By Matt the Engineer on March 17, 2010
In our attempt at making cities more friendly for bicycling, we often talk of bike paths as being the gold standard. But cars never settled for paths – riddled with stop lights, crosswalks, and pedestrians – for their ideal commute. I think it’s time to consider a bicycle freeway downtown.
My idea of a bicycle freeway would [...]
Posted in bikeway
By Matt the Engineer on March 5, 2010
I’m a fan of tearing down the Viaduct, think we should downscale our ferry terminal, and believe we should get rid of 520 as well. Just as road capacity creates sprawl, reducing capacity builds density. It will be painful at first, as people increase their commute times until they decide to move near their job, [...]
Posted in bridge
By Matt the Engineer on March 3, 2010
Apropos of nothing, let’s consider how car ferries impact Seattle’s waterfront. Even in a car-based world it makes little sense to put such a large source of cars right in the middle of the city. In such a world it’s a bit of a stretch to think of a far-west sider driving on to a ferry to drive [...]
Posted in ferries, waterfront
By Matt the Engineer on February 28, 2010
I’m taking my son and niece on the light rail to find parks today, and found this resource. It has walking maps of all of the Rainier Valley light rail stations. It looks like it’s been around a while and people around here may already know about it, but I hadn’t so I thought I’d [...]
Posted in link light rail, walking
By Matt the Engineer on February 26, 2010
The Seattle Times has been running a full court press to build 520 in any way the state (and Microsoft) wants. It’s always felt to me that money drives news in our local papers (now paper), but with Microsoft paying $40,000 for a full page ad supporting the bridge it’s not even being done under [...]
Posted in bridge, subsidies
By Matt the Engineer on February 18, 2010
We all know WSDOT loves cars, but this is just sad.
Go to the WSDOT home page to see their list of priorities, click on “Climate Change.”
Look for their “Climate Change Tools,” click on “Moving Washington.”
Notice first that this page is aimed at reducing congestion. Then notice that their first strategy is to add capacity*.
So according [...]
Posted in WSDOT
By Matt the Engineer on February 17, 2010
KUOW* recently played one of Alex Steffen’s Town Hall talks from a few months ago, and I highly recommend listening to them. He claims that Seattle has a world reputation as a green city, which is based purely on our clean hydroelectric energy source, not the way we run our city or region. But we [...]
Posted in climate change
By Matt the Engineer on February 8, 2010
It occurred to me that the electronic signs in Link’s windows telling you their destination are almost useless, since we currently only have one line. Also, the electronic signs announcing departing trains will be a bit sad, with only one destination announced per direction. I therefore suggest the following use, for one day humor value:
1. Change train [...]
Posted in LINK
By Matt the Engineer on February 5, 2010
I love the stickers someone placed on Metro buses. Stabbing Prohibited and No Urinating. This should remove a few common bus faux pas.
Posted in Metro, policy
By Matt the Engineer on January 29, 2010
SeattleBubble just posted some very interesting numbers for the 25 most populated cities in the US. There are a few lessons from this set of data, but my favorite is how cheap this city is – as dense cities go. Click on the “Density” tab, and we’re #8. Our Income/Rent ratio is 5 – much [...]
Posted in affordability, density
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