Chief
08-10-2008, 08:17 AM
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf?/base/news/12182451433000.xml&coll=7
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Oregonian
S EATTLE -- The transportation yahoos in the Emerald City can't figure out how to get light rail across the 520 Bridge. They've been paralyzed for years over what to do with the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The Seattle Monorail Project, designed to connect downtown with Ballard and West Seattle, imploded after its booster club spent millions of dollars and condemned dozens of properties.
And the city's international airport won't have light-rail service until late 2009, or eight years after the first MAX cars rolled into PDX.
But if Seattle can't get a grip when it comes to mass transit, it clearly has a sense of humor: May I present the South Lake Union Trolley, which connects Westlake Center's Fantasy Unlimited sex shop and the Hooters at Chandler's Cove, and -- not surprisingly -- goes by the charming acronym, "the S.L.U.T."
Seattle does so many things well -- notably clam strips, ferry rides, tattoo expos and farming out first-ballot Hall-of-Famers to baseball towns with serious World Series' aspirations -- that it's entertaining to find something that the city does so much worse than Portland.
Seattle is such a mass transit basket case that the S.L.U.T. -- a 1.3-mile jaunt through the future Vulcan Empire -- may be its crown jewel.
The $51 million trolley has certainly generated the best T-shirts: Kapow! Coffee has sold thousands of "Ride the S.L.U.T." shirts, profiting mightily over local annoyance with the wholesale redevelopment of one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
Kapow! is parked between a Taco del Mar and a sheet-metal shop in a building that barista Jeremiah St. Georges describes as "the last remnant of the old neighborhood and the last building that's not Vulcan-owned."
Vulcan, of course, is the Paul Allen company that insists its 60 acres at the south end of Lake Union -- and not Portland's South Waterfront -- will one day be the center of the biotech universe. Amazon is already moving its headquarters, and 5,000 employees, into the neighborhood and onto the trolley line.
The Vulcan invasion has not only recast the light industrial Cascade neighborhood, replacing $300-a-month lofts with $2,000-a-month condos, but renamed it as well. When politicians and developers came around looking to appease longtime neighborhood activists, St. Georges said, those activists demanded some vestige of affordable housing.
They got a trolley.
So, the folks at Kapow! renamed it, producing incredible acronym anxiety -- or is that trolley rage? -- among city officials, who greatly prefer "Seattle Streetcar."
"People tried to take them on head-on," St. Georges said. "We decided to do it with a funny shirt. People in Seattle can't have a meaningful talk about public transportation these days without talking to those funny guys who made the T-shirt."
Guilty as charged.
When it comes to public transportation, "there's constant eye-rolling around here," said Valerie Paganelli, who was riding the S.L.U.T. Thursday. "Its cost. Its leadership. There isn't a cohesive plan for the city. Voters approved a monorail extension, and they ran out of money. When they went back to the voters, people freaked out and said, 'Forget it.' "
Kenneth Jones, who caters for the Seattle Art Museum, says the trolley is great as far as it goes: "I didn't think it would be that big a deal, but I'm riding it five times a week. The way traffic has been lately, you don't want to drive."
But as long as the South Lake Union Trolley is better described as a yuppie lunch wagon than the shape of transit systems to come, all meaningful conversation about public transportation in Seattle will come with a laugh track.
Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com blog.oregonlive.com/steveduin
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Oregonian
S EATTLE -- The transportation yahoos in the Emerald City can't figure out how to get light rail across the 520 Bridge. They've been paralyzed for years over what to do with the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The Seattle Monorail Project, designed to connect downtown with Ballard and West Seattle, imploded after its booster club spent millions of dollars and condemned dozens of properties.
And the city's international airport won't have light-rail service until late 2009, or eight years after the first MAX cars rolled into PDX.
But if Seattle can't get a grip when it comes to mass transit, it clearly has a sense of humor: May I present the South Lake Union Trolley, which connects Westlake Center's Fantasy Unlimited sex shop and the Hooters at Chandler's Cove, and -- not surprisingly -- goes by the charming acronym, "the S.L.U.T."
Seattle does so many things well -- notably clam strips, ferry rides, tattoo expos and farming out first-ballot Hall-of-Famers to baseball towns with serious World Series' aspirations -- that it's entertaining to find something that the city does so much worse than Portland.
Seattle is such a mass transit basket case that the S.L.U.T. -- a 1.3-mile jaunt through the future Vulcan Empire -- may be its crown jewel.
The $51 million trolley has certainly generated the best T-shirts: Kapow! Coffee has sold thousands of "Ride the S.L.U.T." shirts, profiting mightily over local annoyance with the wholesale redevelopment of one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
Kapow! is parked between a Taco del Mar and a sheet-metal shop in a building that barista Jeremiah St. Georges describes as "the last remnant of the old neighborhood and the last building that's not Vulcan-owned."
Vulcan, of course, is the Paul Allen company that insists its 60 acres at the south end of Lake Union -- and not Portland's South Waterfront -- will one day be the center of the biotech universe. Amazon is already moving its headquarters, and 5,000 employees, into the neighborhood and onto the trolley line.
The Vulcan invasion has not only recast the light industrial Cascade neighborhood, replacing $300-a-month lofts with $2,000-a-month condos, but renamed it as well. When politicians and developers came around looking to appease longtime neighborhood activists, St. Georges said, those activists demanded some vestige of affordable housing.
They got a trolley.
So, the folks at Kapow! renamed it, producing incredible acronym anxiety -- or is that trolley rage? -- among city officials, who greatly prefer "Seattle Streetcar."
"People tried to take them on head-on," St. Georges said. "We decided to do it with a funny shirt. People in Seattle can't have a meaningful talk about public transportation these days without talking to those funny guys who made the T-shirt."
Guilty as charged.
When it comes to public transportation, "there's constant eye-rolling around here," said Valerie Paganelli, who was riding the S.L.U.T. Thursday. "Its cost. Its leadership. There isn't a cohesive plan for the city. Voters approved a monorail extension, and they ran out of money. When they went back to the voters, people freaked out and said, 'Forget it.' "
Kenneth Jones, who caters for the Seattle Art Museum, says the trolley is great as far as it goes: "I didn't think it would be that big a deal, but I'm riding it five times a week. The way traffic has been lately, you don't want to drive."
But as long as the South Lake Union Trolley is better described as a yuppie lunch wagon than the shape of transit systems to come, all meaningful conversation about public transportation in Seattle will come with a laugh track.
Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com blog.oregonlive.com/steveduin