Comments On: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic? by Dominic Holden

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Bob — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:51:41 -0800

in a giant looming depression, they all got lucky not to have the gaping hole for a decade

I loved the OLD SAFEWAY - went there on purpose - tons of mark downs and good sales, sweet guys working the floor - bought dimes in the parking lot at the same visit

the best of all worlds - gone forever - and what's with the fucking sing, I do not remember that

oh well, with any size real grocery below, the units will rent well.... older folks like to be right near the grocery store, and VERY energy effiient and easy to carry....

good luck to the vanishing hole project
Posted by Bob

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Bob — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:45:53 -0800

#26 - and fixed viewpoint produce change?

bunk

new interest in hot isotope nuke micro units - small - maybe the new auto fuel??

or maybe bunk, but let's not ask

call the know it alls for the answers, they have it all under control

not bunk, bullshit ten feet deep, sir

Posted by Bob

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Luke Baggins — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:57:10 -0800

Oh, and I don't believe that climate change comes from your tailpipe. It has always happened and always will. I think we should do our best to burn all the fossil fuels on earth as soon as possible. But living in the city without a car is healthier and better for a variety of good reasons.
Posted by Luke Baggins

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Luke Baggins — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:53:28 -0800

# 16 I agree with not fucking with other peoples' choices. What we really should do is get rid of all zoning laws and eliminate DCLU. I think if the market had been free since the 40's-- this means no national highway fund, no zoning etc., cities would be more dense and suburbs would be less violently retarded. Since the 40's, all construction has been dictated by community planners and the result has been increasingly hideous. If zoning must continue-- and I can't see it going away in any less than a few decades, let it favor the pedestrian and the renter. It's our fucking turn.
Posted by Luke Baggins

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Catalina Vel-DuRay — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 23:42:00 -0800

Rob dear, I said the parking lot sign was fun. NOT that the parking lot sign was "mid-century modern". There is a significant difference.

Chez Vel-DuRay is a tasteful Mid-Century enclave. It is not fun. At least not per se.

The Safeway parking lot sign was fun, in that 50's cartoonish sort of way, but not necessarily an example of Mid-Century Modernism.

Please make a note of it.

Posted by Catalina Vel-DuRay

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Will in Seattle — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:06:45 -0800

oh, and that side of Stone Way is Wallingmont. Frellingford is on the west side of the street.
Posted by Will in Seattle

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Will in Seattle — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:19:06 -0800

Why do you guys hate our grocery store?

Especially since it's on the bus lines from the U Dist to Queen Anne, Seattle Center, and Fremont?

Seriously, GET ER DONE!
Posted by Will in Seattle

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

keshmeshi — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:14:44 -0800

@22,

you really don't know it all

hydrogen cars on on the road in California, test stage, 50 of them from GM and others from Toyota and Ford

Neither do you. Hydrogen is bunk. It will not come to pass, period. No one who's serious about energy or the environment would rely on that joke of a technology.
Posted by keshmeshi

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

rob — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:01:04 -0800

@ top photo: Looks like an underappreciated opportunity for a neighborhood personal-watercraft launch ramp.
Posted by rob

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

rob — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:49:59 -0800

@11, old Safeway signs don't count as Mid-Century Modern unless, of course, they have the two slender spires of different heights.
Posted by rob

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Louis — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:49:50 -0800

#19 - honey, gas is 1.89 here in Seattle as we post.
My family had a Mercedes Diesel thirty five years ago - custom order from Germany - ran on stove oil - which then was dirt cheap

I think it is still in a garage on the family farm, we used it for twenty five years, god, the thing clattered a lot, but just fine transportation. (no speed in the passing lane, ever, but it would plane at 75 on the highway like a breeze ..)
Posted by Louis

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Bob — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:43:44 -0800

#17

you really don't know it all

hydrogen cars on on the road in California, test stage, 50 of them from GM and others from Toyota and Ford.

Peasants and serfs never left the Kings Farm. In the horse and buggy era poor people rarely left the small town.

Some how the use of transportation by the masses has come to mean something negative by the hot house babies.

Stupid does not begin to describe their concept of a modern functioning world.

Of course horse crap everywhere was a big bonus, or, was it?

By the way, in the days of wagons, rural people went to town once a month. Oh sure, all the wholesome isolation ... some of these posts are just so mind jerking silly.

On a global basis we will move to small cars with very high miles and whole new tecnology - mass transit - including personal vehicles, trucks and buses is here to stay.

Pray for jet packs, magna flux roads, central energy source autos, and on down the sci fi list. It will ALL happen with time.

Remember the market for advanced technology on a global basis is ten times what it was twenty years ago
and China and India are racing toward newer and newer engineering inroads. Both are now in space and will soon overtake American space science.

America has the problem doing anything really new. Look to China, tapping a market of tens of millions of
units a year.

By the way, under pressure form the Feds, American autos can be pushed to twice the miles. Thank Bush for the shit on another front.

Nothing wrong with the solar panels on your house charging the batteries of your car either.
Posted by Bob

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Power to the People — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:36:47 -0800

"Bio-diesel will always be more expensive than gasoline, because they can. "

Oh, child of the Reagan era. You are indeed naive. Now that we are back in power, we can use government to totally change the paradigm.
Posted by Power to the People

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

michael — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:01:48 -0800

To keep the arterial sidewalk friendly to walkers, it is good to put the driveway on the side street. A lousy arterial for walking has tons of driveway cuts, a good one has very few. Of course, the best business districts for walking were built before parking lots and garages were required by government.
Posted by michael

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Tiktok — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:54:56 -0800

Ain't no serious bio-diesel effort with gasoline <$4/gallon kids.

Bio-diesel will always be more expensive than gasoline, because they can.

Everyone driving a diesel-enabled vehicle already raise your hand.

Everyone looking forward to buying a new diesel-enabled vehicle in the near future, raise your hand.
Posted by Tiktok

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Darwin — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:22:58 -0800

http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwi…

Feldman, that's a good story of drunken idocy. Power to ya for the bike ride and bus taking.

"we wonder who the real men are" - Joe Jackson
Posted by Darwin

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

know-it-all — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:14:00 -0800

Yet another reason why we need better mass transit.

And here I go, about to respond to someone who's just obviously bating the likes of me:

Hey Ivan, no one mentioned banning cars. But anyway, cars aren't like abortions. I don't have a car and yet the quality of my life, though improved at times by cars (thanks to my friends), is also compromised by them (e.g. constant noise and exhaust in my neighborhood).

If hypothetically cars didn't exist and we could replace the freeways with a huge number of women having abortions in their place, it wouldn't increase area asthma rates in children, or pedestrian fatalities.

I understand why people like cars (convenience, independence, etc.) but they harm the environment in numerous ways (Again, they destroy the air quality--exhaust of any kind will do that, even biodiesel, particularly if the number of cars increases, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here. Highways take up space and are ugly. They're also dangerous because people abuse the privilege of driving and drive when they're intoxicated or sleep deprived or talking on their cell phones. They also isolate people from their environments.)

Plain and simple, an individual's actions affect others. This is why sometimes, yeah, we need to fuck with other peoples' choices when they don't seem to get that the world isn't their own instant-gratification-fest.

You know, I hope the ecologically sound cars you refer to actually come to be, even if they make the landscape ugly--if I can't have non-toxic and beautiful, non-toxic itself is better than nothing--but I'm not optimistic.

Posted by know-it-all

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

ivan — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:46:34 -0800

If traffic is going to be such a problem on Stone Way N, then they should go back to two lanes in each direction so it can flow.

@ 12:

Actually, attitudes like yours are the ones that shold be marginalized. Cars will be smaller, lighter, cleaner, more ecologically sound, and more ubiquitous in the next 20-25 years, and the use of personal motorized transit will keep pace with the population growth.

When cars are running on biodiesel made from algae, what will your excuse be for banning them then? You won't have one, just like you don't have one now, except for "I don't like cars."

Well, cars are like abortions. If you don't like them, don't have one. But don't fuck with other people's choices.

Posted by ivan

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

walter — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:29:43 -0800

Wallimont of Wallingmont is the preferred nomenclature, dude.
Posted by walter

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Feldman — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:05:27 -0800

As long as the bar at the bottom of Stone Way doesn't change. This past June, I got shit-faced there during the Solstice parade. Good times. Not to mention bicycling to it from White Center. I took the bus back home.
Posted by Feldman

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Mr. X — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 03:29:57 -0800

This really is a uniquely important site, and is worth getting right. At the very least, I really hope that the generic 15,0000 sqf convenience store described in the decision means a significant food market of that size, and isn't allowed to be subdivided into a Plaid Pantry, Quizno's, and tanning salon halfway through construction.

Way way back when (as in, way before the QFC proposal), Wallingford objected rightly to locating the entrance for a rebuilt Safeway on NE 40th Street, as it would result in cars entering the uphill portion of the site instead of the part that faces onto Stone Way as it did when Safeway was still there. Doing so about guarantees permanent gridlock on 40th for cross town town commuters, and also creates a very strong likelihood that there will be a ton of rear-end collisions as westbound traffic crests the hill and is immediately confronted with a line of cars waiting to turn left into the Safeway lot against traffic.

While my recollection is that the neighbors used to consider the former Stone Way entrance route to be the best option, 39th was seen as a reasonable compromise.

Having looked at the decision, I can't help but be struck by how thoughtful and diligent the DRB and DPD were in reviewing the project, but how strangely disappointing the current plan appears to be despite all of their efforts.

@ 12 -

I was in Chicago a few months ago, and having actively sought out and read every local paper I could get my hands on, it seems to me that there are plenty of people there with similar concerns about the real-world effects of this kind of growth in their neighborhoods, too. Oddly enough, I found that the effective activism you dismiss as a "suburban mentality" in those in-city single family neighborhood folks was quite refreshing (as I have in Berkeley, LA, NYC, Berlin, Paris, and pretty much every other city I have picked up a neighborhood paper in).

But yeah, that said, if you live across the alley from this particular site, it's not as if you didn't know this day was coming.

Posted by Mr. X

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Luke Baggins — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:42:49 -0800

What we should do is shit-can any requirements that parking be a part of residential construction, and maybe consider a requirement that there be no parking. I've lived in Seattle for 7 years without a car and living by an arterial here is just as good as living by the red-line in Chicago, I did that for 1 year and lived by the blue-line for 2. Lots of apartments with no parking would mean lots of voters who don't think of driving conditions first.

Most people we know around here wouldn't dream of living in that location without parking, that's why we need new people. Until we increase the non-driving population, we'll still have to deal with the same NIMBY bullshit.

Although you're right that this neighborhood response is a huge improvement over what we're used to.

NIMBY community groups like these have to be marginalized or we never lose that suburban mentality that hangs over Seattle like a toxic cloud.
Posted by Luke Baggins

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

Catalina Vel-DuRay — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:31:30 -0800

I miss that old Safeway. It was one of those late 1940's, Patricia Neal-ish style Safeway. And the parking lot sign was an awful lot of fun.
Posted by Catalina Vel-DuRay

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

TG — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:34:11 -0800

Could you also inquire into how much longer we need a vacant lot parking lot where the cha cha/bimbos/bus stop/manray/kincoras used to be?
Posted by TG

Re: Filling Up Frellingford—With Traffic?

AJ — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:07:10 -0800

The best way to fuck up someone's day in Seattle would be to put 3 stop signs at a busy 4-way intersection.
Posted by AJ