The Imperial College in London is right on the Circle Line a tube route that, as the name implies, is a circle around Central London and Westminster. I studied at Imperial College for a quarter, and after school would take the reading assignment or a newspaper and sit for a while, and when I came to a good stopping point in the reading would get off the train and explore whatever part of the city was around the next stop. I still remember a chip shop where one of the locals I talked to complained that you have to bring your own vinegar because they don’t provide it in this part of town anymore and some gloriously spicy Indian food.
Well today, on the first day of light rail service, I went out and explored Othello, a neighborhood that previously might have been Mars for how infrequently I got down there.
The station is great. Beautiful itself and right across from King Plaza, a two story strip mall that was doing a brisk business on this weekend day. Beyond that, past a couple blocks of London plane trees was a very nice little park (I’m not sure it was a city park; I didn’t notice any signage), a perfect place to sit under a gigantic willow and read with a scent of lavender planted nearby mingled with that of some burgers a family was grilling.
I walked back to, and then down MLK, parallel to the tracks. A few businesses that may benefit from having light rail eventually were pretty empty when I looked into the windows. I stopped in and had a late lunch at a Thai place a few blocks from the station. It was empty except for me at about 2:30, and a bit fuller when I left, but hopefully it and places like it will get more business as people see what’s out from the stations.
After lunch back at the station, Sound Transit did a great job with a little fair. There was music and some booths. I got my undriver’s license and took in some music, and then back home to downtown.
The line wasn’t as bad as I had feared but it was about a half hour before the ST people let me on a train (going there from University Street Station there was almost no line at all).
The point of this (admittedly overindulgent) post is that light rail opens up a piece of the city for those of us without roots there and who make most of our trips without a car. Sure, this is something I could do yesterday if I’d wanted to. But it’s much easier to just get on a train than it is to figure out the bus schedule or to find parking if I’d wanted to drive. And I know exactly how to get home: hop on one of the trains that come every few minutes.
In the coming weeks, I hope to explore other neighborhoods that I normally wouldn’t get to. I’ll probably wander around another station tomorrow. Perhaps after work some time before it starts getting dark early, I’ll take a bike to one of the stations and ride it home. Given that the trains were stuffed, I doubt I’ll be the only one.
Great POST!
I plan to do something very much like this. Barb and I have been “exploring” that area by car for sometime now, there is a lot to see.
I only wish I had the moolah to invest in properties near Othello station!
Does anyone know how the neighborhood got that odd name?
Opens up? What does that even mean? The Rainier Valley already had some of the best bus service in Kink County. Central Link is a political line, nothing more. If you put your glass of Koolaid down for one minute and think about it, the line doesn’t make any sense. It’s slow, meandering, and the stops are over a mile apart. We were sold light rail with the promise of getting people out of their cars and off the freeways. Instead, we got a line that’s designed to get unemployed people off of buses and onto trains.
Troll
Maybe you ought to READ Carl’s post. He did not say anyhting about freeways.
How long do you suppose the bus ride is from Seattle to Othello?
BTW, I am pretty sure that KoolAid is more popular with Repricans than it with Demicans.
re 2 __ You are so opposite. You remind me of Robert Maplethorpe.
@4
The word’s contrarian.
Good quote I just read about our Link system: “It’s not a good line. They built were they could, not where they should.”
Another observation someone made: “By the time U-Link is built, the line will crisscross I-5 THREE TIMES from the airport to the UW.”
In the meantime you dimwits are missing the fun of discoverin Othello. You may want to consider the new Chines therapy for excess use of the Internet .. just posted at SJ.
The Seattle P.I. has created a Seattle-area gang map.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seat.....155394.asp
If you do decide to follow SJ’s advice, please watch out for the Crips, SUR 13, and the Disciples.
Also, if you do decide to venture down into the dangerous, and crime-ridden Rainier Valley on Link, leave any valuables at home. Watches, cell phones, jewelry, laptop, backpack, wallet, etc. Also, it’s advised to travel in groups of 10-15. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RIDE THE LINK AT NIGHT! OR ALONE!
For those who eat fish there are two fish markets in that area Puddy visits.
Puddy @9,
By “that area” do you mean Othello, or all of South Seattle?
Jim jones and his democrat connections in san fran prove you wrong.
But thanks for trying to spin it.
There really are some koolaid drinkers out there with respect to Link. They are so fanatical about rail, they’ve lost the ability to differentiate between a rail line that makes sense, and one that doesn’t. To them, any rail is good rail. I, on the other hand, am for light rail, but only if it makes good sense. Even Sound Transit knows this line doesn’t make sense. That’s why they sold it as a regional line that will get people out of their cars, instead of selling it as a glorified bus on rails that will get the “transit dependent” off of buses and onto trains.
This line is the first step; it links about six stations outside downtown, with downtown.
The systems in London and elsewhere that we love and rave about are full systems that connect dozens and dozens of stations linking all quarters of the relevant city and area, with downtown and each other. In our region ST currently plans to get to Capitol Hill and UW by about 2016 — seven years away. Then to a limited number of additional stations in North Seattle (and more, in the suburbs) by about 2020-2023. In the city, between UW and NOrthgate we’re only going to have Brooklyn, Roosevelt and Northgate stations.
So in about 11 years, some 30+ years after starting, we’ll only have provided service to the eastern half of Seattle — there are no real plans now to link the 99-West Seattle-Ballard corridor at all. (And along the Link line, having half a dozen stations in all of Seattle north fo downtown isn’t really a full system, either.)
If we can’t go to Northgate until 2020 when will we got to West Seattle or Ballard, 2030?
21 years from now and some 33 years after starting?
This is not a good plan. It’s too tentative and slow. We need a fundamental change in the timetable and to speed up delivery of new segments that would link all parts of the City. This requires changing the funding system and probably requires addressing the institutional discrimination in favor of funding infrastructure that mainly serves automobiles.
In this landscape, committing to a $4 billion thru-downtown bored tunnel — that does not even have a single bus stop downtown — is the wrong approach! Either that tunnel needs to be designed to have a train in it — or the whole idea should be scrapped in favor of building more rapid transit links, sooner.
Whether we add another rapid transit line that’s got one rail or two, whether it’s just two legs connecting to the central Link segment, or whether it adds another thru-corridor (using the bored tunnel or going elevated thru downtown) — heck, whether we want to build gondola links from the WS Junction or from Ballard thru Interbay to downtown and Link — however we do it we need to build the rapid transit connections to the other half of the city asap.
I haven’t been to the Othello neighborhood lately. I am sure I will enjoy checking it out. But really, to plan a $4 billion bored tunnel and have no plan to link up half the city with rapid transit is not the way to go. Most of us want a system where we can go FROM Othello TO West Seattle, Seattle Center, Ballard and the parts of the city west of 99, and vice versa.
We need a discussion of how to get revenue streams to bring about a full citywide rapid transit system that doesn’t leave out any part of the city, and in this context, what is the role and purpose and benefit of the $4 billion auto tunnel that has little transit benefit.
Othello’s nice — but come on, let’s figure out now how and when we’re going to hook up half the City of Seattle that is currently left out of the plans.
Cleve, I am a transportation expert. What you are talking about is basically replacing bus routes with rail routes. Buses on rails. That makes no sense. We need to design a system that gets people out of their cars and off the freeways. Yes, I know you riding on a light rail train makes you and others “feel more European,” but that’s not reason enough to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
Troll,
“I am a transportation expert.”
Oh????? I didn’t realize bicycles with training wheels were even considered a serious form of transportation.
Troll taught you something today.
Are you going to thank him or isn’t that your style?
I think Cleve’s point is that there are 61,000 trips a day across the Ballard Bridge and 109,000 trips a day across the West Seattle Upper Bridge – nearly all of these being single-occupant vehicle trips. The way to get 170,000 fewer single-occupant vehicle trips a day is to offer those folks a means of getting where they’re going faster than they can get themselves there. That is not going to be a bus – it’s going to be a grade-separated system – mass and rapid transit. Not buses, and not the perpetuation of the single-occupant vehicle – cars. Otherwise my greenness is not as relevant nor as important as my productivity so I’ll drive if the bus or buses take two or more times longer – and it almost always does, sometimes it’s four or five times longer.
Troll I’m not sure what rock you live under but Rainier Valley isn’t particularly dangerious and isn’t any more full of unemployed people than Bellevue.
If you are smart you’ll go check the area out yourself rather than relying on some story you heard from someone about how it is full of “thugs” and you’ll spend every single second there dodging a hail of bullets.
If you are really smart you should consider doing like SJ and buying some property down there. Considering the bitching about the lack of park & rides in South Seattle there is likely quite an opportunity to offer monthly parking near a station.
Now I know why we have light rail. It’s so people don’t have to figure out bus schedules. Now that is money well spent.
@18
It’s put up or shut up time. I provided a P.I. created map of Seattle-area gangs. You show me a map of Bellevue gangs.
Troll, I think connecting downtown with the airport is a win. And of course the line isn’t complete yet. The proposed line looks pretty good. It is just that there is not enough of it.
“What you are talking about is basically replacing bus routes with rail routes.” The public prefers rail to buses, when it has the choice, and we have plenty of bus routes that would have better been converted to rail decades ago. I get my beak rattled every day on one of them.
As far as I can tell, the main users of the Seattle bus system are commuters–it really only works well for people with a well-defined route. Why are you talking about the unemployed?
@20
Troll, I didn’t say Bellevue had the same gang problems (though it does have gang problems, don’t kid yourself) I said it likely had about the same proportion of unemployed people. Just like anywhere else most people of working age who live in Rainier Valley work. Most of them work fairly hard.
In any case in 22 years of living in Seattle I haven’t had one problem in the CD or Rainier Valley. This includes working graveyard shift near Rainier Ave and MLK during some of the worst gang problems in the late 80’s/early 90’s, living 3 years near Washington Hall and 2 years just off of 23rd between Cherry and Union.
I have had problems with various crazy’s, criminals, and drunks hassling me in that time including getting beat up by a group of young men just for the Hell of it and one robbery at gunpoint. Every single time I’ve had a problem it has been in the U District or Downtown. The robbery and the assault were both in the U District.
Even so, Seattle is VERY safe compared to some place like Detroit, Baltimore, or even Minneapolis.
Ok, sorry for being a jerk to you. And sorry for what happened to you.
Goldy, sorry for the delay, Puddy working on the house today.
South Seattle
Just south of Graham is Montoyas.
MLK & Henderson is a Samoan/Tongan cooked fish market where they have some Asian island goodies we like to get with the fish.
There used to be a West Indian Fish Market on Rainier Ave west side north of Othello that PacMan’s wife took us to but Puddy can’t remember it’s name and PacMan is out.
Hope that helps.
Troll @2: do you write stupid things on purpose, or are you just a complete airhead? Discovering neighborhoods by bus. What a joke. If you knew the first thing about public transportation, you would know that people take buses because they HAVE to – they take trains because they WANT to.
And Troll – just because you are afraid of dark skinned people, doesn’t mean you need to spread your Puddy-like racist scare tactics all over the internets.
Cleve @13: if you hadn’t done such an excellent job driving the monorail project into the ground, we would have coverage on the west side of the city. Complain about the many years needed to deploy rail in this city. A long time is better than never – which is YOUR record.
@25
Mark, I’m going to let that slide. I admire your guts, kid, going up against one of the leaders of this blog.
A Smelly Turd@25 Left:
Racist Scare Tactics? all over the internets? Hmmm… Puddy didn’t say this… one of your buds did…”“There were those who worked in the fields and those who worked in the house. Those who worked in the house protected their positions and felt above those who worked in the fields. But at the end of the day, they were all property. This is a truth the house niggers sought to deny. But it is a truism that Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice understand every day of their lives.” – Comment by headless lucy 9/16/05 @ 12:22 am”
Cum on back when you can create cogent thought.
Now I see why steve never wanted to denounce headless.
Which lefties had the decency to denounce the headless one?
Wow, I didn’t know that cleve had the ability to drive the monorail project into the ground with his comments on this blog.
Kudos to cleve for being all that.
Markthedeadneck @ 25,
“Troll @2: do you write stupid things on purpose, or are you just a complete airhead?”
Troll frequently posts idiotic statements. At times, his comments appear to be aimed at simply invoking a reaction or disrupting a thread.
Other times his comments seem more sincere but (typically) woefully uninformed or just plain wacky. Either way, when someone points out the failings of his comments, he typically resorts to something like, what do you expect…look at my screen name!
I think it is best to simply ignore him altogether (or have fun mocking him). When ignored, he will frequently become increasingly bizarre in subsequent comments….
In the meantime, Carl’s interesting seed is not being watered.
I for one think it is cool .. discovering a new paret of the city, one named after a moor after all! Given the thnic mix there now, is “Othello” an apt name for a “new” neighborhood?
re 11: Jim Jones used ‘Flavor-Ade’ — a cheap imitation of the delicious real thing, Kool-Aide™
It’s like comparing Sean Hannity with Walter Cronkite — it won’t hold water.
Yep Erich is Correct. Wyler’s Grape as Puddy remembers!
“Troll” has a point. It’s underneath his hat, but honestly…there are about 450,000 people in Seattle who don’t give a rat’s ass about the Othello neighborhood, and very likely never will.
Rail service between downtown and the airport is a great idea, but not if it zig-zags through SoDo, Beacon Hill, Rainier Beach and Tukwila, half of the way crawling along surface streets, while I-5 and 99 go more or less directly there.
Let’s face it, folks…this line is a first step, almost a demo. The route was selected with too many objectives in mind other than just the best way to move people from Point A to Point B. These included targeting an area where bus service wasn’t all that great, finding a route that avoided some major contentions over property rights, supporting “gentrification” of the southeast part of the city (which has been happening anyway) and trying to impress a lot of people–including a degree of narcissism on the part of the folks who planned it, a number of whose Mount Baker residences it passes fairly close to.
All that being said, it’s still a start on the sort of regional mass transit we’re soon going to desperately need, but while we’ve spent 30 years building one piddly-ass route, other cities have accomplished much, much more.
ArtFart
Sure nuff, but is that bad?
I think it is a dumbass mistake to think of Othello as a bedroom for the masses of New-York style workers commuting to Seattle’s version of Wall Street.
Proximity to SeaTac, Tukwilla, and to Downtown ain’t to sneeze at! The cultural mix there already (Sephardi, Ethiopians, Arabs, Buppis and Yuppis) is a striking collection .. almost a definition of upwardly mobile. Add a few UW profs, Amazonians looking for a new home to raise younguns, … the potential is huge.
Compare this with the growth of North Aurora. The mix there is pretty cool too .. Koreans replacing Semites, less of the established ethnic community (Sephardi have been here for 100 years) but again an area growing in its own right. Light rail would accelerate this too, but the distance Othello will travel is a lot more exciting than Lynnwood and, Othello has more potential (because of SeaTac and lightrail) to develop light industry.
Another interesting comparison might be Bothell. Bothell has put a lot into an attempt to develop industrial parks. The results are impressive except that Bothell remains isolated by the need to transit through the Pacific Ocean of traffic. In contrast Othello would make a great choice for many things (e.g. a new UW branch campus near SeaTac?).
Tx Carl for a great point, sorry about the Trolls.
Good post Carl. Just as and FYI the Othello Streetfair that was put together on opening day was 100% organized by the community not by sound transit. TCC sponsored the undrivers license folks and OThello Partners donated the lot. The community did fund-raising for it and made it happen from the ground up. Thanks for coming by!