Traffic? The worst intersections I’ve seen in the country? The fact that when you get there parking for an hour often costs more than a day pass for the train and bus?
Easy solution: just drive toward Denny & Stewart then get out of your car. By the time you’re back from whatever you were doing there you may be able to move forward a bit. Free parking!
To give more history about this route, there is a annual "race the 8! event scheduled by seattle urbanists where people start off on the worst part of its route and do increasingly outlandish activities on foot while still beating it to its designations. Folks have beat it juggling, walking backwards, dancing, etc. Katie and her kids participated before she was the mayor, and you guessed it, beat it.
This route serves an intensely dense part of the city and has been failing people for years. The city/county have been making piddly, empty changes for nearly a decade that fixed nothing, like adding a 1 block bus lane. Yup, one block only.
The bus is regularly 30-40 minutes late, which makes using it miserable and unreliable. The reason its route is terrible is that there is a highway onramp thats right there near Amazon HQ. So for years and years people commuting in and out of the city have been prioritized over people who live in it, and no previous mayor had the stones to push back and fix it for actual residents.
It is not just prioritising car commuters from outside vs locals, it is simply an extremely wasteful use of limited traffic capacity. The bus, not clogged down in traffic, has a way higher capacity than probably even two full car lanes at the highest performance. A bus lane is the only rational thing there. If that makes the highway off ramp redundant because there is no capacity for cars left to justify it, simply tear it down. It is fake capacity anyway if the traffic cannot be supported further down the road and it would even benefit car drivers, as it would remove a clogging point and free up capacity on the highway.
I agree with everything you say until the end. It’s disingenuous to say that residents do not take the highway. It runs through the middle of the city! We all take the damn highway.
That particular on-ramp, yes. I’d rather just drive south (I live to the south) a little bit and take an easier one. But still, anyone who drives here uses I-5 all the time.
That ramp really does need to be rerouted. It makes that entire area undrivable.
In one line I got:
She’s comparable to current rockstar mayor
She fixed bus service
She hersekf uses bus service
She noticed a problem and fixed it
Definitely couldn’t before though! Hence why her parents help her cover childcare expenses.
Right, good article, she couldn’t then but can now, yet she chooses not to in order to help the lives of regular people
Impeach her right now! The job of government officials is to enrich themselves at everybody else’s expense! Heresy!
If you’ve been to downtown Seattle you know why people don’t drive there.
Traffic? The worst intersections I’ve seen in the country? The fact that when you get there parking for an hour often costs more than a day pass for the train and bus?
Easy solution: just drive toward Denny & Stewart then get out of your car. By the time you’re back from whatever you were doing there you may be able to move forward a bit. Free parking!
I’m pretty sure that’s how people use the I5 in Seattle.
There is no “the I-5” north of California.
I don’t know why you’d think that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_5
I was talking about calling it “the I-5”. That’s a California thing. Washingtonians and Oregonians call it “I-5”.
To give more history about this route, there is a annual "race the 8! event scheduled by seattle urbanists where people start off on the worst part of its route and do increasingly outlandish activities on foot while still beating it to its designations. Folks have beat it juggling, walking backwards, dancing, etc. Katie and her kids participated before she was the mayor, and you guessed it, beat it.
This route serves an intensely dense part of the city and has been failing people for years. The city/county have been making piddly, empty changes for nearly a decade that fixed nothing, like adding a 1 block bus lane. Yup, one block only.
The bus is regularly 30-40 minutes late, which makes using it miserable and unreliable. The reason its route is terrible is that there is a highway onramp thats right there near Amazon HQ. So for years and years people commuting in and out of the city have been prioritized over people who live in it, and no previous mayor had the stones to push back and fix it for actual residents.
It is not just prioritising car commuters from outside vs locals, it is simply an extremely wasteful use of limited traffic capacity. The bus, not clogged down in traffic, has a way higher capacity than probably even two full car lanes at the highest performance. A bus lane is the only rational thing there. If that makes the highway off ramp redundant because there is no capacity for cars left to justify it, simply tear it down. It is fake capacity anyway if the traffic cannot be supported further down the road and it would even benefit car drivers, as it would remove a clogging point and free up capacity on the highway.
I agree with everything you say until the end. It’s disingenuous to say that residents do not take the highway. It runs through the middle of the city! We all take the damn highway.
Ehh, way more residents take or would take that bus then would use that on ramp. Its mainly an ingress point to the freeway for people who commute.
The ramp isnt even closing, its just being sanely re-routed to not cause such a clusterfuck.
That particular on-ramp, yes. I’d rather just drive south (I live to the south) a little bit and take an easier one. But still, anyone who drives here uses I-5 all the time.
That ramp really does need to be rerouted. It makes that entire area undrivable.