What do Amanda Knox and the Chamber of Commerce president have in common? They are both leaving. Meanwhile: octopi, a sentencing in the Steve Bushaw murder, a new social, etc. club, and a townhouse fire. Coming up: a ton of chances for yelling at public meetings, and some cool recognition for West Seattle Blog leader Tracy Record. more ›

For those not up to speed: King County Metro is in crisis. Our county's bus service is subject to a 17% cut to the entire system -- 600,000 hours of transit service over two years, affecting up to 80% of bus drivers. We're pretty mad. more ›

Plan ahead, commuters: The King County Department of Transportation has announced that the West Seattle Water Taxi has suspended service starting this afternoon, and will not be running at all until Monday, March 28. more ›

Our fair city is still small enough that it's exciting when we get a mention in the New York Times. It's especially exciting when our history is dissected into what's basically a glowing review of our priorities and way of life. more ›

Seattlest will be counting down to 2011 with a series of posts on our highlights of this year and what we're looking forward to in the next. Got a list to suggest? Send it our way. See the entire series here. more ›

Desperate economic times sometimes call for desperate measures--and King County Metro is no exception. Remember to bring an extra quarter for your hungover, New Years Day ride home, because starting at the very crack of 2011, all adult fares increase by 25 cents, to $2.25 off-peak and $2.50 on. Happy trails to the family fare: the Sunday-and-holiday option which has been around since approximately the stone age (has anyone witnessed anyone actually using this?) is now eliminated. more ›

Holiday travel is notoriously difficult, but be prepared for greater delays this year. In case you haven't been following all the hullabaloo and the sudden influx of people's junk on the Internet (if that was even possible), just in time for this, the most joyous of seasons, the Transportation Security Administration has imposed whole body scans, inciting privacy and heath concerns. Out of the two types of whole-body scans, Millimeter Wave and Backscatter X-ray, the latter has raised caused a larger health uproar. The latter type, the health-uproar kind, are what they have at our own Sea-Tac Airport. more ›

If there's one thing you can say about Tim Eyman, it's that he's not a quitter. Dancing on top of the success of I-1053, the initiative passed this month which preserves the two-thirds legislative majority for tax increases, Eyman has hopped right back on it, doing the same thing he does at the end of every election season--whip up a new batch of initiatives. One of them reopens an old local politics wound: the $30 car tab. And this time, after a similar success in Mukilteo, he's thrown red light camera fines into the mix--those would also be capped at $30, under Eyman's proposed initiatives (there are several that involve both the $30 tabs and the $30 fines). Seattle Transit Blog has a solid rundown of I-473, the most recent of the proposed initiatives, and PubliCola explains some of the finer points of the included "Vehicle Owners' Bill of Rights." more ›

In response to Seattle's 2008 snowpocalypse (which had everyone in the Midwest laughing at us -- three to five inches!), Metro has released its new snow plan, which, in the event of a dangerous level of snow, will reduce service to the "Emergency Service Network"--70 routes that follow main arterials that are the top priority for snowplows, Publicola reported last week. more ›

So what happened this week? Well, it was beautiful, and then it wasn't. It freakishly snowed and we collectively shook our fists at the sky. more ›

Seattle has a tumultuous relationship with transportation. On the one hand, as a green-leaning city, we like to think that we're committed to reducing our reliance on single-user automobiles. One the other hand, our bus system goes down during major weather events, and we're just barely getting started on our light rail system. Sometimes it's hard to visualize what our commuting habits are or how they scale up against other cities. This graphic from artist Martha Kang McGill might help you out. more ›

The folks at Sound Transit must be in good spirits this week--the lowest construction bid for the University Link tunnel was $20 million lower than Sound Transit's original estimate. more ›

Reading through Lucas from Neighborlogs' coverage of a King County Metro budget meeting, we're left with the uncomfortable feeling that we read the phrase "deferred maintenance" one too many times. Besides fare increases (to $2.25) and bus service suspensions, Metro's Kevin Desmond says "Metro will greatly reduce the number of buses it purchases, and speed, reliability and asset maintenance programs will be cut." [Emphasis added] We know! Reads like a line cut from Drag Me to Hell, doesn't it? more ›

Thank the gods of Olympus! Amtrak's twice-a-day Seattle-Vancouver train service starts a week from today, on August 19, 2009. (UPDATE: Seattle Transit Blog says Thursday the 20th. Here's the current train schedule.) Seattle rail passengers will be able to depart at 7:40 a.m. or 6:40 p.m. and arrive in Vancouver, B.C., at about 11:35 a.m. or 10:45 p.m, respectively. From Vancouver, the southbound Amtrak Cascades train will leave at 6:40 a.m., hitting Seattle four-ish hours later, and arriving in Portland at 2:45 p.m. We get the train to help us get to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympics Winter Games, with no promises for after the Games are done. more ›

The ORCA card is, of course, the new, handy way to pay fares for many kinds of transit including the new Link light rail. Like all good Seattle things (e.g., a trendy restaurant, your friend's house, or the Fremont Troll), the youth ORCA card is not that easy to find unless you know where to go already. more ›

In the Seattle Times story about mayoral candidate Michael McGinn, "McGinn: 'He's the guy who's against the tunnel,'" state representative Judy Clibborn, chairwoman of the state House Transportation Committee, tries to pull the "done deal" card: "Since we're so far down the line and this was a decision that took so long to make, we're not going to change just because one person doesn't like it." Judy, Judy, Judy...70 percent of Seattle voters rejected a tunnel in 2007. We're not statisticians, but we think that's more than one person. (Check out tunnelfacts.com for all the reasons why people haven't warmed up to the deep-bore option.) But maybe we're looking at this the wrong way--if the state has a few billion sitting around to spend strictly because of process inertia, Governor Gregoire is obviously misleading us about all those cuts to healthcare we need to make that will kill people. more ›

Earlier today, we were smiling over the Seattle Times trying to use the first day of light rail ridership as a benchmark. "What was the Times headline on February 4, 1965?" we asked, thinking of the opening of I-5. Then we really wanted to know, so we looked it up. more ›

From the Times: "On the first day of regular light-rail service, ridership on Sound Transit's new Link train system is rather light. Midway through the morning commute, trains were arriving at Tukwila from downtown Seattle with fewer than 10 passengers aboard." And: "Normal use is projected at 26,600 per weekday next year—far more than today's trend." One morning is a trend? This makes us curious. What was the Times headline on February 4, 1965? "I-5 Looks Awfully Open"? Times commenters are through waiting for ridership to increase--they sound about ready to rush out and pull up the tracks. more ›

• Jon Talton on his Sound Economy blog has a nice overview of the state of the economy nearly two years into our current economic nightmare. Read it; it's not pretty and things aren't getting better any time soon.
• Erica C. Barnett at Publicola has liveblogged the the County Executive debate from Bellevue, featuring some choice right-wing nuggets from is-she-or-isn't-she-Republican Susan Hutchinson.
• Speaking of Hutchinson, Seattle Transit Blog has some info on her thoughts on transportation issues. Also not pretty.

One thing the loop does is remove the need for decision about 12th or Broadway, which, it being Seattle, could keep us at the consensus table for the next quarter of a century. Also, as we understand it, it takes up less space to run the streetcar one way down a street, and it pencils out (construction-wise) as cheaper to do. more ›

The Seattle Times has a complaint from a Redmond woman who was taking two kids to the fireworks on the Fourth. On holidays, Metro's policy is that kids ride free with a paying adult. But it turns out the Fourth is not a holiday...well, not a Metro holiday. Metro's holiday was the Third of July, which as you know celebrates the day the Founding Fathers settled on the parchment for the Declaration of Independence. more ›

The trains will open with service from Westlake to Tukwila on July 18. It will be free to ride on the 18th and 19th with paid service starting on Monday, July 20. The base ticket price will be $1.75 with a .05-cent increase with every mile. When the Tukwila to SeaTac section opens in December, it will cost $2.25 from Westlake to the airport. Trains come about every 7.5 minutes during peak times, and every 15 minutes otherwise. more ›

Last night at about 10:20 p.m., a bicyclist was struck and killed by a car taking the Dexter Way North exit from Aurora, says Queen Anne News. The police arrested the car's driver after "an evaluation showed signs of impairment." more ›

Mayor Nickels, speaking of the tunnel for which no cost overruns can be foreseen, noted that, "The design work and engineering on the 'mile in the middle,' which has been the controversial part, will go forward in about two years." Does that mean what it sounds like? Is the most controversial part really undesigned? (The Weekly's Damon Agnos has some terrific quotes from someone who looked like the Mayor speaking out strongly against a tunnel a little while ago.) more ›

Friday we got our new ORCA card in the mail and ran straight to the computer to add cash dollars to our account using our ultra-high-tech VISA technology. Saturday we checked the account and saw $0.00. Oh, wait: "Any value purchased in the last 24 hours may not be shown." Really? Is someone doing this by hand back there? As of now (2.5 days later) our transaction is still pending, our ORCA card useless. *sigh* Great idea, though! more ›

Farsighted Capitol Hill Seattle has been nosing around in Sound Transit's documentation, trying to discover if Capitol Hill residents might be in for "sandy void" surprises when the light rail tunnel passes through. more ›

A friend of ours was at the Washington Conservation Voters auction fundraiser last night, where Mayor Greg Nickels was being applauded for his greenery. But when Nickels got to the part about the deep-bore tunnel, the response was noticeably tepid. Perhaps thinking people needed a little push, Nickels mentioned his excitement about the tunnel again, only to hear some back-of-the-hall derision. Did his staff not tell Hizzoner that real greens don't buy into tunnel-vision? more ›

It's heartening to discover we weren't the only ones who found it possible to envision cost overruns in building Seattle's deep-bore tunnel. Sightline's Clark Williams-Derry: "It's a potentially enormous financial burden, since even the best planning process can't anticipate things that can go wrong with such a massive undertaking." The Seattle Times' Danny Westneat: "I do think it's suspicious that this same tunnel was rejected in December by a stakeholder advisory committee on account of it being way too expensive. Only to have the costs then shrink (!) by $400 million, arriving at a size that happily fits the state's pre-existing budget." Westneat does everything but call those involved bald-faced liars. Since the alternative is that they're delusional, we're not sure which option is preferable. more ›

Sometimes we fantasize that the Capitol dome is a Reset button that just needs a really big thumb. Here's the exciting part about the viaduct bill that just passed the House: "Any costs in excess of ($2.8 billion) shall be borne by property owners in the Seattle area...." Are you at all reassured by Gov. Gregoire's spokesperson that "we don't envision any cost overruns to occur on this project"? more ›

Commonsense prevails, as the seven Puget Sound public transportation agencies--that includes ferries too--have joined together to start rolling out their new "transportation baby," a collaborative regional fare system. more ›