Comments on: Dec’09 UW Light Rail Station Meeting

By: Jonathan Dubman

Jonathan Dubman — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:01:34 +0000

I like the extension of Rainier Vista and the lowering of Pacific Place but the rest of this plan needs work.

Why is it such a long walk – across two busy streets – coming out of the station and transfering to a southbound bus?

There will be a large volume of bicycles crossing the Montlake Bridge destined for the station, the campus or the Burke-Gilman trail, especially after we have a bicycle trail across the floating bridge. Do we really want this stream of bicycles crossing Montlake Blvd. at grade?

We have pedestrian bridges north of Pacific Place and west of the triangle. The Burke-Gilman trail has bridges over 35th Ave. and over or under other arterials. Why is it so bad to have a bridge or tunnel here? I don’t understand the great aversion. There are 40,000 vehicles per day on Montlake Blvd. 25,000 will cross this street in each direction, daily, to access the station. Why not a bridge or tunnel?

It cannot be the expense… Compared to the cost of building the rail line or even the station, the cost would be negligible.

For some reason, SDOT has a thing against “skybridges”. They consistently apply the same rules to this area as they do to the streets of downtown Seattle… Streets such as Pike between 7th and 8th Avenues, a public realm SDOT would never dream of sullying with a skybridge.

By: Galen Weld

Galen Weld — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:07:27 +0000

I was also there last night, and I also asked about the feasibility of a ramp of some non-stair connection to the triangle. The response I received was that a ramp would involve raising the corner of the triangle, which the U.W. didn’t like because it impeded the lines of the vista coming down from the fountain. I was also told to write a letter, and I would encourage others to as well.

By: Editorial: The UW Land Bridge? Not So Great. - Seattle Transit Blog

Editorial: The UW Land Bridge? Not So Great. - Seattle Transit Blog — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:49:51 +0000

[...] Editorial: The UW Land Bridge? Not So Great. by Ben Schiendelman Last night I attended the University Link open house at the Museum of History and Industry. Construction is about to start on UW Station at Montlake, so there was a presentation explaining exactly where construction will take place, what sort of mitigation there will be, and what will go on. I’m not the first to post about this – Alper of Alpertopia covered it today as well. [...]

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:06:40 +0000

Thanks for the great writeup. I was there last night as well, and I’m definitely not interested in the UW design after seeing the presentation and talking to the project manager.