The transportation yahoos in the Emerald City can't figure out how to get light rail across the 520 Bridge. They've been paralyzed for years over what to do with the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The Seattle Monorail Project, designed to connect downtown with Ballard and West Seattle, imploded after its booster club spent millions of dollars and condemned dozens of properties.
And the city's international airport won't have light-rail service until late 2009, or eight years after the first MAX cars rolled into PDX.
But if Seattle can't get a grip when it comes to mass transit, it clearly has a sense of humor: May I present the South Lake Union Trolley, which connects Westlake Center's Fantasy Unlimited sex shop and the Hooters at Chandler's Cove, and -- not surprisingly -- goes by the charming acronym, "the S.L.U.T."
Seattle does so many things well -- notably clam strips, ferry rides, tattoo expos and farming out first-ballot Hall-of-Famers to baseball towns with serious World Series' aspirations -- that it's entertaining to find something that the city does so much worse than Portland.
Seattle is such a mass transit basket case that the S.L.U.T. -- a 1.3-mile jaunt through the future Vulcan Empire -- may be its crown jewel.
The $51 million trolley has certainly generated the best T-shirts: Kapow! Coffee has sold thousands of "Ride the S.L.U.T." shirts, profiting mightily over local annoyance with the wholesale redevelopment of one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
More:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf?/base/news/12182451433000.xml&coll=7