the absolute flood of people that board buses there would argue that it should not be sacrificed. if you're in Amazonia, you'll have to walk 5 blocks further to Westlake. which is also overcrowded.

Marvelous. Another example of Brutalist architecture slated for downtown.

This makes me so sad. I have always loved the old Seattle-ness of that station ("old" meaning 1970s-era). Something about the neon, the foggy blue glass, and the triangular lines that parallel the escalators reminds me of some fuzzy, relatively untroubled time from long ago. And it's especially pretty at night.

Shit.

For us transit wonks, this is old news, and worth celebrating regardless. The tunnel barely has enough room for all the trains and buses that currently run there, and the complexity of joint operations (i.e. running both buses and trains in the same tunnel) contributes to delays and overcrowding. Once the tunnel is train-only, everything will run a lot more smoothly.

To #1's point, light rail already skips Convention Place Station. The buses that will move to the surface -- the 101, 102, 106, 150, and 255 -- will quite likely be extended to/through South Lake Union, providing an even shorter commute for Amazonians. (This is already happening for RapidRide C.) The tunnel will be much less crowded, because there will be fewer disparate routes -- every time a train arrives (every 3-4 minutes during peak), the platform will empty out completely.

Other routes (e.g. the 41, 71/72/73, and 550) are likely to be eliminated in favor of Link. But even then, there's a good chance that Metro will preserve peak express routes, and that those routes will reach South Lake Union as well. Only outside of peak hours will riders need to use Westlake instead of Convention Place. And even then, if they don't want to walk, they'll be able to ride the streetcar or the 70 directly to their destination.

(There's a separate question here: why doesn't Link stop at Convention Place? The answer is a complex mix of engineering and politics. Suffice it to say that Convention Place wasn't a realistic option. The real station we should be mourning is the one that should have been built at Bellevue & Pine.)

god Charles, can you figure out the nuance of a situation before crying about it for at least once in your life? the metro stop was going to close already sometime around 2019 when the buses are kicked out of the tunnel for the EastLINK construction project. It was only going to be used for bus layovers - a colossal waste of space that's better activated by allowing massive tax generation tool which specifically funds arts education (not to mention some subsidized housing on site too).

And anyway, the building looks great. I doubt you even bothered to look at the design docs before complaining about it in your typical NIMBY fashion.

Go ahead and just say it Charles, closing the Metro Convention Place Station is racist.

Growing your convention center to pursue additional events is pretty much the same logic as expanding I-5 to better handle the congestion/growth, which we all know Charles would support without question.

If you want to mourn a 70's era Seattle icon at that spot, mourn Spags (Seattle's dearly departed "Bear Bar") which was located there along Pine Street until they were forced by the construction of the bus tunnel to move up onto Capitol Hill.

Hugs <3

@4: thanks for the insight. I'm not enamored of the plan to surface all the buses. downtown is already a gridlocked clusterfuck many afternoons. often it's just faster to walk.

Having a massively expanded convention center with a massive hotel above it WITHOUT having a light rail stop in the basement is facepalming stupid.

Spag's moved to the hill and died. The "bear" bar is now Diesel which destroyed the building that was home to Mike's Off Madison formerly the Sea Wolf formerly Hombre's.