Spotts and the mayor hop off the bus at the RapidRide G ribbon cutting ceremony earlier this year
The final acts of Greg Spotts leading the Seattle Department of Transportation have had some mixed results. The $1.45 billion transportation levy he helped shepherd cruised to victory with voters in November. The $144 million RapidRide G his department was in charge of building for King County Metro launched with construction mistakes, inadequate bus shelters, and traffic signal hiccups.
Spotts announced this week he is stepping down from the post, citing a desire to work closer to family.
CHS reported here in 2023 as the former chief sustainability officer at the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services and “15-minute city advocate” made the move from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest with a “Vision Zero” agenda and a philosophy around “self-enforcing” roads.
Under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s administration, Spotts barely got started in what will ultimately be a short tenure in the role. The $1.45 billion transportation levy will be one measure of his work. The city’s continued challenges around traffic safety will be another.
Among large American cities, Seattle is considered relatively safe for walkers with a pedestrian fatality rate around 2.54 deaths per 100,000 people. But walking deaths here remain well above the “Vision Zero” goal with totals stubbornly remaining around 16 to 20 deaths in recent years.
Keeping count is also a struggle. The city says it must cobble together reports from sources such including the Seattle Police Department, the Washington State Department of Transportation, and the King County Medical Examiner to keep track of pedestrian and traffic deaths.
Meanwhile, even small projects like this “Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons” installation planned for E Olive Way still take years to implement.
Spotts will remain in the role into February as Harrell, who has just announced he will seek a second term, works to select his replacement.
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
Not surprised. The Rapid G ideas + rollout is disastrous. It’s not connecting anywhere meaningful, it’s removed a bunch of trees and the area now looks like a suburban shit hole; and the traffic is worse than ever on Madison.
What a short sighted, dumb way to spend $144M when we still have a**holes (sorry, homeless drug addicts) on our streets. That should be the ONLY priority for the city until the issue is done.
Also, the leader who stepped down is lying, I wish they had the candor to say they failed and thus they no longer can serve. I’d respect them a lot more.
Your act is old.
It looks so bad over there. Like concrete nightmare. I can’t stand any of it. The intersections are like these monstrosities someone dreamed up in a bad city planner.
Nobody is riding the G like they said they would either. And why would they? Nobody on that part of the Hill and Madison Valley was really begging for a slightly faster way to get downtown via bus. There were already plenty of options.
Ridership is like 20-30% of what they
liedclaimed it would be.Yeah I’m not sure who the intended audience for the G line is, but it’s not helping anyone I know.
I think you can largely blame Madison Valley for this truncation not making sense.
You think if it went further, passing Denny Blaine / Broadmoor (big public transit users, those folks) and ended down at the water in Madison Park (another big group of transit enthusiasts) it would be getting more use?
Nobody uses RapidRide G anymore, it’s too crowded.
You do understand that the city only contributed ~$20 million of the $144 million total, right? The rest came from the federal government, Sound Transit, the county, and the state. AND that $20 million came from a levy that voters approved that’s specifically for transportation improvements.
Also, do you have anything to back up transit times being worse, or is it just “I don’t remember seeing cars on Madison before, it must be worse, never mind the fact that it was getting worse anyways as more and more people move to the area…” Because I’ll cancel out your anecdote with my own that it feels faster driving to the I5 on ramp, and knowing that a bus will be coming within 6 minutes and won’t take 45 minutes to get from 15th to downtown makes me much more likely to take it.
I hope it all works out and is convenient for many. For me it will be useful for those rare times that I want to catch a ferry. The ST 3 dollars that were diverted to it, along with WSDOT $s and Metro $s, represent our transportation resources and a real cost. I am not sure what the emphasis on only how much the city spent is about. I assume that the comment regarding federal funding is assuming that it was there for the taking. That might be true.
My main complaint at the moment is that the electric trolley lines were to be restored as part of the project and that doesn’t seem to be happening for at least another year. in the meantime, the electric trolleys are sitting unused at the bus barn. If only they could restore what they tore down. Are the restorations being added into the cost of the Rapid Ride? They were part of the plan.
Rapid Ride G could have chosen to use smaller electric trolleys that would have fit the design and instead went for the larger diesel buses.
The $144.3 million RapidRide G Line project was funded through a combination of sources:
The “transit time” on the G LIne (from 1st Ave to MLK) was decreased by only about 5 minutes. Several years of construction, frustrating many. What a waste of taxpayer money (both Federal and local)! Yes, I know that some infrastructure work was done, but that could have been accomplished without the bus line, and in a more efficient manner.
Hopefully, the next SDOT Director will do a better job, but I’m not optimistic. There seems to be something negative ingrained in that Department, no matter who heads it up.
“What a waste of taxpayer money (both Federal and local)! Yes, I know that some infrastructure work was done, but that could have been accomplished without the bus line, and in a more efficient manner.”
In what ways
5 minutes in savings is huge actually. That’s roughly 20% of the route time. And increased frequency means people aren’t waiting as long for a bus to arrive (conservatively another 5 minutes savings). That’s roughly 40% time savings in total. It is a huge beneficial change.
I would say all the cars in the city make it seem like suburbs more than anything else. G Line is nice, I don’t get the complaints.
I really like the G line, actually. I was very skeptical at first, and the construction was a mess, but I find it pretty useful and efficient for getting downtown. The connection to light rail at Symphony station isn’t the most seamless, but it’s really not bad (probably better than trying to catch a bus from Westlake), especially when catching the uphill G.
As someone who has been using the number 11 bus on Madison regularly for many years, I didn’t see the point of the G Line when it was under construction, but now that it’s running, I really appreciate it. It’s faster and more frequent. I get downtown to run errands and home again much quicker.
Wondering if the last paragraph meant to say Harrell will ‘seek’ a second term
From its initial planning stages as part of the 2012 transportation master plan the RR G, seemed an awkward, expensive, and unnecessary means of implementing improvements to Madison, but Gregg Spotts cannot be blamed or take credit for the idea or planning since construction on it began before he arrived in Seattle. Perhaps he can be blamed for some details of implementation. Those who should be accountable are probably long gone. He has overseen some other planning and initiatives.
I did not know Bruce had ever stepped foot on a bus
To all the folks saying the G isn’t being used, you have obviously not ridden it. I’ve been taking it to work every day since it opened, and many times, it’s been standing-room only.
Metro’s own published ridership numbers disagree with you. It’s 20-30% of what they predicted. Even if you think it will grow over time, there’s zero chance it will get to the numbers they claimed.