The First Hill Improvement Association was dismayed. The First Hill Streetcar is slated to run down Broadway, if the mayor adopts a recommendation from city transportation planners, not past the hospitals on Boren, as the First Hill Improvement Association wanted. Neighborhood leaders fired off a letter to Mayor Mike McGinn on March 22 to “express our frustration and deep concern that the SDOT preferred alignment for the First Hill Streetcar appears much more like a Capitol Hill Streetcar and leaves First Hill—yet again—with the short end of the stick.” The frustration is understandable. Originally, Sound Transit planned to build an underground light-rail stop on First Hill, but when that was found unfeasible due to soil conditions, the agency promised the neighborhood a streetcar instead.
But today the neighborhood group is rejoicing:
Escalators and moving pavements put an end to bitter bickering over the Broadway (formerly First Hill) Streetcar
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has just announced a revolutionary change in how the First Hill Community gets to work. Instead of hiking up and down Madison Street, they will be whisked up by a series of covered, high-speed escalators!
The revolutionary idea is modeled after the Central-Mid-Levels escalator in Hong Kong. Hong Kong Island is dominated by steep, hilly terrain, which required the development of unusual methods of transport up and down the slopes. In the Central and Western district, there is an extensive system of zero-fare escalators and moving pavements. The Mid-levels Escalator is the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world,[2] operating downhill until 10 am for commuters going to work, and then operating uphill until midnight.
Good one, First Hill improvement Association. We get jokes.
And how about a underwater glass tunnel/people mover between Bellevue and Seattle? Its awesomeness just speaks for itself.
@1 they could hire Chihulhy for that, and he could have his minions build it, since he’s not getting into Seattle Center.
Jokes aside, the “First Hill” light rail station was planned with a pedestrian entrance about a block from Broadway, where the streetcar is now planned to run (and where one of the streetcar stops is located.) The neighborhood can rightfully bemoan its lack of a light rail station, but not the chosen route for the streetcar.
Actually, having used and loved the mid levels escalator in HK, I would get behind this even on days not April 1. But it’d have to start at Coleman dock and just run all the way to the top of the hill. That’d be effin’ sweet!
@4, Yeah this just sounds like a good idea. Hell you could have little hooks or something for bikes. It shouldn’t cost to much to build and would be a pretty nice way to connect the areas not served by light rail.
It is true though, one night my boyfriend and I helped push an elderly man who had a cut on his hand and whose electric wheel chair was broken up the hill to get to the emergency room. When we came along he was struggling to push the extremely heavy chair up all by himself and was getting nowhere fast.
BUT WHO MAKES THE ROADS ROLL?