This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published February 20, 2010 and can be found here.
About a year ago I had the awesome pleasure of riding Seattle's new South Lake Union Streetcar--a 1.3 mile line that opened in December 2007. Peep this video from Streetfilms.org. Seattle's state-of-the-art streetcar line features real time arrival message boards, solar-powered ticket vending machines, and human-activated doors to save energy while the train is in layover mode. And check this out, you can find out the next arrival time and actually watch the streetcars moving via GPS trackers all from the Seattle Streetcar web site.
But what has this hi-tech investment done for the South Lake Union neighborhood? For one thing, a Whole Foods Market moved in--downtown Seattle's first full service supermarket in decades. Plus, new condos, mixed-use development, and Amazon.com's brand new world headquarters. That's impressive.
Oh and while I was there I made sure to ride the monorail ! You know I love you Rochester, but I had some serious reservations about returning from that trip.
See also Rochester's Case for a Streetcar Line .
