Comments

1
Trekking to the upper campus in the rain will be a pain, and I wonder how cutting the downtown lines will affect businesses along the Ave.
2
You're bemoaning a 10-15 minute walk? Are you one of those people who takes a bus 1 stop?
3
The 49 Metro is a better option from the Hill
4
If the University were smart, one would think they'd at least consider providing some sort of shuttle service to-and-from main campus to the station during the morning and afternoon. Or maybe get the City to spring for a Pronto bike station at each end.
5
Why not put "for students" in the headline?

You don't address if the station is practical for the many who work at UWMC and nearby buildings. Yeah, walking to central or north campus is a bit of a trek, but walking to the UWMC area is not.
6
@1 + @4: You do realize that bus service on pacific place way and 15th will be more frequent as of the 26th?
7
A 15 minute walk for college kids to get to class? The horrors!

Maybe the city can pay for laborers to carry the students on their backs for that harrowing trip so that the students can be spared such an injustice.
8
People do realize there is this thing called buses? There will be 6 bus routes that stop next to the station all during the day and all of them go to north campus/ u-district. This isn't even counting the rush hour only buses, of which there are another 2 routes. Then there is the 66/67 which you can catch on Stevens Way. A bus will be coming next to the station almost every couple of minutes. This is how mass transit works in every city with a rail system, multi-modal connections are plentiful.

Also the U-District station will be opening in 2021. People, it really won't be that hard.
9
Taking 48, 44, 571, 542, 540, etc will take LR people to 15th and 43rd in less than five minutes. Assuming that you have to wait 5 minutes, that is still shorter than walking (and better than walking up hill in the rain).

Plus, from buses the U-District to Downtown, it can be 45 minutes in standing room only (and you have to walk up the Ave to catch a bus that wont pass you by). 30 minutes at a minimum with no traffic. I will gladly take the 15 minute walk and board an empty light rail trail to downtown every day of the week.
10
agreed with comte, simple problem solved by a shuttle bus, bike share, or students having a bike, rollerblades, etc.
11
It's good for them. Builds character. Quit yer bellyachin'! City life done made you SOFT!
12
Um yeah, have you tried to board a 70-74 from the University to downtown, or downtown to the UW lately? It can be nearly impossible depending on the station/time. Also, a lot of students already walk that far or further just to get between classes (try getting from Oceanography to Denny hall in 10 minutes, or from Terry/Lander to the IMA..) A 10-15min walk for a 9 min ride downtown (way faster than the 70-74 (if you can even board one)) doesn't really seem like something to whine about
13
Yup, it's a bummer that the UW regents required the station to be located there.
14
How else to properly prepare students for a sedentary and corpulent life working in cube farms than to ensure that they don't ever walk 15 minutes to get somewhere? Why, why, that's nearly A MILE! ...God forbid... <crosses self> *faints*
15
How did this post even get past an editor?
I mean, I thought "is it practical?" would refer to something problematic about the station's interior pedestrian flow, or potential lack of capacity to handle 23 billion slavering Husky fans during peak Dawg season or something.

But "walk 15 minutes" is the complaint??
o_O
16
Why is a 10 or 15 minute walk bad? Would you have preferred some god awful construction project in the middle of the U-District instead? Despite the disruption of building the station, it was pretty manageable and has resulted in a good compromise to get people to the stadium, UWMC and campus. Ride a pronto bike if walking 10 minutes ruins your life. Or just don't get out of bed, that is way easier than any of this.
17
@5 Good point about the headline. Thanks!
18
What happened, are all the avatars at a convention or something?
19
@6:

As someone who rarely buses into the U-District, no I was not aware of this, but it certainly makes sense.
20
How often do students fly anywhere? How often do they fly with two suitcases? On the list of things to bitch about, this doesn't even register.
21
These articles fail to mention this stop is adjacent to the University of Washington Medical Center which will be a huge help to thousands of employees and patients.

Also, all those that can, should walk more.
22
Not sure how well it would work, but isn't there a huge parking lot at that stadium that is nearly empty outside of game days? Does UW offer a cheapish parking pass? Wouldn't that work as an unofficial park and ride into the city for North Enders?
23
IIRC the location of light rail was guided by the UW, as they didn't want boring machines anywhere near their physics experiments. So not feeling a lot of sympathy.

Perhaps we should have designed a system with a station in each classroom, and had handlers carry the students from the door to their seats.
24
@18 - hey raindrop, just checked and my avatar is AWOL as well. I hope they are having a good time....
25
Seattle is about to get the biggest upgrade to its transit network in maybe its history. But some people are hard to please. Maybe these "sleepy-eyed" students can use the short brisk walk to wake up. There see turned it right back into a positive. See how easy arguing is!
26
@3 is wrong, take LINK from SCC and hop on the 44 or walk/bike to 31/32
27
Or I could lend you my skateboard @3
28
Ugh this is so short sighted. Do all students live in capitol hill??? This link just made it much much easier for students living in south seattle to get to uw. This article is crap.
29
And people say the children are our future...yikes.
30
Not to be a cranky old man, but when I was attending the UW between 1999 & 2003 I would sometimes come from the Eastside to the Montlake station on 520 and walk up to campus and I would have to take traffic-snarled buses to other parts of Seattle for work and fun. I never had any kind of rail option, only dashed dreams and ignored election results in re the monorail expansion. I would have killed for a light rail station at the stadium going to Capitol Hill, downtown, the ID, and other points more southerly. More importantly, I would have walked 10-15 minutes (or taken a bus!) and I would have been grateful for such an opportunity.
31
As @28 said, this is going to be a much quicker transit option for those coming from south Seattle, and a more reliable one. The fastest I got from Beacon Hill to the U-District was about 30 minutes, when all the transfers hit right. More often, it took close to an hour.

The 49 is a great line in the morning. Generally predictable, generally, on time, and generally not much traffic to deal with. But getting back up to Capitol Hill on the 49 is a nightmare during evening rush hour. I'll happily walk down to the station to not have to worry if the bus, once it finally arrives, will take 45 minutes to get to Broadway & Pine, especially since from my office it will take less time to get there than it takes to get to the 49 stop on 15th.
32
OH NO! 15 minutes to the "center of campus" (wherever that is) from the station!

Have you ever had to walk to the "center of campus" from the current 70-series bus stops at Campus & Brooklyn? It's already 10-15 minutes. And unlike the 70-series, which takes a fucking half-hour to get there from downtown, and is always standing-room-only any time that classes are in session, the train makes the trip in 15 min.

So gaining 5 minutes of walking, losing 15 minutes of shoulder-to-shoulder busriding? Seems like a win to me.

Especially for people going to / from the science buildings that are clustered around the duck pond. People going to / from the liberal arts buildings around the quad will have the worst time of it, but if they don't want to make the walk, they can ride the buses on 15th 2 or 3 stops around to the station.

I have a hard time getting worked up about a 15 minute walk from the station to a classroom, when students have to make longer walks than that just going from one class to the next classes. Try strolling from a Chicano Studies lecture in the Communications building to a Chemistry section in Condon hall. The class schedule gives you 10 minutes to do it, good luck!
33
Face it. Light rail to either UofW or the airport is not for those who aren't prepared for a workout. Light rail is not close to terminals at Sea-Tac and light rail is not close to many of the places people want to be at UW.
34
Everyone is saying how lovely the UW station is. I hear no comments at all about Capitol Hill station. Could that be because it's just ugly?
35
You know, the medical center and health sciences complex employ thousands and thousands of people year round. Accommodating those workers on a daily basis is of greater importance than making sure you can occasionally schlep to the airport without having to walk more than 5 minutes.
36
COMTE dear, as a former quasi-employee of the UW (I was a paid intern for a year in the 80's) I can assure you that the University of Washington doesn't care about undergraduates. They are merely a source of revenue.
37
Metro has made it so easy to transfer the new light rail station with their restructured routes on March 26, I don't think the argument of this article will hold true.

See for yourself at http://metro.kingcounty.gov/programs-pro…
38
Must be why WE ALREADY PLANNED AND HAVE TUNNELLED TO A STATION ON THE OTHER SIDE. Good lord people, pay attention. The solution you want is already being built.
39
UW Transportation also opted to not install secure bike storage lockers at the station. And since Sound Transit is actively discouraging bikes on the train (each car only has capacity for 2 bikes...notwithstanding general overcrowding), those who would like to combine bike commute to a station and once they arrive at their destination are stuck. Very frustrating for those of us who want to ride light rail but also need a way to move further than walking distance from the station...
40
This weekend once Metro implements its service change, all you have to do is cross the street to the southeast corner of the triangle and catch *any* bus that stops to be taken up 15th or the Ave. There will be a plethora of buses serving that stop (43, 44, 45, 48, 71, 73, 167, 271, 277, 373, 540, 541, 542, 556) *all* of which will go up 15th or the Ave, so wait times will be minimal.
41
Sorry -- *southwest corner
42
Yes, a ten-minute walk should not be an issue for most people. The point is that designers of the station dropped the ball: optimal access to buses (i.e., right when you exit the station), support for bikes, and immediately adjacent drop-off zones should have been worked into the original design. A thoughtful discussion of the subject is here: http://seattletransitblog.com/2015/01/30…
43
@bethyp @mschuler - Yes. There needs to be more access for cyclists but they primarily dropped the ball when it comes to patient access. You know, the elderly, sick, and disabled who have to walk and maneuver and try to find space or a seat available on the rail and buses. Many are also students and employees, but hey. They're the University of Washington, and what's that line? This is America, you don't have to help *anybody*.

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