• The sounds of a police helicopter woke up sleeping residents on Capitol Hill around 3:30 a.m., CHS blog reports the police were above trying to track down the assailant who attacked a woman in the alley near 17th and Howell.
• If you've found "Wash Me" written on to your vehicle recently, you may want to take up Brown Bear Car Wash offer for a free car wash today until 8 p.m. at all tunnel locations.

• As of 9 a.m. this morning, Sea-Tac's cell phone waiting lot has re-opened. The new lot is twice the size, with nearly 100 spaces and can be found just north of the old lot on Air Cargo Road.
• My Ballard reported that around 3 a.m. this morning, a car collided smackdab into a utility pole at Market Street near Third Avenue, leaving the 27-year-old driver trapped inside. Rescue crews were able to cut the driver free, who was then sent to Harborview with non-life threatening injuries.

"Metro Transit pins at thrift store" by Wendi Dunlap (litlnemo), from our Flickr pool more ›

• Tonight we expect it to be all-out airness in Eastlake at El Corazon for the Seattle Regional Air Guitar Championships. We also hear one of the judges has a thing for the keytar.
• A homemade float plane (who does that?) had a splash landing this morning into Lake Sammamish. Its pilot, an 82-year-old Redmond man, was left unscathed.

The other day, Seattlest Abbey found a gem in the Seattle Municipal Archives' photo pool. When we saw that, we knew it wasn't just a dusty old transit study from which nothing came. Our friends at HistoryLink tell us: more ›

We know how bad this whole crashing economy is. Really, we do. But every cloud has a silver lining, and we're pretty sure the sparkle you can see just past today's bankrupt financial giants and tanked WAMU stock is increased transit ridership translating into more routes and added runs on existing routes so you don't have to drive (or pay for gas) anymore. more ›

The Seahawks today announced that the popular park-and-ride shuttle buses to Qwest Field for home all home games have been eliminated, due to the Bush Administration's efforts to privatize public transportation. In April, the Federal Transportation Administration forced teams to seek private bids for all previously negotiated contracts with local transit agencies. What is not clear is why the Hawks aren't able to continue the Metro service since the only private bid was deemed incomplete. This was the case with this year's similar Mariners shuttle service, which was also threatened by the ruling. According to the News-Tribune report, the Seahawks are recommending fans should consider taking regular ST and Metro bus service, as well as Sounder. But a news release from Sound Transit yesterday announced that Sounder will not serve the preseason games. Left hand, meet right hand. Please. *****Update: According to an email sent to all Seahawk season ticket-holders this afternoon, ALL park-and-ride shuttles have been eliminated this season. Sigh. more ›

When that 25-cent fare increase hits in March...let's see, gotta calculate up...carry the exponent...Metro could be making 1,925,000 extra dollars per year (not really, we're just multiplying 0.25 by 7% of total boardings, for a quick estimate). A peak 1-zone fare will be $1.75, so make sure you're carrying around three quarters during commute times. more ›

The Seattle Transit Blog reported (and Seattlest echoed) the fact that 3rd Avenue Downtown is going to remain a transit-only corridor during rush hour way back in June, but since the press release just came out and it'll probably be in the papers tomorrow maybe we should revisit it. more ›

Seattle Metro Transit is reporting that 2006 was a record year for bus ridership with 103.2 million boardings and for some reason we feel like cheering this news. Yay Metro Transit, you're competently running a bus service for the city of Seattle. Way to go. The release claims that this year's numbers represent a 4.3% increase over 2005 and attributes the increase in ridership to additional jobs in the area - The previous high-ridership mark was set in 2000 when there were also a high number of jobs in the city. We'd like to attribute it to an increased awareness of the lack of sustainability built into the automobile-based model of transportation in the region, but we also attribute our cat's energetic moods to the tides, so... The closest Metro Transit will come to saying something like that is: more ›

This week Seattlest played like a transportation groupie -- former Mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, Jaime Lerner was in town and we caught his public address at Benaroya Hall ("An Evening with Jaime Lerner") and then a breakfast talk ("Lessons from Curitiba") sponsored by the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle and offering a panel discussion with Patricia Chase (International Sustainable Solutions), Kevin Desmond (King County, Metro Transit), and Jim Mueller (JC Mueller). more ›

Seattlest's bus ride to work lasts about twelve minutes. That's just long enough for us to find a seat, sit in it, open our bag, take out our laptop and boot it up, Start, Shutdown, Yes we would like the computer to shut down, put it away and get off the bus. Ah, another productive commute! You didn't notice it, but during the minute our computer was on it attempted and failed to find any available wireless networks. Our email rants to the editor were unable to fly out into the either. more ›