By Matt the Engineer on December 30, 2010
Today there was a discussion on Seattle Transit Blog about the benefits and drawbacks of cutting off bus service from the south to downtown Seattle and instead shuffling everyone onto LINK trains. The core of the argument is cost savings vs. speed, and considering KC Metro is going through major cuts it’s time for unpleasant [...]
Posted in fares, King County Metro, LINK
By Frank on December 30, 2010
Well, look at that. Turns out that other mayors besides Seattle’s also have trouble snapping their fingers and making snow disappear: As New York City struggled with huge snowdrifts left by a crippling blizzard the day before, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg acknowledged on Tuesday that the cleanup had been slower than expected and the impact worse [...]
Posted in Weather
By Frank on December 30, 2010
Via Brendan Kiley, I see that the state ferry system is going to start selling web ads. I can’t say that I have a problem with this in theory. Governments sell ad space on visually prominent physical and virtual spaces all the time. However, I’m pretty skeptical that this is the answer to any serious [...]
Posted in Revenue
By Frank on December 20, 2010
So the Russians are building out a high-speed rail network. Will this finally get Americans interested in seriously investing in HSR? 21st-century space race anyone?
Posted in high speed rail
By Frank on December 20, 2010
I’m a bit late to this, but I wanted to call out this CD News post on a potential re-route to the 3/4 that Metro is apparently studying. As someone who spends a lot of time on the 3/4, I’m certainly in favor of anything that makes it more reliable. What makes current service so [...]
Posted in King County Metro, Uncategorized
By joshuadf on December 13, 2010
For retailers, the holiday season accounts for a huge percentage of annual sales, and I recently heard that Amazon.com designed its EC2 cloud computing service to meet the holiday spike in online retailing as well. The effects of this spike spill over into other sectors of the economy, such as shipping. Unfortunately, transit service seems [...]
Posted in Uncategorized
By Matt the Engineer on December 10, 2010
And the winner is: “Seattle Tunneling Partners” (whoever that is) with a bid within 0.02% of the maximum and a grade of C- (losing bidder was also within 0.02% of the maximum and had a grade of F). The Slog has the only coverage I’ve seen so far, but there will be more… oh yes, [...]
Posted in tunnel, WSDOT
By Matt the Engineer on December 8, 2010
If our cities density and economic strength were measured in tall skyscrapers, then we’d be failing. “America’s share of the 100 tallest buildings will fall from 80 percent in 1990 to 18 percent by 2012.” (DJC, expensive registration required*) So I ask: are we afraid to build tall buildings because of terror**? Is it our weak [...]
Posted in 20th century, economy
By Frank on December 1, 2010
Erica Barnett says there’s been some great progress with the multifamily zoning codes. A whopping 8% of the city’s land can now be developed without minimum parking requirements. Lots of good stuff in there, be sure to click through to read the details. This will only affect a small chunk of the city’s land, as [...]
Posted in Uncategorized
By Frank on November 22, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized
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