(Image: Sound Transit)
Since its opening in March 2016, Capitol Hill Station has helped move thousands of people through their lives in the city. Every descent to the platform has left neat freaks a little more freaked out. Jet Kiss, the work by artist Mike Ross that turned A4 fighter jet war machines into sexy pink gloss love machines, often looks like it needs a good dusting. Hopefully it will help you to relax to know Sound Transit has an expert on the case.
Meet “Art Collection Specialist” Tim Marsden:
As the person in charge of more than 100 art installations at bus and train stations and other Sound Transit facilities from Everett to Lakewood, Marsden is the chief caretaker of a collection of museum-quality work by nationally-renowned artists.
His official title is “Art Collection Specialist.” That’s a catchall for everything the Seattle artist juggles to maintain an art collection exposed to the elements, passing trains, buses and thousands of riders every day.
“In a nutshell, I am responsible for the care and maintenance of the public art collection – which to my mind is to identify problems before they become problems,” Marsden said. “I like to get eyeballs on the work and a good method for this is to schedule regular cleanings.”
More on Marsden and the special challenges of keeping Jet Kiss shiny bright here.
Station development update
Meanwhile, you will have the opportunity to see the updated designs for the development projects set to rise around Capitol Hill Station in an open house on June 6th. The projects including four seven-story buildings with a combined 427 market-rate and affordable apartment units, plus more than 59,000 square feet of commercial and community space are lined up for a second and possibly final round of design review this summer — likely in August — following a first review session last December.
The Capitol Hill Champion community group reports that lead developer Gerding Edlen is in the process of interviewing potential anchor tenants for the project. Also, Gerding Edlen and the Capitol Hill Farmer’s Market “have agreed on a tent layout that accommodates approximately 70 stalls for the large weekend market in the plaza and festival street and approximately 30 stalls for the smaller weekday market” in the project’s plaza, the group reports.
Regarding Capitol Hill station, I notice that new yellow safety barriers have been added to the platform, presumably to offer some added protection from accidental falls from the platform edge when a train is stopped and the platform is crowded.
Why this and why add it now a year after opening? Is there some growing sense of concern for platform safety in this station specifically? I wonder if the center platform width at Capitol Hill is proving to be too narrow for the actual peak-period ridership. How does the platform width at Capitol Hill compare to the other center-platform station designs in the system? Does a comparison of station platform widths accurately align with ridership levels and congestion among all the stations?
Did ST under-estimated the platform width requirements?
The barriers were added to all link stations as a way of meeting federal safety regulations.
Thanks for the helpful updates. Any new news on the escalators? They seem to be holding up a little better than they were.