Our carpool buddy parked his large red truck in front of our house on 3/27, near the corner of Northeast 89th Street and 15th Avenue Northeast. In a big “oops” on his part, he accidentally left his Kindle on the bumper of the truck where he’d been reading and waiting for my husband.
We are hoping that a neighborhood Good Samaritan may have seen it and retrieved it for safe keeping. If so, could you please contact Chad at 206-200-7283.
Ralph, a black Labrador/chow walked out of our house this morning (March 26) - back gate opened due to strong wind last night. If found, please call Dionnie: 206-335-3569. Thanks.
Ralph lives at 14th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 75 Street.
Sound Transit confirmed today that - as one of our readers had suspected - First Avenue Northeast will remain one-way at the Maple Leaf Portal for two more months.
First Avenue NE between NE 92nd Street and just south of NE 100th Street will remain open southbound only through May. Current traffic and Metro bus service detours will remain in place through this extension.
The northbound closure allows crews to safely complete excavation and dirt hauling of the Maple Leaf Portal site. Keeping the northbound lane closed helps keep trucks from tracking out dirt which can wash into nearby Thornton Creek. Additionally, the northbound closure maintains a consistent traffic pattern rather than having continually shifting conditions. Unfamiliar changes in traffic can create a safety hazard.
Crews now plan to open the northbound lane once excavation is complete in May.
More wet weather has arrived - bad news for Oso and those involved in the slide there.
For us: “The rain comes our way as a cold front rolls in, dropping our temperatures about 10 degrees from yesterday. Showers will be heavy at times this afternoon as highs reach the mid to upper 50s,” KOMO reports.
As the week progresses, hail and thunderstorms are possible. Friday brings a lot more rain.
Just before noon we heard from PCC that its long-anticipated new Green Lake store - which will be the closest PCC to Maple Leaf - will open June 4.
It will be just down Fifth Avenue Northeast at the location of the old Vitamilk Dairy, which closed a decade ago after 60 years at Green Lake.
It’s a bit behind schedule. The store was originally expected to open in 2013.
The new PCC will be part of the Green Lake Village mixed-use development between Northeast 72nd and 71st streets along Woodlawn and Fifth avenues northeast.
The existing Greenlake PCC, on Aurora Avenue North, will remain.
Long-time residents will remember when the PCC at Greenlake was a block west of the south end of the lake, just off Northeast 65th Street.
Two weeks before ballots are mailed in the April vote on hiking taxes to prevent a 17 percent cut in bus service, our news partner The Seattle Times has two transit stories today.
The first is on a debate in Bellevue Wednesday over the proposal for an additional $60 car-tab fee and a tenth-of-a-cent sales-tax increase for roads and buses.
It did not go particularly well for pro-transit advocates, the Times notes:
An early face-to-face over King County’s proposed car-tab-and-sales-tax measure to fund transit and roads took place in front of one of the few organizations opposing the measure, the pro-highway Eastside Transportation Association (ETA)….
…audience members complained about how Metro King County Transit is managed, voiced concerns about seeing some virtually empty buses on some routes and suggested having bus passengers themselves pick up a larger share of the service’s costs.
Metro historically has had difficulty providing the Eastside - in the past not bus friendly - with enough service to justify the transit tax dollars the region contributed. One result was buses operated with few riders.
The other, more lively, story is an attempt by the Times to crowd-source the answer to this question: “Full Metro bus pass you by?
“Crowded buses so full they sometimes have to pass by would-be riders. That’s been one manifestation of King County Metro Transit ridership growing back to pre-recession levels.
“Has a full bus passed you by at a bus stop? Tell us about it, we’re mapping pass-ups.”
Ballots will be mailed April 2 for the April 22 election.
(Sometimes we can get it to work. Sometimes we can’t. Go figure.)
He also says First Avenue Northeast at the site, which is currently one-way southbound, may not reopen in both directions as scheduled at the end of this month.
“The contractor just requested that they keep it one lane through May. (Sound Transit) hasn’t decided yet if they’re going to grant that yet, and part of that decision will be up to SDOT.”
A different reader, who clearly knows a lot more about the light rail project than we do, emailed the below last week.
Glossary (by editor):
TBM = Tunnel Boring Machine (we think).
ST = Sound Transit.
Brenda = TBM named after a project manager’s wife, according to comments on an earlier post. Brenda is not Bertha, the whopping big TBM stuck on its way under downtown.
North Link = light rail that will run from Husky Stadium to Roosevelt Station to Northgate. It should reach Northgate in 2021.
Togo and Balto: From the same comments: “The two TBMs that are digging from UW to Capitol Hill were named Togo and Balto after famous Huskies – the four-legged kind.”
The fact sheet regarding tunneling in the North Link document archive notes that one TBM will be launched from Maple Leaf toward Roosevelt, where it will be trucked back to Maple Leaf for re-launch. Two TBMs will be launched from Roosevelt toward UW.
Brenda’s remnants are definitely at Maple Leaf, ST noted that in an earlier press release. Probably fitted with a new shield assembly and cutter head. I believe the original shield was left in place in the tunnel near the Paramount. I’m guessing Togo and Balto will likely be reused on the Roosevelt to UW segment, as that would be a cost effective move for the contractor and probably figured into their bid. Maybe rename them Brendaborg, Togoborg and Baltoborg.
Looking forward to this group trying to beat the ULINK bar for cost and schedule, but we shall see, hopefully no immovable objects stand in their way.
Last May’s Interstate 5 bridge collapse over the Skagit River was not enough to persuade the parties to come together to pass a long-negotiated, multibillion dollar transportation package.
Crosscut.com has a piece on the transportation flame-out here.
What’s this mean for us?
Next month we’ll be asked to substantially raise our local transit taxes. Or suffer serious cuts to Metro transit service next year, including the elimination of several routes that serve Maple Leaf.
Affected would be routes 41, 77, 73, 68, 306 … it goes on. The full list is here. Our report from December is here.
On the day all nine members of the King County Council voted to put the taxes on the April 22nd ballot, the Times reported:
King County voters will decide in April on a $60 car-tab fee and a tenth-of-a-cent sales-tax increase for roads and buses.
On Monday, the Metropolitan King County Council also passed a 25-cent fare increase for bus riders starting in 2015. Peak one-zone fares are $2.50 now, and peak-two-zone fares are $3.
The increases all make up a funding package the county pulled together to save King County Metro Transit from threatened service cuts of as much as 17 percent. The county had hoped the Legislature would act to save the bus system, but it didn’t.
That last-ditch plan was called “Plan B” from its onset. Plan A was the hope the Legislature, as it dealt with transportation, would give the county authority to use other varieties of taxes that aren’t as regressive as Plan B. One proposal involved a county-only, car-tab tax based on a vehicle’s value.
At the end of February, Melanie, a neighbor and Maple Leaf bus commuter, wrote us to encourage support for the April measure, pointing out cuts would affect many University of Washington employees and students, “many of whom live in Maple Leaf.
“I think not many folks are aware this is coming up so soon” as the April 22 ballot, she wrote.
That might be the clearest thing about the surveillance photos above.
Here’s the rest of the story, as posted this afternoon by Seattle Police:
Seattle police are hoping someone will roll over on a burglar who snuck into the Northgate Mall early last Thursday and made a beeline for the Cinnabon.
Around 6:45 a.m. on March 6th, the suspect crept through an unlocked service entrance and walked directly to the Cinnabon at the south end of the mall.
The suspect began crawling around inside the store—which had not opened for the day—where he stole three small bottles of milk and crawled into an office. The suspect spent the next eight minutes inside the office, where he stole several thousand dollars in cash. The suspect then limped out of the store and down a hallway, and quickly limped off down First Avenue Northeast.
Detectives don’t know much about the suspect other than the fact that he has a medium build, was wearing a red mask or bandanna, and has a significant limp on his left leg.
If you recognize this suspect or know anything about this case, please call (206) 625-5011.
What may be Maple Leaf’s most northern coffee shop is open for business in the former Maple Leaf Evangelical Church.
Laura emailed us Wednesday: “I enjoyed a coffee here today and told the fellow I spoke with named Trent, that I would send him information about the ML blog, so they can get connected to the community. He said they opened three weeks ago.”
And Trent emailed today: “I am sending you a message about a new coffee shop that opened a few weeks ago on Northeast 96th Street and 12th Avenue Northeast, called “LUX Coffee Co.”
LUX Coffee is operated out of the old church, now leased by LUX Communities. We wrote about LUX earlier here and here.
LUX Coffee has a Facebook page and a website. It’s open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Earlier this week Micah emailed:
I am a Maple Leaf Resident and a pastor of a local church, Lux Communities (1059 N.E. 96th St.). Some time after 2 p.m. and before this (Monday) morning at 7 a.m. our “Community Breakfast” and “Lux Coffee Co.” signs were stolen. They are A-board style signs. We have reported it to the city.
Both the free breakfast and the coffee company are ways that we are trying to serve our community. We are wondering if anyone from the community saw anything or found the signs etc…?
This morning around 144 of our neighbors to the east are without power after a rainy night that brought an additional .79 inches of rain and more winds.
That outage started shortly after 1 a.m., according to Seattle City Light. The cause is given as “equipment failure.”
And lights are blinking here in Maple Leaf at 7:45 a.m.
Six days into March, we have had nearly 4 inches of rain (3.91 inches here at Maple Leaf Life South).
The forecast: More rain today, slackening this afternoon. Perhaps a dry spot on Friday. Rain over the weekend.
More rain - some heavier than last night - is expected to start arriving soon and last into Thursday.
“While the rain let up toward mid-morning and the sun could even be found peeking through the clouds, a second, stronger storm was racing toward the region, due in just after the evening commute finishes for another round of heavy rains and blustery winds,” posted KOMO-TV weatherman Scott Sistek.
And the National Weather Service, about a half-hour ago, updated its Special Weather Statement: “HEAVY RAINFALL IS EXPECTED TO
START THIS AFTERNOON AND TOTAL 1 TO 3 INCHES BY TOMORROW AFTERNOON. THIS AMOUNT OF RAIN WILL PUT EXTRA PRESSURE ON SOIL INSTABILITY.”
The weather service’s Seattle office thinks the rain might beat the commute: “(It) WILL BE INTO PUGET SOUND NEAR OR PRIOR TO COMMUTE TIME. WV IMAGERY SHOWS THIS SYSTEM HAS ENTRAINED SUB-TROPICAL MOISTURE WAY OUT NEAR HAWAII.”
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The city’s Department of Transportation tweets a half-hour ago: “This is the worst I’ve seen the map in awhile … red everywhere!!”
At Maple Leaf Life South, 1.53 inches of rain overnight.
We don’t really get a break until Friday, forecasters say.
“Be careful during your morning commute today. We have received reports of standing water on roadways from heavy rains overnight. We have almost an inch already since midnight here in north Seattle!”
John emails this afternoon: “I see that not only are the lower playfields now open at Maple Leaf Park, but also the drain steps on the east side of the park are now filled with water. This is the first time I have seen so much water in them. It’s flowing over the lips…just as it’s supposed to.”
The rain overnight here at Maple Leaf Life South measured 1.35 inches.
