A conversation with Seattle
Overnight, a commenter on a story about the violent crime rate in downtown Seattle changed the headline for everyone. In a follow-on story to the shooting of a Metro bus driver, the Times supported the Downtown Seattle Association’s contention that crime is getting worse, before noting that the data say no, same old, same old. Continue reading Just Like at Gawker, Commenter Rewrites Seattle Times Headline on Crime
Surprisingly, the audience for this particular piece of political theatre is the state legislature in Olympia, as they control King County’s ability to create more stable funding mechanisms for Metro, but have been reluctant to cede that authority, despite King County’s evident willingness to pay. Continue reading Why Your King County Metro Bus Route’s Future is Up to the State
In a related Reuters story, APTA spotlights Seattle, “where transit rides rose 11.8 percent over the year as the metropolitan area added more than 30,000 jobs.” From January 2012 to January 2013, the state of Washington added some 65,800 jobs (98 percent of which were in the private sector), with the unemployment rate now holding steady at around 7.5 percent statewide, 6.3 percent in Seattle. Continue reading Seattle Takes Light Rail Train to Job Growth
WhichBus approaches the Seattle bus dilemma from a different direction than OBA, which assumes that you know where you are and where you’re going. (You can search out these particulars using OBA, but it’s not as easy as it could be.) WhichBus uses King County Metro’s real-time data to help you solve how to get from A to B. Continue reading New Trip-Planning App WhichBus Reaches Private Beta
The idea puts some Seattle Times commenters ranters in a tight spot, where they have to portray this eminently capitalist solution to a supply-and-demand problem as “socialist” because it is being thought of by a transit agency. (The reverse is clearly true: Free parking is socialism.) But at first glance, it seems like this might hurt transit ridership, and wouldn’t that be a problem? Continue reading Would You Pay to Park & Ride? Should You?
Moving ahead with the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement project, Washington Department of Transportation crews will reroute Alaskan Way traffic south of Spring Street to a newly improved road below the viaduct. That in turn will change the way you get to the ferry toll plaza at Colman Dock. Continue reading Alaskan Way Reroute Begins 2nd Week of May
We were already running late–the driver had arrived at his second stop on the run 5 minutes behind and yawning, as if from a nap, and managed to coast a bit past every stop on the way, coming to a halt next to a pole, usually, that people had to insinuate themselves around to get on or off. Occasionally he stopped for no one. Continue reading Make the Bus Suck Less–Advice for Seattle’s New Transit Riders Union