Today in America a very large number of us live in big cities. These cities are located in some pretty annoying places but that’s because those places seemed logical when the cities were founded.
Seattle occupies a large section of the Salish Sea Waterfront. When I say “Seattle” I’m talking the Greater Newcastle Area. It stretches from way up north around the Tulalip Casino and way down south to the McNeil Island Penitentiary. It includes the populated parts of five counties. Population is around 3.5 million give or take.
That waterfront could be put to better purposes. But that’s not the subject of this post.
The challenge is that we have very little land to build new cart paths on. But everyone has a several cars. Most of us are not capable of driving more than one car at a time. I can do it, but you already knew I have super powers didn’t you?
The problem is every car has what we in the mainstream media like to call a “footprint.” A parked car takes about 100 square feet. I can park 12 cars in my garage but I have to stack them. Not easy.
What that means is kind of an intellectual pole vault: multiply the number of people by the average number of cars per person and then times 100 square feet and you have the amount of parking capacity required in the Greater Newcastle Area.
Many people understand this even if they never did the math. These people are called “Parking Lot Owners.” They tend to congregate around city centers where people want to park all day long. Many city governments are also in this business.
OK, parking is an issue but when these cars are moving along a highway the footprint is much bigger. At least it should be. If it’s not the footprints sometimes overlap which causes a lot of people to spend time parked on the highway. And that’s free as long as it wasn’t your footprint that was overlapped.
In any case highway designers and parking lot owners are pretty much concerned with footprint capacity. Add in trucks and other large vehicles and you see the problem – we don’t have any room to add more capacity here.
And that’s why we really need rapid transit. Opponents claim the cost per mile is too high compared to building more roads. They do math but they don’t do logic. Here’s my point: You can carry a lot more people on transit than individually one-each in cars over the same time frame.
In New York and a few others many people don’t own a car or use the DMV. They never get a ticket for expired Driver’s License. They take the subway or other transit. Many people who work in New York City actually live in other states. I know one who lives in Iowa. Whoa! There’s a whole nother subject – telecommuting.
Back to the math; building roads and adding lanes is not really cost effective. Running a 16 lane freeway from Canada to Mexico via Seattle would be beyond the talents of most DOT prestupnics.
In my last post I mentioned the shuttle system. Once the transit systems reach the place where people can begin to ignore the “Toyotathon” commercials and reduce the number of household cars the benefits will multiply.
Today a person can take the Link Light Rail from downtown Seattle to the airport and fly out of town. That’s usually good no matter how you got to the airport. Flying is fun and there are hundreds of interesting places to see and people to visit. It’s the stuff in between arriving at the airport and taking off that are insufferable.
Did I get off track? Maybe, I’m not reading this so I don’t really know.
One of the main things transit opponents whine about is the cost of building the systems. And it’s pretty big. They really need to design and build them well. That costs money. We have earthquakes. The infrastructure needs to survive earthquakes.
Building highway lanes is cheaper per mile. But it ignores all the other costs. A car can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $103,000 and maybe more. I usually don’t spend over $3,000 so I don’t know how far up it goes. In Washington and many other states we have to carry insurance. We have to pay an annual registration fee. We have to feed it gas, oil, and wiper fluid (in Seattle that’s a big issue). Then there are the hidden costs of providing footprint space at home and interest on the car loan. Cost of owning each car is 17% of a household budget.
Or, if you have a car like mine it’s more like 30% because I have to have it fixed once a month. About time to consider that $6,000 model. Transit costs include the vehicles and maintenance. The only thing riders have to pay directly is the fare. The tax costs of transit are shared by everyone so it’s reasonable. That’s probably where most people will want to argue. I won’t argue. I think transit benefits us all, even those who don’t ride it so the cost should be shared. Period. Thus the cost of building road is not directly analogous to the cost of building transit.
Wrapping it all up; the cost of driving a car in a major metropolis is substantial when you combine the cost of the car with the cost of the road capacity. Riding the transit system eliminates the gas, parking fees, and toll costs. Staying at home eliminates more costs. Reducing the number of cars you own can be an enormous saving.
So my New Year’s Resolution is this: Get rid of 6 or 7 cars. What do I need with all those cars anyway? What was I thinking? Did I really need to buy all the cars in that one showroom? They were nice and shiny, sure, but it took two days to get them all home and stacked in my garage. And don’t ask about the insurance cost! Do you know how much State Farm charges when the cars are already bent up? It’s outrageous! Should have called that lizard.
Al
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Evolution Revolution of Transportation
It’s pretty clear that the human is a mobile organism. If you were to sit down and write a history of the human on Earth only in terms of travel it would encompass practically all aspects of human history.
We know from DNA studies (of course augmented with language analysis and artifacts) that nobody lives where their original ancestors lived. In fact when 2000 rolled around almost everyone on the planet (humanity) could point to multiple ancestral origins over the last 150,000 years. Let’s not argue that point. I don’t have time for it.
What I’m going to talk about is how all this probably occurred. I spelled occurred right the first time and WORD didn’t have to auto correct it. I’ve come a long way.
Way, way back in olden times about the only kinds of folks around were nomads. They had to be simply because being human they managed to mess up the motel room and the manager said they had to leave.
They used simple methods to carry their stuff. “Woman! Take this! Carry it!” But women began insisting that guys share the load.
Resourceful guys could always find a way to avoid any real work. When women got all stubborn and refused to carry stuff guys were forced to invent new ways to do it. It was not that hard – they asked a woman how and then pretended they invented it themselves. Thus the birth of the cart.
The next crucial step toward true independence had to do with the argument about who should pull the cart. The motel manager said “Git!” but that was hard to do when nobody would pull the cart. That led to the invention of powered transportation.
The new source of power was the animal. The horse, oxen, cat, mule, camel, sled dog, reindeer, bear, dino, and hamster were all enlisted to haul those ancient carts. A few of these experiments ended badly but we kept on trying.
The point is everyone wanted to move to a new place. Humans could load up the cart and go until they found another motel that still had a room. We call this the “No Vacancy Epoch” in human history. It lasted for thousands of years.
During this period humans also invented the wind powered vehicle that usually traveled on water. Adding a sail to a cart was rarely successful. Boats made it possible to visit new places. Each “new” place where a boatload of humans arrived was claimed in the name of their king. It didn’t seem to matter that there were already people living there. We managed to invent wars.
Wars are another way of overcoming the “No Vacancy” issue. At least sometimes. Depended entirely on the motel manager and how many nasty people the invaders had to deal with. Next time you read a history book you’ll see how this works out. It’s all about who came to visit and who was already there and how they settled the issue.
During the recent 200 or so years we have been replacing animals as vehicle power with various kinds of motors. They all have one thing in common – horsepower. That’s because we still revere the horse as our favorite cart puller. The Amish are among the last holdouts using actual horses. Amish women are particularly happy there are horses.
Another development during this changeover was that with all this horsepower (not involving actual horses) we could move large numbers of people at the same time. We call these ships, busses, trains, planes, and SUVs.
Humans have one other trait that is probably important. We like to organize everything. Airplanes are required to behave according to rules. You can’t pilot one unless the FAA says you can. It has to land and take off in certain places, usually called airports. Some can use water but they still have lots of rules. And before you ride on an airplane you have to show somebody your shoes.
Vehicles that stay on the ground are close behind, although nobody is interested in your shoes. Trains run on tracks, busses run on roads, and ships navigate the waterways. All these things require organization and maintenance.
Way back in the days when women pulled carts by hand there were no taxpayer built roads. A road was just a pathway where other women had pulled other carts and you just happened to be going the same way.
Now that’s all changed. In order for me to drive on a nice smooth string of potholes in palatial Newcastle I need to pay taxes. People who like to organize everything use that money to build roads for me. Well, some of it anyway. Most of it goes to fancy smancy signs saying “Welcome to Newcastle.”
Now on the eve of 2010 the world is organized around non-animal powered transportation. We can go anywhere our passports allow as long as we can stand being aboard an airplane that long. Especially if you left your shoes with the TSA.
That brings us to the next stage of the transportation evolution. Right now most of us have a personal vehicle to get us around. There are plenty of busses and trains but actually not enough. Besides, if you need to haul “stuff” it’s really hard to drag it onto a city bus. Ever try to get 15 of those plastic bags full of groceries on a bus? Then you have to carry it all from the bus stop 20 blocks to your house.
The new thing in transportation will be the local shuttle. The concept is that bus and rail transit will run fast from hub to hub. An example of a hub will be the multibillion dollar Lake Boren Transit Center to be built in Newcastle in some unknown future century.
People who need to go places will have small shuttles come right to their house and take them to the hub. Once they get to the hub near their destination another shuttle will deliver them that last mile of so. They’ll have to share the shuttles and that means they may take indirect routes. But the overall cost per household will be less than owning a car. I imagine there will be some provisions for carrying their stuff. Right now those cramped bus seats don’t have any extra room but it seems like transportation organizers will finally begin to realize people have stuff.
For example, maybe everyone will have a little hand cart for their stuff and the bus will have extra room at each seat for the little (standard sized) carts. Then as we buy groceries or whatever we cram it all into our little carts and take the local shuttle to the transportation hub. Then we get on the bus/train back toward home. And finally the shuttle takes us to our house.
The only problem is where do we get the women to drag those little carts on and off the busses?
Al
We know from DNA studies (of course augmented with language analysis and artifacts) that nobody lives where their original ancestors lived. In fact when 2000 rolled around almost everyone on the planet (humanity) could point to multiple ancestral origins over the last 150,000 years. Let’s not argue that point. I don’t have time for it.
What I’m going to talk about is how all this probably occurred. I spelled occurred right the first time and WORD didn’t have to auto correct it. I’ve come a long way.
Way, way back in olden times about the only kinds of folks around were nomads. They had to be simply because being human they managed to mess up the motel room and the manager said they had to leave.
They used simple methods to carry their stuff. “Woman! Take this! Carry it!” But women began insisting that guys share the load.
Resourceful guys could always find a way to avoid any real work. When women got all stubborn and refused to carry stuff guys were forced to invent new ways to do it. It was not that hard – they asked a woman how and then pretended they invented it themselves. Thus the birth of the cart.
The next crucial step toward true independence had to do with the argument about who should pull the cart. The motel manager said “Git!” but that was hard to do when nobody would pull the cart. That led to the invention of powered transportation.
The new source of power was the animal. The horse, oxen, cat, mule, camel, sled dog, reindeer, bear, dino, and hamster were all enlisted to haul those ancient carts. A few of these experiments ended badly but we kept on trying.
The point is everyone wanted to move to a new place. Humans could load up the cart and go until they found another motel that still had a room. We call this the “No Vacancy Epoch” in human history. It lasted for thousands of years.
During this period humans also invented the wind powered vehicle that usually traveled on water. Adding a sail to a cart was rarely successful. Boats made it possible to visit new places. Each “new” place where a boatload of humans arrived was claimed in the name of their king. It didn’t seem to matter that there were already people living there. We managed to invent wars.
Wars are another way of overcoming the “No Vacancy” issue. At least sometimes. Depended entirely on the motel manager and how many nasty people the invaders had to deal with. Next time you read a history book you’ll see how this works out. It’s all about who came to visit and who was already there and how they settled the issue.
During the recent 200 or so years we have been replacing animals as vehicle power with various kinds of motors. They all have one thing in common – horsepower. That’s because we still revere the horse as our favorite cart puller. The Amish are among the last holdouts using actual horses. Amish women are particularly happy there are horses.
Another development during this changeover was that with all this horsepower (not involving actual horses) we could move large numbers of people at the same time. We call these ships, busses, trains, planes, and SUVs.
Humans have one other trait that is probably important. We like to organize everything. Airplanes are required to behave according to rules. You can’t pilot one unless the FAA says you can. It has to land and take off in certain places, usually called airports. Some can use water but they still have lots of rules. And before you ride on an airplane you have to show somebody your shoes.
Vehicles that stay on the ground are close behind, although nobody is interested in your shoes. Trains run on tracks, busses run on roads, and ships navigate the waterways. All these things require organization and maintenance.
Way back in the days when women pulled carts by hand there were no taxpayer built roads. A road was just a pathway where other women had pulled other carts and you just happened to be going the same way.
Now that’s all changed. In order for me to drive on a nice smooth string of potholes in palatial Newcastle I need to pay taxes. People who like to organize everything use that money to build roads for me. Well, some of it anyway. Most of it goes to fancy smancy signs saying “Welcome to Newcastle.”
Now on the eve of 2010 the world is organized around non-animal powered transportation. We can go anywhere our passports allow as long as we can stand being aboard an airplane that long. Especially if you left your shoes with the TSA.
That brings us to the next stage of the transportation evolution. Right now most of us have a personal vehicle to get us around. There are plenty of busses and trains but actually not enough. Besides, if you need to haul “stuff” it’s really hard to drag it onto a city bus. Ever try to get 15 of those plastic bags full of groceries on a bus? Then you have to carry it all from the bus stop 20 blocks to your house.
The new thing in transportation will be the local shuttle. The concept is that bus and rail transit will run fast from hub to hub. An example of a hub will be the multibillion dollar Lake Boren Transit Center to be built in Newcastle in some unknown future century.
People who need to go places will have small shuttles come right to their house and take them to the hub. Once they get to the hub near their destination another shuttle will deliver them that last mile of so. They’ll have to share the shuttles and that means they may take indirect routes. But the overall cost per household will be less than owning a car. I imagine there will be some provisions for carrying their stuff. Right now those cramped bus seats don’t have any extra room but it seems like transportation organizers will finally begin to realize people have stuff.
For example, maybe everyone will have a little hand cart for their stuff and the bus will have extra room at each seat for the little (standard sized) carts. Then as we buy groceries or whatever we cram it all into our little carts and take the local shuttle to the transportation hub. Then we get on the bus/train back toward home. And finally the shuttle takes us to our house.
The only problem is where do we get the women to drag those little carts on and off the busses?
Al
Friday, December 11, 2009
Technology Barely Keeping UP or Are We Falling Behind?
You need to know about a couple of things. First, you can never have enough technology. Get everyone on your list something technical for the generic year-end non-partisan holiday. You know; the one with the tree and the plastic nativity scene.
Obviously I’m not going to get involved in any controversies. Sing Christmas Carols, if you want, I won’t judge.
But everyone needs more technology. We here at the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report Galactic Headquarters have lots. No clue how most of it works. Examples:
There’s a machine that can stream real time TV on a 3.5 inch HD screen via the high speed cell phone system. To change channels you just swipe your finger up or down on the screen. You need that. Saves the effort of actually going into the room where the TV is and finding the remote.
Speaking of finding the remote: You also need a dozen of those little beeper finder things. They’re intended for the key ring but why not use them for everything? Just attach the beeper to whatever you lost, let’s say the cat, and then instead of hunting for the cat you hunt for the sender. If you find the sender and press the button you’ll never see the cat again. So it’s a win-win. Do you see a problem here? If not you shouldn’t have any trouble deciding.
Another handy item is the Botanicalls DIY Plant Twitter Kit. After some basic soldering and assembly (the DIY part) you just cram it into the dirt under your house plant and then connect it to your household network. You have a household network, right?
Then you just subscribe to the plant’s Twitter feed. The plant sends Tweets about how it’s doing on water. Plants don’t really care about much except water. Just check Twitter and presto you see if your plant is too wet or too dry.
And you need the LED faucet light. It connects to the faucet where the water comes out. Water below 89 degrees (what your plant wants) is blue. If it gets hotter it changes to red. You need that. Your plant wants that. Check Twitter.
Right now your computer is spilling crucial information on your desk from the unused USB ports. Did you know those things can leak data? You need to get stuff for everyone on your list to plug those up. Like a USB flexible speaker. Or a 3.5 inch digital photo frame. Or a Swiss Flash USB knife. Thumb drives disguised as Lego blocks, AA batteries, lighters, and spilled coffee. As data leaks out the coffee puddle gets bigger. Then you need a USB paper towel.
You also need a laptop computer desk for your steering wheel. I ordered mine. Makes it a lot safer than just holding it in your hands. You can read email in traffic and even get real time traffic info on the back-up your accident caused.
Another hot gadget is a set of Star Wars light saber chopsticks. They’ll make your Oriental food taste better. It’s all in how you hold your thumb. Never be intimidated by Szechwan cuisine again.
And a final note: Newcastle is getting a library. The groundbreaking will take place in July 2010. Everyone has agreed to allow the project to go forward even though we still don’t know for sure if it will include apartments.
The City Council approved changing the requirements to eliminate a lot of extra stuff in the structure which paved the way (so to speak) for the library to be built by itself. However, now, for some reason, the Newcastle News thinks apartments are still part of the plan.
I hope to watch and possibly make rude comments as construction goes on. It’s my job now. That’s what we old guys do. In a week I’ll be even older.
Oh, earlier I said something about a final note. You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. Here’s another.
The person employed to “blog” about Newcastle has quit. Not “fired,” he quit. He said the reason he quit was that nobody should get paid for doing that. What a guy. Anyway, I’m still waiting for someone to offer to pay me. Although I’d probably have to register as a political lobbyist and pay some kind of fee. So what’s the point? Exercising my freedom of speech for free is just about as much fun as I’ve ever had. And I don’t have to get it approved by anyone!
Al
Obviously I’m not going to get involved in any controversies. Sing Christmas Carols, if you want, I won’t judge.
But everyone needs more technology. We here at the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report Galactic Headquarters have lots. No clue how most of it works. Examples:
There’s a machine that can stream real time TV on a 3.5 inch HD screen via the high speed cell phone system. To change channels you just swipe your finger up or down on the screen. You need that. Saves the effort of actually going into the room where the TV is and finding the remote.
Speaking of finding the remote: You also need a dozen of those little beeper finder things. They’re intended for the key ring but why not use them for everything? Just attach the beeper to whatever you lost, let’s say the cat, and then instead of hunting for the cat you hunt for the sender. If you find the sender and press the button you’ll never see the cat again. So it’s a win-win. Do you see a problem here? If not you shouldn’t have any trouble deciding.
Another handy item is the Botanicalls DIY Plant Twitter Kit. After some basic soldering and assembly (the DIY part) you just cram it into the dirt under your house plant and then connect it to your household network. You have a household network, right?
Then you just subscribe to the plant’s Twitter feed. The plant sends Tweets about how it’s doing on water. Plants don’t really care about much except water. Just check Twitter and presto you see if your plant is too wet or too dry.
And you need the LED faucet light. It connects to the faucet where the water comes out. Water below 89 degrees (what your plant wants) is blue. If it gets hotter it changes to red. You need that. Your plant wants that. Check Twitter.
Right now your computer is spilling crucial information on your desk from the unused USB ports. Did you know those things can leak data? You need to get stuff for everyone on your list to plug those up. Like a USB flexible speaker. Or a 3.5 inch digital photo frame. Or a Swiss Flash USB knife. Thumb drives disguised as Lego blocks, AA batteries, lighters, and spilled coffee. As data leaks out the coffee puddle gets bigger. Then you need a USB paper towel.
You also need a laptop computer desk for your steering wheel. I ordered mine. Makes it a lot safer than just holding it in your hands. You can read email in traffic and even get real time traffic info on the back-up your accident caused.
Another hot gadget is a set of Star Wars light saber chopsticks. They’ll make your Oriental food taste better. It’s all in how you hold your thumb. Never be intimidated by Szechwan cuisine again.
And a final note: Newcastle is getting a library. The groundbreaking will take place in July 2010. Everyone has agreed to allow the project to go forward even though we still don’t know for sure if it will include apartments.
The City Council approved changing the requirements to eliminate a lot of extra stuff in the structure which paved the way (so to speak) for the library to be built by itself. However, now, for some reason, the Newcastle News thinks apartments are still part of the plan.
I hope to watch and possibly make rude comments as construction goes on. It’s my job now. That’s what we old guys do. In a week I’ll be even older.
Oh, earlier I said something about a final note. You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. Here’s another.
The person employed to “blog” about Newcastle has quit. Not “fired,” he quit. He said the reason he quit was that nobody should get paid for doing that. What a guy. Anyway, I’m still waiting for someone to offer to pay me. Although I’d probably have to register as a political lobbyist and pay some kind of fee. So what’s the point? Exercising my freedom of speech for free is just about as much fun as I’ve ever had. And I don’t have to get it approved by anyone!
Al
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Traffic Barrel Storage
The interim temporary Newcastle Transit Center is just about done. It’s been that way for a month. Problem appears to be an abundance of those orange traffic barrels. They’re everywhere. There must be hundreds and since there’s no place else to store them the contractor has decided to leave them on the street.
Right now the “landscaping” is being planted and bus stop shelters erected. These take place on the sidewalk. Landscaping is defined as “native plants that have a 50/50 chance of surviving.”
The bus shelters are places where people can wait for the bus while it’s raining. We have a lot of rain here. Every month the weather person announces that the previous month set a new record for rainfall. Apparently their “records” only cover the current year. “This has been the rainiest November on record since last summer.”
Sound Transit spent most of the budget on paving. They took up the old dilapidated asphalt that was well over two years old and looked it. Then they put down some cement pads where the bus is supposed to stop as well as cement paving in the intersection itself. Very high tech stuff.
While doing all this they brought in truck loads of orange barrels and never took any away. Maybe they can move them into the empty Library property and open the street. Maybe. Maybe they could pile them up and make a library.
Meantime the King County Executive has proposed a plan for the closed BNSF rail corridor. There’s a lot of non-specific and apple pie type of dialog relative to this “plan.” Such as “enhance our quality of life,” etc.
Here’s something that may be a surprise to some of us: one of the reasons many of the old abandoned rail corridors have been made available for trails and bike paths is that the railroads retain the right to buy them back if they need to. In other words it would be hard to sell off parcels for shopping centers and apartment buildings now only to have BNSF exercise its buyback right in 2020. So they need to remain in the hands of the public (parks, trails, etc).
Anyway, King County plans to enhance the quality of our lives by doing something. But what? Here are some of the outfits involved with King County in this: Port of Seattle, City of Redmond, Sound Transit, Puget Sound Energy, and Glen the Lake Boren Carp. A lot of people are not aware of that last one but we all know there has to be at least one voice of logic and reason in a group like this.
OK, what has this to do with hundreds of orange barrels in Newcastle? Well instead of hauling all those barrels back to Maple Valley lets use them on the BNSF corridor. Saves several trips back and forth.
Maybe they could line them up on the old I-90 railroad overpass. Right now it’s covered with graffiti but nobody notices. I bet very few of us even realize there’s a railroad bridge over I-90 in South Bellevue. It’s just part of the background.
The one that’s not part of the background is the historic trestle in the Wilburton neighborhood. The old wood structure harkens back to an era when steam locomotives pulled boxcars around. Can you imagine the old steam trains chomping across NE 8th Street back when it was a two lane dirt road? Neither can I.
In other news (only remotely related) the final leg of the Link Light Rail will open on December 19. They picked that date in honor of my birthday. I’m humbled. That leg will extend the line from Tukwila to SeaTac International Airport.
After it opens people will be able to take it from the airport to downtown Seattle. If they have an Orca Card it’ll be almost like free. I’ll have to make another inspection trip in a month or so. I have an Orca Card.
So, to wrap up: Orange barrels in Newcastle have to be dealt with. Will they use them to build the new library or to make the BNSF rail corridor improvements? Can we expect the quality of our lives to be enhanced as a result? How much does a traffic barrel cost anyway? Can you believe I used a word like “harkens?” And why is my shower still ice cold?
Al
Right now the “landscaping” is being planted and bus stop shelters erected. These take place on the sidewalk. Landscaping is defined as “native plants that have a 50/50 chance of surviving.”
The bus shelters are places where people can wait for the bus while it’s raining. We have a lot of rain here. Every month the weather person announces that the previous month set a new record for rainfall. Apparently their “records” only cover the current year. “This has been the rainiest November on record since last summer.”
Sound Transit spent most of the budget on paving. They took up the old dilapidated asphalt that was well over two years old and looked it. Then they put down some cement pads where the bus is supposed to stop as well as cement paving in the intersection itself. Very high tech stuff.
While doing all this they brought in truck loads of orange barrels and never took any away. Maybe they can move them into the empty Library property and open the street. Maybe. Maybe they could pile them up and make a library.
Meantime the King County Executive has proposed a plan for the closed BNSF rail corridor. There’s a lot of non-specific and apple pie type of dialog relative to this “plan.” Such as “enhance our quality of life,” etc.
Here’s something that may be a surprise to some of us: one of the reasons many of the old abandoned rail corridors have been made available for trails and bike paths is that the railroads retain the right to buy them back if they need to. In other words it would be hard to sell off parcels for shopping centers and apartment buildings now only to have BNSF exercise its buyback right in 2020. So they need to remain in the hands of the public (parks, trails, etc).
Anyway, King County plans to enhance the quality of our lives by doing something. But what? Here are some of the outfits involved with King County in this: Port of Seattle, City of Redmond, Sound Transit, Puget Sound Energy, and Glen the Lake Boren Carp. A lot of people are not aware of that last one but we all know there has to be at least one voice of logic and reason in a group like this.
OK, what has this to do with hundreds of orange barrels in Newcastle? Well instead of hauling all those barrels back to Maple Valley lets use them on the BNSF corridor. Saves several trips back and forth.
Maybe they could line them up on the old I-90 railroad overpass. Right now it’s covered with graffiti but nobody notices. I bet very few of us even realize there’s a railroad bridge over I-90 in South Bellevue. It’s just part of the background.
The one that’s not part of the background is the historic trestle in the Wilburton neighborhood. The old wood structure harkens back to an era when steam locomotives pulled boxcars around. Can you imagine the old steam trains chomping across NE 8th Street back when it was a two lane dirt road? Neither can I.
In other news (only remotely related) the final leg of the Link Light Rail will open on December 19. They picked that date in honor of my birthday. I’m humbled. That leg will extend the line from Tukwila to SeaTac International Airport.
After it opens people will be able to take it from the airport to downtown Seattle. If they have an Orca Card it’ll be almost like free. I’ll have to make another inspection trip in a month or so. I have an Orca Card.
So, to wrap up: Orange barrels in Newcastle have to be dealt with. Will they use them to build the new library or to make the BNSF rail corridor improvements? Can we expect the quality of our lives to be enhanced as a result? How much does a traffic barrel cost anyway? Can you believe I used a word like “harkens?” And why is my shower still ice cold?
Al
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