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1. At the first of what will likely be numerous public appearances to promote his plans to expand transit connections in the center city and to Ballard, Mayor Mike McGinn told members of Great City, the urbanist organization he founded before becoming mayor, that his strategy had changed from grand plans (putting a whole new light rail line, mirroring the failed monorail Green Line from Ballard to West Seattle, on the ballot by 2011) to more modest proposals (connecting neighborhoods).
Before:
After:
"We're not doing a good job of connecting neighborhoods to each other," McGinn said. "So, for example, [a new high-capacity route connecting] Ballard to downtown could carry 26,000 riders a day---that's as much as is going through the [Rainier] Valley right now on Link light rail."
McGinn's proposed budget would spend $5 million studying "high-capacity transit" (although he's plugged the proposal as a rail expansion plan, that could actually mean light rail, streetcars, or bus-rapid transit) from downtown to the U District along Eastlake, downtown to Madison up First Hill, and across the Ship Canal to Fremont and Ballard.
Asked why McGinn's latest plan does not include high-capacity transit to West Seattle, part of his original light-rail proposal, McGinn's spokesman, Aaron Pickus, said yesterday that the city's Transit Master Plan had showed that "the corridor out to West Seattle was not on the list of what we should be studying first."
2. #Asians Part Two?
Riffing off the controversy over a former Rob McKenna staffer who did an offensive tweet about Asians ("shut up and speak english #asians"), a Democratic operative and US Sen. Maria Cantwell campaign aide copped the flip hashtag and posted a prank tweet showing McKenna at a recent Asian Pacific American Community Summit waiting during the lengthy translations.
The Tacoma News Tribune has the story including the response from the Cantwell campaigner, Kelly Steele:
3. The Seattle Times has a summary of their testy endorsement interview with the two state auditor candidates— Democrat Troy Kelley and Republican James Watkins.
Watkins has been trashing Kelley for a lawsuit Kelley was involved in at his escrow management company (he settled over charges of financial mismanagement) and Kelley has been questioning Watkins' claim to have done 150 performance audits at his consulting company.
4. And be sure to catch yesterday's Afternoon Jolt: A fact check on state Supreme Court Justice James Johnson.
1. At the first of what will likely be numerous public appearances to promote his plans to expand transit connections in the center city and to Ballard, Mayor Mike McGinn told members of Great City, the urbanist organization he founded before becoming mayor, that his strategy had changed from grand plans (putting a whole new light rail line, mirroring the failed monorail Green Line from Ballard to West Seattle, on the ballot by 2011) to more modest proposals (connecting neighborhoods).
Before:
After:
"We're not doing a good job of connecting neighborhoods to each other," McGinn said. "So, for example, [a new high-capacity route connecting] Ballard to downtown could carry 26,000 riders a day---that's as much as is going through the [Rainier] Valley right now on Link light rail."
McGinn's proposed budget would spend $5 million studying "high-capacity transit" (although he's plugged the proposal as a rail expansion plan, that could actually mean light rail, streetcars, or bus-rapid transit) from downtown to the U District along Eastlake, downtown to Madison up First Hill, and across the Ship Canal to Fremont and Ballard.
Asked why McGinn's latest plan does not include high-capacity transit to West Seattle, part of his original light-rail proposal, McGinn's spokesman, Aaron Pickus, said yesterday that the city's Transit Master Plan had showed that "the corridor out to West Seattle was not on the list of what we should be studying first."
2. #Asians Part Two?
Riffing off the controversy over a former Rob McKenna staffer who did an offensive tweet about Asians ("shut up and speak english #asians"), a Democratic operative and US Sen. Maria Cantwell campaign aide copped the flip hashtag and posted a prank tweet showing McKenna at a recent Asian Pacific American Community Summit waiting during the lengthy translations.
The Tacoma News Tribune has the story including the response from the Cantwell campaigner, Kelly Steele:
My tweet was a satirical reference to a previous racist statement made by Republican Rob McKenna’s own staffer. The language about speaking English and the hashtag #Asians emanated exclusively from McKenna’s own team, and were initially forgiven by McKenna himself until media pressure caused a quiet resignation days later,” he wrote. “While tweets from my personal Twitter account represent solely my own views and opinions, the fact that my tweet was passed along by the highly-respected group APACE seems to confirm this is simply a case of McKenna supporters upset about revisiting an embarrassing incident from their past.
The civil rights group, Asian Pacific Islander Americans for Civic Empowerment (APACE) did retweet Steele. As they say, retweets are not endorsements, but make of it what you will.
3. The Seattle Times has a summary of their testy endorsement interview with the two state auditor candidates— Democrat Troy Kelley and Republican James Watkins.
Watkins has been trashing Kelley for a lawsuit Kelley was involved in at his escrow management company (he settled over charges of financial mismanagement) and Kelley has been questioning Watkins' claim to have done 150 performance audits at his consulting company.
4. And be sure to catch yesterday's Afternoon Jolt: A fact check on state Supreme Court Justice James Johnson.
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