A room packed with community members attended Tuesday night’s first public session to discuss the city’s plan for a streetcar route to connect with Capitol Hill’s light rail station. Here are a few notes and observations from the night as well as some links to the video we broadcast live from the event:

• The meeting format was not what we expected — and that was mostly a good thing. Most of the information we received about the meeting had us thinking we were in for a sit-down session with slides and presentations followed by public comment, questions (and, as is often the case, cranks). Instead, SDOT’s first public meeting was done open house style with a series of information tables manned — and womanned — by city staff and representatives from companies working with SDOT to plan the project. The result was a lot of one on one time and not a lot of angry speeches (though there were a few).
• The time for angry speeches will come, however. The next set of meetings will be sit-down presentations with public comment opportunities and will likely take place in January according to a rep from the communications firm working with SDOT on the outreach component of the streetcar process.
• If you missed the fun Tuesday night, you can swing over to the Central District or the International District over the next two nights for two more of the open house sessions.
• Or you can check out some of the video coverage from last night streamed from my iPhone:
  Tip: click the little player arrow (not the big graphic one) to view the video without leaving CHS

1. My intro to the meeting and a few shots of the early crowd to give you a sense of how many people were part of the night.

2. Capitol Hill Community Council member Tony Russo peppers SDOT planner Ethan Melone with questions and asks about reaching Aloha. Melone, by the way, says that the plans are compatible with an Aloha extension but that construction isn’t funded. Yet.

3. A citizen voices his objection to including 11th Ave in the route.

• This clip of a talk with Casey Hildreth, senior planner for SDOT, offers the best overview of the what city officials were highlighting last night:
  
  
• A lot of the people I talked to last night fell into the undecided camp on route preference. Our first poll on the preferred alignment, by the way, has the Broadway 2-way and Broadway/12th Ave couplet routes running neck and neck.
• I never really got a clear answer from planners why the 11th Ave element hadn’t come up sooner.
• That being said, the city process on this project seems really well organized and genuinely geared toward including the community in the decision making as more information is gathered.
• Speaking of info, most of the data like estimated times are going to be revised and will have a lot more science thrown at it. Route times appearing on the maps last night, for example, were calculated by driving the route to simulate a streetcar. The next round will factor in things like signal coordination for much improved estimates.
• April 2010. That’s the big milestone to watch. The goal is to present a plan to City Council by the fourth month of 2010 for approval.
• Seattle Transit Blog’s take on the open house is here.