capitolympia
Covering Planning and Community in Washington's Capital
Do you remember that brief period of time during the Obama administration when it looked like America might finally be getting high speed rail? It may have been a short lived program, but Washington State is about to finally see some real benefit from it. This Fall WSDOT is adding two more trips to the Amtrak Cascade Service between Seattle and Portland. These two extra trips will be used to increase the span of service. Currently the earliest train arrives in Seattle at noon, but under the new schedule a person will be able to board a train in Olympia at 8:13 am and be in Seattle at 9:40 am. The last train to depart Seattle will be a new trip departing at 7:45 pm. A person could now spend ten hours in Seattle when traveling by train. Compared to the current six hour time span between the first train to arrive in Seattle and the last to leave, this new schedule will be much friendlier for day trips. While the two extra trips are the main benefit, there will also be a small travel time reduction. Trips from Olympia to Seattle will now be scheduled to take about an hour and twenty-seven northbound and an hour in fifteen minutes southbound. For reference, driving between the two train stations takes about an hour and nine minutes without traffic, which is a rare occasion in Seattle. I believe the reasoning behind the different travel times for northbound and southbound trips is due to where WSDOT places travel time padding. The benefit of the Amtrak Cascades service will still be hampered by our train station's less than ideal location. However, it will continue to be Olympia's only passenger rail connection for the foreseeable future despite some efforts to have Thurston County join Sound Transit and the state's high speed rail study currently underway. These improvements are primarily thanks to the construction of the Point Defiance Bypass project, which can be seen along I-5 between DuPont and Lakewood. This project is taking trains off of the curvy route along Puget Sound and putting them along a much straighter and less busy alignment. The disadvantage being that the trip to Seattle will no longer have the scenic views of Puget Sound. However, additional and faster trips are well worth the trade. If you want the Puget Sound views, there is still time. An official start date for the new service hasn't been announced yet.
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A new condominium building has been proposed for a small property across from Percival Landing at the intersection of Columbia and Thurston. The lot is currently a vacant gravel lot, so almost anything would be better than its current use. The building would be seven stories tall with the lower two levels for parking providing 50 spaces and a small lobby, and the upper five levels housing 28 units. Units are to range between 1,300 sq. ft. to 2,500 sq. ft. Given the size I'd guess they'll be one and two bedroom units, but that hasn't been confirmed. Three on street parking spaces along Columbia would be replaced with an extended sidewalk and landscaping. Three other parking spaces would be removed on Thurston Ave. to provide access to the parking structure and for garbage pick-up. The fact that the building would be purely residential works for the area. It's located in a quieter part of Downtown. Plus High density residential neighborhoods serve an important role in making nearby mixed use areas vibrant. If you want fewer vacant storefronts than focusing on surrounding the commercial core with more residents is one potential solution. My main concern with this project is its removal from Columbia Street. With the bottom two floors primarily composed of parking it will likely leave something to be desired in the pedestrian realm. Thurston Ave. is a long way off from having an attractive pedestrian realm, but it also doesn't have much reason for foot traffic. Columbia on the other hand has heavier pedestrian traffic. If I could make one change to this project, it would be to add a ground floor townhouse style unit or to extend the lobby across a larger length of Columbia to create a more active frontage or at least visually interesting pedestrian space. One design aspect I could see becoming a concern in the future for Olympia more broadly is empty/parking lots being developed into essentially parking lots with apartments floating above them. A few here and there as architectural oddities is fine, but it's definitely not a style a city wants as a defining feature of its urban design.
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