In the end, it was a bit of a social occasion as residents of the building at 1711 E Olive Way mixed with the smokers and hangers-out from CC’s while they waited for Seattle Fire to clear the scene. Earlier, SFD crews ripped through a steel door to quickly extinguish a blaze in the building’s garbage room. Picture and account courtesy building resident Jill:

Fire in the trash room of plaza del sol (my apt building) firefighters had to saw open the door to the trash room!

The 9:58p response closed E Olive Way for about 40 minutes as several fire units rushed to the scene — the typical response for all fire reports in multifamily structures.

The fire was reportedly contained to the trash room. There were no reported injuries during the response. We’ll check with SFD to learn more about the cause.

The incident came on a pleasant Sunday night at a reasonable hour as a few dozen residents waited on the sidewalks outside the building and is a reminder of just how few serious fires we end up covering in the area. No complaints here, by the way.

Thanks to everybody for the tips. It’s really helpful to get your information and pictures. You can always txt/call us at (206) 399-5959, email or holler at us via Twitter or Facebook.

(Image: CHS)

With a kitchen churning out biscuits and treats run by onetime Volunteer Park Cafe baker Heather Earnhardt, coffee expertise provided by Fuel’s Dani Cone and a location picked by Vita’s Mike McConnell, the debut of The Wandering Goose on 15th Ave E is the product of some deep Capitol Hill cafe love.

CHS stopped by a preview party over the weekend for these shots — and for a biscuit or three. Monday, October 1st, marks the cafe’s first day of business. The Goose will be open every day but Tuesday WEDNESDAY!, 7a-4p. The menu is here.

We’ve documented the journey of the space from a “mystery” restaurant project that emerged way back in 2010 that would have brought a Vita to the street, to the emergence of a two-headed pairing of Earnhardt and restaurant entrepreneur Ethan Stowell, to Earnhardt’s crowdsourced efforts to fund her venture. Before that, the space was a long-time gift and homegoods store — Tilden was, you might remember, difficult for children… for 37 years. Long ago, Piggly Wiggly called the storefront home.

More 15th Ave E Before and After images from octopup.org

The snug Goose has been built as a 30-seat “Southern influence cafe” separated only by a “demising wall” of “vintage leaded glass” from Rione XIII. Sidewalk seating is in the plans — one would expect that should go easier on 15th Ave E than outdoor activity went at 17th and Galer.

Stowell’s adjacent Rione XIII opened a few weeks back and seems on track to help push forward continued changes and growth underway on 15th Ave E as even the street’s elder statesmen are upgrading their offerings. The arrival of the Goose will add to the bustle. With North Hill Bakery already long established, the Bagel Deli holding down the fort, and Liberty, Ladro, Victrola, and Starbucks ready to pull your shots, the addition of The Wandering Goose and its fully manual espresso machine means 15th Ave E is probably not a bad place to wake up in the morning. Especially when Coastal returns from its remodel around October 10th.

You can learn more at thewanderinggoose.com.

Biscuit sandwich (Image: The Wandering Goose)

(Image: The Wandering Goose)

(Images: Alex Crick/CHS unless otherwise noted)

Somebody decided to put a streetcar here. Somebody invested in real estate. If you’ve got a business in the Summit neighborhood (looking at you, Top Pot Doughnuts) – you didn’t build that.

In Part 3 of On the Summit Line, we explore the overlooked plan to topple Seattle’s streetcar barons… and discover how it inspired much of Capitol Hill’s transit infrastructure.

In the series’ first installment, we learned of a gifted young woman who lived at the base of Capitol Hill in 1900. Part 2 described how she moved as a newly-wed to the Summit neighborhood, where Summit Slope Park is today.

This chapter is a bit of a digression. It should have been a short paragraph summing up the extensive literature on the failed 1906 Seattle municipal streetcar plan. Unfortunately that doesn’t exist. So instead we need to address this small business right now, investing in a new infrastructure for the historians of the future.

Rage Against the Machine
At the end of the 19th century, the Progressive movement arose in opposition to the theory of Social Darwinism. One of the things that they fought most fiercely was economic inequality and the amassing of monopoly power. After the Boston firm Stone & Webster bought up all of Seattle’s independent streetcar lines from 1899 to 1901, their holding company Seattle Electric Company became the embodiment of the machine that the Progressives raged against.

W H Moore, 12276 (SMA)

We’re Not Gonna Take It
After watching corporations take monopoly control of basic services like water supply, gas, electricity, telephone, and street car services in cities across America, a new idea emerged among Progressives. If it was okay for a private monopoly to strangle-hold the public, why wasn’t it okay for a government monopoly to better serve people’s needs?

In June of 1905, the Seattle Republican ran a front page headline “MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP THE SLOGAN”.  Halfway through the page-and-a-half rant, the editors wrote:

“Seattle cannot afford to allow private corporations to fatten off of the profits made in the private ownership of the public utilities… The city cannot stand back when all the civilized world has realized the necessity of municipal ownership.”

At the next mayoral election, the newly-formed Municipal Ownership Party’s candidate easily beat the Republican. William Moore’s single-issue platform was to put a streetcar plan in front of voters.

R. H. Thomson (Pac Building &Engineering Record, 8/4/1906 p3)

Cold, Hard Mathematics
Moore immediately tasked city engineer R. H. Thomson with creating a plan for a municipal streetcar system that would not lose money.

Thomson needed a data-backed analysis of unmet demand for streetcars and how much to invest in the system. After all, he couldn’t just say he’d build 9 lines of 9 miles and charge 9 cents a ride and expect some sort of 9-9-9 Plan to be successful.

Of course this was 1906. There were no databases or analytics packages. No GIS or block-level demographic information.

Thomson did have one tool: the recently published 1905 streetcar report by the U.S. Census Bureau. He looked at data from cities around America, and decided that Seattle should be able to support one mile of streetcar track per 1430 people. There was only one mile per 1750 people in 1906, which he took to mean a 25% gap of demand that could be filled.

Thomson hired the engineering firm of Hanford & Blackwell to double check his work. They considered statistics such as boardings per person per year and miles of track per square mile and came to a similar conclusion.

After Thomson had run the ‘rithmetic, his plan proposed a phased build out of a 56 mile system to poorly served areas of the city. It would reach Green Lake, Georgetown, Magnolia, the UW, Rainier Valley and Ballard. The system included a new tunnel under University Street from First to Pine, an elevated railway along the waterfront, and a new cable car on Denny from the water to Summit.

It was silly math by today’s standards. But in 1906, Thomson could sincerely say he had a “cold-blooded, mathematical basis” for his plan.

The plan and its municipal bond funding were placed before voters in September of 1906.

We Own This City
The Seattle Electric Company was not a fan. With no restrictions on corporate financing of elections, SEC embarked on a massive, stealthy campaign.

Their basic counter-argument was laid out in the Seattle Times in early August, after details of the plan were announced:

“Thomson proposes to spend $7,500,000 to build a street railway to run along the side of one which is already built, charge the entire expense to the taxpayers, and still demand five-cent fare.”

The Times, which had earlier been antagonistic to SEC, set out on a daily finance lesson for its readers with ever-more complicated analysis of the impact of the bond measure.

They also began publishing opinions by members of the Seattle Economic League (SEC’s front in the election) word-for-word. Realtor J. R. McLaughlin (*) warned:

“Seattle is a favorite throughout the whole United States. Money is flowing to this city from all sections of the country. We should not convey to the world that the voters of Seattle are hostile to the interests of invested capital. Capital is notoriously sensitive… Let [municipal ownership] alone. It is a delusion and a snare.”

The relentless economic arguments resonated with voters. They were convinced that the city could not carry the debt. On September 12 the vote failed by 15%.

(* McLaughlin appeared in CHS Re:Take #7.)

If It’s a Legitimate Plan

Streetcar plan Capitol Hill detail ( (Pacific Building &Engineering Record, 8/4/1906 p3) 

Besides poor economics, the League members argued that the municipal system would be a failure because the proposed lines were useless.

But SEC was talking out of both sides of its mouth. At least in a few cases, in order to win votes it made a corporate-personal pledge to build the proposed lines after the election.

On Capitol Hill this led to a huge expansion in service.

SEC connected the Broadway Line to the Brooklyn Bridge (now University Bridge) in early 1906 in the lead-up to the election. This is now the Metro 49.

In 1909, streetcars followed the proposed route on 23rd, continuing down the hill to the UW. This is now the Metro 43.

Construction started right after the election on two local routes. For the longer of the two, cars ran up Madison and then 19th to Galer. This is now the Metro 10 12.

The shortest was a little loop that went up Pine and then over Summit and back on Bellevue. This is now the Metro 14.

Each triggered a new real estate boom and created new neighborhoods across what would collectively become known as Capitol Hill. And they were all first mapped out for Thomson’s failed municipal streetcar.

SEC’s Summit Line ca 1910, LS0146 (KC Metro Files)

Next Time We Wrap it Up
The Summit neighborhood didn’t appear out of nowhere.

Somebody planned the streetcar line. Somebody built it.

Somebody promoted the real estate. That was our man L. N. Rosenbaum, whose new realty business placed him in perfect position to become the key investor and promoter of the neighborhood.

We’ll learn about that next time in our conclusion of On the Summit Line.

Credit
Thank you to Dotty DeCoster for finding the map of the streetcar plan and SPL’s Bo Kinney for scanning it. Thanks to Richard Wilkens for pointing me to the plan’s enabling ordinance.

Upcoming
Rob will speak about early Capitol Hill history on October 25th at the Capitol Hill Library, 6:30-7:30pm.

In case you missed them, here are the last few Re:Takes on CHS:

• Home is where the park is (Summit Line part 2)
• Love letters shaped our city (Summit Line Part 1)
• Hope Springs from the Summit of First Hill

Here are the top CHS posts from this week in 2011:

• Shooting on Boylston Ave — UPDATE: Man says shot in street robbery
• ‘Legendary’ First Hill penthouse hits market — $6.7 million
• Grey geyser bursts forth on E Pike — UPDATE: Light rail tunneling sends surprise to surface
• Capitol Hill’s Copy Mart slapped with copyright lawsuit for ‘coursepacks’
• Bako (+ the ghosts of Jade Pagoda)
• Leaving Capitol Hill not enough: ‘Izilla Toys isn’t needed these days’
• Grey geyser bursts forth on E Pike — UPDATE: Light rail tunneling sends surprise to surface
• ‘All day, all knight,’ The Canterbury celebrates 35 years on 15th Ave E

This week, the crow learned why somebody might vote Republican and what can be done about it. Also, Yohan is Swahili for John. Learn anything?

From the “Register to Vote” sign on your clipboard, I’m going to guess that you’re …well, registering people to vote?
Yes, I’m with the League of Women Voters of Washington. It’s all about getting people out to vote. We don’t endorse candidates, we just want people to get out and get educated. We provide nonpartisan information on where the candidates stand on various issues, and based on that, people can make an informed decision on how to vote.

Why did you choose this corner of Capitol Hill?
I’ve found that this is a pretty good place. People are coming out of QFC, lots of foot traffic. We also have some people up at Cupcake Royale, but I find that it’s better to be out on the street—don’t mind asking people if they’re registered, and if they are, I remind them to vote.

What do you think is the biggest barrier to getting people to vote?
I think some people are discouraged with the way the government has been going. Some people who voted for Obama are not sure they want to vote for him again, but Republicans aren’t sure they want to vote for their candidate either. That’s why education is so important.

Do you live on Capitol Hill?
I live in Horizon House, a retirement community on University. I walked here this morning — been here since 10 o’clock!

Approaching random strangers—even for a good cause—can be a bit scary. Have you encountered any people who were, shall we say, less than pleasant?
Only one homeless man. He said, “Nobody’s done anything for me, so I’m not going to vote.“ I can understand that he’s kind of depressed about his situation, but we do register homeless people. Homeless people can vote. All they have to do is say where they usually are, if they sleep under a bridge or whatever, and most homeless people have a place like a community center where they can get their ballot.

Before you retired, what line of work were you in?
Oh, I did a lot of things. My husband and I lived overseas for many years, in Hong Kong. He was an educator, and I did social work.

How long have you lived in Seattle?
I moved here from Port Angeles about a year ago. I’m originally from Texas, but I don’t like Texas. I’m a city person, so I was really happy to move to Horizon House.

What are some things that attracted you to this part of town?
Oh, it’s so vibrant, and so alive! I mean, look at all of this! The shops are really neat, and I can walk here from Horizon House. And people are friendly.

Is there anything that you miss about life in a smaller town like Port Angeles?
Not really. A small town perhaps has more interaction because it’s smaller, but I find people quite approachable here. I smile at somebody, they smile back…

This is going to be a question I can guess the answer to, but … what do you do for a living?
I’m a bartender and a server here at The Canterbury.

So that’s why you brought us drinks earlier! Mystery solved. How long have you worked here?
In about two weeks, it’ll be five years.

Where are you from originally?
Estacada, Oregon.

How would you compare life in Seattle to life in Estacada?
Estacada’s now 2,500 people, but when I moved away in ’98, it was 2,000. There was one paved driveway other than my parents’. So, you could say it’s pretty different!

What brought you to Seattle?
I went to the Art Institute for commercial photography. I really liked the darkroom aspect of photography, but print photography is becoming a thing of the past.

In five years at Ye Olde Medieval Pub, I bet you’ve seen a lot. Any memories that stand out in particular?
Well, the ghost messed with me a lot…

There’s a resident ghost?
At least one. There was a thing about it in The Stranger a while back, but the one I saw wasn’t the ghost they mentioned. I was working one night, and I thought I saw a man sitting at the bar in a black trench coat, but I didn’t see his face. I asked the bartender, Jen, to describe the ghost to me. And she described exactly what I saw. It was this guy who got his face shot off here, but I didn’t know this story until afterwards.

Did the ghost make his presence known in any other way?
There were cases where things were turned on after I turned them off, and things were moved around when nobody was here. The back room of the Canterbury used to be an occult store, but that was before my time.

You seem very outgoing—you must get to know a lot of the locals and regulars.
Yeah, I knew a lot of people before I started working here; I started coming here when I turned 21. They had my resume for two years before I was finally hired.

When you’re not working, where do you like to hang out?
I don’t really go out much. Last night, I went to 5th Avenue Theater—I go to a lot of musical theater shows.

Are you involved as a performer?
I’d love to be—I was an honors thespian in high school, but there wasn’t a theater program at the Art Institute, since it’s technically a vocational school.

When I was a waitress, I especially hated Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. As a server/bartender, are there any holidays or days of the year you especially dread?
New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day are kind of amateur nights, but at the same time, I like being busy. It’s kind of a love-hate thing. I don’t like just standing around for ten hours. I like people, so I like to entertain and serve people.

If you didn’t work for the Canterbury, what would be your ideal job?
I always wanted to be like Bette Midler—singing and dancing. But then I found out that I was a really bad actress. But I’d also like to be an accountant. I really like math.

Maybe you could find a way to combine musical theater and accounting?
Yeah, I could be a singing accountant! That would be great.

Your name is pronounced like the German name, but it has a different spelling. Tell me about it.
Yohan is Swahili for John, in the way that Johann is German for John. I’m originally from Kenya, in East Africa, where we speak Swahili. The language came about from the intermarriage and trade between the Arab world and East Africans; Swahili has a lot of Arabic terminologies and African languages mixed together, along with some influence from colonial languages.

It seems like everyone speaks about a thousand languages in the Horn of Africa countries…
In Kenya, everyone speaks at least three. We speak English, because of the British colonial influence, then we speak Swahili, which is our local language. And everybody belongs to a tribe, so they speak their own tribal vernacular. And then I learned French in school.

Being so multi-lingual, which language do you think of as your “mother tongue?”
My mother tongue is a language from Uganda—my mother is from Uganda, and I was born there, but my father comes from Kenya. So we moved to Kenya and I learned Swahili. And my father belongs to a tribe called the Kisii…

How do you think that affected you, growing up speaking multiple languages and living among so many different cultures in Uganda and Kenya ?
As a kid, it doesn’t phase you. It seems normal that everyone speaks different languages, etc. As you grow up, you start learning the differences among the tribes, which are more dominant, and you start looking at tribes as either superior or inferior. Some tribes are bigger than others, and the bigger ones run the economy.

Why did you move to Seattle?
I went to college in Vancouver, B.C., doing graphics and communication. I was an artist for a while, but that wasn’t what I really wanted to do in life. I wanted to fly airplanes! So I moved to Seattle, then I went to flight school in Florida and got my commercial pilot license. I was a pilot for TWA for a while. When American Airlines bought them out, I moved to Italy and flew for an Italian airline based in Milan.

How did you like living in Italy?
I loved it. Beautiful country. Love the food. But I got laid off, so I decided to move back to Seattle, which I consider my home.

It sounds like you’ve been all over the world—why do you consider Seattle your home?
I think it’s something in the water in Seattle, perhaps! I can’t put my finger on it, but I keep moving away, and I keep coming back. It’s weird. I’ve lived in some of the best and most exotic places in the world, including Italy and Puerto Rico and Hawaii, but I keep coming back here. I don’t understand it myself!

Do you live on Capitol Hill?
I live by Queen Anne, but this [the Canterbury] is basically my “local bar.” I know a lot of people here and they know me. I like to come here when I get off work early.

What do you do now?
I work for The Boeing Company in Everett as a functional technician, but I hope to become a test pilot for them soon.

More CHS Crow:

• Jorge, Monica & Jake — ‘… so I blend in’
• Ben, Azul & Mike (& Alfred) — ‘People in Seattle are from all over the place’
• Charles, Noa & Qwo-Li — ‘You have to have another job to pay the bills’
• More…

Marguerite Kennedy is a freelance writer, semi-professional thumb wrestler, and recovering New Yorker who currently resides on Capitol Hill. She blogs at www.marguerite-aville.com, and does that other thing @tweetmarguerite.

(Image: Lindsey Wasson/The Spectator)

Note: Details on the State of Washington vs. Tina Mcvey case and its chronology were taken from SPD Detective Melvin Britt’s 2011 Case Investigation Report, as well as various other court records. Because the case is still in litigation, University Counsel declined to comment on the case and advised University faculty and staff to refrain as well. Public Safety Director Mike Sletten provided a timeframe of the investigation.

At the end of the 2010 school year, David Ingham made a discovery.

Ingham, the account systems manager at the Seattle University Controller’s office, noticed that deposits had not been made from campus “revaluation machines” for a long time.

“Revaluation Machine” is the proper name for the black consoles on campus embedded in the wall near ATMs in the University Service Building and the Student center. If your meal plan is running low, or you want extra cash for laundry or vending machines, students and faculty can “reload” their campus card accounts with cash using the machines.

Oversight of the machines, as well as most campus technology systems, is the responsibility of Sungard, an external IT Service provider that began working with SU in 2003. After noticing deposits hadn’t been made from the revaluation machines in an unusually long time, Ingham reviewed accounts received from Sungard and noticed some alarming discrepancies.

Over the course of the 2008-2009 fiscal year, $53,598 had gone missing.

In the 2009-2010 fiscal year, $84,895 had disappeared.

In total, $138,493 deposited by students and faculty in campus revaluation machines simply was not there.

It had vanished.

Ingham picked up the phone and called Tina McVey.

Not long after, McVey quit.

—

Sungard and Seattle U’s Office of Information Technology began releasing a seasonal newsletter in 2008 called “SU Tech Talk.” In the Spring 2009 edition, a small feature was included called “Five Minutes With Tina McVey.” In it, McVey is interviewed briefly about her employment at Seattle U through Sungard. Starting in 2007, she began serving as the Campus Card Administrator, the duties of which she sums up in the interview as “oversee[ing] the Campus Card office, the people who staff it, and the card services that the University authorizes.”

McVey mentions working closely with payroll, Student Financial Services, Housing and Resident Life and Bon Appetit. At the end of the interview, when asked what she likes most about her job, McVey replies, “I really enjoy interacting with everyone on campus and getting to know them better. Since everyone has to have a campus card, I think it’s great that I’ll eventually get to meet everyone!”

One of McVey’s primary responsibilities was the collection of funds for deposit from the revaluation machines on campus. McVey was to collect the money in a US Bank bag, along with the deposit receipt, and take them to Rommel Delacruz, the Senior Account Technician at the Controllers office. In a statement to the Seattle Police Department, Delacruz said McVey was “the only Sungard employee he took deposits from that he could recall.”

After the missing $138,493 was discovered, McVey turned in one last deposit, short of funds, and abruptly quit.

A staff investigation led by campus Pubic Safety director Mike Sletten was launched to look into the theft, which soon involved the Seattle Police Department.

“Concerns about money handling reached a point where we needed to contact plice about a criminal investigation,” Mike Sletten said. “We needed to get this reported through police right away.”

McVey’s sudden resignation after the discovery of the missing funds made her a person of interest in the investigation. Quickly, other suspicious details started cropping up:

• While in 2008-2009 McVey recorded 13 deposit slips, in 2009-2010, she only recorded five. The space between deposits in 2009-2010 spanned months at a time.
• McVey was discovered to have written checks to a collection agency in 2008.
• A court issued search warrant of her personal bank account revealed “McVey had large amounts of cash each month, above and beyond her regular pay being deposited into her bank account in even dollar amounts (i.e. $1000, etc.).”

The investigation lasted from Jul 2010 through the middle of 2011. Sletten facilitated the investigation with SPD, assisting with setting up appropriate interviews and coordinating logistics. Public Safety and the Controller’s office took control of the responsibility for account deposits from Sungard after the incident.

“We wanted to assure it was appropriately accounted for, dollar for dollar,” Sletten said.

During the period of the investigation when Public Safety and the Controller’s office took control of accounts, only a $1 to $2 discrepancy was noted.

After a review of the facts, probable cause was determined to charge Tina McVey with Theft in the 1st Degree. McVey was arrested on September 20, 2011.

—

How the University failed to notice large amounts of money being stolen for two years has yet to be addressed by Seattle University—however the University did assure The Spectator that no faculty, staff or student lost money in their account due to the theft.

Thanks to Chuck Porter, neither faculty, staff, nor student will really have to worry about it anymore.

The same Fall that McVey was arrested, Chuck Porter was hired to fill a newly created position at Seattle University—Chief Information Officer (CIO). The CIO job, while tech oriented, is not staffed through Sungard like McVey was. The CIO works strategically with Sungard from the university to prioritize technical investments on campus, and administer Sungard’s contract with the school. Porter is in many ways the mind behind the campus tech—he thinks about what the school has in the way of technology, and tries to make sure it gets what it needs.

One of Porter’s first priorities as CIO was to replace the campus card system.

“The system was built 12 years ago, and in tech you have to think about things in dog years, so that’s really old,” Porter said. “Door locks would stop working with cards when it rained, which we all know never happens in Seattle.”

Another concern of Porter’s about the system was that students couldn’t count on it to accurately reflect the balances in their accounts.

Upgraded SU Cards might be part of the solution

“The revaluation machines were broken most of the time,” Porter said. “Faculty and students couldn’t even use them, let alone rely on them to tell them how much money they had.”

Over the summer, Porter replaced the entire system—installing new door swipers that activate with a simple tap of the campus card. He got rid of the revaluation machines altogether.

Instead, students have an entirely new way to manage their campus card debit accounts. A new website in its final stages of debug, https://campuscard.seattleu.edu, will debut around the time this newspaper comes out that will enable a slew of new capabilities to students. Students will now be able to add money to their accounts and check balances over the internet. Students can also give their parents access to add money to their campus card debit accounts remotely. If students lose their campus cards and are worried about someone taking them, they can also deactivate their current student cards over the internet.

“The risk that was present before has completely gone away,” Porter said. “This new system is much safer, and I think will be much easier for students.”

As for McVey—her first case scheduling hearing was originally scheduled in June of this year. The hearing has been delayed three times as McVey confers and reviews the case with her lawyers, but is currently set for September 24th.

The Seattle University Spectator is a student-run publication covering the school. CHS features Spectator reporting as part of a community collaboration. A portion of advertising revenue generated by the collaboration is donated to area non-profits involved with media, journalism and social causes. You can enjoy the Spectator online at su-spectator.com.

Slowly but surely, Seattle is waking up to coal trains. Normally, the Pacific Northwest crows about its trade relationships with China, but in the case of coal shipments, the crowing has become more of a dry, irritated cough.

Political fights over new terminals dedicated to coalwere the first to crop up. But as people have had the chance to see the mile-plus-long trains click-clacking by, cars uncovered so that coal dust can blow off along the whole route, opposition to the whole prospect has stiffened.

In August, the Seattle City Council came out in favor of Congressman Jim McDermott’s proposal to form a Coal Mitigation Trust Fund–a $10 excise tax on every ton of coal mined in the U.S. would go to pay for “adverse impacts.”

Earlier, in May, the Council passed a resolution to the effect that they wanted nothing to do with coal trains and terminals, and that they’ll be watching very closely to determine if there are issues with public safety. Now, Mayor McGinn is putting pressure on the Port of Seattle to address the “environmental, health, and economic harms” he says the coal trains bring with them.

Coal trains also made an unlikely appearance during the Great Arena Debate of 2012, when arena proponents wondered why the Port was so little concerned with the traffic impacts of, as Publicola summed it up, “16 and 18 trains per day (one every 75 to 90 min, basically), each potentially 1.5 miles long, taking roughly three to seven minutes to pass through the seven train crossings—from Spokane Street to Wall Street—in Seattle.”

Even sleepy Ballard has gotten into the act. A story in the Ballard News-Tribune noted that the coal trains “would be passing through Sodo, the Olympic Sculpture Park, up Interbay, across the Ship Canal by Ballard Locks and past Golden Gardens and beyond. Estimates say that it would stop traffic for an extra two hours a day.” (BNSF wrote in asking for corrections to the story: For one thing, they said, they’re already shipping tons and tons of coal through town on its way to Canada and it’s never bothered anyone; it would only be 18 trains, not 20; and some trains might not go through Ballard at all.)

The sustainability-pushers over at Sightline, besides exploding the “low-carbon coal” terminology, help explain why shipping coal to China has taken on such urgency. Thedomestic market for coal has taken a huge hit as energy-producers switch to cleaner natural gas. Reports Clark Williams-Derry, “the nation’s electric utilities used 18 percent less coal in the first half of 2012 than they did in 2011, and 27 percent less than they did during the peak year, 2008.”

The SunBreak is an online magazine of news & culture. A conversation about the things on Seattle’s mind.

Sara- Summit & Olive

I passed by Sara as she was getting off the bus outside of Glo’s. When I explained that I wanted to take her photo for my website she told me that she gets a lot of her favorite clothing and accessories (like this shirt dress) from Buffalo Exchange in the U-District. She’s got a great eye.

One thing is sure to get lost in the shuffle of concerns about microapartments on the Hill — people live in these things. This morning, we showed you just how many microhousing projects there actually are around Capitol Hill. Here’s what they look like inside.

Warning: What you are about to see is, well, kind of boring.

But getting there was the interesting part. Our efforts to work with the developers or property managers and get inside one of the open aPodment buildings on the Hill got nowhere fast.

Turned down, we turned instead to an aPodment resident. What we found were small, dorm-like rooms — as messy and cluttered as any other 20-something male’s place on the Hill. The shocking photos are below.

You also get a sink and a refrigerator in your room

The rooftop patio

Shared Kitchen area

First impressions: The aPodments are, yes, tiny. Roughly the size of a college dorm, maybe even smaller, there’s room for a bed, some clothes, and a bit of storage for your things.

Units average less than 150 square-feet across the various developments. Rents range from $500 to more than $600.

A communal kitchen and a small rooftop area with seating can provide a getaway from the confines of your room, but quarters are close there too. It’s a lot of living packed into a very small space.

Remember Remember the end of September …,
originally uploaded by Gordon Werner.

In which we seem to have made a regular Friday morning practice of reducing surely significant events into notices about traffic irritations. You’ve been warned.

• Friday afternoon downtown traffic mayhem — via SDOT:

Friday afternoon between 3:30 and 5:30, there’ll be a “Funeral March for the Ride Free Area” mourning the end of free bus rides in downtown Seattle. While the marchers will remain on the Third Avenue sidewalks between Westlake Park and the County Courthouse, traffic could, nevertheless, be impacted. About the same time, an unknown number of bicyclists, taking part in the local extension of an international bike blockade called “Super Swarm,” will attempt to hinder traffic as they make their way from Pioneer Square to Westlake Park. 

Friday, September 28

Funeral March for the Ride Free Area:  3:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Starts at Westlake Park – Fourth and Pine Street
50 participants

Starts at fourth and Pine and marches on the sidewalk on Pine to Third Avenue, south on Third Avenue to the County Courthouse at James Street, then retraces the march back to Westlake Park.  March could cause disruptions to traffic when participants cross at intersections. 

Super Swarm:   3 – 5:30 p.m. or later
Extension of international bicycle blockade
Unknown number of bicyclists

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Bicyclists leave Occidental Park in Pioneer Square at 3 pm and travel north to Westlake Mall at 5:30 attempting to create traffic gridlock along the way. 

• “Pay on entry” busmageddon — via Metro:

You’ve probably heard about all the Metro service  coming up at the end of the month—the end of the Ride Free Area in downtown Seattle, the start of “pay-on-entry” on all , two new RapidRide lines, and revisions to more than 50  routes.

We’re asking you, our customers, to alter many travel habits, so we want you to know why.

We’re revising service to make the best use of Metro’s resources—the public’s tax and fare dollars—to get more people where they want to go.

Giving you the most value for your transit dollar has always been important, and never more so than now. More and more people are riding our  as the economy gets stronger and our region grows. At the same time, Metro continues to face a funding shortfall that threatens our ability to meet the demand.

So we’re making sure we’re providing service where it’s needed most. We’re restructuring routes to reduce duplication, make service more direct, and give riders better connections to fast, frequent RapidRide lines and to popular destinations.

We’re discontinuing some of our least productive routes and reinvesting the service hours in more heavily used routes to reduce overcrowding and help  arrive on time.

And we’re making many smaller adjustments to improve service speed and reliability.

Many of these  are possible now because Metro has new service guidelines, approved last year by the County Council, that emphasize efficiency and productivity.

As we  service over the next few weeks, there are bound to be a few glitches. We’ll be doing our best to make things go smoothly—and you can help:

• Learn how your  service is changing and help others do the same by visiting our .
• If the bus service you use now will change, use the trip planner to plan new ways to get where you want to go most frequently; be sure to enter a date after Sept. 29.
• Let others know that starting Sept. 29, all riders will pay as they board the bus and there will be no free rides in downtown Seattle.
• If you have friends or family members who don’t speak English well, help them prepare for changes that will affect them.

Thanks in advance for your patience and support while we make Metro a stronger  system that will serve you better.

Here’s what we had to say about the changes, by the way.

• The streetcar work rumbles on — via SDOT:

·The intersection of Broadway and Union will be closed, with the exception of one northbound lane, the weekend of September 29^thand 30^th.

·Broadway will be closed between Madison and Marion from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. for up to two weeks beginning September 27^th. There will be a signed detour.

• Montlake mess — via Sound Transit:

Montlake Blvd. September 28th weekend traffic impacts

Construction of the University of Washington Station pedestrian/bike bridge construction has started. In order to build the bridge the contractor will need to close traffic lanes and sidewalks on Montlake Blvd. (see traffic details below).

Friday, September 28 (7 p.m.) through Saturday, September 29, 2012 (2 a.m.)
 

Northbound on Montlake Blvd.

• All lanes northbound on Montlake Blvd. including the east sidewalk will be closed.
• Northbound traffic must turn left on NE Pacific Street, right onto NE Pacific Place and turn left back onto Montlake Blvd. at the signal.
• Pedestrians/Bicyclists must use the crosswalk and the west sidewalk between NE Pacific Street and NE Pacific Place.

Southbound on Montlake Blvd.

• One southbound lane will be closed. 
• The west sidewalk will be open between NE Pacific Street and NE Pacific Place.

Saturday, September 29 (2 a.m.) through Monday, October 1, 2012 (3 a.m.)
 

Northbound on Montlake Blvd.

• All northbound lanes and the sidewalk will be closed between NE Pacific Street and NE Pacific Place.
• Northbound traffic must turn left on NE Pacific Street, right onto NE Pacific Place and turn left back onto Montlake Blvd. at the signal.

Southbound on Montlake Blvd.

• All southbound lanes and the sidewalk will be closed between NE Pacific Street and NE Pacific Place.
• Southbound traffic must turn right on NE Pacific Place, left onto Brooklyn, left onto NE Boat Street, left onto 15th Avenue NE, right onto NE Pacific Street, back to Montlake Blvd. which merges with Montlake Blvd SB.
• Southbound traffic follow posted detour route.