Transportation in Seattle

As with almost every other city in western North America, transportation in Seattle is dominated by automobiles, although Seattle is just old enough that the city's layout reflects the age when railways and streetcars (known locally as "trolleys") dominated. These older modes of transportation made for a relatively well-defined downtown and strong neighborhoods at the end of several former streetcar lines, most of them now bus lines.

Because of the isthmus-like geography of the city (wedged between Lake Washington and Puget Sound), and the concentration of jobs in certain parts of Seattle, much of the movement in the Seattle metropolitan area is through Seattle itself. North-south transportation is highly dependent on Interstate 5, which connects most of the major cities on the Puget Sound with southwest Washington communities such as Centralia, Longview/Kelso, and the Portland, Oregon/Vancouver, Washington metropolitan area, and to cities to the north such as Bellingham. I-5 joins with British Columbia Highway 99 at the US/Canada border at Peace Arch, between Blaine, Washington and Surrey, British Columbia; this highway provides access to Vancouver, British Columbia and other Canadian points. Also heavily used is State Route 99, which includes the Alaskan Way Viaduct in downtown Seattle. Because of seismic instability, there are plans to rebuild the viaduct, or relocate the traffic to surface streets and an expanded transit system.

Transportation to and from the east is via State Route 520's Evergreen Point Floating Bridge and Interstate 90's Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge and Third Lake Washington Bridge, all over Lake Washington. Those bridges are the first, second, and fifth longest floating bridges in the world, respectively. State Route 522 connects Seattle to its northeastern suburbs.

Unlike most North American cities, water transportation remains important. Washington State Ferries, the largest ferry system in the United States and the third largest in the world, operates a passenger-only ferry from Colman Dock in Downtown to Vashon Island, car ferries from Colman Dock to Bainbridge Island and to Bremerton, and a car ferry from West Seattle to Vashon Island to Southworth. Seattle was once home to the "Kalakala", a streamlined art deco-style ferry that plied the waters from the 1930s to the 1960s. The ship has since fallen into disrepair.

Seattle contains most of Boeing Field, officially called King County International Airport, but most of the city's airline passengers use Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in the city of SeaTac. Seattle is also served by three Amtrak routes at King Street Station: the Cascades, the Coast Starlight, and the Empire Builder.

History

Even though Seattle is old enough that railways and streetcars once dominated its transportation system, the city is now largely dominated by automobiles, but has recently started rebuilding streetcar lines and light rail routes. Seattle is also serviced by an extensive network of bus routes and two commuter rail routes connecting it to many of its suburbs.

Organized land transportation in Seattle dates back at least to 1871; by that date a wagon traveled twice daily from what is now First Avenue (near Elliott Bay) to Lake Washington; the fare was 50 cents, no small sum for that era. In 1880 a two-horse carriage carried passengers and freight from roughly today's Pioneer Square to Belltown every two hours at a fare of 12.5 cents in an open coach or 15 cents in a covered coach. This was shortly followed by similar services connecting out to Lake Union and to Madison Park on Lake Washington.Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=144]

Water transport was important in this era even within what are now city limits. A steamer connected South Lake Union to Latona (between today's Lower Wallingford and the University District and another steamer crossed Green Lake.

The first streetcars came in 1884, with iron-wheeled horse-drawn streetcars convert|3.5|mi|km|1 of track up today's Second Avenue to Pine Street, then up First Avenue to Battery Street. [Harvnb|Newell|1956|p=73–74] Yesler Way and Jackson Street got their cable cars (from Pioneer Square to Lake Washington) in 1888, allowing public transportation on routes over hills too steep for horses. Electric streetcars, soon to be known as the "Interurban" appeared in 1889, making Seattle one of the first cities in the United States to adopt this innovation.Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=145] [Harvnb|Newell|1956|p=73–74. Newell also writes that the entrepreneur of both the first horse-drawn streetcars and the first electric streetcars was Frank Osgood from Boston; his partners in the enterprise were Seattle pioneer David Denny and Judge Thomas Burke.]

The Great Seattle Fire did not slow this progress at all: by 1890, there were lines along the waterfront from South Seattle (today's South Park) to Lower Queen Anne and from the center of town to Capitol Hill, Madison Park, and Madrona. These were instrumental in the creation of a relatively well-defined downtown and strong neighborhoods at the end of their lines.

At the turn of the century, the streets were so bad that a boy named Joseph Bufonchio drowned in a sink-hole at the corner of Third and Jackson. As Gordon Newell noted in 1956, contemporary reports did not seem to consider this particularly unusual. [Harvnb|Newell|1956|p=106]

At that time, there were about 25 independent transit lines in Seattle. By 1907, the Seattle Electric Company, owned by Boston-based Stone and Webster, leveraged its foothold in the electric power industry to consolidate these into one operation, known after 1912 as the Puget Sound Traction, Light and Power Company. It cost a nickel (5 cents) to ride. Puget Sound Traction was bought out by the city in 1919 for US$15 million. However, under the city's management the streetcars chronically ran a loss (even after a 1923 fare increase to three rides for a quarter, a fare of 8-and-a-third cents), and the quality of the system deteriorated. [Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=145–146]

The advent of the automobile sounded the death knell for rail in Seattle. Tacoma–Seattle railway service ended in 1929 and the Everett–Seattle service came to an end in 1939, replaced by inexpensive automobiles running on the recently developed highway system. When the city received a US$10.2 million federal grant to pay off transit-related debts and modernize its transit system, rails on city streets were paved over or removed, and the arrival of trolleybuses brought the end of streetcars in Seattle in the wee hours of April 12, 1941. This left an extensive network of buses (including convert|188|mi|km of trackless trolley lines) under an independent Municipal Transportation Commission as the only mass transit within the city and throughout the region.cite news | author=Walt Crowley | url=http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=2667 |title=Interurban Rail Transit in King County and the Puget Sound Region – A Snapshot History | publisher=HistoryLink.org | date=2000-09-19 | accessdate=2007-09-29] [Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=146–147]

The new transit system was jammed and profitable during the gasoline and rubber rationing of World War II, but the automobile reigned supreme after the war. Fares rose to 10 cents, [Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=148] the first of many increases that would lead to a present-day fare of $1.50-$2.25 [http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bus/fare/fare-info.html Metro Fares] .

treets and roads

Seattle set its first speed limit in the 1880s, in the days of horse-drawn vehicles. At that time, traffic in the Pioneer Square neighborhood was limited to convert|6|mph|km/h|1.Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=50]

The city is described in a mid-20th-century Civics textbook as "a city of islands—islands created both by water and by abrupt valleys that can be traversed only by bridges."Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=48] Already by 1948, 221,500 vehicles a day crossed the city's bridges across the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Duwamish River; except for the high Aurora Bridge (officially George Washington Memorial Bridge) across the Ship Canal, these were all drawbridges.Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=49] This was before the construction of the Interstate Highways or State Route 520; the original Lake Washington Floating Bridge (opened 1940) provided the only road out of town to the east; construction of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the first limited access highway through the city center, was still under way.

Even with the lesser population of that time and fewer major highways, difficulty parking downtown had already become "practically an institution".Harvnb|Peterson|Davenport|1950|p=53] The total number of vehicles parking downtown in a day would already have filled a parking lot the size of downtown had they all been there at once; naturally, many of these were there only briefly for shopping. Parking meters had been introduced in the early 1940s, and multi-level parking garages provided some relief (and would later provide more), but the impact of the automobile on the city was very apparent. The city was considering various proposals, such as the establishment of large parking lots on the periphery of downtown with shuttle buses into the center. The city was seeking (and failing to get) state permission to use the right of eminent domain to acquire property for multi-level parking lots. Later, in the mid-1960s, the historic Seattle Hotel building was torn down for just this purpose; the reaction against that sparked the preservationist movement for the revival of Pioneer Square, and made it clear that the city would not solve its problem by demolishing a ring around downtown.

Alaskan Way Viaduct

The Alaskan Way Viaduct, completed on April 4, 1953, is an elevated section of State Route 99 that runs along the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle's Industrial District and downtown Seattle. It is the smaller of the two major north-south traffic corridors through Seattle, carrying up to 110,000 vehicles per day.cite web | url=http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/Viaduct/ | title=SR 99 - Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seawall Replacement | publisher=Washington State Department of Transportation | accessdate=2007-09-29] The viaduct runs above the surface street, Alaskan Way, from S. Nevada Street in the south to the entrance of Belltown's Battery Street Tunnel in the north, following previously existing railroad lines.

The 2001 Nisqually earthquake damaged the viaduct and its supporting Alaskan Way Seawall and required the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to invest $3.5 million U.S. in emergency repairs. Experts give a 1-in-20 chance that the viaduct could be shut down by an earthquake within the next decade. Since the Nisqually Earthquake occurred, semi-annual inspections have discovered continuing settlement damage.

Whether to remove, replace, or rebuild the viaduct is a politically charged issue. On March 13, 2007, voters in the city of Seattle rejected two separate proposals to replace the viaduct. [cite web | url=http://www.metrokc.gov/elections/200703/res.htm | title=King County Election Results | publisher=King County | date=2007-03-13 | accessdate=2007-09-29]

Public transit

Two bus systems serve Seattle. They are operated by King County's Metro Transit and the regional organization Sound Transit. Sound Transit is the regional transit organization, charged by voters to build a region system of light rail, express buses, and commuter rail. Sound Transit operates a number of regional bus routes connecting Seattle with its suburbs and commuter rail lines, called Sounder, linking Seattle with Tacoma and several cities to the south and Everett and other cities to the north. The light rail system, called Link Light Rail, includes the initial convert|15.7|mi|km|1|adj=on Central Link from downtown Seattle to Sea-tac Airport, which will come online in 2009. A convert|3.15|mi|km|2|adj=on mile extension of the line called University Link was approved for final design in November 2006, with construction expected to begin in 2009 and complete in 2016 at a cost of $1.5 billion. Future extensions of Seattle lines are planned to connect the University of Washington to Northgate, Seattle, Washington to the north; east across Lake Washington to Bellevue and Redmond; and south to Federal Way and possibly as far as Tacoma.

The Metro Bus Tunnel runs the length of downtown. It is currently used by buses, but was reconstructed in 2005-7 to accommodate light rail as well. Link light rail trains are scheduled to begin running in the tunnel in 2009.

Seattle also had an historic Waterfront Streetcar that ran parallel to Puget Sound, but the streetcar's maintenance base was demolished to make room for Seattle Art Museum's new Olympic Sculpture Park, so the streetcar is currently closed while a new base is built. After the streetcar reopens, it might be extended east up Jackson St. In December 2007, the South Lake Union Streetcar began running between Westlake Center (a major transportation hub in Downtown Seattle) to the restaurants, shops, offices, and condos in the South Lake Union neighborhood.

The Seattle Center Monorail, constructed for the Century 21 Exposition, connects Downtown and Seattle Center.

Metro Transit offers a trip planner on its web site that provides information for public transit in Seattle and surrounding areas (King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties), including Sound Transit's Regional Express bus routes, Sounder commuter rail, Washington State Ferries, and the Seattle Center Monorail. Riders enter their intended origin and destination, along with optional time, date, and other information, and the trip planner displays itineraries showing the stops, depature and arrival times, and times to get from the origin to the destination. Metro Transit has begun dowloading their route schedules to Google and this has spawned a new generation of trip planners such as [http://www.transittrips.com TransitTrips] .

Over 15,000 Seattleites are members of the car sharing program Zipcar (formerly Flexcar). While not all members are frequent users, as of September 2004 the use of these shared cars has been substantial enough to justify the purchase of over 150 cars and other light vehicles for the program, with an additional vehicle purchased approximately every ten days.

In addition, there are extensive multi-use car-free regional pathways linking the city and county to the surrounding areas. For example, one could ride a bicycle from Ballard via the Burke-Gilman Trail, to Redmond via the Sammamish River Trail, then to Issaquah via Snohomish River/East Lake Sammamish Trail, a distance of roughly 40 miles.

Airports

Seattle's commercial airport is Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, locally known as Sea–Tac Airport and located in the city of SeaTac, which is named for the airport. It is operated by the Port of Seattle and provides service to destinations throughout the world. The airport is a hub for Alaska Airlines and its regional subsidiary Horizon Air. Seattle is also a focus city for Northwest Airlines.

Closer to downtown, Boeing Field is used for general aviation, cargo flights, and testing/delivery of Boeing airliners. Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines recently requested permission to move services from Sea–Tac to Boeing Field but did not receive permission. [cite news | url=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/244262_southwest12.html | title=Plan won't fly: Sims kills Southwest's Boeing Field hopes | author=Jennifer Langston | coauthors=Gordy Holt | publisher=Seattle Post-Intelligencer | date=2005-10-12 | accessdate=2007-10-19]

ee also

*Street layout of Seattle

Notes

References

*Citation
last =Peterson
first =Lorin
last2 =Davenport
first2 =Noah C.
year =1950
title =Living in Seattle
place =Seattle
publisher =Seattle Public Schools.
*Citation
last =Newell
first =Gordon
year =1956
title =Totem Tales of Old Seattle
place =Seattle
publisher =Superior Publishing Company.

External links

* [http://transit.metrokc.gov King County Metro Transit]
* [http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/viaduct/ Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seawall Replacement Webpage]
* [http://www.soundtransit.org/ Sound Transit Light Rail, Regional Express Bus, and Commuter Rail]
* [http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/bikemaps.htm Maps for bicycle paths and routes]
* [http://www.seattletransitblog.com Seattle Transit Blog]