Supposedly they improved the RapidRide, but it's still slower to get to/from Ballard from anywhere in North Seattle than it used to be.

Looking forward to the new streetcar line thru Fremont to Ballard.

More like 20, maybe 25 minutes.

I like Link too but 10 is just inaccurate.

And once you get off at Husky Stadium, it's going to take you 15 minutes to get to the main campus.

i did ten this saturday from columbia city to chinatown...

I understand that Husky stadium is a focal point for traffic on at least 6-10 weekend days per year, but it does seem like a foolish fixed point.

I've also been thinking about Brasilia (a horrible city- this is why you don't let architects/urban planners design cities) and their dedicated paved lines. Buses to run on dedicated lines cost a small fraction of what a streetcar or light train costs (plus we already have them), and in the case of major emergency those lines could be utilized to bring in/move out people/supplies/equipment that isn't able to utilize rail. Much more flexible.

I can get to University/Westlake from Col. City in about 14, without major delays. 12 to the ID on the regular. It was about 20-25 from Rainier Beach.

Hopefully the station at the Stadium will be designed in such a way that it'll serve Students well in addition to Husky fans.

Meanwhile, about 15% of the city's population and about 12% of it's entire land is trapped behind two overcrowded bridges in West Seattle. When are we getting our own Light Rail?

Chris Jury @6:

Buses to run on dedicated lines cost a small fraction of what a streetcar or light train costs (plus we already have them), and in the case of major emergency those lines could be utilized to bring in/move out people/supplies/equipment that isn't able to utilize rail. Much more flexible.

Excellent point, Chris. And while we're at it, as long as flexibility is of paramount importance, we should all start living in tents like Bedouins. I'm also a strong believer that, instead of building skyscrapers downtown, Amazon should be putting up pop-up office space. Don't ask me how that works, but I can guarantee you it's a fraction of the cost of real office buildings.

@6, dedicated lanes for anything are great and are usually going to be faster, but the problem here is what space are you going to dedicate? Seattle is much more built up and quite a bit denser so it would be much harder to find space without pulling some "eminent domain" shenanigans and knocking down a lot of existing buildings.

Why not just get rid of all those "parking" areas along the streets, and use them for bus/taxi/carshare instead?

That said, there's a lot of jobs and students within easy walking of the Husky Stadium. Just ask the UWMC and all the Engineering, Biochem, Chemistry, and Computer Science students. Sucks to be from a soft arts program though. Use your fold-up scooter, kidlings.

Underground trains generally don't have to stop for traffic lights, which I'm pretty sure most above ground buses, even with dedicated lanes, would still need to do.

Also:
Based on some general observational anecdata: The amount of time it takes someone who's handicapped or encumbered to get on a train from a platform: about 5-10 seconds.

Amount it takes the same person to get on a bus: about 2-3 minutes.

Dedicated bus lanes will help a bit, but they're nowhere near a substitution for rail when it comes to efficiency.

@8 one of the many reasons I bought a house in CC.

@12: It's no farther from main campus than many of the commuter bus stops on Pacific, or the E1 commuter lot for that matter. The planned pedestrian bridge across Montlake will help a lot.

I heard a rumor that a line directly under the main campus was nixed partly because of concerns that the vibration would interfere with ongoing physics experiments, but I dunno if that's true. I think it's likelier UW didn't want Stevens Way to become a major bus transfer point.

moar like RapidRage amirite

I like that at the moment he says "...walls dug using high precision computers and lasers" it shows a worker bonking away at the side of a pipe with a sledge hammer.

link and transit are great, obviously, but CC->downtown in 10 is almost definitely pushing it in my mind. i've never had a ride that fast from those two distances, even if you count the ID stop as downtown.

Earth to everyone, Husky Stadium isn't the final stop being built to the north. It will take a few additional years thanks to the dumbass piecemeal funding scheme we've forced transit funding into, but the next station north will be at 45th and Brooklyn. One huge campus, two stops. Not ideal, sure -- "put a stop in red square, dammit" -- but passable. This is public transit, not student transit.

@15 - that bridge is going up nicely, no?

In certain circles bringing up the subject of RapidRide Ballard will get you punched. Or at least lectured at for twenty minutes. It's a fiasco. I can't wait until they replace the 358 with RapidRide E so I can walk an extra ten blocks to my stop. Or not, as the case may be.

Fuck the bus with a red hot fireplace poker. A hundred thousand times.

I wonder how Metro can be so split-brained. RapidRide B on the eastside is fantastic. I can go almost anywhere on around 15 minutes' notice 18 hours out of the day, even on Sunday. Just wish they'd get the arrival signs working at more than two of the "stations."

@9- I don't think a tent serves the same purpose as a house or skyscraper, but hey, I'm willing to give it a go.

Brasilia's dedicated line buses do not share the road with anything, they literally have their own roads that do not intersect with traffic, except at crossings much like our train crossings. I understand the romance of rail travel, but otherwise there is little difference between a streetcar and a bus, except for how it interacts with traffic. If we eliminate traffic interaction part, to make it function like a streetcar- then what at that point is the difference- you know, besides cost?

@23: Yes, I suppose there might be room to do that when all of your buildings are a fucking mile from one another and your main roads are up to 18 lanes wide.

Of course, Brasília is hell on earth for pedestrians, and quite possibly the worst city in the history of humanity.