I noticed new upholstery on the seats of the Seattle Streetcar First Hill Line. Feels like vinyl. Looks great. Wasn't sure if someone had posted about this (couldn't find a post) so thought I would share.
Every station can be at street level except for Point Defiance Park, Point Defiance Ferry Terminal, and Stewart Heights due to topography.
Sometimes when I share this I hear people say "Tacoma doesn't deserve something like this". I disagree strongly. I love the T Line, and I think leaders in Tacoma should dream big when it comes to high capacity transit.
I sent this in to SoundTransit, and figured I post here as well as an FYI.....
I wanted to raise a concern during a recent ride where your Fare Ambassadors showed up in the car I was riding in which in itself was not the problem. The problem arose from my usage of the Apple Watch, which uses Express Transit payment at your station fare collection and the payment is processed using the card associated with express transit which for me is an Visa card #2. However the your individually held terminal is NOT configured for express transit and when my watch was verified, it used my Visa card #1 since that is my default apple wallet payment for normal transactions. This caused my fare verification to fail, and also created confusion with the ambassador not understanding what was happening or why. It turned into a debate which was cur short as I was at my stop and given the focus on fares, which I fully support, SoundTransit needs to get this process RIGHT starting with the portable terminal, and also having the ambassadors understand the how the fare processing works, and the burden should NOT be on the rider to have to explain what is happening.
I was quite eager for the Sound Transit Express fall service change to take effect, as this meant my commute on the weekends could consist of the light rail and the 535 instead of a combination of KCM busses.
My previous trip, if tedious, did get the job done, but it was quite unpleasant. Taking the train and the bus now is far quicker and significantly more pleasant.
I used the 535 the first Sunday it was in service, and I thought that I would have been the only person using it, but I was very surprised to see that the bus was about 60% full. More often than not, the bus is around half full. On the weekends. On a Sunday evening. For a service that hasn't even been active for one fiscal quarter.
This is amazing.
I'm also recalling a presentation given at one of the Sound Transit board or committee meetings, I do not recall which; but, I think it might have been a rider experience or system expansion committee meeting. Point is: the presenter pointed out that as they kept opening stations deeper into Redmond the more utilization tthe new stations experienced whilst the old stations experience a slight cooling off effect.
They concluded, based of that observation, that there may be more latent demand for light rail deeper into Redmond, or farther north in other words.
Anyhoo, just thoughts kicking around my head.