Infrastructure

Health systems

Group Health Cooperative is a leading proponent and developer of managed care in the northwest, and the University of Washington is consistently ranked among the country's top leading institutions in medical research. Seattle has seen local developments of modern paramedic services with the establishment of Medic One in 1970.^[55] In 1974, a 60 Minutes story on the success of the then four-year-old Medic One paramedic system called Seattle "the best place in the world to have a heart attack".

Most of Seattle's hospitals are located on First Hill. Harborview Medical Center, the public county hospital, is the only Level I trauma hospital serving Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. Virginia Mason Medical Center and Swedish Medical Center's two largest campuses are also located in this part of Seattle. This concentration of hospitals resulted in the neighborhood's nickname "Pill Hill".

Located in the Laurelhurst neighborhood, Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center is the pediatric referral center for Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has a campus in the Eastlake neighborhood and also shares facilities with the University of Washington Medical Center. The University District is home to the University of Washington Medical Center which, along with Harborview, is operated by the University of Washington. Seattle is also served by a VA hospital on Beacon Hill, a third campus of Swedish in Ballard, and Northwest Hospital near Northgate Mall.

Transportation

Even though Seattle is old enough that railways and streetcars once dominated its transportation system, the city is now largely dominated by automobiles. Seattle is also serviced by an extensive network of bus routes and two commuter rail routes connecting it to many of its suburbs.

The first streetcars appeared in 1889 and were instrumental in the creation of a relatively well-defined downtown and strong neighborhoods at the end of their lines. Unfortunately, the advent of the automobile proved to be the death knell for rail in Seattle. Tacoma-Seattle railway service ended in 1929 and the Everett-Seattle service came to an end in 1939, replaced by inexpensive automobiles running on the recently developed highway system. With the removal or paving over of the rails on city streets and the arrival of trolleybuses, 1941 brought the end of streetcars in Seattle. This left only an extensive network of buses to provide mass transit within the city and throughout the region.^[56]

Seattle is serviced by three transit authorities. King County Metro provides frequent stop bus service within the city and surrounding county. Like Vancouver and San Francisco, Seattle is one of the few cities in North America that use electric trolleybuses.

The second transit authority that services Seattle is Sound Transit, which provides express bus service between the suburbs and downtown Seattle. On September 18, 2000, Sound Transit began operating "Sounder", a commuter rail system that connects Seattle to Tacoma and other suburbs to the south and another line to Everett and other suburbs to the north.^[57] Sound Transit also began construction on the 15.7 mile Central Link portion of its Link Light Rail in November 2003 that will connect downtown Seattle to SeaTac Airport in the south suburbs. Central Link is expected to be completed in 2009, giving the city its first local rapid transit line that will have intermediate stops in the city. University Link is an approved extension of the light rail system connecting downtown Seattle to the University of Washington. Future expansion plans of the Link Light Rail system include connections from the University of Washington to Northgate to the north; Bellevue and Redmond, across Lake Washington to the east; and Federal Way, Des Moines, and possibly as far south as Tacoma.^[58]

The third transit authority is operated by Washington State Ferries, which manages the largest network of ferries in the United States, third largest in the world, that connects Seattle to Bainbridge Island and Vashon Island in Puget Sound and Bremerton and Southworth on the Kitsap Peninsula. This ferry system consists of 10 routes (4 servicing Seattle), 20 terminals (2 in Seattle), and 28 vessels (8 servicing Seattle).^[59]

A monorail line constructed for the 1962 Exposition still exists today between Seattle Center and downtown and is used by tourists and by commuters from the north, who often find it cheaper to park at Seattle Center and take the 1 mile route to work rather than taking their car downtown. On November 26 2005 the monorail's two trains collided on a curve near Westlake Center where a design flaw made it impossible to pass safely. Service was suspended for a few months as both trains were repaired. The system then resumed operation.

In the 1990s the city proposed building a longer monorail as a real commuter service replacing the existing tourist attraction, but nothing came of two voter approved initiatives in the 90s. Ultimately Seattle voters approved the creation of the 14 mile line, which was to be called the Green Line, connecting West Seattle and Ballard to downtown in November 2002. Controversy over scope, financial difficulties, and other issues led to two additional votes with the final vote, November 2005, bringing the extented monorail proposal to an end.^[60]

The South Lake Union line of the Seattle Streetcar passed full City Council on June 27, 2005. The streetcar is "on track" to be built and operating by 2007. The 2.6 mile (4.2 km) streetcar line will run between the Westlake Center shopping mall in Downtown and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Eastlake. Property owners along the right-of-way will pay about $25 million of the $45 million total capital cost through a local improvement district.^[61]

Seattle's commercial airport is Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, locally known as Sea-Tac Airport and located in the city of SeaTac, which is named for the airport. It is operated by the Port of Seattle and provides service to many destinations throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, some of the major ones include, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Tokyo among many others. The airport is a hub for Alaska Airlines and its regional subsidiary Horizon Air. Seattle is also a focus city for Northwest Airlines.

Seattle's general-aviation airport is Boeing Field. It is also used for cargo flights and testing/delivery of Boeing airliners. Southwest Airlines recently requested permission to move its services from Sea-Tac to Boeing Field but did not receive permission.

Alaskan Way Viaduct

The Alaskan Way Viaduct, completed on April 4, 1953, is an elevated section of Washington State Route 99 that runs along the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle's Industrial District and downtown Seattle. It is the smaller of the two major north-south traffic corridors through Seattle, carrying up to 110,000 vehicles per day.^[62] The viaduct runs above the surface street, Alaskan Way, from S. Nevada Street in the south to the entrance of Belltown's Battery Street Tunnel in the north, following previously existing railroad lines.

The 2001 Nisqually earthquake damaged the viaduct and its supporting Alaskan Way Seawall and required the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to invest $3.5 million U.S. in emergency repairs. Experts give a 1-in-20 chance that the viaduct could be shut down by an earthquake within the next decade.^[62] Since the Nisqually Earthquake occurred, semi-annual inspections have discovered continuing settlement damage.

Whether to remove, replace, or rebuild the viaduct is a politically charged issue. On March 13, 2007, voters in the city of Seattle rejected two separate proposals to replace the viaduct. ^[63]

Utilities

Unlike most neighboring cities, water and electricity are provided by public city agencies: Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light. Privately owned utility companies serving Seattle are Puget Sound Energy (natural gas), Seattle Steam Company (steam), Qwest (landline telephone service), and Comcast (and to a lesser extent Millennium Digital Media) (cable television).