• Working on plaza improvement near the west main gate of Husky Stadium (E17) to accomadate increased pedestrian density during games/events,
• Montlake and Pacific intersection will have a protected left turn signal added for southbound Montlake traffic into the access road,
• A temporary complete sidewalk closure (4 weeks) on the east side of Montlake Blvd for four weeks to erect noise wall along the street
• After wall is finished, a slurry wall we be constructed underground to outline the future station and ensure the integrity of future digging,
• After slurry wall completed, main excavation down 100ft begins! The tunnel boring machine (TBM) will arrive Spring 2011; the station contract is set to be awarded June 2010, with construction on that starting March 2011.
• Trucking schedule is mostly at night, hauling hours now are established to be 2-3pm, 10pm-7am. Negotiations with the city might allow 12 hour hauling window from 7p-7am.

A couple of interesting comments came up. When first asked for public questions, an older gentleman berated the public relations part of these community meetings (poor Wilbert!), saying that no one came door to door to the historic Montlake homes to inform affected residents of the presence of the meetings and how the sound is “carrying really well” across the cut. He repeated this gripe two more times. Sound Transit replied that they had done door-to-door canvasing in the neighborhood in addition to public flyers and email announcements, and countered his argument that none of his neighbors knew about these meetings by claiming that his neighbors had indeed shown up to previous meetings and voiced similar concerns to his (noise, hauling schedule).

On the topic of noise (which seems extremely silly to me because this station seems to affect the least homes due to its position far away from residential areas), ST said the contractor applied for a temporary noise variance permit (in addition to the February-approved 24 month permit for six decibles over ambient) to experiment with what equipment can and cannot be used during the night hours.

With respect to the pedestrian bridge, Sound Transit noted that SDOT policy discourages pedestrian bridges (seems rather non-applicable to this situation), and also withdrew their portion of funding due to budget constraints. This leaves the UW with $4 million and ST with $4 million + the cost of the pedestrian bridge to find an alternative. A public meeting on this topic will be held very soon in May or June.

Lastly, environmental impacts were brought up. Concerns over the gobbling of green space by the parking lot by the project were voices, especially of the climbing wall and old cottonwood trees. Sound Transit assured that no futher use of green area is required and that the rock wall will be fine.

There were a considerable number of repeat questions after Sound Transit’s presentation, and it was definitely neat to see that the plans are a lot more concrete and the plans make practical sense (for the most part!). Questions such as bike access (grade-separation from the Burke-Gillman trail, bike runners for the stairs on the east end), trucking soil and spoils out of the excavation area (modifying the Montlake/Pacific Wy signal), and parking issues dominated the Q&A period.

Then came the UW presentation for the overhaul of Rainier Vista and everything went incredibly insane. The guy gave a decent presentation, although quite sparse on the comparisons with replacing Sound Transit’s arcing footbridge to the south end of C-12 with a 100-ft wide lid over Pacific Place (necessitating the need for regrading the street 17 feet lower) and using a separate signaled crosswalk to cross Montlake at the midpoint between Pacific Pl and Pacific Ave (think the Seattle Aquarium crosswalk).  I’ve included a picture below.

It’s tiny at the moment, hopefully a better image will surface in the next couple of days.  One of the most important debatable aspects of the design is the crossing at Montlake that’s partially hidden by the lower text bubble.  Sound Transit is predicting at least 10,000 daily trips using the light rail at Husky Stadium by 2030.  Which one supports this growth?  Apparently 25% of riders are expected to make transit connections, and 70% of the remaining 75% will go north to upper campus.  The remaining 22% will go to the hospital and points south.

Of course, most of the criticism that came after the UW presentation was the practicality of the change compared to the Sound Transit proposal ($18 mil vs. $6-8 mil) and the complete infeasibility of an at-grade crossing for over 75% of users.  The poor UW guy eventually shut down while suggestions and criticisms were voiced against the UW plan, but some important points were raised.  One gentleman was particularly concerned with the jaywalking tendancies and the lack of queuing of the university community and questioned the pace of the traffic light counter to pedestrian traffic (“…if the traffic light isn’t responsive to within 10 seconds, it’s not fast enough…“, to which the reply was “…[the light] is fixed to 30-second intervals.“)  Many concerns were raised about efficiency; is constructing a 100-ft wide bridge only accessible from the station/bus stops by crosswalk really necessary?  The Seattle Transit Blog has a little discussion about pedestrian feasibility in the area, though throughout the presentation it was becoming clear that a pedestrian bridge would not be constructed in conjunction with the Rainier Vista lid.

Neither option supports good connections to the hospital, and it came up through some discussions with other people at the meeting that the medical center didn’t support a dedicated pedestrian right-of-way from the station to the hospital (why? crowd control?).  People that work/visit at the hospital will still have to make the two-hop jump to the hospital through Montlake and Pacific. 

My suggestion would be to extend Sound Transit’s bridge idea. At the current time, transit planners are envisioning re-routing buses to take advantage of the light-rail transfer and utilize the north side of Pacific Pl, hence the inclusion of a stairwell and elevator in the center of the walkway span. Instead of (or in addition to), there should be a pedestrian ramp from that midpoint toward the center of the vista triangle. While this enables people to populate the triangle (it hardly gets any traffic and can be a decent gathering area), it allows for a one-crosswalk connection to the hospital, bike connection to street level, and access to future bus stops.