Bus shelters with glass canopies. Information kiosks with ORCA-card readers. Smog-eating sidewalks. Portable flower vases. These amenities and more could soon adorn downtown streets, now that a committee of the Seattle City Council has approved a plan to improve Third Avenue.
Members of the city’s transportation committee voted July 9 in support of the Third Avenue Transit Corridor Design Concept, a long-term plan to foster a more attractive and inviting environment along Seattle’s busiest transit thoroughfare. The plan, a darling of committee chair Tom Rasmussen that’s been derided by some residents as a mere beautification program, seeks to incorporate a broad swath of structural and design changes that will affect Pike and Pine streets, downtown bus stops and storefronts, as well as fund ongoing maintenance.
“The goal is to create America’s best urban experience,” said Gary Johnson, a coordinator with the city’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD), in a presentation during the meeting.
The first change could take place this fall, with the installation of nine information kiosks at RapidRide bus stops along Third. Riders will be able to tap ORCA cards on card readers at the kiosks, which serve the C and D lines, prior to boarding. Concept designers said the city is still working with Metro officials for final approval.
These same stops will also provide real-time bus information for riders. Metro officials estimate that Third Avenue is the starting point for approximately 80,000 bus trips each weekday.
To pay for the kiosks, as well as other capital improvements along Third, city leaders will dip into a transit corridor fund valued at close to
$9.5 million, the result of federal grants and matching funds from the county and city. Planners estimate all improvements will be complete by 2015.
Slides shown during the meeting portrayed artistic renderings of bus shelter canopies crafted from metal and glass. Seating would be installed under the new canopies, including at stops near Third Avenue and Pine Street, where riders tend to lean against storefronts and brick walls. Street furnishings would also be installed in other locations along Third.
Lesley Bain, with architectural firm Weinstein A/U and a consultant to the city, said the furnishings would provide comfortable places for people to “linger but not loiter.”
Part of the effort to improve the character of Third would come through the introduction of souped-up sidewalks: The design concept proposes using sidewalks that contain titanium dioxide, known in the construction industry as photocatalytic concrete.
When heated by the sun, the chemical compound neutralizes smog and nitrogen. The material is undergoing a test run in the sidewalk at the northwest corner of Fifth and Union.
“It’s not magic, but it does have some self-cleaning qualities,” Bain said.
Bain also spoke briefly, but with enthusiasm, about portable flower vases. The program, called Third Avenue Blooms, would rely on “small, durable, brightly colored” vases that building owners, storefront tenants and pedestrians could attach to doors, store windows and trees. Flowers would not be included.
The vases would provide that “humanizing touch,” Bain said.
Social issues
To some, flowers aren’t enough.
During the public comments, prior to the design presentation, Paula Reese said that for 16 years, she had worked in an office at Third and Pine. She recalled that after a shooting near her office, she saw someone’s brain matter splattered on the side of a building.
“The issues are not design,” Reese said. “They’re social.”
But committee chair Rasmussen countered that the plan to revitalize the Third Avenue streetscape was more than a beautification process.
“It includes elements to improve the environment, focusing on public safety, improving public transport and improv[ing] environmental life along Third,” Rasmussen said.
In the past committee members have discussed law enforcement as integral to the plan. Seattle police department statistics reveal that along Third, crimes against people dropped 28 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared with the same quarter of 2011.
During the recent meeting, committee members heard of plans to lengthen the size of the bus stop in front of Macy’s. Planners are also investigating extending Third Avenue’s transit-priority zone, which prohibits cars and motorcycles on most blocks between Yesler Avenue and Stewart Street during morning and afternoon rush hours. The extension could increase the length of the priority zone into Belltown, perhaps as far as Denny Way.
DPDs Gary Johnson said that along with emphasizing the plan’s overall implementation, maintaining improvements into the future was important.
“The last thing the committee wants is for another plan to go on a shelf,” Johnson said.
Now that the design plan has been approved by the transportation committee, the full city council will vote on it on July 22.