Midweek Roundup: audacious, unique, and bold

Former King County Metro Route 246 (deleted last Fall) climbs Somerset Blvd SE in Bellevue on July 18, 2025 (Ken Robinette).Transit headlines:

• The Seattle Times' ($) transportation reporters offered two opposing perspectives on Saturday's opening of the full 2 Line: Lindblom directly questioned whether Sound Transit is even capable of reliably operating the line on Friday, while DeShais called the project audacious, unique, and bold on Sunday.
• Sound Transit's plausible" scenarios for ST3 all exclude finishing the Ballard Link Extension, and three more takeaways from last week's Board retreat (The Urbanist)
• 55mph freeway speed limits helped reduce gas consumption during the 1970s Oil Crisis, and it might be time to bring it back (Paul Krugman).
• Every $0.50 increase in fuel costs adds $12,500 to Metro's daily expenses, and other impacts of the recent spike in oil prices (The Seattle Times, $).
• Pioneer Square's historic preservation committee opposes SDOT's plan for more bike and scooter corrals (PubliCola), apparently preferring the current chaos.
• Construction of RapidRide I (upgrading Route 160) broke ground last week (The Urbanist)
• SDOT selected three locales across Seattle where it will focus early efforts toward creating Low-Pollution Neighborhoods": Lake City, Capitol Hill, and Georgetown/South Park (SDOT Blog).
• It's weird that truncating the Ballard Link Extension is on the table but revisiting the choices which made unaffordable is off the table (Seattle Bike Blog).
• Ambiguous definitions of frequent transit stop" lead to inconsistent rules regarding transit-oriented development (StreetsBlog Cal).
• Lime is retrofitting its scooters with cameras which will use AI to detect if the scooter is being ridden on the sidewalk (The Seattle Times, $).

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