Mark Ostrow

Things don’t always work as planned.  That certainly must be the feeling at the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) after the rollout of high-tech adaptive traffic signals along Mercer Street. Often called “the Mercer Mess,” Mercer Street is a major east-west route that bisects two dynamic downtown Seattle neighborhoods: Uptown,...

Carolyn Mawbey is irked. The feisty 68-year-old former New Yorker gets around Seattle’s Uptown neighborhood mostly on foot but when the transportation department flipped a switch this spring, her Earth-friendly commute got considerably rougher. “At first, I thought there was something wrong with me. I used to get across...