Japanese restaurant Benihana returns to Seattle https://www.diningandcooking.com/us/9050/ #FoodDrink #KingCounty #lifestyle #News #Seattle #SouthLakeUnion #Us #Wa #Washington #WashingtonDining #WashingtonFood #WashingtonGroceryStores #WashingtonRestaurants #WashingtonState #WashingtonStateDining #WashingtonStateFood #WashingtonStateGroceryStores #WashingtonStateRestaurants
#southlakeunion — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #southlakeunion, aggregated by home.social.
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https://www.alojapan.com/1525141/japanese-restaurant-benihana-returns-to-seattle/ Japanese restaurant Benihana returns to Seattle #Food&Drink #JapaneseRestaurant #JapaneseRestaurantsInNewYork #KingCounty #lifestyle #NewYork #NewYorkCity #news #Seattle #SouthLakeUnion #us #wa SEATTLE – Japanese restaurant chain Benihana is returning to Seattle after a 10-year hiatus. The teppanyaki chain will take over a nearly 9000 square foot vacancy at Lake Union Piers, and will become the chain’s flagship location, according to Man
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Just some of the speakers who turned up in #SouthLakeUnion #Seattle for the #fixTheL8 #busLanes announcement.
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ICEWATCh: South Lake Union, Seattle. #ICE #seattle #southlakeunion
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qfv5btrgwsb6pqxhqpwugq6n/post/3mci5fbcjcs23 -
ICEWATCh: South Lake Union, Seattle. #ICE #seattle #southlakeunion
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qfv5btrgwsb6pqxhqpwugq6n/post/3mci5fbcjcs23 -
Our monthly social meet-up is tonight in South Lake Union (we'll be changing up the location to bring them around the LD), we hope to see you there!
📍 TeKu Tavern (552 Denny Way)
🕖 7pm TONIGHT, Tuesday, July 8th -
Seattle City Light is reporting a medium outage in the South Lake Union area.
Start Date: Jun 7 8:03 PM
Cause: Investigating -
Text of the audio "“Hi, I’m Jeff Bezos,” AI Jeff said. “This crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime, with an important message—please, don’t tax the rich, otherwise all the other billionaires will move to Florida, too. Wouldn’t it be terrible if all the rich people left Seattle or got Luigi’d? And then normal people could afford to live here again.” Then, comedian Bo Burnham's "Bezos 1" song played.
#Bezos
#JeffBezos
#Space
#SpaceCowboy
#Wealth
#WealthTax
#Tax
#EatTheRich
#Luigi
#SouthLakeUnion
#Amazon -
A video of the crosswalk audio is on Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1k0n0fu/someone_hacked_the_crosswalks_in_the_u_district/
#Bezos #JeffBezos #Space #SpaceCowboy #Wealth #WealthTax #Tax #EatTheRich #Luigi #SouthLakeUnion #Amazon
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CM Saka budget proposal would create plan to end service on SLU Streetcar
Seattle’s official 20-year plan for transit, which the City Council approved in the spring, shows streetcar connections to the South Lake Union line as well as along 1st Ave to Lower Queen Anne and SoDo. There are no other streetcar additions in the plan, and even the Broadway extension is no longer included.The future has become even bleaker for the low-ridership South Lake Union (“SLU”) Streetcar line as Transportation Committee Chair Rob Saka has proposed funding a plan for how to wind down and end service on the line. The budget changes would no actually end service, but they set the stage to do so as early as next year’s budget. The action could set up the city to finally make a decision about the streetcar once and for all.
As Seattle Bike Blog argued in August, Seattle decided in 2015 to make the SLU streetcar a dead end when SDOT chose RapidRide bus service on the Fairview/Eastlake/Roosevelt corridor rather than a streetcar extension. The streetcar line’s operating budget sits at $4.4 million per year to serve about 500 weekday trips on average. Ridership peaked in 2017 before SDOT added transit-only lanes to Westlake Ave to coincide with expanded King County Metro bus service along much of the streetcar’s route. In my previous post, several SLU transit riders said they just hop on whatever comes first, a bus or the streetcar. The under-construction RapidRide J line will further improve bus transit service in the SLU neighborhood when it begins operations as early as 2027. So even those 500 daily riders would likely not be stranded without the streetcar. Metro just deleted the Route 20 bus with little fanfare, for example, and that deletion (as well as other bus route changes and deletions) had a bigger negative impact on access to transit than closing the SLU Streetcar would.
Additionally, construction for the South Lake Union light rail station is expected to shut down SLU Streetcar service for eight years, so it makes sense for Seattle to decide sooner than later whether the city sees a future for the streetcar beyond that construction. If the city wants to preserve service they could build 2,000 feet of additional track to bypass the Link station closure, but that would only make sense if we are committing to this thing long-term. If not, then we may as well get the tracks out of the roadway and focus on creating efficient bus pathways. Removing or covering the tracks would also eliminate major hazards for people riding bicycles around the neighborhood, preventing injuries and improving bike circulation within the neighborhood. Removing the tracks may even lead to more new bike trips per day than the streetcar would carry if it kept operating in its current state.
The only possible future for the SLU streetcar line would be to connect to the planned Center City Connector streetcar (AKA “Culture Connector”) through downtown along 1st Avenue and Stewart Street. However, construction on that line remains stalled, and it has a huge funding gap. Seattle Bike Blog has also voiced serious concerns about bike safety along the planned route. As Councilmember Saka noted in an interview with the Seattle Times, “The only viable path I see for ever doing that one would be to create a public-private partnership at some point.” Councilmember Bob Kettle has proposed removing the Center City Connector from SDOT’s capital improvements list, an amendment Saka supports.
The Downtown Seattle Association (“DSA”) pushed back against the proposal to kill the SLU Streetcar line, arguing to the Urbanist, “We’re seeing more residents, workers and visitors in downtown and now is not the time to take existing mobility options off the table. […] With looming major transportation projects like Revive I-5 impacting our network’s capacity, we need to ensure the transit modes we already have downtown are functioning optimally, safely and a providing great experience.”
Seattle Subway has also created an online petition to save the streetcar, arguing:
While the SLU Streetcar suffers from low ridership, it is widely attributed to the lack of connectivity rather than anything inherent to streetcars. We cannot fix the design mistakes of the past, but we can certainly make improvements. SDOT ridership figures for 2022 put SLU streetcar at 500 daily riders and First Hill streetcar at 2,500 daily riders, with ridership trending upwards since the pandemic. By SDOT’s own estimate, the proposed Culture Connector extension would attract 28,000 daily riders, making it more popular than the busiest bus line in the city. This city council also called out the Culture Connector as a key improvement in their own Seattle Transportation Plan which they passed in April. Rob Saka himself said at the time, “It’s time we commit to our transportation goals and give them [SDOT] the resources they need to succeed. That’s what this plan is all about.” They are now prepared to go back on that commitment.
The SLU Streetcar was initially funded by a LID in the area as a way to encourage development of the area into the business and tech hub it is today. So from that perspective, it was a huge success. But as a transit service, not so much. I worry about transit supporters taking the L off someone else’s forehead and putting on their own. Providing effective transit service was not the primary force behind this particular streetcar, so transit folks should not feel like this is something they need to own. The SLU Streetcar is a simulacra of a good transit system, but Metro’s bus system is an actual good transit system. The most important transit priority is to make sure the city builds more bus priority improvements in the area, preserving and improving on the bus-only lanes created when the RapidRide C extended into the area. Perhaps Metro buses could even reuse of some of the streetcar infrastructure like the transit-only pathway along Valley Street. The worst case scenario would be for the streetcar to be removed without any effort to improve bus service.
While the SLU Streetcar’s future certainly hinges on the Center City Streetcar, is the inverse also true? The city’s 20-year plan for transit calls for a 1st Ave Streetcar that connects Seattle Center/Lower Queen Anne to Pioneer Square and the First Hill Streetcar on Jackson Street as well as a 1st Ave extension into SoDo. Would some or all of this line be viable without the SLU connection? Perhaps rather than removing the Center City Streetcar from the capital projects list, Council could add questions to its request for a SLU Streetcar wind down plan about what impact such an action would have on a possible Center City line. This would give the city one more year to give the Center City Streetcar the proper public debate it deserves. Let’s lay out all the facts and options, and then make a damn decision.
If businesses and developers want to foot the bill for both the Center City and South Lake Union streetcar lines, then I’m sure city leaders will shift to support them. Otherwise, well, you may want to make an effort to go out of your way to ride the thing at least once before it is shut down so you can say you did it and buy that clever t-shirt on sale at Pike Place Market.
#SEAbikes #Seattle
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Seattle City Light is reporting a medium outage in the South Lake Union area.
Start Date: Nov 12 11:01 PM
Cause: Investigating -
Seattle City Light is reporting a medium outage in the South Lake Union area.
Start Date: Nov 1 9:57 AM
Cause: Investigating -
Seattle City Light is reporting a medium outage in the South Lake Union area.
Start Date: Nov 1 9:57 AM
Cause: Investigating -
Construction open house Sept. 24 counts down start of RapidRide J Line work
https://kingcountymetro.blog/2024/09/24/construction-open-house-sept-24-counts-down-start-of-rapidride-j-line-work/
#KingCountyMetro #UniversityDistrict #RapidRideJLine #SouthLakeUnion #MetroRoute70 #Community #Haveasay #Eastlake -
Seattle City Light is reporting a medium outage in the South Lake Union area.
Start Date: Sep 17 10:03 PM
Cause: Investigating -
South Lake Union streetcar returns to regular service Wednesday, Sept. 4
https://kingcountymetro.blog/2024/09/03/south-lake-union-streetcar-returns-to-regular-service-wednesday-sept-4/
#KingCountyMetro #SeattleStreetcar #SouthLakeUnion #streetcar #repairs #News -
Seattle decided 9 years ago to kill the SLU Streetcar
These tables were part of the city’s process in 2015 to decide whether the high capacity transit line on Eastlake and Roosevelt should be a rapid streetcar (RSC) or bus rapid transit (BRT).The South Lake Union Streetcar broke down Friday, August 9, and nobody even noticed until King County Metro and SDOT sent out a press release about it the next Monday. Like, I searched through social media posts and could not find a single person mentioning issues riding the streetcar line the entire weekend that it was out of operation. Perhaps even more damning for the line is that Metro and SDOT are not even running any kind of replacement service while the streetcar is out of commission, noting that riders are served by existing service on Routes 40, 70 and RapidRide C.
The thing that baffles me about this line is that people keep acting like the city needs to decide what to do with it when Seattle already made this decision nine years ago. The RapidRide J project was initially proposed as an extension of the streetcar from its odd terminus in the middle of Fairview Ave N north to Roosevelt Station, but Seattle decided in 2015 to make the project a bus line instead. The ongoing Route 40 Transit-Plus project was also once vaguely envisioned as a streetcar line (complete with a new Ship Canal crossing), but is now a set of bus reliability improvements. The time to fight for the streetcar happened a decade ago, and the streetcar lost.
The streetcar lines from the 2012 Seattle Transit Master Plan (PDF) are missing in the 2016 TMP update (PDF).Around the same time, SDOT made a smart decision to add transit-only lanes to Westlake Ave so Metro could extend the RapidRide C line through South Lake Union along much of the streetcar route. It was an effective and low-cost way to dramatically improve transit service in the neighborhood, but it also made the streetcar even less necessary. Many riders using the shared bus and streetcar stops just hop on whichever comes first because level of service matters far more than what kind of wheels the transit vehicle has.
These days, the SLU Streetcar carries an average of 494 weekday trips, the Seattle Times reported. It costs $4.6 million per year to operate, though advertising helps offset some of that. That operating cost would be fine if the ridership were strong because transit shouldn’t be expected to make a profit. But 494 weekday rides does not justify that level of ongoing investment. For contrast, the First Hill Streetcar carries a healthier 3,598 trips on an average weekday, though it also has higher annual operating costs. The First Hill line seems to be filling an actual transportation need while the SLU line does not.
Keeping the SLU line alive is a classic case of Seattle indecision. It’s connected to the city’s years of indecision about the downtown streetcar project, which remains stalled due to a $93 million budget gap. Worse, indecision like this can be very damaging to a community because streetcar supporters have reason to keep fighting for it so long as it seems that there’s still a chance. I don’t blame them because the vision of a European-style network of streetcars is genuinely appealing and seems like a vision worth fighting for. But even if the city built the downtown streetcar, there are no plans whatsoever to expand the network any further. We’d still just have one oddly-shaped line for the foreseeable future. The 20-year Seattle Transportation Plan and 8-year levy proposal does not include any additional streetcars. (CORRECTION: As David commented, I missed that the STP does include streetcar extensions north and south on 1st Ave beyond the current design.) These are decisions Seattle has already made.
The streetcar needs to go big or go home, and Seattle has firmly decided not to go big.
Shutting the line down is not an easy decision. There will be costs associated with shuttering it, especially if they do so responsibly by removing or filling in the unused tracks so they do not injure bike and scooter riders. It would also be a shame if the mayor and council used the budget savings to plug the general budget gap rather than investing it in other transit improvements or plans. When the mayor decided to shut down Pronto Cycle Share, the city directed the bike share expansion budget to go to bike lanes on 4th Ave and Pike and Pine Streets downtown instead. Those investments softened the blow of losing our public bike share system, which coincidentally was also a victim of Seattle indecision. Maybe the SLU Streetcar funds could go to exciting projects to speed up the Route 8 bus or early planning for Seattle-led light rail extensions, laying the groundwork for investments the city can feature in the next Seattle Transportation Benefits District vote due in 2026. I don’t know, I’m sure transit planners and advocates have ideas here. There needs to be some kind of organized effort to create a positive exit plan for the funds because this latest shutdown has made the SLU Streetcar an even bigger target for the City Council as they head into what will likely be a very tough budget season.
“Given the low ridership numbers of the South Lake Union line, does it make sense to continue that investment?” Transportation Committee Chair Rob Saka said to the Seattle Times last week. “I don’t have a strong answer yet, but I will definitively be scrutinizing that.”
Perhaps a private company would want to buy the SLU streetcar. Councilmember Saka suggested a “public-private partnership” as a possible way forward. A private company already owns and operates the Seattle Monorail, so maybe there’s a future where something similar happens with the streetcar. Amazon has invested in the streetcar line in the past. Do they like it enough to buy it? Do they want to invest in the downtown extension? Do we as a city even want this level of private transit ownership?
My support for the streetcars evaporated after Daniel Ahrendt was horribly injured and Desiree McCloud died in separate crashes on the First Hill Streetcar tracks. The city has made some bikeway improvements since to mitigate some of the dangers, but especially on Jackson Street many issues remain. The design plans for the streetcar tracks on both First Avenue and Stewart Street are also insufficient from a bike safety standpoint. I wrote extensively about what it would take to make the plans safe, and the project team did not address the issues. I won’t be sad when the city finally declares the project to be dead.
I know reading this is probably a bummer for some of you. It’s a divisive issue among folks who should otherwise be united in the fight for walking, biking and transit. If the SLU Streetcar and downtown plans die as seems likely, I hope streetcar supporters out there can find a positive way to move forward and continue their dedication to advocating for better transit in our city.
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Seattle City Light is reporting a medium outage in the South Lake Union area.
Start Date: Jun 27 5:22 PM
Est. Restoration: Jun 28 12:00 AMCause: Investigating
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Seattle City Light is reporting a medium outage in the South Lake Union area.
Start Date: Jun 8 1:13 AM
Est. Restoration: Jun 8 8:00 AMCause: Investigating
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They did the thing I suggested at 9th and Mercer, and it almost works!
They did it! The Seattle Department of Transportation changed the order of the traffic signals at 9th Ave N and Mercer Street to allow straight traffic, the bike lane and the crosswalk to go before the left turns. This was an idea I first suggested more than six years ago shortly after the new Mercer Street configuration opened. I then made a longer video and post about the idea in April 2022 when I was biking through there every day while doing preschool transportation. Every single time my kid and I tried to get through here heading northbound during the early evening commute, left-turning traffic from southbound 9th Ave would block the bike lane and crosswalk.
I am barely exaggerating when I say “every time.” It was a very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation. One of the most common reader complaints I get from folks via social media or email are about this intersection. It is very well-used, providing the most popular connection between the city center and bike routes to most points north. There are no easy solutions to backed-up traffic on Mercer Street since those are caused by traffic getting onto I-5, but surely the city could at least do something to keep the bike and crosswalk open, right?
I am not a signals engineer, but I thought I had a simple fix: Just change the order of the lights. And after more than half a decade, they did it. And the results are…I think pretty good but not perfect!
I do not have hard data, but I do have footage from before and after since I stood out there for about an hour in 2022 when making my first video. The new signal order does work how I hoped it would, keeping the bike lane and crosswalk clear much more often than before. However, it’s not completely fixed. People on Mercer still often block the box by pulling forward before there is space for their vehicles on the other side. It does not happen as often as before, but it does still happen. I also suspect that the timeframe for blockages is shorter now. I saw almost no blockages until a little after 4 when traffic levels begin to peak. Before, the blocking seemed to begin as soon as traffic was even a little heavy. There were also signal cycles around 4:30 that were fully clear, something that almost never happened before. But keeping people safe and providing an accessible street crossing more of the time still isn’t good enough.
Watching the intersection also highlighted the other inherent safety problems at this intersection as well as many others on Mercer Street. The corner turn radii are so wide that right-turning cars are extra problematic. I saw a lot of near misses, especially between right-turners and people using the crosswalk. People driving can turn quickly into any one of three lanes, and the crosswalk users must travel a surprisingly long distance across all these lanes, leaving them exposed. The city should consider either banning right turns entirely or constructing a physical curb extension or bike lane protection island of some kind so that people turning must make slower and more careful turns. The current design does not work and is not safe. You don’t need to stand out there for very long before you witness a scary interaction. The issue is not that a few people are behaving badly (though some certainly do), it’s a design problem.
Have you noticed an improvement in this intersection recently? Let us know in the comments below.
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Seattle’s first fully-protected intersection is now open at Dexter/Thomas
The goal: No more deaths or serious injuries at Dexter and Thomas.
This seemingly unremarkable intersection has been the site of at least two tragedies in recent memory. Mike Wang was killed by someone making a left turn there while biking home from work in 2011, and Jaahnavi Kandula was killed by a speeding Seattle Police officer while walking in the crosswalk in 2023. Though this project was planned before Kandula was killed, its opening this week feels like the city is saying, “No more. Not again. Not here.”
The new design includes several features Seattle has not used previously, but they are all designed to maximize safety by slowing motor vehicles, shortening crossings, separating modes of travel, and creating redundant safety buffers. It is something of a showcase of safety features, a test of what a high-budget, complete rebuild intersection project could look like. There are curbs and separators all over the place, carefully placed to slow turning traffic, improve sight lines between all users, and make it clear where everyone is supposed to be.
Aerial photo from SDOT.I observed the new protected intersection at Dexter and Thomas for a while Monday, and it seemed like most people had no problems figuring out what to do. The biggest issue I observed was that some drivers wanted to turn left, which is no longer allowed. One person drove in the bike lane to do it, and another sat there confused for a while before finally deciding to turn right.
But even the person who drove in the bike lane to turn left didn’t create a super dangerous situation because they were moving so slow when doing it. Obviously it was not ideal, but that’s the big takeaway I had from riding through it from every direction and observing others use it: There are redundant safety features. For example, let’s say someone in a car wants to turn right. First, they have to take a sharp, slow turn so they are already moving relatively slowly. Then there is a long maybe ten-foot buffer area where their car is turning but they have not yet entered the path of the bike lane. This buffer area accomplishes two important things: 1) The person driving has a lot of extra time to see people in the bike lane and crosswalk and yield to them. 2) The people biking and using the crosswalk have a lot of extra time to see that someone is turning and to look out for them. So even if the driver completely fails in their duty to yield, everyone else has a lot more time to avoid a collision. That’s what I mean by redundant safety features. Several things need to all go wrong in a row before someone is hurt or killed.
Redundancy is a vital feature of any safe system, whether we are talking about a factory or an airplane or a public street. People make mistakes, so we need to design systems in a way that accounts for those mistakes. While the U.S. has embraced a safe systems approach to workplace safety (thanks in large part to labor unions) and air travel (insert Boeing joke here), our public roadways are almost entirely designed so that even a small mistake by a single person can end in tragedy. At most intersections, it only takes a moment of inattention for a person turning right to strike someone in a crosswalk or right hook someone on a bike. Maybe the person was hidden for a moment by the pillar next to the car windshield or maybe the driver was looking to the left for a break in traffic and started moving before checking to the right. There is no backup safety process to prevent a tragedy.
People biking probably have the biggest learning curve here, especially if they want to turn left. Doing so now requires making a two-step turn by crossing straight with the green bike light, then turning and stopping in the waiting area on the far side until the signal changes again. It’s easy to figure out, but it does require waiting potentially for two full signal cycles to get through. That’s the trade-off for all the extra separation. People who don’t want to wait and who feel comfortable biking in traffic can always turn a block before or after using the left turn lane, but now there’s a complete solution for people who don’t feel comfortable merging across traffic or who are willing to wait in exchange for increased safety and comfort.
There is still a lot of work to do on Thomas Street, but it is now mostly ready to play the role of the best biking and walking connection between South Lake Union and Seattle Center. I’m remembering back a decade to before the Mercer Street bikeway under Aurora opened when it was next to impossible to bike between these places. What a difference.
It would be very pricey and take a very long time to turn every intersection in Seattle into what Dexter and Thomas is now. It would be amazing if this style of intersection becomes part of the standard street rebuild process for high-budget projects. I am also hopeful that by learning from this design, SDOT can take the most important elements and apply them to lower-budget projects that can be built much faster across the city. Because while this one intersection had seen far more than its share of tragedy and heartbreak, it’s just one of thousands.
If you want to see the intersection in action, check out today’s video from Best Side Cycling:
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The 20-year bike plan for Downtown, Queen Anne, Interbay and Magnolia
#SEAbikes #Seattle
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RapidRide J design planning is complete, construction to begin in 2024
https://kingcountymetro.blog/2023/10/26/rapidride-j-design-planning-is-complete-construction-to-begin-in-2024/
#KingCountyMetro #UniversityDistrict #SouthLakeUnion #MetroRt70 #RapidRide #Eastlake #News -
In today's walk through #Seattle, I came across this small protest outside of Amazon's Spheres. The demonstrators are demanding the company cease its union-busting efforts.
#Washington #business #protests #southlakeunion #amazon #tech #unionization
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Amazon’s new back-to-office policy is welcome news to small businesses around Seattle HQ - Shannon Rau, owner of Martha’s Garden dog daycare and bar, says she hopes Amazon’... - https://www.geekwire.com/2023/amazons-new-back-to-office-policy-is-welcome-news-to-small-businesses-around-seattle-hq/ #southlakeunion #smallbusiness #restaurants #amazon #civic
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Sandbox VR opening new full-body gaming venue in Seattle’s South Lake Union - (Sandbox VR Photo)
Another virtual reality gaming experience is opening shop i... - https://www.geekwire.com/2022/sandbox-vr-opening-new-full-body-gaming-venue-in-seattles-south-lake-union/ #southlakeunion #virtualreality #sandboxvr #games
