Seattle Transit Tour

Seattle from the I-90 Bus lane.

Glen the Lake Boren Carp (short for carpool) was telling me about the transit system and how you can get everywhere. He said the busses and carpools get to use the diamond lanes. Sounded interesting. So I decided to give it a try.

Years ago, before diamond lanes, I rode the bus to work in Everett. The project I was working on went to mandatory overtime. That bus was a special that got you to work at starting time and left for Bellevue at quitting time. No overtime bus so I had to quit riding. Within a month my knees stopped hurting.

Eastgate Park and Ride in Bellevue.

All those oldies have been replaced due to scientific advancements. Now they use a diesel engine rather than steam. The driver doesn’t have to crank it to start. The wood spoke wheels have been updated.

Busses to Seattle come in two flavors. Express and even slower. The express stops fewer times.
We left the Eastgate Park and Ride and entered the diamond lane on I-90 at the fish ladder. These fish are bronze.

Eastgate Fish Ladder Salmon

It was express and we stopped at Mercer Island. Did you know people live there? I was amazed. They even have a Park and Ride. I thought it was just land fill but apparently some folks built houses on it. Scary.

We got back on I-90 for the white knuckle ride on the floating bridge diamond lane. It’s sandwiched between the east and west lanes of I-90 and reverses every morning and afternoon.
After the open sky of the bridge we dove into the Mt. Baker Tunnel. It’s nowhere near Mt. Baker but people call it that. Makes you think there’s a mountain above. Nobody was fooled.

Once on the Seattle side of Lake Washington (man, people really live on Mercer Island – I can’t get over it) we leave the freeway and use a special bus diamond lane into the downtown transit tunnel. You have to get on the right bus to get the tunnel ride. Selecting the right bus is among the challenges of bus riding. You don’t want to risk accidently going to Renton!

The bus tunnel is a nasty piece of work. When you enter there’s a very tight kink in the roadway that tests the hinge in the middle of the bus. It’s at this same point that the tracks for the Link Light Rail enter the tunnel. All very ceremonial.

Looking out the window you can see all kinds of utility conduits and bare cement, fences, and barricades. They don’t want anybody without a bus in there and they don’t care how it looks.
The first station in the tunnel is all artsy and fixed up. They have fancy tile and big wide walkways with artwork on the walls. Not at all like the entry. This is where some people get off. Maybe those people who live on Mercer Island.

Sign at Entrance to Westlake Center from Bus Tunnel.

This pattern repeats; utility tunnel all dirty and narrow followed by another station all artsy and tiled. Maybe they don’t think anyone looks out the window while the bus is moving.

After several stops the bus reaches Westlake Center and lots of us leftovers get off. About half the people have iPod buds in their ears. I don’t blame them.

Westlake Center is not by a lake. It’s in the midst of the city. When you get out there are several ways to exit the station that usually get you into the lower part of shopping venues. For example you can go into Macy’s or Coldwater Creek. I went to Westlake Center which has many shops.

The first thing you notice is one of the escalators is all torn apart and a couple of guys in work overalls are talking about how many weeks it’ll be before the repair parts arrive. Downtown Seattle requires a good pair of shoes and a willingness to take the stairs.

South Lake Union from Space Needle.

Westlake Center has a food court on level three. Also level three is where you can catch the Monorail. The plaza outside is humming with activity. People want you to give them money, sign petitions, and listen to their conversations with imaginary pals on the other end of the phone. I saw a few who didn’t have a phone or headset but were still managing to have a conversation with some unseen entity.

SLUT Arrives at Downtown Stop.

Outside on 5th Avenue level you can cross a couple streets and find the South Lake Union Streetcar (SLUT) stop. I carefully read the instructions for getting a ticket and then figured out where to stand. I got on and sat down but nobody asked to see a ticket. I think they have a hole in their fare collection system.

This is how you buy a ticket for the trolley. Takes a bit of investigation.

The SLUT runs on the street and uses an overhead wire for power. It’s fairly quiet except when the recorded message announces the stop. It also announces who sponsors the stop. What? The stops have sponsors? Wow.

Not real crowded on the SLUT.

Paul Allen and the gang are making a real impact on the area with several square blocks under construction. It was impressive. Mostly digging at this point. Someday the area will be very nice (according to the information graciously provided by the same people who are paying for all the work).

The SLUT makes its final stop at the Fred Hutchinson Medical Center. The “Hutch,” as it’s called, is by Lake Union near where the old Ford plant is. They used to build Model T’s, or was it Model A’s? I don’t know. The building is still there and it’s been used for many things over the years but they still call it the old Ford plant.

The SLUT returns to Westlake Center. Some people on board seem to be transit and train buffs. I talked to a retired transit person from Bellingham.


The Blue Monorail arrives at Westlake Center.

Back at Westlake I found my way to level three and boarded the Monorail. It’s a museum train from 1962 when Seattle had the World’s Fair. It’s still the same route and still the same trainsets as back then. Several years before I was born. Umm, well anyway a long time ago.

The Blue Monorail arrives at Seattle Center emerging from EMP.

The site of the Fair is now called Seattle Center. It’s not in the “center” of Seattle, kind of like Westlake is not by a lake. The Space Needle sits there along with the Pacific Science Center and the Experience Music Project. Lots of places in Seattle get the name “Center.” And they don’t seem to care if it’s the center of anything.

Base of the Space Needle.

Since this was a transportation day I took the elevator to the top of the Space Needle. The elevator is open on one side and as you ride to the top seagulls and crows fly up and beg for handouts.

Space Needle from ground level.

The observation deck provides views of many mountains, including Mt. Baker of tunnel fame. Today the Olympics and Mt. Rainier were shining in the distance. Many days in Seattle you can barely see across the street so this was good.

Experience Music Project from above.

Amazingly you can see Mercer Island from there. It’s huge. Maybe it really is big enough for people to live on. Hard to imagine.

After that I rode the Monorail back to Westlake Center – it runs Center to Center (?). The escalator was still broken so I took the stairs back down to the bus tunnel. I wonder if they’ve named it yet. “The West Lake Boren Transit Tunnel Center” seems like a good name.

The diamond lane return trip to the Eastgate Park and Ride took longer because of that “getting on the wrong bus” thing. Gotta be careful. I ended up in downtown Bellevue and had to find a bus heading for Eastgate. It took some back streets and at one point it looked like Renton might be in the plan. But we avoided that disaster and made it to Eastgate OK. I’ve never seen the gate its east of but at least it’s not called Eastgate Center.

Al

Newspapers – Going, Going, Gone!:

Our Seattle Post-Intelligencer is for sale and if nobody buys it they say it will just simply close up shop. They gave the sale 60 days (from last month) so it’s a little longer than eBay. Interested?

In an earlier post I reviewed the reasons newspapers are not hitting on all cylinders. Basically the business model is lopsided away from the purpose. The word “newspaper” says it’s a paper whose purpose is to deliver news. And they have an army of delivery minions fanning out across the land delivering papers to homes and businesses.

Well that’s one of the problems. We have around 4 million people in the Greater Newcastle Puget Sound Area but circulation barely tops 100,000. So delivery minions travel a great deal while passing up non-customers.

The business model derives revenue from ads, not news. Papers are filled with ads that essentially pay the bills and provide salaries for the newsroom employees. What they can charge for ads depends on how many “subscribers” they have. Each subscriber is worth so much to an advertiser.

What are some reasons papers lose customers? Lack of news and no interest in the ads are a couple of biggies. In the old days of Seattle the papers used to publish the names of boats coming and going. If you wanted fresh fish you checked the paper to see if a fishing boat was in port. Then you went to market, bought a fish, wrapped it in newspaper, and took it home to the cat.

That’s just one example of things you used to find in Seattle papers. Now you’re lucky if they mention Seattle in any context besides describing the guy police are looking for in connection with something or other.

Then there are the ads. My question is how many people really search the ads for what they want to buy? I don’t. Am I unusual? Of course, but I wonder if that includes how I read a newspaper.

Mostly when I see one of those 20 page color inserts for “Nevan’s Discount Boot Barn” I just wonder if it’s a chain or a single store and promptly forget about it. Nevan used to sell garter belts but things weren’t too good and models are expensive so he changed to boots. Who needs models? Boots stand alone.

And, of course, there is the paper itself. The newsprint life cycle is expensive and smelly. Every week big blue trucks come around neighborhoods and collect bins of old newspaper that eventually gets back to the paper factory where hundreds of workers sit around all day and erase the “news” so the PI can buy it back and print the next edition.

My original suggestion was that Microsoft or Apple (or anyone else who can deliver snazzy devices) could make electronic readers that can deliver news for a small subscription fee. Amazon has sold around half a million Kindles that do that except it’s kind of awkward. The black on grey print is very readable, but hardly any pictures, page turners too big, and so on. You can subscribe to newspapers, magazines, and blogs. There are over 230,000 books available and it’s growing.

They come electronically and you can use the Kindle itself to browse Amazon and order books which arrive on the device in seconds. Periodicals arrive at the time of publication as long as you have the receiver on.

Now some more folks are producing these gizmos. One is called a “Plastic Logic” made of all plastic. Another is from Pixel Qi and is based on an inexpensive laptop design. Adobe has an application called “AIR” which they say can be used for downloading and reading on mobile devices. I’m sure more will be coming out as well. We’ve not heard from Apple yet. Microsoft is still tied to the full computer platform but I bet they too are looking at readers.

The point here is that today we are starting to see devices that are working toward elimination of the paper format for delivering news. And one of the most important keys is users will be paying small subscription fees for “news” rather than token fees for piles of paper.

Another key element is high speed internet availability. America is behind in delivering it to all households. The shopping and advertisement function would be separated from news delivery by keeping it on the internet.

A key prospect for informed consumers is that we can subscribe to a blog on our readers that tells about all the neat new stuff on the market. Then we get on our high speed internet and find out where it’s being sold locally. But that sounds like a “pull” system where the shopper has to research the source. A pile of ads on the doorstep is a “push” system where they just show up.

The readers of the future could do that just as well. The user could enter preferences, such as groceries in Newcastle, and receive full store ads with sale prices, specials, and electronic coupons. The device should be able to somehow link so you could make a list. Maybe it would be capable of sending info to the store so that when you check out the coupons are deducted from your items right there in line. If you decide not to get a coupon item it just ignores it.

Too much information? Probably. I’m sure the big data milking outfits would keep track of you and focus beams of ads into your head in hopes of getting you to buy more than you want, etc. In any case I still think the news industry should divorce itself from the advertising industry.

News and reporting are very important to a democracy and Americans need to stay informed. Sure, it’ll take many years to convert over to electronic news delivery and there will be a lot of shakeout in the process. But we really need to unhook from so much paper.

Cities with only one newspaper don’t really exist. When the PI goes away we’ll still have the Times. But we also have hundreds of focused rags everywhere. We have a business journal that tells about commerce, real estate mags, lots of local neighborhood papers, school papers, and it goes on and on. In Seattle we can also get the Wall Street Journal and New York Times (if we’re made of money).

The point is the Times doesn’t have to report on business, like commercial boat traffic, because another paper does that. They don’t have to deal with local items because other papers can do that. However, these are widely disbursed and you have to make an effort to find a publication that covers what you want. Besides very few actually report very well, but they could if “news” was their real business.

If you can get real news electronically on an easy to use reader you should be able to select news categories from a menu. There are a lot of categories I don’t care about. However, I’m interested in construction. I want to know who’s building what. I also want to know what’s going on with public construction, such as transportation and utilities. That’s my job now that I’m retired. But newspapers only cover those things superficially. The Business journal is too expensive. And even if you can find a source it’s almost always PR announcements rather than what’s really going on.

I’m looking for the future of news delivery today. I’m ready for my news to come from reporters who are not beholden to advertisers or employed by people making the news. I want to get back to an independent “press” that gives me information about what’s going on. Today.

So my message is: “Hey PI, when you leave town take the Times with you.”

Al

Christine Agrees With Me

Once in awhile politicians actually get it right. Take the Alaska Way Viaduct, for example. Everyone said they had reduced the alternatives to replacing the existing structure or removing it and using a surface street scheme. Ha ha, I said they were both bogus since Seattle has to think about the long term future as well as the near term danger that the viaduct will crumble.

I ended that particular rant by demanding Christine build me a tunnel. So Christine, who reads my stuff, met with Ron and Greg and they decided on: A TUNNEL! They agreed with me!

Sure, it’s an inadequate tunnel, with only four lanes, but at least we won’t have to tear down the existing structure first. The tunnel boring machine is done making a hole through Beacon Hill for the light rail, so why not?

A lot’s happened in the last couple of weeks. We got Hopey installed in the White House and Al Franken seems to have won a Senate Seat. Caroline, you know, Kennedy, you know, wanted to be a Senator, you know, but, well, you know, she changed her mind like. You know?

All of which means the world is running pretty much normal.

Retaining Walls:
Coal Creek Parkway is looking more like the updated roadway when it’s finished. They moved it over and made it straighter somewhat. In order to do that they had to build a few large retaining walls.

Our pals in Renton are doing some similar work on Duval Ave. Big long retaining walls.
The folks over at the Cedar Grove Compost Pile have a new kind of material. It’s a big porous bag, like a sausage casing, that they fill with compost. It’s about 18 inches around and can be hundreds of feet long.

What they do is pile these long tubes of new dirt on an unstable hillside or excavation and then tie it all together. The wall has a slope to it so it’s not a straight up deal like a cement retaining wall.

Once it’s all in place and tied down you can cut holes and insert plants. But best of all you can just seed the whole thing and to grow grass. After a season of new grass and shrubs the wall is even more stable due to the root structures. And it’s green.

They claim it holes banks better because it’s real dirt and very solid. Since it’s covered with grass and plants it soaks up water. Now we know where some of our yard waste goes. I’m hoping it catches on because it will help keep our garbage hauling charges down.

One place it can be applied right now is on those banks above the Coal Creek Parkway retaining walls. Since I got the politicians to choose the tunnel maybe they’ll see this and decide to use that compost retaining wall to stabilize those banks. Watch for it in your neighborhood.

Al

Floods and Dying Newspapers

The flickr web site has numerous photos of the damage to roads from Washdot. It’s all about roads – no houses and stuff.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot

Some of the western Cascade reservoirs have filled up so the Corps is releasing water which is adding to the damage in some places. It’s either that or risk failure of the dams.

Lake Boren is even up a couple of feet and brown again. It sits in a sort of saddle between two hills east and west and two valleys north and south. May Creek to the south takes the runoff from Lake Boren. It’s very difficult for the lake itself to actually flood.

One of the benefits of having such a hilly area is the water runs down very fast which means we don’t get the standing water. However, those folks who live in the flat valleys get it all. But don’t forget, the fast water running down the hills can take a lot of debris and cause slides. So it’s not all a bed of roses. Especially for those in the floodplains.

News in Seattle – Paper Version:

Thomas Jefferson was a great proponent of a free and independent press. He and the other founding fathers made sure the press in America would always be free of government interference or control.

However, they didn’t count on the giant piles of actual paper we have today. Publishing a newspaper requires vast quantities of paper. Large amounts of that paper are advertisements. In 1776 the paper was one sheet and might have had a small two line “ad” here and there. But the business model of today’s newspaper requires hundreds of ads.

In 1776 the subscription price paid for the newspaper. Now it only partially pays for delivery. The ads pay all the real bills, salaries, and supply costs. The environment pays for the paper.
This is one reason why 200 large daily newspapers have disappeared in the last eight years. The revenue stream is for businesses to buy ad space and the newspaper prints and delivers those ads to households. The people who read the ads go out and buy products which provides more money to buy ad space in the paper.

Notice anything missing? News! The newsroom is an additional cost that siphons revenue from the stream. But most readers allegedly buy the newspaper for the news. Oh, and the comics.
Advertising is a primary component of American commerce. We see a flyer in the Sunday paper that says Penney’s is having a 48 hour sale and we decide we need to be at Penney’s for the next two days. Even if we don’t have a specific item in mind; it’s a sale – we have to go.

News is a whole different commodity. We need weather and traffic information. And sports. How would we know it was Sunday except for sports? And we may need a few other bits of “information” such as the name they picked for Sarah Palin’s grandchild.

The trick is we can get all that “news” in about 20 minutes while we eat our Cherios. I still get the Sunday Seattle Times, soon to be our only large daily, but it takes only one cup of tea to do the whole thing. Then I have a three pound pile of paper for the recycle bin.

The Seattle P-I is for sale and Hearst says if it doesn’t sell in 60 days it will just close. I sent my bid this morning. The Times has this incredible idea that they will pick up 75% of the P-I subscribers when it closes. I don’t think so. The real beneficiaries are the advertisers.

On the sidelines are the people who insist that Seattle (name your city) requires two competing major newspapers. They say it forces them to work harder for news and get their stories correct yada, yada, yada. I say it’s not about “news” it’s about advertising. Now that the holidays (???) are over the ads have shrunk to a mere trickle.

Penney’s 48 hour sale is still going on, because nobody could get there in the snow. But they don’t have any extra money to advertise.

OK, now I’ve done it! Pointed out a problem but no suggestion for a solution. Don’t you just hate that?

Well guess what, I have a solution. It’s so simple. Microsoft! Wait, wait, let me explain!
There are products from several manufacturers that are nice and portable with readable screens. It goes by several names and comes in different sizes. But basically it’s an electronic reader.

What the newspaper companies can do is separate the news from the advertising electronically. Then publish news over the air. The Amazon Kindle has this today. You can subscribe to a daily newspaper and each morning there it is right there on your screen.

They need to improve the interface and that’s what Microsoft OR Apple should be able to do. On the Kindle you can display a newspaper section with headlines and a short intro to each story. You click on a headline and you can read the whole story. But it’s not as passive as scanning a newspaper. For example its regular text so the headlines don’t stand out.

But I bet my paycheck that if the big news organizations were to rethink their delivery paradigm (remember that word? I hate it too.) and understand that advertising and news are two different commodities we’d see a shift like this.

I mean a shift to electronic delivery on a readable medium. Sure, it’s easy to catch weather and sports on TV during oatmeal each morning but it’s also nice to sit down and read a good report on some news item you’re interested in.

You’re reading this on a puter and loving it! But I don’t have any requirement to check my facts or even make an effort to tell the truth. A News organization allegedly does. Some don’t do it, but they’re supposed to.

And, yes, this isn’t exactly me own brainchild. (I’m naming it Truk) Sony tried it, Amazon is having success with the Kindle, and Microsoft is still trying to find the right marketing approach. But the hardware exists and I think the big push will come when the news organizations see how the revenue stream can work.

Here’s why: Electronic delivery is cheap and easy – only requires one original and some broadcast hardware, which already exists. The only trick is to get consumers to buy the reader – we’re “consumers,” we’ll buy anything if it’s “ON SALE.” Once advertisers are free of the enormous cost of supporting the newspaper industry they can focus on TV and Internet. And eliminating all that wasted paper has to be good for everyone.

Big News Organizations should stop whining and rethink their reason for existence. Thomas Jefferson would probably have been one of the first to buy a Kindle and I bet he would have loved reading Ben Franklin’s news on it. To use Tom Jefferson’s quotes as arguments in favor of retaining the paper print paradigm is to deny the genius of the man. He was a forward thinking innovator and I think it’s an insult to place him with the whiners.

Al

Some time ago we had one of the largest snow events we ever had around here. In 1903 or something it snowed three feet in Seattle and everyone moved to Oklahoma City. So us “new” people have never seen this much snow.

It snowed one night; then that day; that night; the next day; and so on for a week. We thought it wouldn’t end. If you live in relatively flat country and/or warm country it may be difficult to imagine how bad it can get here.

We have hills that are hard to deal with on a dry day. In rain they get real hard and in snow they are impossible. Getting up these hills requires four wheels and a shovel. Getting down is harder because breaks tend to work pretty good so your car suddenly becomes a sled. Only the real seasoned snow drivers know how to down shift and drag their feet. Seattle has very few of these pros. So we see piles of cars at the bottoms of all the hills.

Part of the problem is the rarity of “snow events.” We don’t have a fleet of big snow plows and millions of pounds on salt. In fact we usually don’t use salt at all. So when our three sanding trucks took off during the first snow to throw sand out the windows it was sort of comical.
But by the time the third snow came by we had thick ice on many roads. That’s because the de-icer we normally use doesn’t work and each time somebody manages to drive on the snow it just packs it into ice.

Jeff, our crack weather person (we have others but Jeff gets his picture in the paper beside the weather report every day) did his best to let us know what was going on, but he doesn’t drive a snow plow.

In fact hardly anyone drives a snowplow. So the greater Newcastle Metropolitan Area came to a standstill. Christmas shopping consisted of Amazon gift certificates if you had electricity and internet. This caused a recession and Barry (our new pres) promises to fix everything if the Democrats will let him.

But we coped.

Then it warmed up and started to rain. Hoo boy, did it rain. For some reason everyone was upset about all the rain but they didn’t stop to consider how bad it would have been as snow. We’d all have to move to Oklahoma City again. At least they have professional basketball. Ours!
Mostly the rain stayed north, south, and east of the metropolitan area. We managed to get a lot of the effects as several rivers wash into Lake Washington and Puget Sound. The people farther out got real wet.

The Elliott Bridge ($18 million bridge across the Cedar River east of Renton) area was well flooded. Ron Regis Park was closed due to high water. The bike underpass was flooded.

The Maple Valley Highway was closed. Really. How will we get dirt? Worse, how will the garbage get to the land fill? This is a National Crisis. Since the snow prevented garbage delivery there is pent up demand. Lots of New Year’s celebration glassware (empties) was piled up. Oh, yeah, that goes to the recycle center. Only real trash goes to Maple Valley. But there was lots of it.
So closing the Maple Valley Highway is a true crisis.

The heavy rainfall and snow melt drove all our rivers out of their nice quiet beds and over lots of roads. We were cut off from the rest of America except for air. All the passes were closed and so were the major freeways. But most of the alternate routes were also closed. Several of our rural areas were islands. The bears are in hibernation, but the cougars are up there skulking around like wet cats looking for food.

Today, Washdot sent me a note bragging about getting some of the big roads open. Here it is:

Dear Al,
I-5 and I-90 now open to traffic

It was a busy morning for us today. According to the last update, 90 sections of state highway have reopened. There are 34 sections still closed and 14 restricted. The amount of roads closing is changing constantly, so I would recommend looking at our county-by-county update site to see if a road is open or closed.

We are happy to report that I-5 in Lewis county is now open to all traffic. Quickly receding flood waters on I-5 in Chehalis resulted in fewer problems than anticipated. We were able to access the freeway and perform necessary safety inspections of the interstate and levee system and begin clean up work. Some exit and on ramps remain closed within the 20 mile section.

I-90 through Snoqualmie Pass is also now open to traffic. After working around the clock to clear snow, water, and debris from the roadway and shoulders, we opened the eastbound lanes of I-90 Snoqualmie Pass between North Bend and Ellensburg this morning at 9 a.m. We opened the Westbound lanes around noon. There are still restrictions on three I-90 exit ramps. Exit 45 will remain closed due to water over the roadway. Exits 53 and 54 will have ramp lane restrictions to keep traffic out of the high water. Due to erosion and some undermining of the shoulders, there will be no stopping or parking allowed on the shoulders of I-90 between North Bend and Easton.

WSDOT estimates the economic impact of the I-5 closure through Lewis count is $12 million per day and I-090 is $6 million per day. A summary of this information is online.

As of noon today here are the road closures remaining in King County:

SR 202 - Closed from SR 203 to 356th Avenue SE in Fall City. A 90-foot-long section of SR 202 east of the roundabout at SR 203 was completed washed out and requires reconstruction before the road will reopen. There are alternate routes into Fall City. Work might take several days.

SR 202 - Open in North Bend from the northern city limits of Snoqualmie to North Bend Boulevard.

SR 203 between Fall City and Monroe - SR 203 has reopened from Fall City to Duvall. The road remains closed Duvall and Monroe.

SR 410 - Closed in both directions from Greenwater to Enumclaw due to water over the roadway. (Milepost 29.7-57)

I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass has reopened in both directions. Eastbound opened at 9 a.m. Westbound opened at noon.

Apparently they feel I need to know all this.

Well, hope your winter is going better than ours. We like to export as much weather as we can so much of the country gets the same systems as they move to the east. But we do our best to remove moisture.

Now winter will turn benign and we’ll have our normal gloomy drizzle until Memorial Day. I hope. Looks like I need to plan some trips.

Al