West Seattle, Washington
02 Wednesday
After a car hit and killed Tatsuo Nakata last month at 47th and Admiral, the city promised safety improvements to the crosswalk there. Now comes word of a community meeting a week from Monday, at which city reps will talk about what they plan to do — according to a meeting notice forwarded to us, it’s two “curb bulbs” in the area, plus replacement of some “warning sign(s).” Is that enough? Some had been calling for a stoplight. If you want to have a say, the meeting will be at 6 pm Dec. 18, Hiawatha Community Center.
As the Times notes this morning, the city has now rolled out draft maps for its “bicycle master plan,” including how it would affect our side of the bay. You can take a closer look by opening this map (and hitting “zoom” about a dozen times to get up close and personal with WS streets). The dark-blue dotted lines mark streets where bike lanes would be set aside. The Times story singles out one of those routes, 35th south of High Point, as “controversial,” without elaborating. Most of Fauntleroy also is marked as potential bike-lane turf, though the Morgan Junction intersection with Cali Ave is black-lined, which means “needs further study.” The city’s still taking comments on all this, including a meeting tomorrow night in South Seattle, so if something about the draft map worries you or thrills you, you’ve got time to pipe up before the official plan is out next year.
After a few weeks of walking and driving over the new “raised crosswalks” in The Junction, we’re certain we liked the old non-raised crosswalks better. Under the streetlights, the slight bumps are such a subtle difference from the pavement, they’re not as visible as the old painted stripes were, and drivers seem less aware that they might need to stop. We almost got taken out ourselves the other night; feels like we’d be safer jaywalking. You suppose maybe the city could at least rustle up some sort of reflective paint for the sides of the “speed bumps,” so they’d be visible from afar, like this?
The dust is kicking back up off the viaduct dilemma as D-Day for the Guv draws near. Will her announcement be simply a prelude to a Gregoire Vs. Greg deathmatch, or will she pull a surprise out of her hat? The latest wave of viaduct articles, by the way, are rumbling louder about our preferred alternative, The Third Option (see the Sen.-elect Ed Murray comment at the end of this story; also note that Ron Sims is apparently a Third Option fan too). If you want to give the Guv your 2 cents before it’s too late, on whichever option you prefer, this pro-#3 blogblurb tells how.
Since the roads outside WS seem to be a mixed bag, you might want to check the city’s entire traffic cam network before going anywhere today. Outside the city, King County has some cams too.
Scoped the roads while going home for lunch. The Bridge is in vastly better shape than it was this morning. You can hear the crunch and crackle of traction sand working its way into your tire treads, but that’s a much more pleasant sound than the screech of brakes, spinning of wheels, smashing into Jersey barriers and so on. Should be pretty decent for the evening drive home. The Admiral offramp still looked a little icy, though, so beware of that; the stretches of Fauntleroy and California that we traveled were relatively ice-free, but most side streets still look relatively ominous.
The approach to the high bridge has a lighted sign reading ICE ON BRIDGE … perhaps they should simply change it to STAY HOME OR ELSE.
This near-winter time of year, it’s tougher to get a chance to tour the town in daylight. So here’s what we spotted today while catching up:
-A new pedestrian stoplight is up (though the crosswalk’s not painted yet) at Fauntleroy & Kenyon, around midway down the east side of Lincoln Park. About time; without it, you’re taking your life into your hands if you try crossing Fauntleroy anywhere between the 76 station and the park’s southernmost parking lot. Looks like the Fauntleroy Community Association’s been campaigning about this problem for a long time, so perhaps we have them to thank. (Speaking of pedestrian safety, here’s your chance to make a BIG difference: The city’s Pedestrian Advisory Board needs new members, and Monday’s the application deadline.)
-What was Fauntleroy Auto Works (Cali Ave just north of Fauntleroy), future site of what we think of as the Monorail Memorial Park, is now a pile of rubble.
-We found six seven places to buy Christmas trees in West Seattle, so far. (All are now listed on our ever-evolving West Seattle Holiday Stuff page.) Seems like fewer than years past, but as we realized while driving around, we’ve got fewer empty lots these days. P.S. The P-I mentioned the Holy Rosary lot today in a story about nonprofit tree sales.
In line at Morgan Junction Thriftway on Thanksgiving afternoon, we listened to our checker swap tales with customers about what sounded like the Ferry Line From Hell down at the Fauntleroy dock. Didn’t have time or need to check it out for ourselves; but the blog stories we’re finding tonight sound like the next best thing to having been there — 1,000 Comedian Out of Work…’s Blog tells of surviving the seemingly endless line, only to wind up at the wrong dock; Acting Up mentions giving up upon the mere sight of the line, and “driving around” instead to get to Kitsap County.
There are two, in fact, in today’s P-I:
–The traffic columnist disappoints an impatient West Seattle driver by getting the city to go on the record, again, promising the “walk all ways with walk” status of Cali/Alaska is safe. (Personally, we don’t mind it, whether in the car or on foot.)
–Elliott Bay Brewery plays a big role in an odd little article promising to be part of a series themed something like “wow, parents actually still drink in front of their kids.” EBB is one of many swell places in The Junction (yummy burgers), and it’s great to see the area get publicity, but since you can get a drink in a zillion restaurants where you also can bring the whole family (gasp, we’ve had the West 5 mai tai in front of a grade-schooler), we’re a little befuddled as to what makes this a trend. We would have liked to see them poll the patrons on whether they’re walking, busing, or designated-drivering. (Around here, they also could have focused on the creeping tendency to NOT let under-21s in, with both Talarico’s and Matador right there on the same side of Cali.)
The city has announced a public memorial service at Seattle Center this Saturday for Tatsuo Nakata, the man hit and killed at 47th/Admiral earlier this week. Meantime, the P-I takes on pedestrian safety in a Friday editorial. Certainly a touchy topic, as evidenced by the discussion here and on other blogs, like this one.
The Times writes up the city announcements we mentioned last night; the P-I focuses on Tatsuo Nakata’s short but full life in one story, then gets into the new pedestrian-safety emphasis in another.
The city now says it’s putting up a “mobile radar station” and warning signs near the 47th/Admiral crosswalk where Tatsuo Nakata was hit and killed. (Nothing there yet when I drove by a little while ago.) Is that enough? In a comment on our original post below, site visitor Kate invites us all to join her in a push for more. Here’s part of what she wrote:
If you would like to join me, I will be at the Alki Mail and Dispatch tomorrow, 11/16, at 7AM to once again march with signs up and down Admiral Way. I was out there today with a concerned citizen from 7:30AM-11AM raising awareness about driving behavior and pedestrian safety. I would also like to organize a vigil for Mr. Nakata. I did not know him, but as far as I am concerned, we are all Mr. Nakata, every time we walk down the street and cross at the marked crosswalks.
Somebody at the pro-Seattle Prop 1 HQ must have thought it would impress us in West Seattle if they mailed us a big glossy color pamphlet telling us where in WS we might see benefits if the Prop 1 property tax passes. Just one little problem. If you got this pamphlet, take a look at the left side of the map inside — it suggests that Prop 1 will provide $ to “repaint crosswalks at the California/Alaskan Way Junction.” Hellooooooo? Alaskan Way is the street that runs along the foot of that viaduct thingy that is NOT included in Prop 1 (as the back of the flyer seeks to reassure us); at The Junction, Cali intersects with ALASKA STREET. The pro-Prop 1 website is a little odd too. Check out this page … did they simply run out of space at the bottom when it came time to talk about trees?
Signed up for the e-mail updates on the Cali Ave paving/crosswalk project, so we seem to have received this before it turned up on the city news release site:
Work on the east half of the mid-block crosswalk between SW Edmunds and SW Alaska has been completed. This entire mid-block crosswalk should be completed within the next two weeks.Read More
… the city road-work crews, that is. (Perhaps even including the lady with the My Little Pony backpack.) The latest official update says work in The Junction could take up to three more weeks, now that crews have moved on to the “raised crosswalks” (aka mega-speed bumps).
… any time soon, anyway … The Viaduct. The state’s done analyzing results from the inspection during last weekend’s shutdown; they say it “settled” just a little teeny tiny itsy bit since last checkup, and it’s still, like, kind of OK for us to drive on, but they promise to fix it if it settles just a little teeny tiny itsy bit more. Uh, guys and gals, any reason not to just put it up on the rack now and get goin’ with that? Given that the looming Greg vs. Chris Deathmatch over Tunnel Of No Love may leave us stuck with it for a long time …
Couldn’t let this go unremarked … Mayor “No Monorail Because The Voters Have Spoken” sticking to his tunnel-or-else guns in today’s Times, despite the paper’s poll showing 75% of respondents want something other than the insanely expensive tunnel:
“I’ve gone through the peaks and valleys of building a light-rail system in this city, and there were times in 2000 and 2001 where it was about as popular as Prohibition,” said Nickels, a Sound Transit board member. “We stuck it out and in 2009 we’re going to open light rail to the airport, and today if you took a poll there would be consensus that it was the right thing to do.”
And yet the monorail deserved to die after losing one of five votes? … leaving our side of the city completely and utterly without non-bus mass transit.
West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician may well be cursing into his coffee this morning. Since no voter verdict is pending, a paper & pollster decided to take The Pulse of the People another way regarding Viaduct Vs. Tunnel Vs. Neither. The best stuff is in the middle of the story — the Guv says she’s glad to have SOME kind of public feedback; Hizzoner says, in effect, never mind the people, he’s got the back of future generations; West Seattle respondents say (60%-40%) JUST REPLACE THE DAMN THING AND BE DONE WITH IT, ‘KAY? One thing about the story bugs me, though. It mentions that the first round of questioning to poll respondents included asking them about The Third Option. However, the story never gets around to mentioning exactly how many preferred it. (Maybe there’s a breakdown in the “dead tree” version of the paper? Speaking of dead trees, that’s one of our next topics.)
Forgot to mention one last time, a BIG reason to stay on this side of the bay this weekend — the viaduct’s closing, 6 am-6 pm, both days. (And if you want to feel even better about driving less, “An Inconvenient Truth” is still at the Admiral.) Plus, in addition to the events mentioned in the post below, Chas writes to tell us it’s the last Music Nights @ White Center event tonight (seven participating venues).
| 6 COMMENTS