Seattle Department of Transportation

Riddle me this, SDOT, what happened to your annual revenue? 99 million dollars in 1999, inflated to 300 million in 2010 and you still can’t manage to get the right public transportation for this city, maintain the roads in an efficient manner when shtf, and ALWAYS seem to be working on a project that, HELLO, better public transit would lessen the environmental impact that these projects do. It all has an environmental impact, but city planning could’ve done it without the re-​gentrification of the Puget Sound. Plus, instead of using literally MILES of real estate under neath the vast bridge structure in Seattle, you basically have it to spend millions kicking around the homeless that inhabit that land better than you have managed to! In short, I hope for better.

This review is for the Traffic Permits Counter. My second time I’ve been and I was helped by the same woman both times. She is very helpful and funny.
The office closes at 4:30 pm and I’m off work at 4 pm. I ran (both times) from Capitol Hill to Downtown so I can make it before it closes. I arrived sweaty and hot (pow chika pow wow), but somehow this woman’s great attitude made me forget all the bad in the world. She is happy and helpful, something I definitely didn’t expect from a city employee.
I recommend anyone to ditch the on-​line site and come to the office to renew their parking permits, it’s worth the trip.

You can take your «street modifications» and place them ever so gently into your wrecked ‘em? Damn near killed ‘em!
Maybe it’s not ALL your fault after all, SDOT (Why I gave 3***)… The finicky drivers of Seattle are extremely good at slowing to a crawl at the tiniest of impediments. A good example being… Ummm, uhhhh, hmmmm… Well, I don’t have an example because when I finally reach the «hold up» there’s nothing there… Maybe a heartbroken caterpillar clinching and stretching to his own demise???
REALLY?!

SDOT is infiltrated by left-​wing eco-​terrorists. Good luck getting anything approved that would actually help your neighborhood as SDOT and their ineffective lackies will deny every request. In addition to their eco-​terrorist agenda they refuse to plow any street more than 200 feet from the Director’s house. Luckily we were able to escape Seattle: GOOD RIDDANCE!

That would be an F. A big fat F for FAILURE to perform.
No effort again on snow clearance in a progressive city that is an international gateway. We should be EMBARASSED at the performance of the DOT during and after a snow event. The excuse that it just does not snow here much is weak and IS all the more reason to be aggressive about ploughing, salting AND sanding the streets as it starts snowing and thereafter. A LOT of Seattle streets are on inclines and hills. We should not bear having the rest of the nation see our Metro buses sliding down neighborhood roads on compact snow and ice… with people in them!
Do we have to go over the physical properties of water as the temperature drops?
What seems to have escaped the powers that be at the DOT is that if it starts snowing at night, then ALL staff assigned to plough, sand and salt need to get out to the streets to clear ALL the main thoroughfares. Then they need to get to work on the secondary roads.
Yes, it means working through the night, shifts and overtime time pay for those folks. On the other side, it means a city like ours does not grind to a halt and lose productivity and retail revenue. What a treat to be able to get to work and still partake in leisure activities and shop without fear of sliding off the road, rolling over or have someone slide into me.
Also, YES many roads will have to be cleared, salted and or sanded more that once. It’s called efficiency people and that is what keeps a world class city (if that is what we really are) MOVING.
Closing segments of I-​5 after what most would consider a little snow and not blizzard conditions? EMBARASSING and ridiculous. Meanwhile not a snow-​plough in sight!!!
This morning, I heard that the ploughs will have a hard time getting some streets and parts of highways cleaned because of «abandoned» cars. To this I say, if the DOT had gotten out there and were actively making streets drivable, there would be no abandoned cars. Better an «abandoned» car than another accident and potentially hurt or killed individual!

Both on the phone and in person, the people in the SDOT office are super friendly. I was working with a man named Bobby, who walked me through various processes regarding parking permits, and he was super informative and very patient with me when I ask the same questions over and over again. I love it when the little things in life are easy.

So maybe I just hit this place at the right time. But I needed a permit for parking outside my house. I walked in. Had a little banter with the capable person serving the general public for RZP Permits, wrote a check and was on my way.

I am not here to speak on signage, lane markers or snow response. This review is strictly for the pothole reporting service on the DOT webpage.
After the snowpocalypse, roads all over the place were carved up. I drive to work– fremont to sand point — and every day for a while had to deal with two GIANT potholes on montlake boulevard, right near U village. These monsters were located right where my left tires would hit them every day and the edges were SHARP — it was only a matter of time before someone (probably me) busted a tired in one of those things. So I decided to give the form for reporting potholes on the DOT website a try. They claimed that 90-​something percent of potholes would be fixed within 48 hours of an accurate report.
48 hours, I thought? Not POSSIBLE! But I sent in the report, noting the intersection, the problem and my name and email address and 48 hours later, NO MORE TERRIBLE POTHOLES! It was as easy as that. DOT can’t fix what they don’t know about!

I was soooo hoping to be the first to review SDOT! Oh well. So, let’s talk about salt, shall we? When did that become such a dangerous substance, and so bad for the environment? Are they for real? Aren’t we right by Puget Sound (salt water) and doesn’t everything eventually flow into the Sound? Why do the other major cities (Boston, Philly, Chicago…) use it on a REGULAR BASIS, but we won’t use it once every 10 years? Snow plows with rubber blades? Just when I think things here have hit a ridiculous plateau… this is embarrassing! You should be ashamed of yourselves.

I know you nor the City of Seattle is used to this white dump, but an extra bag of sand or de-​icer goes a long way.
OH! If you’re driving down the street why not just put the blade down? You’re driving, you have a blade, so it kinda makes sense to just put the two together.

I’m thoroughly impressed (and shocked) by the quick response I received from the Seattle DOT!
Some douche bag knocked down a «No Parking» sign across the street from my condo and then all these jerks started parking all along the street, which prevented two-​way traffic on said street. (I’m convinced they knew better, but opportunistically took advantage of the missing sign.) With room for only one lane of traffic, drivers were constantly battling each other for the right of way and causing all sorts of headaches and delays. Annoying!
To my glee, I noticed that the whole row of cars had parking tickets on them for a couple of days, but the sign was still missing and people continued to park there. So I called and left a message for the sign department at the Seattle DOT. This was around 4:45 pm. The very next morning, I received a call at 8:15am from the DOT, informing me that they would be taking care of the problem and thanking me for my call (!). When I finally left my building at 9am, the Seattle DOT workers were ALREADY THERE installing a new sign.
Can you believe it? I got an issue handled AND RESOLVED by a municipal government agency practically overnight!

First off, everyone who has spent more than a day in Seattle knows traffic around here is more messed up than a baboon’s butt in a bull fight. This review is strictly for the SDOT office services.
Last Monday, I made my way downtown to the Seattle Municipal Tower to apply for my new Zone 4 parking permit. After riding the elevator up to the 37^th floor permit counter, I found out from an expectedly saucy clerk that the permit expiration had been extended through the end of June. She hand me a slip of paper explaining why and told me to share it with my friends because, «I would be the life of the party.»
Not wanting my elevator ride to have been for nothing, I decided to inquire about a couple of parking tickets I had received in February. I had failed to notice a «No Parking This Space» sign that seemed to have mysteriously appeared out of nowhere in my neighborhood.
I asked saucy clerk if there was some way I could find out why the no parking sign had been put up. One of the women in the office who was preparing to head out to a meeting or lunch or something, overheard me describing the location of the sign. She immediately recognized the location I was describing and so she stopped her conversation, pulled out a piece of scratch paper and explained the city’s reason for putting the sign in while drawing out visual aides to better illustrate the point. She also let me know that the city realized that the sign was proving ineffective and that they had plans to add a red curb to the spot.
She then directed me up to the Director’s office upstairs so that I could inquire about seeing the work order to find out exactly when the sign was put in. Upon arriving in the director’s office, the gentleman behind the counter put me in touch with another woman who produced the work order that showed the sign had been put in just a couple weeks before I mistakenly parked there.
So, while it sucks that I got the parking tickets and that the city feels it is necessary to continue to remove the little available street parking from Capitol Hill, I was thoroughly impressed by the office staff’s customer service skills and willingness to provide me with the reasons for the city’s action. Not only that, but I confirmed that I hadn’t been delusional and just missing the sign when I had parked in the spot in the past, because it had in fact just recently been put in.
So, if you ever want the city to justify their reason for strange parking and traffic regulations, go to the 37^th floor of the municipal tower downtown and ask nicely for someone other than saucy counter clerk and you should get your answer.