Mike McGinn has proposed a new light rail line be built to connect West Seattle, Belltown, Queen Anne, Ballard, Fremont, and Ballard to downtown. I have no idea of his exact plan, but I’d like to speculate. Based on my previous idea for an Aurora trolley line, I present the Aurora Light Rail:
With removing the Viaduct, 99 will have much less traffic. My idea is to reduce it to a boulevard with a single lane in each direction and light rail in the middle, from downtown to the bridge. This allows us to use the existing bridge, as crossing the ship canal may be the most expensive component to a light rail system.
Note also the new pedestrian tunnel from the waterfront to the transit tunnel. A common complaint about using the waterfront as a place for light rail is that it won’t be connected to Link. But it takes only minutes to walk from Link to the waterfront, and an underground tunnel with escalators will reduce this further.
The main detail that needs more thought is at the West Seattle side. I don’t spend much time in West Seattle and am not sure the best route. Ideas?
Also, I haven’t gone as far as thinking out station locations. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Some interesting things happen if (thought experiment) you let them build the tunnel, and then take it over and run light rail north and south on old 99. For starters, you get a high crossing of the ship canal that can cross a 45th Street line to Ballard. We’re all pretty familiar with lay of the land north from the Aurora Bridge.
South of SODO things really get interesting. 99 crosses the Duwamish and heads out towards the airport and then south. Whether your choice is TOD or park’n'ride, the space is there. The currently sparse ridership can be balanced by the existence of a graded and to some extent separated ROW that we already own. If you want to lay 10 miles of light rail and build 100,000 units of green housing in five years, this is the place to do it.
Of course, this is all daydreaming, but it seems as likely as any other daydream we’ve seen lately around these parts.
As far as the West Seattle side goes, it would make a lot of sense to touch, or at least terminate at, the Junction on California. Given the sheer number of restaurants, dense-ish housing nearby (and being built nearby) it would be a good candidate for getting folks on the light rail. However, given that there is no obvious place for placing track & stations aboveground it seems that an underground route would make a lot of sense. Obviously that would make that part of the route more expensive, but it would reach a lot of potential riders and allow people to visit the busiest part of the area without having to park.
I was thinking about this same thing, Matt, thanks for posting.
I agree that it has to terminate at the Alaska Junction, although the station could easily be moved one or two blocks away.
As far as the Queen Anne route, wouldn’t Dexter or Westlake make more sense than Aurora? Then you cross the Fremont bridge and head up Leary, which was one of the streetcar proposals the city council toyed with a ways back.
Otherwise how do you get off of Aurora and still find a way to serve Fremont? N 39th St?
I think if the line were to run down Dexter or Westlake it would effectively bypass a lot of Queen Anne. I live one block west of Taylor and a walk to Dexter and Westlake is significantly more difficult because of the poor amount of crossings over 99. If this were to run on Aurora I’d use it, a lot. If it were on Dexter or Westlake I probably wouldn’t. Now if Aurora became easier to cross it might be different, but that is still a tricky walk because of the hill.
The Fremont Bridge is no good for a light rail system – a frequently opened drawbridge would destroy reliability. I was imagining having light rail drop down through the Aurora bridge on the north side, and turn west just before hitting the troll. We may need to lose a house or two to make this turn and will likely need to remove cars from this block, but it makes a nice direct line down 36th toward Ballard.
True, but you’re talking about jamming a light rail through a pretty thick residential neighborhood. This isn’t a streetcar, it’s grade separated. I don’t know where you get the ROW without pissing off a lot of Fremonters.
A great point. I used to live on QA myself, but up at the top of the hill.
Honestly I think following the route of the monorail/the #15 bus through QA to Ballard is preferable to Fremont.
Either way, there seems to be a choice: you can have Queen Anne, or you can have Fremont, but it’s really hard to see how you can have both.
I see only 8 single family homes and a small apartment complex that would be impacted. I think we could buy them off and redevelop the land if it was really a problem.
I agree. It could just go underground for the couple blocks under Alaska between Fauntleroy and California, so it wouldn’t cost too much.
Oh yeah? You really think eminent domain is that easy to pull off?
I have my doubts.
I have absolutely no idea. In theory we wouldn’t need to remove any of the houses (except maybe one, depending on the turning radius). They just won’t have street access anymore and may have some trouble sleeping.
If it’s really a big deal we could stay elevated until we pass the residential area. Or just choose another route. But we could certainly ask to buy these properties without eminent domain before just giving up.
It’s strange we have to be so careful about every structure for transit. When freeways came through they tore out hundreds of homes.
“When freeways came through they tore out hundreds of homes.”
Dude, that was 50 years ago. A lot’s changed. By the 1970s, even freeways were too controversial for eminent domain, which is why MLK Way (or Empire Way, per the McGinn Campaign) wasn’t replaced by the RH Thompson Freeway.
I say this as someone who’s generally supportive of the concept, btw… I’ve blogged before about how a streetcar could get its own ROW through Fremont.