#where i switch to the red line and ride 1 stop to south station then buy a lowell line commuter rail ticket and wait

[deadpanwalking]

Sounds like you need to take your own advice and learn to fuckjng drive bitch

I do see both the wisdom in your advice and the good intentions with which you dispensed it, but when I said I literally cannot fucking drive, I wasn't being figurative in the sense of being a Gay Who Can't Drive, I was being literal, in the sense of only being gay incidentally, but having a plot-relevant neuroanatomical condition which precludes driving safely.

[omegaremix]

October 30, 2018.

Something inside me was nagging me to go to Manhattan. A few days later, I find myself on the Deer Park platform for a good half-an-hour before the westbound Penn Station train arrives. Six PM. Upper 40’s. The deep prismatic remnants of the fallen twilight sun sit on the horizon west on the tracks. Clear skies, no clouds. Stars in the sky and the moon’s already gone. It’s rare I’d take a train this late to the Five Boroughs and it’s not to see family, doctors, or for a band. I was curious to see how well my kit took night shots and take it from there.

I felt like I didn’t finish the job properly the last time I was there. By “job”, I meant the August photography session in Manhattan: The American Radiator Building at Bryant Park, The Freedom Tower, and Times Square. I always wanted to aim and fire at those three locales and that day’s doctor appointment made it possible. That was right after I entered a new sordid era. Ever since the Brooklyn goth girl tore my heart out I’d have a new perspective on what could’ve been and what I’ll be missing completely.

The brass ring I was told of was never there to begin with. Someone else had it all along. I was still poisoned with the effects of being led on, lied to, and deceived in the worst possible way. I would never feel or see the same way about city aspirations again. Yet, no matter how many razor-thin-tipped arrows are pierced deep in your body, you're told to still fight on.

I don’t even remember what I thought of on the ride west to Penn Station. I was too busy numbing myself with the night’s playlist. I look out the window to my right as Impalers’ “High Wired” was as going fast as the motion blur itself. 65 minutes later, the train slows down as it enters Penn Station. Ron Morelli’s “Golden Oldies” came on when the line slowed down to darkness and crawled by the obscure rarely-seen corridors. The line slows to a complete stop. The doors open and it starts.

I board off, head up the steps to and through Penn Station, and take the 1/2/3 to 42nd St. For the first time since one New Year’s Eve, I’m in the heart of Times Square at night. The Electric Behemoth. I set up my tripod in-between the streaming traffic while being aware of my surroundings. I aim high and shoot with all the settings and adjustments possible, even wildly playing around with the f-stop and leave the sizzling effects for interpretation. After an hour the kit’s display would tell me a story: I’d find out that no matter how I balance my settings I’d never have the right amount of color or sharpness. Too dim, too fuzzy, too bright. Not enough detail. The color’s are off. It seems you could only achieve what your camera allows you to. On towards Tribeca.

I take the 1/2/3 Express line all the way down to a few blocks short of the Freedom Tower. It’s a different scene from when I was there the last time. Not the pleasant blank-blue skies of a baked early-August afternoon, but the quiet pitch-black streets of the end of October where the silence begs for your attention. A few bars open on Church St. where a scant few people stand on the sidewalk conversing with associates or on their phones closing their deals. I line the camera down south and shoot darkness. The numerous specks of overheads and streetlamps illuminate stationary as the traffic lights instantly switch from red to green. The negative space help separate the dynamic range between darkness and colored lights as I play around with the zoom, firing the kit while it adjusts its focus to capture the bokeh effect.

I walk straight to the Hudson River Greenway. Only 3,500-4,000 feet of water separates me from Jersey City. 1,500 to One World Trade Center / Freedom Tower. Total isolation. A younger couple walking amongst themselves from the piers…and no one else to be found. All I could do was aim and fire at Jersey City with as many combinations of settings as possible. The empty office buildings are fully awake with their bright lights and lucid signs as they stood tall and away in the distance as no one else besides myself are around. After all I could, I turned it south towards the Freedom Tower and shoot as much as the batteries allowed it. I successfully managed to avoid the incoming traffic of cyclists because I paid attention and looked where I was going. Not so much for one oblivious muppet who walked first and looked later. He walked right in front of a oncoming bicyclist and they almost collided. “C’mon. Seriously?” barked the cyclist who verbally flashed some sense into the oblivious dullard. Now back to the 1/2/3 express line up north to head home.

I got off one stop short north of Penn Station, the Times Square / 42nd St. Stop where I ended getting up at 40th St. And 8th Av. I walked around Lord knows what streets. I didn’t plan it but somehow I walked past the Port Authority. And somewhat of a pleasant surprise to break negative thought if even for five minutes: a “post no bills” message stenciled on a random red door. Below it: another stencil of Bill Murray. Genius.

I walk through the Manhattan maze the night before Halloween. All five boroughs are gearing up for the whimsical festivities. The city streets are tidy and quiet with barely anyone walking through the minimal light and activity but it’s still all there. I’m right where I want to be. Always - except I walk solo. It would’ve been great to have someone join this unique experience with me. No reason why it shouldn’t but there always is. Instead, someone took me for a ride and left me head-fucked and demystified. She’s right here yet so far away and I can’t get to her. All I could think of on the walk towards back to Penn Station is another could-have scenario once again made possible by immature people and their foolish games. What’s worse? It’s her holiday tomorrow. I know in my mind she’ll be having lots of fun however she gets it. I won’t.

Another night in the record books. About 200 shots taken against the blinding million dollar lights, the pressing cold winds and the serene city silence. The 11:15PM line back to Deer Park is here. It usually takes about 10 minutes of standstill before the train finally takes off. It’s no surprise that Council Estate Electronics’ “60 Megawatts” grinds in my ears as I sit still in the front car sitting forwards and that alone is all doldrums; just waiting for train to take off. Then it morphs into Ron Morelli’s still-unsettling, suspenseful “Narco FRQ” as the line slow-rolls out of Penn Station in tune with the subtle clacking of the train’s wheels on the track. Another 65 minutes to go as I keep my quotient up and my era open, stupified as to what’s in store for me.

Plaque Marks: “Anxiety Driven Nervous Worship”

Council Estate Electronics: Urals

Erica Eso: “Vaccination Free”

AceMo: Black Populous

Arctic Flowers: Weaver

Pop Group, The: “(Amnesty Report II)”

Impalers: “Filth Binge”

Boy Harsher: “Motion”

Fellony: “Politics Of Verticality”

Sky Ferreira: “Voices Carry”

Heem Stogied X EyeDee X Tha God Fahim: “Drive By”

Gnarcissists: “We All Just Wanna’”

clipping.: “Something They Don't Know” (Bad Zu RMX)

Jeremiah J ft. Knxwledge: “Almost”

War On Drugs, The: “Up All Night”

Radon: “A Fist Full Of Potash”

Palm: “Ostrich Vacation”

Impalers: “High Wired”

Caroline K: “Chearth”

Echo Beds: Why Bother Stacking The Chairs On A Sinking Ship”

Blueprint: “Five Years Ago”

Beths, The: “Great No One”

FACS: “Primary” (demo)

Death In June: “Little Black Angel”

Philippe Hallais: “Hero / Fall / Angela”

Fire Engines: “(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”

Dilly Dally: “Doom”

Serge Gainsbourgh: “Je T'aime Moi Non Plus”

wosX: “Armageddon”

Young Fathers: “Lord”

Further Reductions: “Central System”

Street Sects: “And I Grew Into Ribbons”

Frankie Cosmos: “Outside With The Hotties”

Badlands: “Heavy Sighs”

Ron Morelli: Disappearer

[omegaplus]

# 4,507

October 30, 2018.

Something inside me was nagging me to go to Manhattan. A few days later, I find myself on the Deer Park platform for a good half-an-hour before the westbound Penn Station train arrives. Six PM. Upper 40’s. The deep prismatic remnants of the fallen twilight sun sit on the horizon west on the tracks. Clear skies, no clouds. Stars in the sky and the moon’s already gone. It’s rare I’d take a train this late to the Five Boroughs and it’s not to see family, doctors, or for a band. I was curious to see how well my kit took night shots and take it from there.

I felt like I didn’t finish the job properly the last time I was there. By “job”, I meant the August photography session at The American Radiator Building, The Freedom Tower and Times Square. I always wanted to aim and fire at those two locales and that day’s doctor appointment made it possible. That was right after I entered a new sordid era. Ever since the Brooklyn goth girl tore my heart out I’d have a new perspective on what could’ve been and what I’ll be missing completely.

The brass ring I was told of was never there to begin with. Someone else had it all along. I was still poisoned with the effects of being led on, lied to, and deceived in the worst possible way. I would never feel or see the same way about city aspirations again. Yet, no matter how many razor-thin-tipped arrows are pierced deep in your body, you still fight on.

I don’t even remember what I thought of on the ride west to Penn Station. I was too busy numbing myself with the night’s playlist. I look out the window to my right as Impalers’ “High Wired” was as going fast as the motion blur itself. 65 minutes later, the train slows down as it enters Penn Station. Ron Morelli’s “Golden Oldies” came on when the line slowed down to darkness and crawled by the obscure rarely-seen corridors. The line slows to a complete stop. The doors open and it starts.

I board off, head up the steps to and through Penn Station, and take the 1/2/3 to 42nd St. For the first time since one New Year’s Eve, I’m in the heart of Times Square at night. The Electric Behemoth. I set up my tripod in-between the streaming traffic while being aware of my surroundings. I aim high and shoot with all the settings and adjustments possible, even wildly playing around with the f-stop and leave the sizzling effects for interpretation. After an hour the kit’s display would tell me a story: I’d find out that no matter how I balance my settings I’d never have the right amount of color or sharpness. Too dim, too fuzzy, too bright. Not enough detail. The color’s are off. It seems you could only achieve what your camera allows you to. On towards Tribeca.

I take the 1/2/3 Express line all the way down to a few blocks short of the Freedom Tower. It’s a different scene from when I was there the last time. Not the pleasant blank-blue skies of a baked early-August afternoon, but the quiet pitch-black streets of the end of October where the silence begs for your attention. A few bars open on Church St. where a scant few people stand on the sidewalk conversing with associates or on their phones closing their deals. I line the camera down south and shoot darkness. The numerous specks of overheads and streetlamps illuminate stationary as the traffic lights instantly switch from red to green. The negative space help separate the dynamic range between darkness and colored lights as I play around with the zoom, firing the kit while it adjusts its focus to capture the bokeh effect.

I walk straight to the Hudson River Greenway. Only 3,500-4,000 feet of water separates me from Jersey City. 1,500 to One World Trade Center / Freedom Tower. Total isolation. A younger couple walking amongst themselves from the piers…and no one else to be found. All I could do was aim and fire at Jersey City with as many combinations of settings as possible. The empty office buildings are fully awake with their bright lights and lucid signs as they stood tall and away in the distance as no one else besides myself are around. After all I could, I turned it south towards the Freedom Tower and shoot as much as the batteries allowed it. I successfully managed to avoid the incoming traffic of cyclists because I paid attention and looked where I was going. Not so much for one oblivious muppet who walked first and looked later. He walked right in front of a oncoming bicyclist and they almost collided. “C’mon. Seriously?” barked the cyclist who verbally flashed some sense into the oblivious dullard. Now back to the 1/2/3 express line up north to head home.

I got off one stop short north of Penn Station, the Times Square / 42nd St. Stop where I ended getting up at 40th St. And 8th Av. I walked around Lord knows what streets. I didn’t plan it but somehow I walked past the Port Authority. And somewhat of a pleasant surprise to break negative thought if even for five minutes: a “post no bills” message stenciled on a random red door. Below it: another stencil of Bill Murray. Genius.

I walk through the Manhattan maze the night before Halloween. All five boroughs are gearing up for the whimsical festivities. The city streets are tidy and quiet with barely anyone walking through the minimal light and activity but it’s still all there. I’m right where I want to be. Always - except I walk solo. It would’ve been great to have someone join this unique experience with me. No reason why it shouldn’t but there always is. Instead, someone took me for a ride and left me head-fucked and demystified. She’s right here yet so far away and I can’t get to her. All I could think of on the walk towards back to Penn Station is another could-have scenario once again made possible by immature people and their foolish games. What’s worse? It’s her holiday tomorrow. I know in my mind she’ll be having lots of fun however she gets it. I won’t.

Another night in the record books. About 200 shots taken against the blinding million dollar lights, the pressing cold winds and the serene city silence. The 11:15PM line back to Deer Park is here. It usually takes about 10 minutes of standstill before the train finally takes off. It’s no surprise that Council Estate Electronics’ “60 Megawatts” grinds in my ears as I sit still in the front car sitting forwards and that alone is all doldrums; just waiting for train to take off. Then it morphs into Ron Morelli’s still-unsettling, suspenseful “Narco FRQ” as the line slow-rolls out of Penn Station in tune with the subtle clacking of the train’s wheels on the track. Another 65 minutes to go as I keep my quotient up and my era open, stupified as to what’s in store for me.

Plaque Marks: “Anxiety Driven Nervous Worship”

Council Estate Electronics: Urals

Erica Eso: “Vaccination Free”

AceMo: Black Populous

Arctic Flowers: Weaver

Pop Group, The: “(Amnesty Report II)”

Impalers: “Filth Binge”

Boy Harsher: “Motion”

Fellony: “Politics Of Verticality”

Sky Ferreira: “Voices Carry”

Heem Stogied X EyeDee X Tha God Fahim: “Drive By”

Gnarcissists: “We All Just Wanna’”

clipping.: “Something They Don't Know” (Bad Zu RMX)

Jeremiah J ft. Knxwledge: “Almost”

War On Drugs, The: “Up All Night”

Radon: “A Fist Full Of Potash”

Palm: “Ostrich Vacation”

Impalers: “High Wired”

Caroline K: “Chearth”

Echo Beds: Why Bother Stacking The Chairs On A Sinking Ship”

Blueprint: “Five Years Ago”

Beths, The: “Great No One”

FACS: “Primary” (demo)

Death In June: “Little Black Angel”

Philippe Hallais: “Hero / Fall / Angela”

Fire Engines: “(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”

Dilly Dally: “Doom”

Serge Gainsbourgh: “Je T'aime Moi Non Plus”

wosX: “Armageddon”

Young Fathers: “Lord”

Further Reductions: “Central System”

Street Sects: “And I Grew Into Ribbons”

Frankie Cosmos: “Outside With The Hotties”

Badlands: “Heavy Sighs”

Ron Morelli: Disappearer

[thisdaynews]

Seattle and the Dream of the Car-free City

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/seattle-and-the-dream-of-the-car-free-city-2/

Seattle and the Dream of the Car-free City

SEATTLE—Three years ago, this fast-growing, hilly city of 725,000 people took a huge leap toward a longtime civic dream: becoming a place where it’s easy tolive without driving every day or without owning a car at all.

In March 2016, the region’s Link light-rail system, which ran through 13 stations between the airport and downtown, added two stations, one in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and one at the University of Washington. “All of a sudden, you could get from Capitol Hill to downtown in two minutes,” says Keith Kyle, president of the advocacy group Seattle Subway. “Compared to what people were used to, you might as well be teleporting.”

New riders flocked to the trains. “Even though we extended only two stops, we brought light rail to two of the densest-populated sections of the entire state,” says Peter Rogoff, CEO of Sound Transit, which operates the rail line. By tunneling under the ship canal that bisects Seattle, the light-rail extension created a connection to downtown from the north. The 4-mile trip from the university, which could take 20 minutes by car on a good day or 40 minutes on a gridlocked day, shrank to eight minutes. Buses from across North Seattle changed routes to end at the university station, where riders can switch to the train and speed underground into the central city at 55 miles per hour.

The results of this project, the latest in a long string of mass-transit investments, have been remarkable, and Seattle loves to tout them: As the city has grown in population, adding jobs and buildings, its car traffic has actually gonedown.City Hall says average daily traffic in Seattle proper has stayed flat, and even declined a little, since 2006—and during that time, the city added more than 116,000 people, the second biggest percentage increase among America’s 50 largest cities. Meanwhile, its light-rail ridership is surging; after the most recent expansion, the number of daily users jumped 89 percent, to 65,100 people on an average weekday, compared with the year before.

As other cities experiment with congestion pricing in their business districts and even banning cars from major thoroughfares, Seattle is trying another strategy: investing in more commuting options to take the pressure off its roadways. Delays on I-5, the Seattle region’s main north-south freeway, have grown by two-thirds in the past several years. So the shift to carless commuting is transformational. And the push for change isn’t slackening—it’s growing. In November 2016, inspired by Link light rail’s success, voters across Seattle’s tricounty area approved a staggering $54 billion tax levy to further expand the region’s Sound Transit system. With the funding, the light-rail system is set to grow six-fold by 2041, to 117 miles, making it as large as Washington, D.C.’s Metro system.

Seattle’s enormous investment in mass transit comes after decades as a car-dominated city. Many larger cities, encumbered by 19th-century footprints and 20th-century car fixations, have paid for their booming economies with steadily worsening commute times. Census data from 2017 shows 14 million commuters spend an hour or more a day getting to and from work. Commuting time—often spent alone in a car—is getting longer every year. Seattle, as car-influenced and geography-bound as any city, has defied that trend.

Seattle’s embrace of car-free commutes is a story of good fortune, a prosperous and progressive city whose rising fortunes make it easier to invest in managing its rapid growth. But it’s also an example of a virtuous circle, a city investing in the very things that make it attractive, its compact downtown and environmental ethic, and attracting more residents who value the same things. And it’s an example of a city voting to change itself, make up for lost time and opportunities, and catch up to other regions that made different choices decades ago.

Story Continued Below

“There’s huge demand,” says Dongho Chang, the city’s traffic engineer, who measures his success not by reducing delays for cars, but by reducing car miles driven. “People want transit here. People are willing to invest and pay for it. They’re voting for transit investment. And the reason why is because a lot of our streets are already constrained, and transit is the most efficient way for us to move forward.”

***

Twenty years ago, Seattle residents had few ways to get around: cars, buses, a few electric trolleys, and ferries across the Puget Sound. Amtrak and the 1962 World’s Fair monorail — a 1-mile ride between downtown and the Space Needle — were the only trains in town. Now, a commuter standing in Seattle’s Union Station Square can choose from a 20-mile light-rail line, commuter-rail lines that run 34 miles north to Everett and 47 miles south through Tacoma, one of two downtown streetcars, double-decker regional express buses to far suburbs, electric trolleys climbing one of downtown’s toughest inclines, and e-bikes rentable via smartphone apps.

None of this is cheap, but progressive Seattle is willing to pay for it. Beginning in 2014, residents voted to raise their taxes three times in three years, to expand bus service; build bus, bike and pedestrian street infrastructure; and vastly expand the region’s light-rail system.

Geography is a big reason Seattle residents want alternatives to cars. Seattle was built on a narrow isthmus between the Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with the Lake Washington Ship Canal cutting across it, so there are only a few routes in and out of downtown. Culture, economics and politics are other reasons: the Pacific Northwest’s environmental mindset, the young tech workers who like working in vibrant urban places and don’t want cars to be their only commuting option. Since the 1990s, Washington state laws have required regional growth management and obligated large employers to encourage employees to take transit to work, car pool, walk, or—this is big in outdoorsy Seattle—bike.

In 12 minutes, cyclists can ride all the way through the city’s downtown without fear. Riders whiz past glassy new buildings, construction cranes, classic theaters and the Seattle Art Museum along Second Avenue’s two-way protected bike lane. Rows of parked cars and plastic posts separate bikes from car traffic. Bike stoplights at rider’s-eye level show green for go as red left-turn lights keep cars at bay.

Chang, a committed cyclist, stood recently on Second Avenue with his red nine-speed steel bike and pointed to an intersection. Three concrete planter boxes, bursting with wild grasses and yellow flowers, formed a wall next to the white line where bikes stop for a red light.

“It becomes a buffer area for riders, so it feels a lot more comfortable,” Chang told me.

Seattle hasn’t banished cars, nor does it want to. Rather, it is finally achieving a balanced multimodal system, remaking itself from a city built for cars into one built for all the ways people get around.

And the need is growing. Local leaders talk of a “Seattle Squeeze,” as downtown construction and the demolition of an elevated freeway jam up streets and commuters await another expansion of light-rail and streetcar service.

“It’s a huge transition from how the region operated—get in a car—to an entire region where transit is a viable choice,” says Dow Constantine, executive of King County, which includes Seattle, and former chair of the Sound Transit board. “In less than a decade, people’s whole perspective has changed.”

***

Transit used to be a punchline in Seattle.

In 1992, the Gen X love storySinglesfeatured a transportation-planner protagonist whose dream transit system, the Supertrain, is nixed by the mayor. At that point, Seattleites had been proposing and rejecting rail systems since 1968. The “Boeing bust,” when the aerospace industry tanked in the early ’70s, deflated the public’s enthusiasm for major infrastructure projects. But by the mid-’90s, the region’s growing congestion clashed with its green ethos.

The turning point camein 1996, when voters in three counties approved a sales tax hike and a tax on car registrations to fund Sound Transit’s plan for light-rail, commuter-rail and regional bus service. “People are tired of just sitting around in traffic,” the ballot effort’s campaign manager declared on the victorious election night.

The agency, mismanaged at first, lost some federal funding before a dynamic CEO, Joni Earl, whipped it into shape. In 2008, amid the Great Recession no less, voters approved a second sales tax increase to expand the system. By that point, the light-rail line was nearing its debut, and Amazon, the city’s largest employer, had started building its headquarters near downtown, where it expected to move 6,000 employees.

Linking transit and density isn’t just good sense. It’s part of a statewide vision for how to grow. Since the 1990s, Washington state’s Growth Management Act has required local governments in fast-growing areas to reduce sprawl and its Commute Trip Reduction law requires large employers to encourage employees not to drive to work alone. To combat gentrification, state law requires Sound Transit to attract affordable housing to the land it used for construction staging around new stations. Meanwhile, to encourage transit-oriented development, Seattle allows developers to build housing without off-street parking in areas with frequent transit service.

Sound Transit has already bored a tunnel for the next extension and is building tracks and three stations in North Seattle that are set to open in 2021.Riders from those stations can take advantage of light rail’s new route to downtown under the ship canal.

“A lot of the imperatives for transit here are driven in part by geography,” Rogoff says. “We’re surrounded by mountains and water.”

In 2016, the year light rail expanded, Seattle’s booming downtown was headed toward 300,000 jobs. Local officials had only to look at the clogged lanes of I-5 at rush hour to see demand for transit was escalating. Delays on the region’s major freeways grew 7 percent between 2015 and 2017—but rush-hour transit ridership grew twice as fast. The light rail’s success had superseded Sound Transit’s track record of overly ambitious timelines and overbudget transit projects. Polling showed more support for a big ballot proposal than a small one.

“People’s appetite had grown considerably,” says Constantine. “The more ambitious it was, the more people embraced it. They realized we’d waited way too long.”

Seattle Subway’s activists capitalized on that, creating a “vision map” of seven light-rail lines crisscrossing the region. “We made the point that bigger is better, and people want more,” says Kyle, Seattle Subway’s president.

The resulting ballot proposal, called Sound Transit 3, asked for 25 years of funding: a total of $54 billion in increased sales taxes, car taxes and property taxes. Campaigning for the ballot proposal as part of a broad coalition of alternative-transportation groups, Seattle Subway volunteers argued with opponents on the internet and promoted a yes vote at weekend festivals. They chalked potential commute times to downtown on sidewalks near proposed rail stations. The measure passed with 54 percent of the vote regionwide, led by 70 percent in Seattle itself.

Despite their superambitious light-rail plans, Seattle residents don’t see their city as a train-and-bike utopia. They say they’re still decades behind other cities, scrambling to catch up their transportation network to the city’s job growth.

“We have a geometry challenge,” says Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association. “We want to continue to grow jobs in the downtown in a vertical way, but our horizontal space is limited.” He gestures out the association’s office windows at the four new skyscrapers of Amazon’s expanding headquarters complex, which now accounts for 45,000 jobs. How do you get more and more employees to work when there’s no more room to build highways?

The answer, for 70 percent of large downtown Seattle employers, is to offer discounted or free transit passes as part of their employee benefits package. ORCA cards — whose names are a tribute to the Puget Sound’s beloved, endangered killer whales, and an acronym for One Regional Card for All — work on all Seattle area trains, buses and ferries. Commute Seattle, a partnership between the Downtown Seattle Association and local government, helps businesses set up ORCA card programs, showers and bike storage for cyclists and parking-garage pricing that encourages short-term stays over daily commuting.

“Employees don’t want to be stuck in their cars for hours on end each day,” says Scholes. “They want some certainty of getting to work on time. And they value the ease of having that ORCA pass in their wallet.”

In 2014, Seattle voters approved a ballot proposal to buy increased bus service from King County Metro, the local bus agency. Thanks to a $60 vehicle license fee and a 0.1 percent sales tax increase, 67 percent of Seattle residents have bus service every 10 minutes within a 10-minute walk of their home, up from 25 percent of residents three years ago. Low-income residents can get discounted ORCA cards, and Seattle high-school students get them for free.

City Councilman Mike O’Brien, who chairs the transportation committee, says Seattle can’t keep up with the demand for expanded bus service. “We’re close to $50 million a year in extra service that the city buys on top of what Metro provides, and we would buy more if they had more to give,” he says. But King County Metro is at capacity: It’s hard to hire drivers, and the bus maintenance bases are full at night. “I can tell my constituents that we have more bus service than we’ve ever had. And my constituent says, ‘That doesn’t sound right because my buses are fuller than they’ve ever been.’”

In 2015, Seattle voters approved a property tax levy, called Move Seattle, to remake streets to be more friendly to bikes, pedestrians and buses. But today, Seattle’s bike activists are growing impatient. They’re unhappy that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has canceled some bike-lane projects after complaints from neighbors. Durkan, a former U.S. attorney elected mayor in 2017, says her administration has expanded bike access through the city’s rapidly growing private bike-share system. She’s reevaluating the city’s bike network plan after discovering, she says, that “our predecessors had oversold people on what we could build with the dollars we had.” Likewise, Durkan delayed a plan to connect the city’s two streetcar lines, a priority of downtown businesses, out of concern about rising costs.

But Durkan is hardly a transit antagonist. Her administration, King County Metro and Sound Transit recently funded an on-demand, app-based shuttle van service that takes southeast Seattle residents to and from light-rail stations—a pilot program meant to help lower-income residents bridge what planners call the “last mile” between home and transit.

And Seattle, like a number of major American cities, has committed to following the Paris climate agreement despite President Donald Trump’s decision to take the United States out of it.

“To meet our climate goals, we have to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled,” Durkan says. “We have to continue to move people and freight through and around our region. That means reducing congestion. Less cars on the road is healthier for everybody.”

Read More

[travelswithbrindle]

Riding the new wave at Hynes Inbound

My new temp job starts on Monday, and I’m getting conflicting reports about whether I’m there indefinitely or if I’m just there for two weeks. I felt pretty energetic after playing at Andrew earlier today, and I decided to finish off Hynes Convention Center--the stop where I played last week.

The T had announced that the Green Line was delayed due to switching problems (okay, which of you drivers took a Dunkies break before you were scheduled?), and I assumed the pitch would be taken by the time I got there. When I got off the train, the only sounds I could hear were the breaks of the train and the low hum of conversation, so I crossed the platform, hung my coat on one of the old spigots, and set my case out at the foot of the staircase.

I’ve been playing a bit with my set. I still feature several pop hits from a few years ago (and I should probably bring in some new songs), but I’ve been playing some Reagan/Thatcher-era punk and new wave songs. They’re easy to play and people know them, and in light of our recent military actions playing some of these songs is a way to make a political statement without drawing heat from the T police. I made my first dollar within minutes of setting up, when I started playing “Dreaming” by Blondie--a guy wearing his sunglasses indoors threw four quarters into my case, which made me feel like a character in a video game--but one guy who looked as though he was old enough to remember these hits when they were current tucked a $5 in my case, under the Hershey bar I use to hold down my money. While he waited for the train I saw him tapping his foot to the beat, and I looked at him and smiled. He smiled back. I was glad I could make him happy!

I continued playing and the money came in bits and bobs. A church lady folded a $5 and placed in my case, and a girl in an engineer’s cap and an olive drab coat left a singles sandwich as well. Even the people who didn’t throw in money gave me great feedback, like the mustachioed man with a grocery bag who applauded me as I finished “Top of the Pops” and a blonde woman who smiled at me and gave me the thumbs up from her seat on the train. I tend to not look at people when I’m busking because I don’t want to seem like I’m asking them for money even subliminally, but looking up and seeing people cheer me on got me through the set.

I finished after an hour of playing, I packed up my gear and hopped on a 1 bus to Harvard. My tips came out to $25 (counting the money I made at Andrew this morning). I also tallied up the stops I’ve played, and I found that I have five stops left: Symphony Inbound and Kenmore Inbound on the Green Line; Back Bay/South End on the Orange Line; and South Station on the Red Line. I feel like I just started this experiment, and I’m so close to finishing it.

[omegaplus]

# 3,860

October 30, 2018 Playlist.

Something inside me was nagging me to go to Manhattan. A few days later, I find myself on the Deer Park platform for a good half-an-hour before the westbound Penn Station train arrives. Six PM. Upper 40’s. The deep prismatic remnants of the fallen twilight sun sit on the horizon west on the tracks. Clear skies, no clouds. Stars in the sky and the moon’s already gone. It’s rare I’d take a train this late to the Five Boroughs and it’s not to see family, doctors, or for a band. I was curious to see how well my kit took night shots and take it from there.

I felt like I didn’t finish the job properly the last time I was there. By “job”, I meant the August photography session at The American Radiator Building, The Freedom Tower and Times Square. I always wanted to aim and fire at those two locales and that day’s doctor appointment made it possible. That was right after I entered a new sordid era. Ever since the Brooklyn goth girl tore my heart out I’d have a new perspective on what could’ve been and what I’ll be missing completely.

The brass ring I was told of was never there to begin with. Someone else had it all along. I was still poisoned with the effects of being led on, lied to, and deceived in the worst possible way. I would never feel or see the same way about city aspirations again. Yet, no matter how many razor-thin-tipped arrows are pierced deep in your body, you still fight on.

I don’t even remember what I thought of on the ride west to Penn Station. I was too busy numbing myself with the night’s playlist. I look out the window to my right as Impalers’ “High Wired” was as going fast as the motion blur itself. 65 minutes later, the train slows down as it enters Penn Station. Ron Morelli’s “Golden Oldies” came on when the line slowed down to darkness and crawled by the obscure rarely-seen corridors. The line slows to a complete stop. The doors open and it starts.

I board off, head up the steps to and through Penn Station, and take the 1 / 2 / 3 to 42nd St. For the first time since one New Year’s Eve, I’m in the heart of Times Square at night. The Electric Behemoth. I set up my tripod in-between the streaming traffic while being aware of my surroundings. I aim high and shoot with all the settings and adjustments possible, even wildly playing around with the f-stop and leave the sizzling effects for interpretation. After an hour the kit’s display would tell me a story: I’d find out that no matter how I balance my settings I’d never have the right amount of color or sharpness. Too dim, too fuzzy, too bright. Not enough detail. The color’s are off. It seems you could only achieve what your camera allows you to. On towards Tribeca.

I take the 1 / 2 / 3 Express line all the way down to a few blocks short of the Freedom Tower. It’s a different scene from when I was there the last time. Not the pleasant blank-blue skies of a baked early-August afternoon, but the quiet pitch-black streets of the end of October where the silence begs for your attention. A few bars open on Church St. where a scant few people stand on the sidewalk conversing with associates or on their phones closing their deals. I line the camera down south and shoot darkness. The numerous specks of overheads and streetlamps illuminate stationary as the traffic lights instantly switch from red to green. The negative space help separate the dynamic range between darkness and colored lights as I play around with the zoom, firing the kit while it adjusts its focus to capture the bokeh effect.

I walk straight to the Hudson River Greenway. Only 3,500-4,000 feet of water separates me from Jersey City. 1,500 to One World Trade Center / Freedom Tower. Total isolation. A younger couple walking amongst themselves from the piers…and no one else to be found. All I could do was aim and fire at Jersey City with as many combinations of settings as possible. The empty office buildings are fully awake with their bright lights and lucid signs as they stood tall and away in the distance as no one else besides myself are around. After all I could, I turned it south towards the Freedom Tower and shoot as much as the batteries allowed it. I successfully managed to avoid the incoming traffic of cyclists because I paid attention and looked where I was going. Not so much for one oblivious muppet who walked first and looked later. He walked right in front of a oncoming bicyclist and they almost collided. “C’mon. Seriously?” barked the cyclist who verbally flashed some sense into the oblivious dullard. Now back to the 1/2/3 express line up north to head home.

I got off one stop short north of Penn Station, the Times Square / 42nd St. Stop where I ended getting up at 40th St. And 8th Av. I walked around Lord knows what streets. I didn’t plan it but somehow I walked past the Port Authority. And somewhat of a pleasant surprise to break negative thought if even for five minutes: a “post no bills” message stenciled on a random red door. Below it: another stencil of Bill Murray. Genius.

I walk through the Manhattan maze the night before Halloween. All five boroughs are gearing up for the whimsical festivities. The city streets are tidy and quiet with barely anyone walking through the minimal light and activity but it’s still all there. I’m right where I want to be. Always - except I walk solo. It would’ve been great to have someone join this unique experience with me. No reason why it shouldn’t but there always is. Instead, someone took me for a ride and left me head-fucked and demystified. She’s right here yet so far away and I can’t get to her. All I could think of on the walk towards back to Penn Station is another could-have scenario once again made possible by immature people and their foolish games. What’s worse? It’s her holiday tomorrow. I know in my mind she’ll be having lots of fun however she gets it. I won’t.

Another night in the record books. About 200 shots taken against the blinding million dollar lights, the pressing cold winds and the serene city silence. The 11:15PM line back to Deer Park is here. It usually takes about 10 minutes of standstill before the train finally takes off. It’s no surprise that Council Estate Electronics’ “60 Megawatts” grinds in my ears as I sit still in the front car sitting forwards and that alone is all doldrums; just waiting for train to take off. Then it morphs into Ron Morelli’s still-unsettling, suspenseful “Narco FRQ” as the line slow-rolls out of Penn Station in tune with the subtle clacking of the train’s wheels on the track. Another 65 minutes to go before I return to Deer Park. I momentarily keep my quotient up and my possibilities open as I think of how I’ll still be cleaning this mess up.

Plaque Marks: “Anxiety Driven Nervous Worship”

Council Estate Electronics: Arktika

Erica Eso: “Vaccination Free”

AceMo: Black Populous

Arctic Flowers: Weaver

Pop Group, The: “(Amnesty Report II)”

Impalers: “Filth Binge”

Boy Harsher: “Motion”

Fellony: “Politics Of Verticality”

Sky Ferreira: “Voices Carry”

Heem Stogied X EyeDee X Tha God Fahim: “Drive By”

Gnarcissists: “We All Just Wanna’”

clipping.: “Something They Don't Know” (Bad Zu RMX)

Jeremiah J ft. Knxwledge: “Almost”

War On Drugs, The: “Up All Night”

Radon: “A Fist Full Of Potash”

Palm: “Ostrich Vacation”

Impalers: “High Wired”

Caroline K: “Chearth”

Echo Beds: Why Bother Stacking The Chairs On A Sinking Ship”

Blueprint: “Five Years Ago”

Beths, The: “Great No One”

FACS: “Primary” (demo)

Death In June: “Little Black Angel”

Philippe Hallais: “Hero / Fall / Angela”

Fire Engines: “(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”

Dilly Dally: “Doom”

Serge Gainsbourgh: “Je T'aime Moi Non Plus”

wosX: “Armageddon”

Young Fathers: “Lord”

Further Reductions: “Central System”

Street Sects: “And I Grew Into Ribbons”

Frankie Cosmos: “Outside With The Hotties”

Badlands: “Heavy Sighs”

Ron Morelli: Disappearer

[thisdaynews]

Seattle and the Dream of the Car-free City

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/seattle-and-the-dream-of-the-car-free-city/

Seattle and the Dream of the Car-free City

SEATTLE—Three years ago, this fast-growing, hilly city of 725,000 people took a huge leap toward a longtime civic dream: becoming a place where it’s easy tolive without driving every day or without owning a car at all.

In March 2016, the region’s Link light-rail system, which ran through 13 stations between the airport and downtown, added two stations, one in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and one at the University of Washington. “All of a sudden, you could get from Capitol Hill to downtown in two minutes,” says Keith Kyle, president of the advocacy group Seattle Subway. “Compared to what people were used to, you might as well be teleporting.”

New riders flocked to the trains. “Even though we extended only two stops, we brought light rail to two of the densest-populated sections of the entire state,” says Peter Rogoff, CEO of Sound Transit, which operates the rail line. By tunneling under the ship canal that bisects Seattle, the light-rail extension created a connection to downtown from the north. The 4-mile trip from the university, which could take 20 minutes by car on a good day or 40 minutes on a gridlocked day, shrank to eight minutes. Buses from across North Seattle changed routes to end at the university station, where riders can switch to the train and speed underground into the central city at 55 miles per hour.

The results of this project, the latest in a long string of mass-transit investments, have been remarkable, and Seattle loves to tout them: As the city has grown in population, adding jobs and buildings, its car traffic has actually gonedown.City Hall says average daily traffic in Seattle proper has stayed flat, and even declined a little, since 2006—and during that time, the city added more than 116,000 people, the second biggest percentage increase among America’s 50 largest cities. Meanwhile, its light-rail ridership is surging; after the most recent expansion, the number of daily users jumped 89 percent, to 65,100 people on an average weekday, compared with the year before.

As other cities experiment with congestion pricing in their business districts and even banning cars from major thoroughfares, Seattle is trying another strategy: investing in more commuting options to take the pressure off its roadways. Delays on I-5, the Seattle region’s main north-south freeway, have grown by two-thirds in the past several years. So the shift to carless commuting is transformational. And the push for change isn’t slackening—it’s growing. In November 2016, inspired by Link light rail’s success, voters across Seattle’s tricounty area approved a staggering $54 billion tax levy to further expand the region’s Sound Transit system. With the funding, the light-rail system is set to grow six-fold by 2041, to 117 miles, making it as large as Washington, D.C.’s Metro system.

Seattle’s enormous investment in mass transit comes after decades as a car-dominated city. Many larger cities, encumbered by 19th-century footprints and 20th-century car fixations, have paid for their booming economies with steadily worsening commute times. Census data from 2017 shows 14 million commuters spend an hour or more a day getting to and from work. Commuting time—often spent alone in a car—is getting longer every year. Seattle, as car-influenced and geography-bound as any city, has defied that trend.

Seattle’s embrace of car-free commutes is a story of good fortune, a prosperous and progressive city whose rising fortunes make it easier to invest in managing its rapid growth. But it’s also an example of a virtuous circle, a city investing in the very things that make it attractive, its compact downtown and environmental ethic, and attracting more residents who value the same things. And it’s an example of a city voting to change itself, make up for lost time and opportunities, and catch up to other regions that made different choices decades ago.

Story Continued Below

“There’s huge demand,” says Dongho Chang, the city’s traffic engineer, who measures his success not by reducing delays for cars, but by reducing car miles driven. “People want transit here. People are willing to invest and pay for it. They’re voting for transit investment. And the reason why is because a lot of our streets are already constrained, and transit is the most efficient way for us to move forward.”

***

Twenty years ago, Seattle residents had few ways to get around: cars, buses, a few electric trolleys, and ferries across the Puget Sound. Amtrak and the 1962 World’s Fair monorail — a 1-mile ride between downtown and the Space Needle — were the only trains in town. Now, a commuter standing in Seattle’s Union Station Square can choose from a 20-mile light-rail line, commuter-rail lines that run 34 miles north to Everett and 47 miles south through Tacoma, one of two downtown streetcars, double-decker regional express buses to far suburbs, electric trolleys climbing one of downtown’s toughest inclines, and e-bikes rentable via smartphone apps.

None of this is cheap, but progressive Seattle is willing to pay for it. Beginning in 2014, residents voted to raise their taxes three times in three years, to expand bus service; build bus, bike and pedestrian street infrastructure; and vastly expand the region’s light-rail system.

Geography is a big reason Seattle residents want alternatives to cars. Seattle was built on a narrow isthmus between the Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with the Lake Washington Ship Canal cutting across it, so there are only a few routes in and out of downtown. Culture, economics and politics are other reasons: the Pacific Northwest’s environmental mindset, the young tech workers who like working in vibrant urban places and don’t want cars to be their only commuting option. Since the 1990s, Washington state laws have required regional growth management and obligated large employers to encourage employees to take transit to work, car pool, walk, or—this is big in outdoorsy Seattle—bike.

In 12 minutes, cyclists can ride all the way through the city’s downtown without fear. Riders whiz past glassy new buildings, construction cranes, classic theaters and the Seattle Art Museum along Second Avenue’s two-way protected bike lane. Rows of parked cars and plastic posts separate bikes from car traffic. Bike stoplights at rider’s-eye level show green for go as red left-turn lights keep cars at bay.

Chang, a committed cyclist, stood recently on Second Avenue with his red nine-speed steel bike and pointed to an intersection. Three concrete planter boxes, bursting with wild grasses and yellow flowers, formed a wall next to the white line where bikes stop for a red light.

“It becomes a buffer area for riders, so it feels a lot more comfortable,” Chang told me.

Seattle hasn’t banished cars, nor does it want to. Rather, it is finally achieving a balanced multimodal system, remaking itself from a city built for cars into one built for all the ways people get around.

And the need is growing. Local leaders talk of a “Seattle Squeeze,” as downtown construction and the demolition of an elevated freeway jam up streets and commuters await another expansion of light-rail and streetcar service.

“It’s a huge transition from how the region operated—get in a car—to an entire region where transit is a viable choice,” says Dow Constantine, executive of King County, which includes Seattle, and former chair of the Sound Transit board. “In less than a decade, people’s whole perspective has changed.”

***

Transit used to be a punchline in Seattle.

In 1992, the Gen X love storySinglesfeatured a transportation-planner protagonist whose dream transit system, the Supertrain, is nixed by the mayor. At that point, Seattleites had been proposing and rejecting rail systems since 1968. The “Boeing bust,” when the aerospace industry tanked in the early ’70s, deflated the public’s enthusiasm for major infrastructure projects. But by the mid-’90s, the region’s growing congestion clashed with its green ethos.

The turning point camein 1996, when voters in three counties approved a sales tax hike and a tax on car registrations to fund Sound Transit’s plan for light-rail, commuter-rail and regional bus service. “People are tired of just sitting around in traffic,” the ballot effort’s campaign manager declared on the victorious election night.

The agency, mismanaged at first, lost some federal funding before a dynamic CEO, Joni Earl, whipped it into shape. In 2008, amid the Great Recession no less, voters approved a second sales tax increase to expand the system. By that point, the light-rail line was nearing its debut, and Amazon, the city’s largest employer, had started building its headquarters near downtown, where it expected to move 6,000 employees.

Linking transit and density isn’t just good sense. It’s part of a statewide vision for how to grow. Since the 1990s, Washington state’s Growth Management Act has required local governments in fast-growing areas to reduce sprawl and its Commute Trip Reduction law requires large employers to encourage employees not to drive to work alone. To combat gentrification, state law requires Sound Transit to attract affordable housing to the land it used for construction staging around new stations. Meanwhile, to encourage transit-oriented development, Seattle allows developers to build housing without off-street parking in areas with frequent transit service.

Sound Transit has already bored a tunnel for the next extension and is building tracks and three stations in North Seattle that are set to open in 2021.Riders from those stations can take advantage of light rail’s new route to downtown under the ship canal.

“A lot of the imperatives for transit here are driven in part by geography,” Rogoff says. “We’re surrounded by mountains and water.”

In 2016, the year light rail expanded, Seattle’s booming downtown was headed toward 300,000 jobs. Local officials had only to look at the clogged lanes of I-5 at rush hour to see demand for transit was escalating. Delays on the region’s major freeways grew 7 percent between 2015 and 2017—but rush-hour transit ridership grew twice as fast. The light rail’s success had superseded Sound Transit’s track record of overly ambitious timelines and overbudget transit projects. Polling showed more support for a big ballot proposal than a small one.

“People’s appetite had grown considerably,” says Constantine. “The more ambitious it was, the more people embraced it. They realized we’d waited way too long.”

Seattle Subway’s activists capitalized on that, creating a “vision map” of seven light-rail lines crisscrossing the region. “We made the point that bigger is better, and people want more,” says Kyle, Seattle Subway’s president.

The resulting ballot proposal, called Sound Transit 3, asked for 25 years of funding: a total of $54 billion in increased sales taxes, car taxes and property taxes. Campaigning for the ballot proposal as part of a broad coalition of alternative-transportation groups, Seattle Subway volunteers argued with opponents on the internet and promoted a yes vote at weekend festivals. They chalked potential commute times to downtown on sidewalks near proposed rail stations. The measure passed with 54 percent of the vote regionwide, led by 70 percent in Seattle itself.

Despite their superambitious light-rail plans, Seattle residents don’t see their city as a train-and-bike utopia. They say they’re still decades behind other cities, scrambling to catch up their transportation network to the city’s job growth.

“We have a geometry challenge,” says Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association. “We want to continue to grow jobs in the downtown in a vertical way, but our horizontal space is limited.” He gestures out the association’s office windows at the four new skyscrapers of Amazon’s expanding headquarters complex, which now accounts for 45,000 jobs. How do you get more and more employees to work when there’s no more room to build highways?

The answer, for 70 percent of large downtown Seattle employers, is to offer discounted or free transit passes as part of their employee benefits package. ORCA cards — whose names are a tribute to the Puget Sound’s beloved, endangered killer whales, and an acronym for One Regional Card for All — work on all Seattle area trains, buses and ferries. Commute Seattle, a partnership between the Downtown Seattle Association and local government, helps businesses set up ORCA card programs, showers and bike storage for cyclists and parking-garage pricing that encourages short-term stays over daily commuting.

“Employees don’t want to be stuck in their cars for hours on end each day,” says Scholes. “They want some certainty of getting to work on time. And they value the ease of having that ORCA pass in their wallet.”

In 2014, Seattle voters approved a ballot proposal to buy increased bus service from King County Metro, the local bus agency. Thanks to a $60 vehicle license fee and a 0.1 percent sales tax increase, 67 percent of Seattle residents have bus service every 10 minutes within a 10-minute walk of their home, up from 25 percent of residents three years ago. Low-income residents can get discounted ORCA cards, and Seattle high-school students get them for free.

City Councilman Mike O’Brien, who chairs the transportation committee, says Seattle can’t keep up with the demand for expanded bus service. “We’re close to $50 million a year in extra service that the city buys on top of what Metro provides, and we would buy more if they had more to give,” he says. But King County Metro is at capacity: It’s hard to hire drivers, and the bus maintenance bases are full at night. “I can tell my constituents that we have more bus service than we’ve ever had. And my constituent says, ‘That doesn’t sound right because my buses are fuller than they’ve ever been.’”

In 2015, Seattle voters approved a property tax levy, called Move Seattle, to remake streets to be more friendly to bikes, pedestrians and buses. But today, Seattle’s bike activists are growing impatient. They’re unhappy that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has canceled some bike-lane projects after complaints from neighbors. Durkan, a former U.S. attorney elected mayor in 2017, says her administration has expanded bike access through the city’s rapidly growing private bike-share system. She’s reevaluating the city’s bike network plan after discovering, she says, that “our predecessors had oversold people on what we could build with the dollars we had.” Likewise, Durkan delayed a plan to connect the city’s two streetcar lines, a priority of downtown businesses, out of concern about rising costs.

But Durkan is hardly a transit antagonist. Her administration, King County Metro and Sound Transit recently funded an on-demand, app-based shuttle van service that takes southeast Seattle residents to and from light-rail stations—a pilot program meant to help lower-income residents bridge what planners call the “last mile” between home and transit.

And Seattle, like a number of major American cities, has committed to following the Paris climate agreement despite President Donald Trump’s decision to take the United States out of it.

“To meet our climate goals, we have to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled,” Durkan says. “We have to continue to move people and freight through and around our region. That means reducing congestion. Less cars on the road is healthier for everybody.”

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