#7, I-5, Seattle
Weekly hours of bottleneck congestion: 256
Worst bottleneck: Southbound, 45th St/Exit 169
Length of worst bottleneck: 1.46 mi
Weekly hours of congestion on worst bottleneck: 34
Speed of worst bottleneck when congested: 21.3 mph

The expert opinion: “We have one major problem in downtown Seattle, and that is physical restraints,” says Paul Tosch, traffic reporter for KOMO 1000. “We only have so much room to put more freeway through downtown Seattle because we have water to one side and all the downtown buildings to the other. And I mean we don’t have room for one more lane.”

I-405 and SR520 don’t even make the list.

Bridge and Tunnel Club has posted lots and lots of pictures of Phoenix’s Valley Metro.

Northbound train, interior:

Central Avenue and Camelback Station:

19th Avenue and Montebello Station:

It seems like they had a very crowded opening day. Apparently several Sound Transit staffers went down there to gain insight in advance of LINK’s opening in just a few months.

There’s a good chance the Proposition 1 ballot measure to expand light rail will fail, stalling for years comprehensive transportation planning in metro Puget Sound.

It’s a scary thought that this really may be our last chance!

I did have to laugh to myself about the first comment: the poster in opposition to the measure wants to sound like he knows completely what he’s talking about, but he references “Sound Move?!”

[via Crosscut]

In case you’re wondering, Seattle’s light rail will be a bit more night owl-friendly, running until 1am every night. I belive this is about when BART stops running, incidentally.

One of the great things about rail, of course, is that it has relatively low operating costs once you build it, so extending the hours shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It’s running on electricity that’s basically free (water still flows over Ross Dam at night, but the electricity it produces often goes to waste because demand is so low).

Of course, those late night drunk trains aren’t always fun. I’ve ridden the train known as the “vomit comet” more times than I’d care to admit, and it’s incredibly annoying. Still, it beats everyone getting into their cars at 2am by a long shot.

Drivers beware.

With Sound Transit’s light rail line from downtown to the airport scheduled to open next year, the city is feeling pressure to increase station-area development in southeast Seattle. Thus, the draft legislation targets communities around three southeast Seattle light rail stations to update their neighborhood plans first: North Beacon Hill; North Rainier (Mount Baker at McClellan Street) and Othello (Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Holly Street).

“We’re looking at the town-center idea and asking, how do we create the kind of communities (at light rail stations) that neighborhoods have identified in their plans?” said Diane Sigamura, director of the city’s Department of Planning and Development, which helped craft the measures with the Department of Neighborhoods and the Mayor’s Office.

http://maps.google.com/maps/user?uid=103428233658015669918&hl=en&gl=us&ptab=2

Try doing this with a bus:

DART is updating its fleet of 115 light rail vehicles (LRV) by inserting a new, low-floor insert between the existing sections of the vehicle adding seating capacity and improving access through level boarding. The newly modified vehicles began service on June 23, 2008.

Known as Super Light Rail Vehicles (SLRV) because of the greater length and added passenger capacity, the SLRV will seat approximately 100 passengers compared with 75 on the current vehicles. Standing passengers on the vehicle can nearly double the capacity.

(via)

Pivoting off of daijimin’s post on the subject, I think there’s a much more complicated story to be told here. We know that light-rail was a disruption, and that many of the Asian immigrants who lived in the neighborhood moved away because of construction. But much of that was going to happen anyway. And anyone who thinks those communities won’t thrive outside of the Rainier Valley has obviously never been to Renton…or Federal Way…or Lynwood…or…

The story of immigrants to America first living in urban areas and then migrating out to the suburbs as they prospered is almost as old as America itself. After all, New York’s Lower East Side is no longer a bastion of Italians, Irish and Jews. And as an Irish-Italian descendant of those immigrants, I’m glad they made their way out.

On the other hand, if they’d held on to the real estate, I’d be sitting pretty right now! Which gets us to the other side of the coin: if you believe, as I do, that the cul-de-sacs of today could become the tenements of tomorrow, then it’s problematic, from a public policy perspective, to consign the poor folks to the auto-dependent suburbs at a time when auto-dependent lifestyles are on the wane.

Still, the newly-middle-class still seem more interested in movin’ on out (to the suburbs) than movin’ on up (to, say, a deluxe apartment in the sky). And not just in the U.S. Thousands of gated suburban communitites are going up in China to house that country’s newly mobile middle class. It’s mostly those of us who’ve lived for a generation or two in the suburbs who want to try living in the city for a change.

All of this is to say…. it’s complicated!