#Leschi
#Marcia Rutan, the Community Recycling Program manager for the Seattle Public Utilities, will speak on “Where Does It All Go,” at the April meeting of the Leschi Community Council. She encourages us to bring that odd puzzling item that doesn’t seem to fit into any recycling or compost bin; she’ll try to solve that problem for you.
#We’ll also have a resource list of local recycling options for items that won’t go into the bin.
#The meeting will take place Wednesday, April 1, at 7 p.m. at the Central Area Senior Center (500 30th Ave. S.), located one block south of South Jackson Street on 30th Avenue South. There will be refreshments and door prizes.
#— Diane Snell, co-president
#Madison Park
#Is our cherished No. 11 bus about to disappear? That is the plan if Metro has its way.
#Recently, Metro Transit told King County residents that it was going broke. There was a huge public relations campaign mounted to convince us all to endorse yet another tax hike to keep the buses running. Then, just before the vote, there was a very quiet announcement that Metro had found some money. Most people never heard this message and consequently voted for a citywide sales tax and car-tab tax increase.
#So now the planning is afoot to change nearly all bus service in the city, to make it more “efficient.” This means there will be more frequent service on the most heavily trafficked corridors but a drastic realignment of service on the lesser-used routes, such as that to Madison Park.
#On March 18, Metro held a well-attended meeting at Café Flora in Madison Valley to present the latest iteration of its planning efforts. There were only two options presented: its preferred Option 1, with the changes; and Option 2, with, as far as the Madison Park Community Council (MPCC) is concerned, no changes. It quickly became apparent that the agency was determined to make sweeping changes, spurred by the anticipated opening of the new leg of the light rail line, which now reaches Husky Stadium.
#It didn’t seem to matter that the extension of light rail goes north-south, whereas our bus service goes east-west. Our No. 11 takes us directly downtown and travels on Pine Street.
#The plan is to replace it with a modified Route No. 8, which would run on John and Olive streets and Denny Way to lower Queen Anne, bypassing the downtown core, the shopping district and the hospitals entirely. The frequency would improve, but to get almost anywhere would entail a transfer. Because the worst facet of riding public transit is waiting around in the cold, dark and rain for a bus to arrive, the prospect of transferring is destined to cut ridership to and from Madison Park even further.
#A straw poll taken at the meeting was 12-to-4 in favor of stressing the lack-of-a-need-to-transfer over frequency-of-service improvements; Metro doesn’t want to hear this.
#Furthermore, despite the impact of significant proposed service changes to Madison Park residents and service people, there has been no direct outreach by Metro to our community, and there was an announced cutoff of public input on March 31.
#MPCC is working to get more cooperation from Metro, with meetings in the Park, and expects to present and actively lobby for a third route change alternative (an Option 3) to better serve our area.
#The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) sent design drawings of changes to the roadway intersection where 31st Avenue East meets Arboretum Drive — to better accommodate the proposed new multi-purpose trail through the Washington Park Arboretum — to MPCC. The council reviewed the concept in detail via a thorough walking tour on March 2 and concluded that, although the proposed changes are certainly acceptable, they are generally inadequate to serve the current use patterns.
#We are in the process of preparing design additions, recognizing that no work has been done to that intersection in the last 40 years; therefore, it is unlikely that any more changes would be made in the next 40, so it behooves us and SDOT to get it right this time.
#MPCC has definitely not bowed to the Washington State Department of Transportation’s plan to eliminate the existing state Route 520 interchange at the north end of the arboretum and, thereby, force all the traffic into the Montlake interchange, without any mitigation.
#The council has held a meeting with Rep. Frank Chopp in Olympia and two meetings with our other 43rd District representative, Brady Walkinshaw, in Seattle, to offer up certain design changes that could still be worked into the Montlake interchange plan. This is all very critical if we are to ever be able to head eastbound to Bellevue in the future.
#Don’t forget to keep an eye on the various merchants’ windows and bulletin boards for the next in our Extraordinary Neighbor series of talks, which take place in the meeting room/chapel at the Park Shore Retirement Community (1630 43rd Ave. E.).
#— Maurice Cooper, president