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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
This summer, for the first time, Seattle banned cars in the Pike Place Market :
Last year (2024), some politicians said no one will shop here anymore if it's pedestrianized :
https://publicola.com/2024/04/02/dont-open-pike-place-to-pedestrians-council-member-urges/
So ... short version of history:
Seattle was not originally 'Seattle'.
It was a bunch of different smaller towns, all nearby each other, that grew outward toward each other.
As a result, there were many differently oriented street grid layouts... that roughly all smashed into each other at downtown/pioneer square.
The... the meeting where multiple proponents of different street grids, basically mayors of the smaller but now merging towns... where they were supposed to agree on how to make a unified system?
Literally devolved into a a brawl, a melee.
... That's why Seattle's street layout fundamentally makes no sense.
That and the pretty extreme terrain. Try walking all the way up Pike or Pine, from Pike Place Market, all the way up to Capitol Hill.
Steep grades, lots of hills.
Check out the Seattle Underground tour if you want a more comprehensive explanation of this batshittery, lol.
Ok that explains some of it but also no seriously Jesus fucking shit its hell to drive. I've heard amazing things about the tour.
But yeah I really don't buy that grade is that big of an issue when it's a few blocks from the Westlake station. The city is absolutely hilly as hell and that can be exhausting, but anything close to the rail line isn't that bad. If it were next to the space needle I'd agree though.
Walk up from Pike Place Market on uh, Lenora, or Blanchard.
I swear its almost a 30 degree incline.
I remember back in the 08 snowstorm seeing a city bus literally dangling a 1/3rd of its length over I5, having skid down a steep road in Capitol hill and not being able to totally stop in time.
Finally, if you want a fucking incline, go walk up to the top of Queen Anne from the Science Center.
You might as well be climbing a mountain.
Yeah I remember my underground tour guide referring to one particular area known as Profanity Hill due to how hard it was to climb it on foot. The city's an amazing place to walk around despite the shitty street layouts.
I still find the Denny regrade astounding.
Basically:
Fuck this hill in particular, blast it with high powered hoses and pumps, then use the dirt from the hill to make pioneer square more level.
Like... the parts of the actual underground... those were originally street level, they just buried the roads and buildings in roughly a story or two ish of dirt...
...and while they were doing this, you still had the doors to these buildings at original street level, that people could walk into on the sidewalks... with scaffold/retaining walls for the new roads.
I had heard that a worker or two fell off the... new, raised street, onto the original street level sidewalks.
Seattle is, and always has been, an urban design clownshow.
Though they have made a lot of good progress with the lightrail expansions and reworkings of various public areas.
I've bicycled Denny. It's a great workout.