There are 11 weeks until Election Day, and 11 issues in our state's gubernatorial race (12 if you count Eastern Washington's concerns). Each week we'll be taking an award-winning look at where the candidates stand. Washington residents pay the highest gas tax in all the land. Wait, what?!?! We demand to know who is at fault for this! Rossi: She is, because she signed the 2005 bill that increased the gas tax 9.5 cents for......

So there's an article about bus fares over on Crosscut--by the Cascadia Center for Regional Development's Matt Rosenberg--that suggests raising the one-zone peak bus fare to $3.50, an amount to make even the most evangelical of bus riders clutch their wallet. (We throw in "evangelical" because the Cascadia Center is a division of the intelligent-designing Discovery Institute.) But it could be a very good idea, we think, against our skinflint judgment. The $3.50 fare would......

Amtrak has some good prices going fast for its fall fare sale. You have to order your tickets by Friday, August 8, and you can get to such exotic locales as Wenatchee ($19), Spokane ($37), and Portland ($24). Whitefish, Montana, is just $67 and...let's see...multiply the denumberator...323 hours away. Those are all one-way prices, and you gotta travel between September 2 and December 11, 2008. Still, $48 r/t to Portland is not bad, though we......

We just had to run down to SeaTac, and along the way lost count of the amount of road repair and construction projects going on. August is the Pacific Northwest's official Road Repair Month, on account of its stretches of good weather, and transportation crews work around the clock to get the most paving done possible. SeaTac is always under construction, so nothing new there, but Mercer has a lane closure or two, which ought......

There are 14 weeks until Election Day, which is great because there are only 14 issues in our state's gubernatorial race (15 if you count Eastern Washington's concerns). Each week we'll be taking an in-depth, and we predict award-winning, look at where Governor Christine Gregoire and Just Dino Rossi stand. This Week: The Alaskan Way Viaduct. Rossi—That waterfront tunnel no one liked. Gregoire—She will decide by December 2006, the voters will decide, an elevated replacement,......

Keeping with our three-day-old, all-bike-news, all-the-time theme, we see the Seattle P-I has a story about bike racks filling up all over Seattle. The city is installing 300 new bike racks per year (toward a goal of doubling availability by 2017), so if you want one, ask for one. The racks outside Liberty and Hopvine on 15th are often three bikes deep these fine summer days, and the racks outside Madison Market should come with......

Yesterday afternoon we were trying to jaywalk across 15th when a #10 bus pulled up. We walked past it, hoping to use it for blocking. Another #10 bus pulled up. Then we looked down the street. Another #10 bus was pulling up. Thanks to a Metro "more frequent service" upgrade, the #10s run every 15 minutes during rush hour -- or even every 15 seconds, if they all get stuck in downtown traffic. Over on......

One of the sadder stories we heard yesterday, from a friend who was on the Portland-Seattle train, was about the 17-year-old Kent girl who was hit and killed by a southbound Amtrak as she crossed the tracks. The Seattle Times blame-placers let you know the culprit right in the headline: "Train kills girl, 17, who was talking on phone." Amtrak, naturally, didn't want to let its passengers know that they had just run over someone,......

The first thing that struck us about the 3.15-mile, $1.6 billion project that is the University Link light rail line is that it will have half of the projected ridership of the 16-mile Central Link line. Kinda makes us think they should have started with the U District - Capitol Hill part first. As it is, the Central Link goes online in 2009, University Link in 2016. We also marveled at how full the room......

Back on March 19th, Seattle declared war on potholes. (Exactly one week after we submitted a little policy paper on the topic, so draw your own conclusions.) We noticed on the Pothole Snitch page that they try for a 48-hour turnaround on fixes, and got curious about how they do. Since reporting a pothole is as easy as walking down a Capitol Hill street, we gave up one over by Cal Anderson park, in front......

In January, Governor Gregoire announced her support to toll the 520 bridge. Today, Gregoire announced lawmakers have approved the aggressive strategy to toll the 520 bridge to help finance the cost of building a new floating bridge across Lake Washington. The toll amounts have not been finalized. The new bridge will cost $4 billion, and commuters will pay for half. According to the Seattle Times, the toll could be as much as $7 each......

Community Transit, the Everett-based bussing group that serves commuters between Snohomish County and Seattle, is taking it to the next level, literally. According to the Times: At nearly $800,000 per bus, the double-deckers cost more than a typical bus. But with 70 seats plus standing room, three double-deckers can carry as many people as four typical articulated buses, saving on fuel and repairs. We wonder if saving on fuel and repairs also means busses......

We've got a ton of work to get done this morning so we can knock off early and go enjoy the more than 45 inches of new snow in the past five days and this weekend's coming snow at Baker. However because we try to be fair, we thought it important to note a letter sent by the Sierra Club to Sound Transit regarding ST 2.1 and parking garages since we've come down pretty hard......

Mayors hate potholes. In fact, today Mayor Greg Nickels announced an "aggressive" pothole-filling campaign to fix more than 1,300 potholes this week. You can visit the online form or just call (206) 684-ROAD. Says KING 5: Six crews are ready to get to work with two on standby. The city promises if you report a pothole, they will fill it within 48 hours. In addition to pothole patrol, crews will also be resurfacing 30 miles......

When we did our walking tour of the Viaduct last year the engineers in charge managed to convince us that the millimeters-a-month descent of the Viaduct--as portrayed on these little plastic doo-dads--was positively a free-fall. And it was very convincing. We walked off the elevated roadway with our stomachs planted somewhere in our throats and vowed to never walk under that segment of the Viaduct ever again, a plan which has been enforced by......

Man, the ferry system is really having a time of it this year. First they realize that 80-year-old ferries might not be seaworthy or even worth fixing. Then no one wanted to buy a used ferry on eBay and mechanical issues put a ferry on the Pt. Defiance route out of commission earlier this month. And let us not forget the Ferry in a Storm pictures that were emailed around last fall. Now King......

Light rail is about to be in the news in a big way again. Shortly after announcing an increase in ridership of 12.5 percent on Sound Transit and 7 percent on King County Metro last year, it's looking like light rail will be back on the ballot in '08. The Seattle Transit Blog, The Stranger and others are all predicting that the Sound Transit Board is coming back to voters with another light rail expansion......

The failing state of the roads on Capitol Hill (and maybe all over Seattle, we just happen to spend most of our time cursing Capitol Hill potholes) has been getting to us the last few days. Biking around, we're spending as much time avoiding potholes that will swallow our front tire as sleep-deprived drivers on cell phones. We wanted to get a photo to illustrate what we're talking about, and the only issue was, which......

We spend a lot of time at the Seattlest newsroom talking about the problems bicycle riders in this city have and how the city should make it easier for us since we reduce congestion and emissions at the same time. Now we realize we’ve been ignoring the good our our two-wheeled motorized brethren (and sistern) on scooters. According to the PI, Vince Rowley and Eric Pravitz are regular scooter riders who want the City Council......

Photo credit: sniderscion Torontoist spent its week uncovering who was behind mysterious ads for a drug called "Obay" that popped up across the country (Scientology? Frank Shepard Fairey?), first tracing them to an advocacy group called Colleges Ontario and then confirming their suspicions a few days later.Phillyist learned how to put on a puppet show – it's not as easy as you might think!Shanghaiist discovers that the average starting monthly pay for fresh graduates......

Popular Science released its list of the 50 Greenest cities in the U.S. recently. Of course, liberal, green Seattle was on it. We came in eighth. It surprised no one at Seattlest HQ, however, that our neighbor to the South, namely Portland, came in first since some of us believe that Portland is better and we all love PDX regardless. Popular Science "collected survey data and government statistics for American cities of over 100,000 people......

According to an article today's PI, it looks as if the city will be spending some money to study the possibility of adding more streetcars to the city's streets. The Transportation Committee passed a bill approving a feasibility study for six lines yesterday. The study, as approved by the committee, would estimate construction costs per mile and yearly operation and maintenance costs for the six lines. Among other issues, it would identify detailed street corridors,......

All southbound lanes of Interstate 5 through downtown Seattle were closed earlier this afternoon while the State Patrol investigated an accident involving a tractor-trailer and several other vehicles at 1:54 p.m near the Mercer Street exit. We're advising people to avoid I-5 right now," said Lauren Penning, spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Transportation. You might want to avoid it for the rest of the afternoon time:HIGHEST IMPACT I-5 N - Accident, Right Center Lane......

Photo by Cynthia ParkSeattlest's cousin is among the 75 people trapped in Diablo, a City-Light owned town in the North Cascades. There's no danger--they are in contact with the outside world and if they need supplies, City Light will helicopter some it. But they'll probably first finish what they've got. My cousin reports via the irrepressible Tubes:It is snowing heavily right now. Three more feet are anticipated over the next 3 days. DOT says the......

We're gonna start asking Seattlest Dan to pick our lottery numbers. A full year ago he looked into a cloudy future and typed:We predict next year will see even higher numbers at Metro Transit as job growth continues and "gas prices remain high." Ridership is going to skyrocket when either the Viaduct closes to traffic or light rail starts coming on line, but neither of those will likely happen in 2007.The bus people have dutifully......

[Via Komo] We've been loosely planning our Alaska adventure for a few weeks now. Loosely, we say, because we haven't actually made any reservations yet. Mostly we've just been cruising the web, gathering information and daydreaming about sitting out on the deck of a ferry as it makes its way through the inside passage of America's 49th state. We have routinely been checking the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) website for the summer schedule and......

Photo by Tim Willis Thanks, snow. You've got one guy pledging never to take the bus again, and another venting obscenities. Both on LiveJournal. First, the new car convert:In Dec I got a job in the South Lake Union area, close to REI. I live in Greenlake and was busing it into the city everyday ... Today I drove to work because of the weather and fear of bus delays... My trip by car: $5.25......

You know how when you're at the bus stop and the Local shows up and it's packed and obviously only has room for you if you stand in the aisle and clutch at a post and you think, "I'm better than that. I'm waiting for the Express," the Express--which is scheduled to come only minutes later--never shows, late or ever? Then, thirty-five minutes later you're presented with the same dilemma, only this time the Local......

Glory be! Is this the year all our wishes come true? It wasn't but yesterday that we asked whether a decision would be made on the Viaduct this year. Well, Chris McGann of the P-I asked Governor Christine Gregoire about it. And look!"It's coming down in 2012. I'm taking it down. That's the timeline. I'm not going to fudge on it. And if we don't have some alternative by then, boy are we going to......

Originally ran on January 3, 2007, and updated for January 2008. Since 2002 Seattleites have spent the first week of January asking themselves if this is the year a decision will finally be made on the Viaduct. When the governor announced last in March of 2006 that she would be making a decision by December, it looked like 2006 might finally be the year. Well, it took ten months for her to announce that we......