Construction About to Begin on Westlake Transit Hub for Streetcar

Yesterday I was kvetching to SDOT about the absence of any bike racks at the Westlake entrance to the light rail tunnel--either outside or inside--and I was told that I'd be happy to hear about the bike racks planned for the Westlake Streetcar Plaza. (The Southlake blog was happy to hear about the Plaza, so there was precedent.)

Construction begins this January and is supposed to finish by April.

The new Plaza is on one hand designed to improve "connectivity" between the Monorail and the streetcar, and on the other, to make the intersection of 5th Avenue, Stewart, Westlake, and Olive Way less of a confusing invitation to collisions with other cars and pedestrians. The 1.3-mile-traveling streetcar is currently averaging a little over 1,300 riders per day, and as full capacity is 12,600 passengers, it could use a little connectivity.

The plan expands the existing McGraw Square (which is clearly a triangle) to take over Westlake where the streetcar's terminus is. (You can see where the nip-and-tuck that they're going to do on Westlake is here.) This is probably a good idea, streetcar or no--currently it feels like you have to cross the street three times to go a block in that area.

I can't tell you what it will cost; I've visited SDOT's Westlake Transportation Hub Strategy page and downloaded three different pdfs (there are "big tree" and "big raingarden" design concepts for the Plaza), but apparently there are no costs associated with this project that are worth mentioning. This lack of transparency from SDOT peeves the Seattle Times ("Streetcar cost overruns"), which has unearthed $4.3 million in unannounced costs associated with the streetcar line.

I continued lobbying SDOT for a few hundreds dollars' worth of bike racks proximate to a transit option I actually use. (I can't imagine why anyone on a bike would take either the Monorail or the streetcar from downtown, unless they were running ahead of schedule and wanted to waste a few minutes.)

After supplying SDOT with this feedback, I asked Nordstrom's if they had a problem with bike racks on the Pine Street sidewalk, and while assuring me that Nordstrom's was pro-bike, the spokesperson told me all he could think of was that the sidewalk might be a little narrow. Fair enough. But as there is limited bike storage capacity on the trains, bike racks inside the tunnel make even more sense, as riders would have the option of leaving their bikes at the station.

Call it a connectivity improvement.