Some Urban Observations from My Seattle Vacation
I spent part of my recent vacation in Seattle. It was my first time visiting the city, and I only spent a couple days there, but I want to share some observations that I think might interest Streetsblog L.A. readers. Similar to my earlier vacation stories – about London, Barcelona, and cities in Italy and Mexico – this post doesn’t claim to tell the whole Seattle story. It’s just sharing some green transportation facilities that I observed.
Seattle has ~800,000 residents in ~84 square miles; it’s part of a four million person metropolitan area spanning about ~4,400 square miles. In comparison, the city of Los Angeles has about four million residents in a ~470 square mile area which is part of a 13 million person 30,000 square mile metropolitan area.
My family stayed for just a couple of days in a fairly suburban part of the city and got around via bus, rail, and walking. I observed a lot of cycling, but didn’t bike. Our visit coincided with a World Cup soccer match, featuring the U.S. national team. We didn’t attend or even watch the game, but it was hard to miss huge numbers of fans on transit and in multiple downtown streets temporarily closed off to car traffic.
Plentiful Seattle Transit: Light Rail, Bus and Streetcar
We rode the bus quite a bit. Buses were useful, clean, on-time, not crowded; operators were helpful. I didn’t spot much that made them different than buses anywhere else.
The transit spine that we rode a lot is Link light rail run by Sound Transit. In Seattle there are two Link lines: the 1 and the 2. These form a sort of Y-shape that includes about 63 miles of track and 50 stations.
Light rail service felt frequent, even late in the day. In and around the downtown core, the light rail runs underground (somewhat similar to L.A.’s Regional Connector project). Further out the lines I took are elevated, or in roadway medians. The 1 Line makes an easy convenient connection with SeaTac airport.
Many of the Link light rail stations feel similar to Los Angeles.
A few underground Link stations felt different and bigger than L.A.’s underground stations, though not functionally all that different (and hence perhaps not cost-effective?). These station spaces felt fairly grand and airy.
These large underground stations’ boarding platforms are outside the rail, and rail tracks are embedded in a concrete floor – all inside a fairly large station box. It’s perhaps a bit safer, as no one can fall into the track area. It felt like, in a pinch, one could run across the tracks to the other side, though lots of signs noted this was not allowed. (Rail experts can probably correct me, but I think this floor design requires some kind of low-floor rail cars – similar to streetcars – so this design would not work with L.A. light rail vehicles.)
Bicycle connections with transit appeared fairly convenient. I observed several cyclists bringing bikes on-board trains.
Seattle also has a couple of short streetcar lines. I took one that made sense for one trip; it worked fine but felt somewhat slow due to car traffic and a circuitous route.
Seattle Bicycling and Traffic Calming
Seattle, especially in the central city, has numerous protected bikeways – featuring many types of protection, including lots of good solid concrete protection.
Another view of the above diverter and Neighborhood Greenway
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