Recent Stories with tag westlake

PETA kicked off the Seattle Green Festival one day early, with a demonstration at noon at Westlake. Partly obscured by a banner reading, "Clean Your Conscience: Go Vegan! 1 lb. of Meat = 6 Months of Showers," two naked PETA models "showered" in the great outdoors of the pedestrian plaza. Look for all the hot nude action on your local TV news tonight (KOMO 4 and KING 5 KIRO 7 were there).

It's green wisdom that reducing the meat in your diet is a good way of reducing your contribution to CO2 emissions. PETA says why not go whole hog, and leave the hog alone? They quote researchers at the University of Chicago, who "determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering climate change than switching from a standard car to a Toyota Prius."...

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Early Thursday morning on the second floor of Westlake Center, and we're both confused. Me, because I can't understand why the Sprint Wireless store is closed. The college student leading a trolley bag has the same problem, re: the Monorail.

"Excuse me," she says softly. "Do you know why the Monorail isn't running?"

"Probably because it's too early," I say. "Probably doesn't start running 'till nine."

"But I think it should be open," she insists.

Having never met anyone so determined to ride the Monorail, I re-examine the situation. Person in a hurry with trolley bag. Ding! "Wait, are you going to the airport?"

"Yeah," she says....

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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....

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