“We are at a political stalemate and must find a path forward to replace the viaduct,” Gregoire said in a statement. “I don’t believe that, without a vote, either option will move forward. We need to hear directly from the people for whom this decision has the most impact.“

Oh wait, I’m sorry. That was when she delayed a decision over two years ago and called for a public vote. The vote happened, two years went by, and now she wants to delay yet again:

“As a result of the continued overwhelming response and input on replacement options from stakeholders, we have asked our respective transportation teams to continue their review. Once this information is in hand, and working closely together, a final recommendation will be made to the state Legislature in January,” they wrote in the joint letter.

I held out a faint hope that, with reelection out of the way, the Governor would start governing again. But I guess she’s going to just lay low for the next four years so that big mean scary Dino Rossi won’t have anything to hang on her in 2012. Hell, it worked last time!

Meanwhile, the Times says that the tunnel is “back in play.” What part of the 70-30 “no tunnel” vote in 2007 do these people not understand?

It has been around 14 months since the city adopted the bicycle master plan and SDOT has made great strides. Over the summer it seamed like every time I rode somewhere there were new bike lanes or sharrows popping up. There were some snafus and I think the city still doesn’t fully understand how to design bicycle facilities but they are working it out (although slower than I would like).

Bike lanes are great but SDOT shouldn’t stop there. We only need to look to Portland or Boulder to see all of the amazing bicycle facilities that can be built when you really want to. So far the city has done a lot of the low hanging project that are just obvious but soon the city needs to show how serious it is about bicycle facilities and start taking out parking and vehicle lanes. We all know what happened to Stone Way. I think that was a very important lesson for the city.

One corridor that I think these more advanced types of bicycle facilities are especially warranted are along Eastlake Ave. It connects Seattle’s largest urban villages, has a lot of bicycle traffic and it should be designed accordingly.

The most important thing Eastlake Ave needs are cycle tracks (not bike lanes) from Fairview to the Harvard. Actually the cycle tracks could even go all the way up to Ravenna or even Lake City Way but again I won’t touch on that.

Eastlake is uniquely suited to have cycle tracks. The blocks are very long in the N/S direction which reduces the number point in which the bicyclist have to interact with vehicles. Additionally there are a only a few driveways that connect to Eastlake Ave. Again this reduces the number of times that bicyclist interact with vehicles. Eastlake would become the defecto N/S spine of the bicycle network connecting to the Burke and Ravenna.

Cycle tracks are very common in Scandinavian cities and provide the most attractive bicycle facility possible in urban environments. Instead of wedging bicyclist between parked and traveling cars cycle tracks move the bicyclist to the very edge of the road, next to the sidewalk. Bicyclist are protected from moving cars by a 2-3 foot median and when possible parked cars. The most important aspect of cycle tracks are that even an average person who wouldn’t normal ride in the road will use them. If you want to learn more about cycle tracks watch this presentation or flip through the power point.

This is a quick sketch I made to see how cycle tracks might be fit into the ROW. Eastlake is around 55 feet wide. I also think that the intersection with Harvard and Fairview should be looked at because they are major points where bicyclist branch off. Harvard is a perfect location to install a bicycle signal with a protected left turn phase. My only serious accident was at this intersection and it wouldn’t have been serious if there was a protected left turn.

This cycle track in Melbourne is what cycle tracks in the Seattle might look like.

At the end of the day bicycling has to become safer and more attractive if it is to become accepted as an integral part of our transportation system. Bike lanes are a awesome but cycle tracks are the type of segregated bicycle facilities that really start to bring around the necessary paradigm shift.

Andrew at STB, echoing concerns I’ve heard elsewhere, says, “this kind of snowpacolypse happens once every fifteen or twenty years. It’s not worth the investment, especially not an [sic] rushed, reactionary spending spree.”

I get that. Obviously there’s a cost-benefit calculus that must be applied. But I’m not really interested in the response to a “snowpacolypse,” which is, indeed, an outlier event. I’m talking about the city’s annual haphazard response to the one or two inches of snow that we get nearly every winter. It’s hard to believe, but we apparently average 7.3 inches per year.

On Wednesday, December 17, before any snow had fallen in Seattle, the Seattle Public Schools panicked and closed school, fearing (quite rightly) that SDOT would not be able to clear the roads. As it turned out, no snow fell until the next day. Schools closed Thursday and Friday as well. As I recall, something similar happening last winter as well — schools closed for snow that never materialized. (The big snowstorm came that following weekend, Thursday’s snow was the typical 1-2 inches that paralyzes the city nearly every year.)

Obviously the weather here is notoriously finicky, and I’m not suggesting that people ought to be able to predict the future, but the schools have an itchy trigger finger with snow closures because they know what a disaster this city turns into with just an inch of snow. And closing school is a major hassle for low-income parents, who can’t just take the day off or hire a sitter. It hurts businesses, too.

As for a solution, I don’t have a particular dog in the sand-vs-salt fight. If the city says that salt is problematic for Puget Sound, fine, I believe them. On the transit front, I think Matt’s suggestions (and the ones in the comments) on how to improve Metro service make a lot of sense. A few more sand trucks wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Finally, did you know that we’re in the middle of a “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” weather pattern, which causes colder, wetter weather in the Pacific Northwest? Me neither! Or that climate change models predict colder, wetter winters on top of that? Seattle will no doubt continue to experience a few inches of snow every year, and the city needs to figure out how to deal with it better.

If you walked around downtown Phoenix on Saturday, you saw something unusual: people. Thanks to light rail, bars and restaurants that are nearly empty on many weekends were buzzing with people.

(via)

I hope to have some more reports soon from friends who rode it this week. The catch, of course, is re-orienting downtown Phoenix’s development to make it more attractive as a form of commuter transit, not just a recreational or tourist people-mover.

Providing emergency response services is priority one. Getting the transit system up and running should be priority two.

Greg Nickels is the Ray Nagin of the North. Ron Sims is our Kathleen Blanco. Let’s get it together, folks.

By perhaps the 2nd or 3rd day of snow and only after a painful learning curve, buses in Seattle seem to have settled into a comfortable routine. Sure it’s a routine where half of the buses aren’t running, and most routes are unpredictable in terms of pickup and travel times, but at least the routes have settled down. However, these routes don’t look much like their published adverse weather routes (for example the 13 adverse weather route – had planned on still making it up the hill). And during the first days of snow people were stranded without even knowing which bus stop to wait at or which bus to take.

I humbly submit to the Internet my weather plan for the next snow season.

1. Find the most level, drivable route to serve a neighborhood. One way of doing this is to look at the routes as they exist right now. Now name these routes something easy, like #1S replacing the #1 (S for snow).

2. At the first hint of snow, announce to every media outlet you can that Seattle will be switching to snow routes. This shouldn’t be hard, since news reporters love this sort of thing. And don’t overlook the “first hint of snow” piece of this – buses are no good to anyone if they’re broken down on hills.

3. At every stop list directions to the nearest snow route stop, the snow route number, and a phone number to call if you need assistance (for those that can’t walk down a snow-covered hill).

4. Every non-articulated bus that serves a route that is canceled should now join these snow routes. This is critical, since we need to keep frequency high on these now overloaded routes.

5. 4×4 shuttle buses can ferry people up and down hills where required.

6. I’d have the city send someone around to shovel snow off of at least a few walking routes from each hill.

Yes, this will result in people that live on hills having to do a little more walking in the snow. But I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking an extra 10 minute walk to a reliable and predictable bus beats the current system hands-down.

The line ran until the mid-80s, ending largely with wood chip traffic to a mill in Port Townsend that made “pulp liquor”, a cellulosic liquid used in Japan industrially.

In retrospect, it probably would have been cheaper to keep this line running than to subsidize air travel to PA and build a new Hood Canal Bridge for the car and truck traffic. Most of the growth on the peninsula, however, is retirement housing and retailing for long-time suburbanites. Eventually the fuel-cost axe will fall on their supply line, but when it does it will probably not be practical to bring back the rail line.

Is this totally beyond us as a civilization? Build us some nice cozy bus stops, and then build so more in a field so the homeless people can live there.

The defensive posture taken by public design, to discourage “loitering”, has eroded our public pleasures. It might be expensive to provide fields of bus shelters to the homeless, and it might be unfair if the transit agency were tasked with this job, but how great would it be if you could be warm while you waited for a bus?

Deep in the article you’ll note Weyrich’s suggestion that a streetcar should carry traffic all day long, with a less pronounced peaking for commuter traffic. To some extent this happens when a near city neighborhood patronizes a downtown readily, or when a mix of uses keeps people busy over longer periods of the day.

Weyrich was politically active during a period of time that saw the collapse of the rail industry in the face of the interstates, the assumption by Amtrak of all the retirement obligations of the passenger crews of the nation’s railroads, the devastation of the American inner-city core, and the rebuilding of the industry into a few huge lines, and the rebirth of the American ‘downtown’. He shared with William Buckley the attribute of having matured.