Mass Transit
Two public transportation agencies serve the city of Seattle, King County Metro Transit and Sound Transit. Snohomish County's Community Transit also runs bus routes to Downtown Seattle and the University of Washington. Sound Transit is the regional transit authority, commissioned by voters in 1996 to build a system of light rail, express buses, and commuter rail within the Central Puget Sound area. The agency provides a number of regional express bus routes connecting Seattle with neighboring suburbs and cities. Its Sounder commuter rail system consists of two lines, linking Seattle with Tacoma along its Southern run and Seattle with Everett along its Northern run. Several stations in intermediate cities along the lines are also served. The light rail system, called Link Light Rail, includes the initial 15.7-mile (25.3 km) Central Link from downtown Seattle to Sea-Tac Airport, which began in 2009. A 3.15-mile (5.07 km) mile extension of the line called University Link was approved for final design in November 2006, with construction expected to begin in 2009 and finish in 2016 at a cost of $1.5 billion. Future extensions that were approved by voters in 2008 are planned to connect the University of Washington to Northgate, Lynnwood and other areas to the north; east across Lake Washington to Bellevue and Redmond; and south to Federal Way.
The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel is a 1.3-mile tunnel under downtown built in 1987 to relieve bus congestion along surface streets. In 2009, Link light rail trains began serving tunnel stations as part of the initial Central Link segment. The tunnel was retrofitted from 2005-2007 to accommodate light rail. All tunnel bus routes will be rerouted in 2016, making the tunnel an exclusive subway for Link trains within the city core.
The city is currently in the process of expanding a modern streetcar network. In December 2007, the city inaugurated its South Lake Union Streetcar line between Westlake Center and stops in the South Lake Union neighborhood. In 2009, the Seattle city council also approved a second line to run between the Capitol Hill, First Hill, and Chinatown-International District neighborhoods. The First Hill Streetcar will connect to Link light rail stations and is expected to begin service as early as 2013. Metro Transit also operated a historic Waterfront Streetcar line that ran along Alaskan Way, but the streetcar's maintenance barn was demolished to make room for the Olympic Sculpture Park, resulting in the subsequent closure of the line. King County Metro now operates a replacement bus line that mirrors the route.
In 2009, the ORCA Card was introduced as a new way for fare payment between the seven transit agencies in the Puget Sound region. The card uses RFID technology to handle payment from either passes, vouchers, or the E-purse, a stored value debit account. ORCA's precursor, PugetPass, will be retained as one of the several passes that can be loaded automatically onto the card. The system also calculates transfers for a two-hour window for those paying with the E-purse.
The Seattle Center Monorail, constructed for the Century 21 Exposition, runs approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) between Seattle Center in Lower Queen Anne and Westlake Center in Downtown.
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, departure and arrival times, and times to get from the origin to the destination. Metro Transit uploads their route schedules to Google and this has spawned a new generation of trip planners such as TransitTrips. BoltBus began offering Seattle's first curbside intercity coach service in May 2012, with Portland as its first destination.
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 (64 km).
Read more about this topic: Transportation In Seattle
Famous quotes containing the words mass and/or transit:
“No doubt Jews are most obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed. But I, as an Irishman, can, with patriotic relish, demonstrate the same of the English. Also of the Irish.... We all live in glass houses. Is it wise to throw stones at the Jews? Is it wise to throw stones at all?”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)