1. City Council candidate Jessie Israel (running against popular incumbent Nick Licata) is going to get the firefighters endorsement.
2. For his part, Licata has released a spoofy newspaper, The Seattle Planet , including the story of how Licata got arrested at the Fremont solstice parade for riding in the nude bike ride with his clothes on . The dude is Woody Allen.
3. 92,000 people showed up to check out and ride Seattle’s new light rail system this weekend. Cool. Of course, Seattle Transit Blog owns the coverage and has links to all the other good coverage. (Transit nerd, Erica C. Barnett, will file her five-volume post, I kid you not, soon.)
Meanwhile, I have two complaints A. There’s nowhere to lock up your bike downtown around the Westlake station. Nowhere. I asked one of the yellow-shirt attendees at the entrance where to lock up my bike, and she shrugged and half-heartedly pointed to the Cascade Bicycle Club tent (set up just for this weekend’s kickoff) a block-and-a-half away and across the street in Westlake Park. Ha. I hustled over there, but they were closing up shop. I locked my bike to a park bench and ran back to (almost not) catch my train.
I guess I could have brought my bike on the train, but bringing your bike on a crowded commuter train is a stupid idea for everyone. And it’s not the way trains—NYC, D.C., Boston, Philly—work. (For example, and rightly so, only two bikes allowed per car, and only at certain times—not rush hour—on the awesome D.C. Metro.)
As people who live in cities know: You’re supposed to lock up your bike by the station (more bike racks downtown please!), take the round trip, and grab your bike on the way back.
Which leads me to my second complaint: B. Why’d the train stop running at 6 pm yesterday? I had to be in Columbia City at 5. I took the train down to the Columbia City station at Edmunds, but was kind of f’d on getting home an hour later.
4. In a recent entry on his blog , City Council Member Tim Burgess explains how he’s going to cut the “head tax” but still fund transportation projects. (The “head tax” is a $25-per-single-occupancy-vehicle-employee tax on business that goes to fund transportation projects.)
Burgess told me the tax as it stands—on businesses—doesn’t work (i.e. doesn’t get employees out of their cars) because the tax hits the employer not the employee. (Uh, Yay Tim—tax people not business?)
5. There were an unusual number of posts here on PubliCola this weekend—usually we take the weekend off—including a fight in the comments thread about Amazon.com’s “Orwellian” behavior. Scroll down for all the action.
This morning’s Morning Fizz brought to you by Candidate Survivor .
On #3.A: Josh while I agree there need to be more bike racks downtown, especially in the Westlake area (word is the merchants don’t like bike racks for some reason), I think the expectation is the demand for bike racks is at the stations outside of downtown. There are lots of racks near the ID station if you really need a place to leave your bike near a downtown Link station.
On #3.B: The hours this weekend were just for the opening gala thing, normal weekend hours will be 5 AM to 1 AM on Saturday and 6 AM to Midnight on Sunday.
There are several misses on the Light Rail planning for how people get to and from.
I comprehend the argument about why we don’t want to create large park/ride lots near the in-city stations, but what about smaller scale areas for car share vehicles, scooters, and bicycles?
I was out for a couple of hours at the Rainier Beach station and we had volunteers at four other stations on Saturday. The most common comments I heard were:
(1) No sidewalks so they could safely walk to the stations.
(2) Dissatisfaction with bus service links to the stations.
Oddly, I didn’t hear any comments about the noise except for relief that they were no longer honking the horn at every crossing. The noise at RB was nothing like I’d heard a couple weeks earlier near Columbia City. I don’t know if they had a fix or if it is just differing characteristics of the tracks in the area.
It was a great day for our city, don’t get me wrong, but we (Seattle and Sound Transit) have a bunch more work to do on the small things that will integrate the service into daily life.
Josh–
So what does it mean to get the firefighters endorsement? Does it mean they think Jesse is more likely to support a favorable contract for them? I’m curious what it is they like about her and what they don’t like about Nick. That would tell me something.
Mikos,
I don’t know much more on that.
Morning Fizz: Caffeinated News & Gossip.
But good call. I’ll make some calls.
Light Rail Rules! I LOVE Light Rail! Go Sound Transit! I am so frickin’ excited! I can’t even stop being excited! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
David Miller: So, how would you pay for the sidewalks and bus service?
How’s about redirecting the funds raised by the City parking tax from the Mercer project to start?
There’s a reason that there are no bike lock locations at Westlake Center.
It’s because, about 10 years ago, the Downtown Business Association in general, and the Westlake mall owners in particular, didn’t like that Seattle’s bike messengers used to congregate in large numbers right outside where Starbucks now is (which I think used to be Seattle Best Coffee, or Tully’s, whichever one Starbucks didn’t buy). So they tried to drive them out by removing places to lock your bike and by aggressively padlocking and ticketing people who locked their bikes to rails on mall property (the north side of Pine).
The bike messengers are largely gone (and anyway the industry has collapsed as everything goes digital). But you’ll still get a hefty fine and a hassle if you try to lock your bike at Westlake mall. And there’s no place to lock your bike at the park either. You could use the locks outside Pacific Place, though, and walk across the street to the Nordstrom entrance of the tunnel.
@8,
Thanks Trevor.
I was about to call the DSA to see what the deal was.
Nick Licata is a stalwart supporter of the Firefighters Union and has been for the last 12 years on the Seattle City Council. He will remain committed to them for the next 4. This blurb in morning fizz is the first we’ve heard of it, and it comes as a surprise. Nick just won the sole endorsement of the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, and enjoys the sole support of 15 labor unions covering trades from healthcare to plumbing. We’re proud of our strong union support and look forward to supporting the interests of labor for the next 4 years on the Seattle City Council.
Andrew Lewis,
Licata Campaign Manager
@ 7: Miller supports the Mercer project.
Does anyone know if bike thefts are worse around Westlake then anywhere else? I also haven’t been able to find a good place to leave my bike in the day so often leave it on the fence at the Market.
I’ve been in a meeting in 4th and Union where the security interrupted to tell us that someone had just stolen a bike outside. We watched the video and everything looked totally normal.
Wow. Its great to see David at the Othello and Columbia City Stations. I didn’t know that he ventured past 23rd and Jackson. Good for him!