Truly Metro is Listening. Our work for the #2 is not done.

Wake up Metro! A train is coming and you are going to be smashed physically down to the size of your pea brains. I will be supporting withdrawl of funding from every posible source.

Joanna,

I asked this in another thread and I don't know if I ever saw a reply - how does Metro measure "productivity" in this context?

Regarding your other points:
#1 - The # of vehicles isn't the right metric to be looking at. Madison is 4 lanes and has dedicated left turn lanes at some key intersections. Seneca is only 2 lanes through much of its slog through 1st Hill. Comparing # of vehicles on an arterial vs. non-arterial street is apples to oranges. What you really want is some measure of throughput (# of vehicles per unit time) or the avg time it takes a vehicle to travel a given distance.

Two other aspects of Seneca that I haven't seen discussed in this months long debate are a) the incredibly long waits at 6th going westbound. That is a messy intersection with traffic coming off I-5 and fairly high northbound volumes on 6th. If you're unlucky, you can be waiting at that light for what feels like 5 minutes (although it's probably less). b) frequent stops at crosswalks between some of the buildings on 1st Hill. This may seem fairly minor, but these unexpected stops add up, especially if they cause you to miss lights because they throw off the timing. I think Madison is better in both these regards.

That said, I definitely think Madison could be improved to make it an even better route for buses. They should permanently remove all on street parking (at least west of Broadway) and clean up some of the eastbound left turns east of Broadway (the one onto 12th Ave northbound can be particularly annoying). The right turns when heading east bound in that same... read more eral location onto either 12th Ave southbound or E. Union eastbound can also be impacted by pedestrians, but I don't know if there's a lot you can do about that (or if the issue is big enough to warrant doing anything about it).

#2. Who is arguing for a bus only lane along that stretch of Madison? I haven't seen anything from Metro arguing that their proposed changes are dependent on a bus only lane. Claiming that something that isn't needed is infeasible isn't really compelling. Besides, don't all the clinics along there have their own entrances? It's not like tons of clinic patients are being dropped off on the street.

#3. Metro's priority can not and should not be preserving people's one seat rides. It is counter to how you build a good transit network. We have been over this point ad nauseum in the various discussions on these changes and I know you feel that people who support this view are just transit wonks who don't care about how things work in the real world, but that's not a fair assessment. Having a fast, reliable network where people can easily get from point A to point B (for a very larger number of A's and B's) has the potential to be transformative for the region. Beyond that, how disrupted and inconvenienced will people be if Metro has to make more drastic cuts down the road because it can't get additional funding? Remember, Metro is on life support now and they only got a short reprieve. They need to show the state they are serious about making changes to improve the overall network or things will get much worse in a few years. If Metro pulls back from the changes it feels it needs to make now in order to preserve a longer term funding stream down the road, it may be forced to make such drastic changes that people will fondly look back at this current set of proposals and wish they had supported Metro rather than fight them tooth and nail.

#4. I don't even know if I should bother to respond to this one since people are either on one side or another on whether the #2 is broken and no amount of argument from either side is likely to sway anyone's opinion. But, at a minimum, I will say that Metro must have thought is was broken (or at least could be improved) or they wouldn't have proposed the changes to begin with. There seems to be this perspective from some of the "no change" folks that Metro planners live in ivory towers and have their heads up their asses and only propose changes to irritate people or shortchange the CD or ... I don't know any planners so I suppose that perspective could be true, but I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're like the rest of us - they've been given a job to do and limited resources and they're doing the best they can. So, in that context, ask yourself why Metro would have proposed these changes to begin with and whether "if it ain't broke" is really a valid position...

The next time anyone complains about how long it takes to get around this city, I hope they remember who's to blame.