For any fan of going out in Seattle, there is a lot to like in the mayor’s newly released Seattle Nightlife Initiative Community Report including strong support for later bar closing times and better late night transportation. But our favorite element from the report was the acknowledgment of Capitol Hill’s enthusiasm for a party:
Our online feedback survey drew 2,223 respondents, with strong support for every element of the Initiative. Survey respondents included participants in community meetings concerning the Initiative, readers of the Seattle Times, The Stranger and neighborhood and community blogs; and people attending music and nightlife events like the Capitol Hill Block Party. There was a high concentration of respondents from Capitol Hill, but participation otherwise was fairly even distributed throughout Seattle.
We’re leaders, Capitol Hill. Here’s our post from this summer’s announcement of the SNI effort and our contribution to the Capitol Hill hype for the survey. We’ve pulled out some highlights and our takeaways of where Mayor Mike McGinn’s report says our party bus is headed. Full report including survey results and feedback collected from various community meetings is embedded below.
- You want to be able to drink later: “…more than 80 percent of online respondents agreed or strongly agreed that, ‘Extending service hours will make our streets safer.'”
- “Support for late-night transportation options other than driving was widespread. Nearly 90 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, ‘People would be less likely to drive under the influence if there were late-night forms of transportation like taxi stands and public transit available after bars close.'”
- One option visualized for the report is the friendly Night Owl Bus Service that would pick up drunk people up and down Pioneer Square, Belltown, Downtown and Pike/Pine and deposit them to far lung points like Ballard and West Seattle.
- Maybe the most straightforward, practical transportation solution in the report: Starting in April, pay parking stations will begin operating at 10 PM to allow drivers to pre-pay for up to two hours of morning parking time. The current meters don’t turn on until 4 AM to accept pre-pay.
- This 2,200+ pool of Seattleites is a confident bunch. Less than 15% said theyfelt unsafe on the streets at night.
- The survey respondents were also not highly concerned about noise as “only 6 percent of respondents reported having a significant problem with nightlife-related noise at least once per month. And 65.8 percent reported that they had never experienced this problem.” The report notes more concern about noise was voiced by attendees at the community meetings.
- Concerns about unfair enforcement at venues featuring live hip-hop acts and at gay and lesbian establishments were also documented in the report:
Online, many were concerned about the relationships the Seattle Police Department and Washington State Liquor Control Board have with gay and lesbian nightlife venues. Respondents asked that officers with pro-gay values be assigned to enforcement at gay clubs and bars, and that more effort be made to crack down on anti-gay harassment and street violence, particularly in Capitol Hill. In response to these concerns, the Mayor requested an audit of the Code Compliance team’s enforcements to be completed by the city’s nightlife coordinator.
- Finally, the report reminds that the city’s douchebag laws go into effect starting this weekend:
The Nighttime Disturbance Ordinance was passed by the City Council on August 2, 2010. It creates a new civil infraction for loud noise, threats or fighting that occur in a public place in a commercial or industrial zone between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. The noise provisions of the ordinance were approved by the Department of Ecology in November and SPD is currently conducting officer training on the ordinance. Enforcement will begin in January 2011.
Here’s the Seattle Times take on the update. Full report from the mayor’s office is below. You can view the complete survey results here.
this state has such archaic liquor laws, it’s not funny. Folks drink round the clock in Las Vegas and it doesn’t seem to be an issue. I fear if closing time is extended to 4 a.m. that the last call syndrome will just be later at night, although I would love to be wrong about that.
I just don’t trust City Hall to stick its nose into the otherwise reasonably free trade these businesses have an expectation of conducting right now.
That’s what this community needs. Yellin’ and screamin’ in the street til the crows come home.
Happily, State Liquor Board approval is required for such a change, and that’s years down the line, if ever. Probably never, really. Thank Jah for that!
“Finally, the report reminds that the city’s douchebag laws go into effect starting this weekend.”
yes, i’d like to see how this will be enforced; there’s already not enough police on the streets as it is. now we are to believe that drunk loudmouths who scream at the top of their lungs on the sidewalk at 2am will be immediately ticketed? cops can’t stop sidewalk holdups, how are we supposed to believe they can stop “noise, threats and fighting”? please!
when people drink “round the clock” in las vegas, it’s usually on the strip where the only people are other drunks or people sleeping in hotels – high above the street (in sound proof hotels). not in the middle of a residential district (yes, capitol hill is primarily a residential district) where the majority of people are trying to speak.
i would be willing to bet that the survey cited above spoke more to the drinkers who want to stay out until 4am than it did the vast majority of people living around the bars where these drinkers would be.
“Folks drink round the clock in Las Vegas and it doesn’t seem to be an issue”
A dumb comparison because they don’t LIVE in Las Vegas. They all have hotel rooms.
“That’s what this community needs. Yellin’ and screamin’ in the street til the crows come home.”
What are you babbling about?
The first bar graph bottom text is kind of hard to read even with my glasses. Any way to make what is says a bit clearer?
Given the report’s conclusions, I wonder if it wouldn’t be worthwhile to reroute some/all of the night owl buses through Capitol Hill. For example, the 83 (which is already through-routed with the night-owl 7) could take Broadway and 10th, rather than Fairview and Eastlake, and the 82 could through-route with the 84.
Of course, I bet they’re already considering this…
P.S. Whoever made that PDF left out the most important night owl route (at least by Capitol Hill standards): the 49! (It’s also missing the 120.) It only makes one run, but it’s better than nothing…
Somebody ‘splain “irony” to mausie.
I understand people’s noise concerns, but I think that public safety needs to come first. As the report says, kicking every drunk person in the city out to the curb at 1:45, with limited transit service to support them, is a recipe for disaster. And anyone who’s lived near a bar can confirm that noise outside the bar is much worse than noise inside.
The real way to fix noise problems is sound-proofing. If you give businesses a financial incentive to keep noise down — for instance, by charging very large fines if they receive too many noise complaints — they’ll do it. If a business has to choose between spending $10,000 a month on noise fines, or $10,000 one time to fix up their soundproofing, they’d be silly not to pick the latter.
It’s also important to note that part of the goal is to stagger closing hours, rather than to keep every bar open until daybreak. It stands to reason that the bars which are granted later hours will probably be ones in commercial/nightlife-focused areas. That is, R Place is much more likely to get an extension than the Canterbury. So the biggest impact of this change will be on the least residential areas, as it should be.
Don’t be a dick Maus.
If the mayor is serious about improving transit options, then let’s have him start agitating for longer, i.e. late-night hours for light rail service once that tunnel is up and running in 2016. It’s a sham now that the trains stop running long before the 2am last-call, especially on weekends. Time to act like a real city and help people move around, responsibly, at all hours of the day and night.
Unlikely.
So, the graphs have colors and they tell us something about some self-selected and likely highly biased cohort of Seattlians (how do we know where respondents are from?). Sure, convenience sampling can tell us something but mostly this is pure crap.
Survey says: “Up yours, Wallingford!”