Seattle Light Rail Opens. 92,000 Celebrate

[Metro Jacksonville]

Seattle Light Rail Opens. 92,000 Celebrate



"The crowds at light rail stations throughout the weekend showed the excitement people feel as we have become a light rail region. That excitement about our mass transit future will only grow as we continue to build and expand on the light rail system."

Sound Transit Board Chair and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-jul-seattle-light-rail-opens-92000-celebrate

[Hurricane]

Just awesome!  Hopefully our elected politicians will do their job and try their best for this in JAX. 

[tufsu1]

This is actually a fairly expensive LRT system as much of it is above grade.....although the portions below ground downtown use an already existing busway that was used as a busway up until a few years ago.

[TD*]

That looks super sweet. I want to be there! Jax bring rail to Tally as well!

[Deuce]

That is one bad-ass looking station in the photos. Does anyone know which stop that is?

[thelakelander]

Thats the Mount Baker Station.

[ralpho37]

Shows what a city with vision can accomplish...  get it together Jacksonville.

[tufsu1]

Shows what a city with vision can accomplish...  get it together Jacksonville.

really?

There are those that have argued that Seattle should have had light rail 10+ years ago....remember, its a much bigger and denser metroplitan area than Jacksonville.

[Lucasjj]

If anyone remembers the grunge/drama movie Singles from the early 90's...that is what Matt Dilon's character was trying to do. Although it got shot down by the mayor. I have no clue whether that part was based on something really going on at the time.

[ProjectMaximus]

exciting stuff up there.

Having lived in and owned a business in Seattle, I can't attest to it being any bigger or even that much denser than Jacksonville. 

but they do have Microsoft, Starbucks, Nintendo, T-Mobile, WaMu, Amazon.com, Boeing, Nordstroms, Costco, etc, and are home to the 11th largest university in the US. Thats gotta help.

[tufsu1]

The Seattle metro. poulation is 3.3 million people....compared to our 1.3 million....and clearly their downtown areas is far more dense.

[thelakelander]

Seattle is a larger and denser urban community all the way around.  However, this should not be used as an excuse to why they can pull something rail-based off and we can't.  For every dense community (Seattle, Los Angeles, NYC, Boston, New Orleans, Philly, etc.) that has invested in rail, you'll find another that is suburban (Phoenix, Charlotte, Tacoma, Little Rock, Nashville, Kenosha, etc.) and invested also.  

[Traveller]

If anyone remembers the grunge/drama movie Singles from the early 90's...that is what Matt Dilon's character was trying to do.

Close.  Matt Dillon's character was the singer for the rock band Citizen Dick.  The DOT employee who pitched the Supertrain idea to the mayor was played by Campbell Scott.

[Lucasjj]

^ Thats right. I even watched that recently but confused the two.

[Abhishek]

“Light rail was meant to be fed by people taking the bus, walking or biking,” said Rick Sheridan, spokesman for the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). “It was not meant to be fed by cars.”

The City of Seattle has had a policy of discouraging park-and-rides, per the news article on Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009479330_stparkingpic16txt1.html).

Marinating this creates an idea to increase the proposed Skyway extension to go all the way to the Publix in Riverside, build a station on top of the Publix building etc. That will make grocery shopping so much easier for a lot of people in Springfield, Downtown and San Marco. It will also increase shopper traffic between the Riverside Arts Market and Five Points.