vote, the Seattle Monorail Project still has some say into what the ballot measure will be. But on Thursday, the SMP board voted against putting language on the ballot, saying they were instead focusing on fixing the financing plan: In a 6-2 vote, the board decided to proceed as planned to try to come up with a new finance plan and contract improvements in an attempt to save money. The board said they would try to put a measure on the ballot in February. Last week, Nickels said if the board didn't act to put a measure before voters in November, the city would do it for them. BUT! Just one day later, the SMP reversed itself and submitted language for the ballot after all ... and just a scant hour before the 4:30 filing deadline. The new language calls for a shorter line: The Seattle Monorail Project board yesterday agreed, under duress, to ask voters to either trim the Green Line by three miles so it runs from Alaska Junction in West Seattle to West Dravus Street in Interbay, or shut the project down. Meanwhile, Dan Savage over at The Stranger is pissed off at Nickels, demanding his $300 campaign contribution back and going after Nickels in this week's paper: You're no Mayor Daley, Greg. Not even close. Daley, as Newsweek said, knew how to run a city. Daley would have told the anti-urban whackos, the opportunistic hacks (yes, I mean you, Jamieson), and the naysayers—not to mention his deputy mayor—to go get fucked. "We're building the monorail," Daley would have said. "The city needs it, it'll create jobs, and we're a city that works, not a city that sits on its ass year after year while a problem like gridlock gets worse." Seattle's Daley would have found a way to make it happen. But you, Greg? The going got tough and you pussed out. Mayor Daley? No way, Greg. You're not even Jane Byrne. You're barely Michael Bilandic. Bill Virgin over at the PI agrees, it seems: Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels took a hard look at the proposed monorail and made a tough call: Let's have another election! Meanwhile, gas prices continue to climb, Metro buses are getting increasingly full, and now we've decided to - wait for it - close the bus tunnel for the next two years: About 100,000 bus riders who catch buses downtown will be affected when the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel closes for up to two years beginning today at 7 p.m. God, I love this town. You can't make this stuff up. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated September 24, 2005 10:23 PM. September 16, 2005The Monorail Is DeadPut a fork in it, it's done. In a press conference this afternoon, Mayor Nickels announced that he was withdrawing his support for the monorail, and ordering the city to withdraw its right-of-way permits. He also asked the City Council to hold an emergency meeting next week to put an advisory measure on the November ballot. What? Look, the monorail is screwed. Without public right-of-way, it can't build over city streets. That means it's a train to nowhere. So if Nickels has pulled the permits, it's over. But if that's the case, why bother with the ballot? What the hell will the ballot say? "Do you, Citizen of Seattle, want the monorail built?" What if we say "yes"? Are you going to say, "Oh! Just kidding about the permits!" Riiiiiight. C'mon, Greg. If you want the public to sound off, put the thing on the ballot and ask. If you have made up your mind to pull the permits, the ballot is unimportant. Naturally, the Stranger is on this as well: So, if the city is pulling the plug—Nickels is canceling the project's Transit Way Agreement—what exactly are the people deciding? Well, Nickels—having killed the transit way agreement—is asking the council to send an advisory measure to the people asking them if the city should stop supporting the monorail. It's like taking the wheels off a car and asking people if they still want to buy it. Exactly. And, of course, all of this monorail-bashing comes precisely at the time when most Americans are waking up to the fact that, gee, $3 gas is expensive. From the PI, "Gas price jump boosts use of mass transit": "...ridership on the Metro during the first two weeks of September was up more than 4 percent from August and more than 10 percent from a year ago. Personally, I've noticed that the 545 is pretty full these days; if gas prices continue to climb (and they will), behavior's gonna change. And where will these newfound transit riders go? Apparently ... to the stuck-in-traffic bus. Because the monorail's not gonna happen. Dammit! UPDATE, May 6, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated September 16, 2005 8:52 PM. August 17, 2005Monorail UpdatesIt's been a bit since I've blogged about the Monorail, but there's a handful of articles out today that caught my eye. First up is the Seattle Times ("Report challenges monorail's growth"), wherein local economist Dick Conway believes that the Monorail-funding MVET will not grow as fast as estimates he's issued previously. The old estimate? 4.8%. The new one? Just 4.4%. It's notable that both of these numbers are well under the 6.1% that the Monorail authority is using to plan their finances. Second on the list is Seattle Weekly ("'Joel Horn Lied To Us'"): One of two elected members of the board of the Seattle Monorail Project says that former Executive Director Joel Horn lied about a bid to build the project, the details of which were at the time undisclosed, by telling her that news reports about the bid being $200 million too high were not accurate. Finally, the last article is an op-ed piece from Seattle Weekly's reliably-cranky pseudo-Seattleite Knute Berger, aka "Mossback" ("Time for a Mercy Killing"): [Seattle Mayor Greg] Nickels asked the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) board to decide by Sept. 15 whether to ask voters in November to approve changes to the plan that might salvage the troubled line. Without voter involvement in November, Nickels effectively said, the city would bring the project to a standstill, presumably by refusing to issue permits to build the Green Line from Ballard to West Seattle. I've written before about what I think should be done with the Monorail, and I stand by that piece. It saddens me profoundly that the project has been so badly managed, and is miles from the mark. At this point, I'll be shocked if we wind up building the damn thing. Seattle needs good mass transit, and the Link light rail is only one part of that puzzle. Monorail could have been an outstanding in-city complement (and alternative to Metro). No wonder the Economist ragged on us (registration required). We frickin' deserve it. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 17, 2005 12:40 PM. July 8, 2005PI: "A look at the monorail project options"The PI has a good article this morning, summarizing the various options available to the monorail board - as well as an FAQ. Some samples:
Good information, presented simply and clearly. Worth a read. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 8, 2005 10:34 AM. July 7, 2005Standing Room Only
The format was very specific: all the board members were present (and taking notes); citizens who wished to address the board simply signed up on a sheet. Speakers were allocated three minutes to say whatever they wanted. By the time I'd arrived, there were already 60 people on the list. And by the time I left - during a break, shortly before 9 PM - we'd only gone through 38 of them. I've had the bulk of my day to think about the meeting, and to assess my feelings about this project. Going to these kinds of forums can give you information - intangibles, mostly, like body language or vocal inflection - that simply doesn't make the newspaper. I think I needed to see the whites of people's eyes - both the board and the public - to be truly informed. In terms of my fellow Seattleites, they tended to clump into a few core groups:
People, despite their political views, were unfailing polite and courteous to the board members. This was a plus. The audience kept the booing, hissing and heckling to a bare minimum as well. If I had to characterize the overall tone of the evening, I would say that people want transit, but don't trust the current leadership of the SMP to bring it to them. The board has failed to control costs (SMP has spent $182 million (!) in two years, and is blowing $4M a month on its staff and expenses. By point of contrast, it took Sound Transit five years to spend $100M), and the monorail organization is seen as clubby, insular, and more focused on spin than transparency. The core problem, in short, is trust. We have in front of us a proposal to build the monorail. Let's assume for the moment that it can be done. If that's the case ... are the people in charge the right people to do it? Projects, by their very nature, are built on assumptions and projections. Somewhere, an MBA with a copy of Excel typed a number into a cell that represents fare-box revenue, or ridership numbers, or cost-overruns, or expected variance in the cost of steel. Big projects like this are built on compounded assumptions - assumptions on top of assumptions, interacting in an exponential, not linear, fashion. Such is the nature of projections. Yet some projections are better than others, and the difference is the people making the projections. The public must have confidence that the numbers are sound. We don't have that confidence today. The current proposal has a number of assumptions - about the growth of Seattle's taxable car base, about riders using monorail instead of Metro, about the ability of the project to break even operationally (something that no other transit system in the country does) - that, taken together, make me very nervous. Ask yourself: if the monorail existed, how much would you pay to ride it? $1? $2? $5? If I'm downtown at Pioneer Square, will I pay $2 to get to Key Arena? What if I'm at Westlake? I pay $1.25 to ride the Alweg Monorail from Westlake to the Seattle Center, but part of that price is the "novelty factor" - I love the monorail, so it's worth the extra few cents to me. Does that "novelty factor" scale to 50,000 trips a day? This is not a trivial point. Someone made an assumption, somewhere, that Joe or Jane Citizen is going to pull cash out of their wallet and give it to the monorail on a day-in, day-out basis. Is the system going to provide enough value - enough differential value - to enough citizens to make it worthwhile? We have projections. But who created those projections? Ultimately, these are the things that scare me about this project.
This is what I think should be done:
Seattle needs transit, and I love the idea of the monorail. But, like so many things, the idea of something is often better than its reality. We need to find out how closely the ideal and the real correlate to one another before we spend any more money on this. And I don't trust this board - or the current SMP organization - to level with me. They've got to go. Just my $0.02. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 7, 2005 7:55 PM. July 6, 2005Off To The Monorail MeetingI'm off to have dinner with my sister and then attend the Monorail meeting at 7. It's in the SMP "Community Room"; I strongly urge anyone with an interest in this project to be there. According to a story I heard on KUOW this morning, last night's meeting in Ballard was packed - 300 people - and pretty rambunctious. SMP has video on their Web site, but I've had no time to watch it. (300k stream, RealPlayer required; low-bandwidth and Windows Media files are available on the site.) I'll post details later tonight. Richard and I have to do some work in the data center, so it may be quite late. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 6, 2005 4:12 PM. July 5, 2005Monorail On "Weekday"Steve Scher and the hard-working folks at KUOW's "Weekday" spent an hour this morning talking about the Monorail; Josh Feit of The Stranger was one of the guests. It was fascinating stuff, and gave a real taste of what we can expect (read: contentious opinions) at the monorail meetings tonight, tomorrow and Thursday. The show is available via streaming MP3 or RealAudio, or via podcast from the KUOW Web site. UPDATE, December 31, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 5, 2005 10:26 AM. July 4, 2005FLASH: Monorail Board Chair And Director Resign!According to Slog, Monorail Chair Tom Weeks and Monorail Director Joel Horn resigned their positions today. The letters are available on Slog; excerpts: "Two weeks ago today, Seattle Monorail Project staff delivered to the Board a fixed-price contract to build the 14-mile Green Line along the voter-approved route from Ballard through Downtown to West Seattle. The proposed agreement to design, build, operate and maintain the Monorail is within voter-approved funding limits. The press release is available from the Seattle Monorail Project site. This is huge, huge news. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the remaining board members take this as a positive cleansing, and an opportunity for a fresh take on the project's financing ... and not as the death knell of elevated transit in the city. UPDATE, May 6, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 4, 2005 4:20 PM. July 3, 2005BusMonsterGuido sent me a link yesterday to a kick-ass new site that fuses Google Maps, Metro's Trip Planner, and the UW ITS "MyBus" web services. It's called BusMonster. (And it's not compatible with Safari yet, so you'll need Firefox or IE to see it.) Essentially, the site allows you to search for bus information in King County. Simply type in the route number you're interested in (e.g., "43") and the system plots the travel path for the bus in question. It's not unlike the map you can get from Metro, except that BusMonster does a better job of putting the route map in context of the rest of the city (bodies of water, nearby streets, and so on). BusMonster also lets you search for a place (e.g., "Safeco Field"), at which point you can see what routes are nearby. But BusMonster moves into the "astoundingly cool" category through the interactive, live nature of its map. First of all, the map uses live GPS data to plot the actual position of the bus on the route. You can see where the bus(es) is(are), right now, this second. Second, you can click on any number of stops for more information about the routes that stop there, and when the next one is due. Again, all live. This thing is hot. I got pretty excited back in April about the Craigslist/Google fusion, but this takes it to a whole new level. The developer, Chris Smoak, has a blog. I'm so gonna use this thing. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 3, 2005 10:18 AM. July 1, 2005Monorail Financing Plan KilledAs of last night, the board of the Seattle Monorail Project has killed the $11Bn, junk-bond financing scheme to pay for the transit system: "The Seattle Monorail Project board killed the system's controversial financing plan last night. Whew! OK, so we've dodged the bullet on the financing. Now we need some political backbone to go to the voters and put together a funding package that will allow us to build the Green Line and pay it off in a reasonable period. One concern: "But another deadline looms also. If the Notice to Proceed has not been issued by mid-October, contract prices escalate by 0.25 percent per month, Weeks said. If no notice has been issued by mid-December, [bidder] Cascadia can walk away." -PI We better get busy. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 1, 2005 8:40 AM. June 30, 2005Monorail: Change Or FailHoo, boy. Here we go - the papers are consumed today with monorail news and opinion:
However, the best piece comes from Josh Feit at The Stranger, writing in his "Counter Intel" column: "After backing the monorail through four elections, championing the project, and debunking the opposition in article after article, I cannot stand by the current finance plan. My disillusionment increased in recent months as news about Seattle Monorail Project's "creative financing" plan started to leak. As it turns out, the agency was also misleading us into believing the payment plan would live up to voter expectations. But $11 billion in debt service!?" Like Feit, I've been a big, big booster of the Monorail (but unlike Feit, Joel Horn is unlikely to call me for moral support). And, like Feit, I'm aghast at the financing. The proposal itself I'm actually OK with. But the approach of the SMP leadership - spin and denial - scares me to death. These are the people we're trusting with this project? What else don't we know? Fortunately, it sounds like the City Council is coming to their senses. Richard Conlin said this morning on KUOW that he is voting against the project. Nick Licata and Tom Carr, staunch supporters both, have sent a "letter of concern" to the SMP board (see link, above). It looks like hard questions will be asked. There may be a way of salvaging all this yet. Allie took me to task in email yesterday: "You are making me furious Mr. Suddenly Anti-Monorail! She's totally right. We do need a rail-based transit system in Seattle. And a monorail makes a lot of sense, given our unique geography - subways are expensive (tunneling), standard light rail runs "at grade" (a codeword meaning "in traffic with everyone else") and so going up ("rise above it all", right?) makes a hell of a lot of sense. However. The monorail proposal and the monorail financing are two different things. The Stranger really called it when they said, "Hey, we're good with the proposal - we need the Green Line, and we need it built just this way. But we also need to not pay $11 billion for the thing. Let's fix the financing, give Joel Horn the boot, and get going with this thing." Bingo. The Green Line is, on its own, an amusement park ride. No, really. It is. It's a point-to-point line that will provide a backbone for future line development. The trick to the "future line development" - be it in 2020 or 2030 or, God forbid, 2078, is having funds available from a willing populace who sees additional lines as a smart investment. We can be assured, without question, that spending $11Bn on the Green Line will prevent the construction of any future lines. And so we get an amusement park ride. For what it's worth, it cost $1.4Bn to build Disney's California Adventure. If we're going to get an amusement park ride, let's consider getting a frickin' coaster out of it, huh? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 30, 2005 1:02 PM. June 29, 2005Back To The Ballot BoxHoly cow! Last night, Chris and I talked for quite a while about the monorail, and I pointed out that The Stranger had been eerily mute, from an op-ed standpoint, about the recent project revelations. Dan Savage and company have been among the staunchest supporters of the monorail, and the least patient with "The Seattle Way" of doing things. I told Chris that if The Stranger came out against the monorail plan, it would signal the beginning of the end - when your best friends tell you your baby is ugly, well, it's because your baby is ugly. Well, the cat is out of the bag. About two hours ago, the Stranger posted this article, "Back To The Ballot Box" to their blog: "In today's Stranger, we call for a revote on the monorail's financing plan, and the resignation of Seattle Monorail Project director Joel Horn..." This sums up my feelings on the subject perfectly. Do we need transit? Yes. Do we need a monorail? Sure. Is a Ballard-to-West-Seattle line an appropriate first step? Yes. But do we need this plan, funded this way? Hell, no. From a public-opinion standpoint, this is a big, big deal. I can't wait to read the full article tomorrow. UPDATE, May 6, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 29, 2005 4:22 PM. June 28, 2005Monorail Coverage Du JourIt looks like the red flashing lights and klaxon on the Monorail have (finally) caught the attention of the city council and others. Both the Times and PI are running articles this morning about what a mess we're in:
My favorite (scariest) quote comes from council member Richard McIver (via the PI): "I'm concerned about being able to be indemnified, being able to be held harmless from liability and also knowing for sure that if something happens, the monorail, whether it's built or not finished, can be torn down and removed from our streets at their expense. Those are my first concerns." Incidentally, this fear - that we'll spend billions on this project, only to have to spend millions more tearing the sucker down when it fails - was echoed by my Project Management professor, Dr. Ted Klastorin, in an e-mail exchange with me this weekend ("WHOOPS all over again"). Last Fall, Ted was telling everyone that there were lots of risks associated with the Monorail that nobody was paying attention to. He was pushing for the recall, and, at the time, I vigorously disagreed with him. Spirited debate ensued. Sadly, it now looks like he was right. Mea culpa, Ted. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 28, 2005 12:56 PM. June 27, 2005Monorail Forum On July 6: Be ThereI got a circular in the mail from the Seattle Monorail Project over the weekend. They are holding three "community sessions" to let the public "provide comments on the agreement reached with the Cascadia Monorail Company to build the Green Line." The sessions are July 5 (Ballard High School), July 6 (SMP Community Room) and July (West Seattle High School). They're all at 7 PM. I'm going to be at the one on the 6th, and I encourage anyone with an interest in this project to be there. Joel Connelly weighed in on this business in this morning's PI: "On Sunday last, our family welcomed a lovely but vocal baby into the world. A day later we learned that, if she settles here, the kid will be paying for the Seattle Monorail Project until she's 45 years old." Sheesh. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 27, 2005 10:52 AM. June 24, 2005Times: "How monorail got into a bind"This morning's Seattle Times has the latest on the monorail: "How did the Seattle Monorail Project stumble into this predicament? This sums it up: "We got into this because every one of the bad things that could happen, has happened," [Monorail board member Cindi] Laws said. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 24, 2005 12:19 PM. June 23, 2005Eleven. Billion. Dollars.Well, the news on the monorail is out, and it's even worse than was rumored. The short version? The Seattle Monorail Project has decided to pursue a direction that involves issuing junk bonds to pay for construction, which means that the total cost of this train will be around $11B when all is said and done. The car-tab tax will run out in - wait for it - 2050. We have one bidder. We have all kinds of construction and operating risk. And in exchange, we get a monorail line with fewer stops than were promised, lower frequency than was promised, fatter columns, bigger stations - oh, hell, the thing sucks. It's like some dark transit nightmare instead of the "ribbon in the sky" we all hoped it would be back in 2002. This is all compounded by some patently-unrealistic assumptions about the growth of the taxable car-tab base here in the city, as well as the ability of the system to be operationally profitable in a few short years. The news coverage here in Seattle has been extensive (Times, PI) and the op-ed pieces are pretty stinging, too (PI). The state auditor and treasurer are coming out against this in a big way: "This week it was revealed it will cost more than $11 billion to pay for the 14-mile monorail Green Line project and the debt to finance it. That's more than three times what Sound Transit will pay for construction and debt service for its 14-mile light rail line from downtown Seattle to Tukwila. The Green Line was slated to be the first of many lines that would connect and support the city. On its own, it's not a solution - it's just a point-to-point transit system in the air. With this kind of debt load and the public backlash, we can be guaranteed that there will never be another monorail extension. The Green Line will be ... it. Which makes it a 14-mile amusement park ride. At this point, only the Mayor and the City Council can do anything to stop this madnesss. I am looking forward to being at the city council hearings. We have to stop this thing now. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 23, 2005 7:56 PM. June 13, 2005Monorail: "The New Deal"The Stranger has more news on the deal reached between the Seattle Monorail Project and Cascadia: "The contract Horn described will be around $1.6 billion, which agency officials say is within the borrowing limits imposed on the agency by its authorizing legislation. It will include 16 of the 19 stations that were originally planned..." These numbers are being contested by OnTrack: "...assailing the SMP's cost estimate of $1.6 billion. Including contingencies, existing debt, operating costs, and utility relocation expenses, the group charged, brings the total cost of the monorail above $2 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars-hundreds of millions more than the $1.75 billion the monorail agency estimated in 2002." So - "basically correct" numbers add up two different ways? Or are we playing accounting games, or what? This is too large - and too important - a project to greenlight by the city council if we can't agree on how the figures should come together. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 13, 2005 2:53 PM. June 10, 2005More Monorail NewsSo yesterday I posted that I'm begging to get afraid of the Seattle Monorail Project, and late last night I saw these articles on Seattle Weekly:
Oh, boy. This is going to be brutal. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 10, 2005 8:57 AM. June 9, 2005Monorail Over Budget?I'm worried about the Seattle Monorail Project. I have been a longtime fan/proponent of the proposed Green Line, but things seem to be going deeply, deeply astray on this train. The Puget Sound Business Journal ran an excellent piece of reporting a few weeks back, "Daring ride: Monorail at risk": "Seattle taxpayers have known for two years now that tax collections for the monorail, made through a special motor vehicle excise duty, are about 30 percent below initial projections. That's because the tax base -- taxable vehicles in the city -- proved to be $1 billion smaller than the agency estimated. Meantime, public attention continues to focus on negotiations with the project's only bidder, a consortium called Cascadia Monorail, in which one of two lead construction partners recently quit after citing financial risk." Now, this article on SLOG (The blog for Seattle's alt-weekly, The Stranger): "Seattle Monorail Project director Joel Horn, who announced that the SMP had wrapped up its negotiations with the monorail bidder, Cascadia Monorail Company, on Friday, acknowledged to me on Tuesday that the new cost estimate for the monorail was substantially higher than the $1.79 billion estimate released in 2002." Hold on a minute. We have a revenue shortfall. We have a single bidder (e.g., a non-competitive sitution). We have a system that has been assured can be built "on time and on budget" for the last three years. And now we're getting admission that the price tag could be north of $2 BILLION? This seems like madness. What if we build it and run out of money? Are we going to be left with a Safeco-Field-to-Key-Arena amusement park ride? I hope the city council actually starts asking hard questions. I've been as big a proponent of "Build the Monorail!" as anyone, but this is scaring the hell out of me. UPDATE, May 6, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 9, 2005 9:45 AM. March 15, 2005Viaduct Tunnel Fly-ThroughFollowing on my post about running on the Viaduct during the St. Patrick's Day Run, Allie sent me this cool-ass link to the Mayor's "Viaduct" page. It has a computer-simulated fly-through of the proposed tunnel (scroll down until you see "See the Tunnel Simulation!"). RealVideo required. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 15, 2005 9:18 AM. December 30, 2004Slashdot on FlexcarBack in October, I wrote a piece about Flexcar, a car-sharing service here in Seattle (and several other cities). Well, the AP has done a piece on Zipcar (a Boston Flexcar clone), and now Slashdot has picked up the thread. For what it's worth, I've been car-free for one year this last Monday. And I love Flexcar. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 30, 2004 10:25 PM. December 20, 2004Let's Monorail!
The Seattle Monorail is back in action! The line, which has been operating continuously since the 1962 World's Fair, was shut down last Memorial Day after a fire broke out on one of the trains. A thorough inspection was done, the cause was determined, and steps have been taken to prevent it from happening ever again. Earlier this week, Mayor Nickels and Santa Claus were the first to welcome the Monorail back to service. Mary and I love the monorail, and we're both pretty excited that the Green Line is, at last, going to be built (after surviving the latest attempt on its life, in the form of Initiative 83). While I'm sad that the original system will be torn down to make way for the new one, I'm glad that Seattle is getting a 14-mile mass-transit system. At last. Anyhow. Mary and I managed to sit in the front of the car during our ride today, so I whipped out my Sony digital camera and shot some footage. The camera limits me to 15-second clips (drat!), so I had to splice everything together in iMovie to make it cohesive. If you've never ridden the monorail: we start at Westlake Center, run down 5th avenue, bank to the right at Fisher Plaza, go through the EMP, and then end at the Seattle Center. The clip is about a minute long, and you can click here to view it (4.8 MB, QuickTime required). Enjoy! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 20, 2004 9:55 PM. |
Yesterday was the last "ride free" day for Seattle's newly-installed South Lake Union Trolley (aka, "the SLUT"), so Elaine, Juli and I decided to hop aboard, ride it end-to-end, and see what all the fuss was about.
Last weekend, Elaine and I went to Vancouver for a quick getaway and dinner with family. The border was no problem (take those passports, kids!), so we found ourselves in downtown Van with a late morning, early afternoon and chunk of early evening at our disposal.
Back in September, I attended a family barbecue and wound up chatting with Martin, an old friend of the family. After we got past the usual, gosh-haven't-seen-you-in-three-decades kinds of conversation (holds hand 3 feet from the floor: "wow, you were just this high!"), we got to talking about what we were up to these days. Turns out that Martin is a fellow UW MBA alum (Class of '81, yo) ... and a Program Manager at Sound Transit.
Another day as a Planner, and another marathon session of airports, concourses, and locking your traytable and putting your seat in the fully-upright position. Yep, I'm back in the UK, and will be here through Thursday, the 29th.
One other, marathon-related fact: the historic 
Last night's public hearing for the Seattle Monorail Project was packed. Formally, the public-comment section didn't begin until 7 PM; I arrived around 6:45, and there already wasn't any place to sit. More folks arrived as the night went on. (I'd put attendance well into the hundreds, but I'm notoriously bad at "sizing" crowds.)