The DSA writes: “Third Avenue should be a welcoming retail experience with buildings that foster public life.”
The issues are far from new but there is something not quite right with Seattle’s 3rd Ave. Now the city is considering a plan to address “the pedestrian environment” along the street that has been reconfigured over the years as a transit corridor while concerns about street disorder and crime have grown.
The Seattle City Council’s Public Assets and Homelessness Committee received a briefing Wednesday afternoon on the plan from the business-focused Downtown Seattle Association.
“Very few of us choose to spend any free time on Third Avenue, though,” the DSA’s task force writes about the situation. “The sheer number of vehicles, weaving traffic and bleak pedestrian environment discourage recreational activity.”
The DSA’s “Third Avenue Vision” calls for “reevaluating the configuration of Third Avenue through Downtown Seattle to improve the pedestrian environment while maintaining transit capacity on this critical transit corridor,” a council committee brief on the document reads. The full document is embedded, below.
The plan calls for Seattle pursuing a mix of street reconfiguration and pedestrian improvement initiatives including the creation of a new district system to “address specific needs not easily met by typical city maintenance protocols or budgets” and an overhaul of 3rd Ave to create wider sidewalks and more space for resources and amenities.
The plan does not directly address crime and safety concerns. Mayor Bruce Harrell and Police Chief Adrian Diaz rolled out emphasis efforts in downtown Seattle earlier this year including focus on 3rd Ave as part of an expanded “hot spot” policing strategy in the city.
Whatever happens with 3rd Ave, the DSA acknowledged the street has important work to do. Its report says 3rd Ave carries more bus trips than any other “transit street in the U.S. or Canada” — over 290 per peak hour.
The full Seattle City Council will consider a resolution supporting the goals of the DSA’s plan later this month.
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There is a lengthy history to parts of downtown Seattle being challenged areas. The first time I went downtown when I moved here in ’87 I watched a homeless man with a broken bottle chasing another honeless man down 3rd Avenue, and 3rd was a functioning street of businesses and people at the time compared to now. Other cities across the world have addressed urban issues successfully, I’d like to see a broader mode of thought than the tunnelvision we so often get here. What we have now along 3rd Ave simply stopped functioning as an urban space years ago.
Nothing says “good times” like a canyon of 290 busses per hour!
Because that doesn’t block the sunlight, create a river of toxic exhaust and make it too easy for people to hide & be horrible…
For awhile the buses were routed underground in the tunnel that light rail now uses. More of our epic civil planning.
Don’t feel like I need folks who started living here long after I did adding not really correct corrections to my comments.
It was mainly the north-south commuter routes running through the tunnel. We still had little canyons of east-west commuter routes and local routes running on 2nd, 3rd and 4th also other streets.
Putting almost all of it on third ave was messed up, IMO.
I avoid bus stops throughout the city, because the buses are a deafening cacophony of roaring and shrieking. If they want to improve the environment on 3rd Ave and everywhere else, they should start buying buses that aren’t so godawful loud.