Seattle Transit

[Mark Hennessy]

Have been in sunny Seattle for the past few weeks.

The city is transit mess like Dublin, corrupt govt, bad planning, developer led planning, even sewer lines!

Its all in here:

http://www.allaboardwashington.org/cms/images/uploads/What_a_Mess_12.pdf

However, this is primarily a bus based city and it is light years ahead of Dublin in that respect.

Comfortable WiFi enabled (!) express buses bring commuters in from the sprawling suburbs in good times (~35 mins). These express buses are fantastic.

They also have a website that gives out quality and usable information about said buses for visitors which is something that can't be mastered by CIE of course.

[Mark Hennessy]

Sadly the only commuter rail service there runs extremely limited peak hours service and no weekend service.

They are getting better though - the light rail system is due to start running in the downtown transit tunnel next year and testing has started on the rail link to the airport.

I was here a few years ago and its gotten way better.

The light rail seems finished to SeaTac but wont open till '09.

Two weeks ago, the folks voted to extend the proposed light rail line going as far as Husky stadium out to the east across the bridge as far as Redmond.

[ccos]

Two weeks ago, the folks voted to extend the proposed light rail line going as far as Husky stadium out to the east across the bridge as far as Redmond

But the rest of the country voted for Barrack Obama so he won