Tag Archives: survey

Getting Around, Urban Planning

SDOT wants your parking opinions

Cars parked at El Centro de la Raza on Beacon Hill. Photo by Wendi.
The Seattle Department of Transportation is currently surveying the opinions of both business owners and customers about parking. How do you decide where to park? What are your needs if you are a business owner? How can the parking situation be made better? Fill out a survey here. The survey should take about 10-15 minutes to complete.

The survey is part of an SDOT study of performance-based parking pricing strategies. In performance-based pricing, parking rates are adjusted depending on a set of data-driven characteristics. For example, rates could change by time of day or location, or seasonally. The expected result of the variable rates is to increase parking availability, and decrease the time drivers spend circling the block in search of a parking spot. This not only decreases the pollution caused by this practice, but also eliminates a fair amount of traffic. (This 2007 New York Times op-ed suggests that drivers searching for curb parking are about 30 percent of the traffic in central business districts.)

Food and Drink

Survey supports later hours — for some

9 Comments
Some neighbors wish these suns on the wall at the new El Quetzal location would shine later in the evening. Photo by Wendi.
by Jake London

The local restaurant hours survey mentioned in the Beacon Hill Blog a few days ago has now closed.

It turns out that the free version of Survey Monkey only allows you to see the results of the first 100 respondents to a survey. So far, 110 people have responded. I’m not prepared to buy the paid Survey Monkey service for this particular exercise, so we’ll have to call it good with the first 100 responses that were received. It’s not perfect, I know, but it still seems like a large enough sample to get a picture of how people in the neighborhood are feeling about later hours at El Quetzal, Victrola, and Kusina Filipina.

My take away from the numbers (which are below) is that there is significant support for El Quetzal to be open later in the evenings. Out of the 100 respondents below, 82 of them strongly agreed or agreed that they would patronize El Quetzal more often in the evening if it stayed open at least an hour later.

There was less consensus among respondents about whether later hours would increase their evening patronage of Victrola and Kusina Filipina: 41% strongly agreed or agreed that they’d patronize Victrola more often in the evening if it stayed open later. About the same number of people felt similarly about Kusina Filipina (40.4%).

A lot more people were neutral about Victrola and Kusina Filipina than they were about El Quetzal. I’m not sure of the best way to read those responses. It seems like maybe they are saying that they aren’t sure whether later hours would affect their evening patronage of these places, but they remain open to the possibility that later hours could make a difference in their behavior.

Conversely, respondents who disagreed or strongly disagreed (and there were some of these folks) seem to be saying that they know pretty clearly that changes in closing times will not affect their behavior, as far as evening patronage of these businesses goes.

Anyway, enough commentary. Here are the questions and the responses.

1. If El Quetzal Mexican Restaurant in Beacon Hill was open until 9pm (or
later) each night, I would patronize it for dinner or drinks more often
than I currently do.

Response Percent Response Count
Strongly Agree 43% 43
Agree 39% 39
Neutral 10% 10
Disagree 4.0% 4
Strongly Disagree 4% 4

answered question: 100
skipped question: 0

2. If the Beacon Hill Victrola location was open until 9pm (or later) each
night, I would patronize it during evening hours more often than I
currently do.

Response Percent Response Count
Strongly Agree 18.2% 18
Agree 23.2% 23
Neutral 29.3% 29
Disagree 21.2% 21
Strongly Disagree 8.1% 8

answered question: 99
skipped question: 1

3. If Kusina Filipina Restaurant in Beacon Hill was open until 9pm (or
later) each night, I would patronize it for dinner more often than I
currently do.

Response Percent Response Count
Strongly Agree 8.1% 8
Agree 32.3% 32
Neutral 38.4% 38
Disagree 13.1% 13
Strongly Disagree 8.1% 8

answered question: 99
skipped question: 1

(Thanks to Jake for creating this survey and sending us this write-up of the results. –Ed.)

Crime, Health and Safety

Responses wanted for public safety survey

The City of Seattle is currently conducting an online survey on the topics of public safety and the Seattle Police Department, with the help of graduate students from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs. The project will gather Seattleites’ views about public safety concerns in their own neighborhoods and on public transportation. The resulting data will be used to help police and city officials improve police services.

The survey is anonymous and takes about 15 minutes to complete. You can access it here.

You can read more about the survey here.

Urban Planning

Your opinions wanted for Neighborhood Plan Update survey

11 Comments
A neighbor at the Beacon Hill Festival, thinking about how to prioritize Neighborhood Plan ideas. Photo by Jason.
(By Frederica Merrell, with some added text by Wendi.)

138 people voted on a Neighborhood Plan Update actions and strategies survey at the Beacon Hill Festival on Saturday. If you couldn’t attend the festival, have no fear—click this link to take the survey online. (This is a different survey than the one we posted about several weeks ago.)

The purpose of this survey is to ask North Beacon Hill neighbors and non-residents to rate their support for elements of our 2011 Neighborhood Plan update. In the survey, you are asked to indicate your level of support or agreement for various strategies to be included in the plan. (Some examples of the strategies that are included in the survey: “Create affordable rental and home ownership housing targets for the Beacon Hill Urban Village and periodically evaluate progress,” and “Create the Town Center campus on Beacon Avenue between McClellan and 15th, by calming and redirecting traffic flow, extending the festival street, and creating bus/bike lanes and activated alleys.”) The proposed plan update will be edited based on your input. Questions or comments? Send them to nbhcplan@gmail.com.

This plan update is proposed by neighborhood volunteers, with ideas that come from neighborhood groups and individuals. It incorporates the work done by the Seattle Department of Planning and Development (DPD) in 2009 and the comments they collected. Look for future reports on the survey results here on the Beacon Hill Blog.

Our neighborhood plan

The 1999 North Beacon Hill Neighborhood Plan has been a highly successful document because neighbors and City of Seattle departments implemented significant improvements for our community over the ten-year planning period. It was built on the shoulders of the 1993 North Beacon Hill Action Plan, our first neighborhood plan and one of the first residential neighborhood plans in the City. The 1993 Action Plan was supported by extensive study of housing trends, demographics, and conditions in the North Beacon Hill neighborhood.
Continue reading Your opinions wanted for Neighborhood Plan Update survey →

Urban Planning

El Centro also seeks the community’s development input

24 Comments
Photo by Wendi
Photo by Wendi

Update: The survey form has been updated. See below for the links to the new questionnaire. They need responses by noon on Sunday, November 29th. Thanks for sending along the new form and revised due date, Chris!

Elliott Jones, Development Assistant with the Lutheran Volunteer Corps at El Centro de la Raza sent this to the mailing list today:

If you’re involved with El Centro de la Raza at all, you know that we’ve been working for a few years on finalizing plans to develop the South end of our property (directly across from the Light Rail Station along Lander St.). We are extremely excited because now that the Light Rail is up and running, it won’t be too long before we get to develop the property and make our beloved Beacon Hill even better!

Our vision for the space includes a large multi-purpose/event building, underground parking, low-income housing, an open space/plaza, as well as retail/office/business space. We are currently working with the Business and Economic Development Center (BEDC) at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business to assess what kind of retail/office/business space will be best for the Beacon Hill community. And of course, in order to figure that out we need your input!

Students from the BEDC will be at Red Apple this weekend with a questionnaire they developed regarding what kind of development you, as Beacon Hill residents, would like to see on that piece of property, so valuable now that the Light Rail has moved in – small, independent stores? Chain restaurants? More grocery options? Better parking?

If you’d like to fill out the survey without taking a trip to Red Apple, you can download the survey in Microsoft Word format from El Centro download the revised survey in Microsoft Word format here.

Because not everyone has the capability of running Microsoft Word, we have made an HTML version and Google Docs version available if you find working with those formats in your web browser easier. (I hope this does not cause a hardship for the survey talliers.) These links have been updated to reflect the new survey above. — Ed.

Please email your completed surveys to Ming Huang, President of the Asian Business Student Association, at huangmingf@yahoo.com.

Ms. Huang and her colleagues will compile them and send the results to El Centro anonymously. Mr. Jones emphasized that they are committed to developing the El Centro property in the community’s best interest.

If you have any questions, you can contact Elliott Jones at (206) 957-4652.

Life on the Hill

McGinn favorite among BHB readers in poll

5 Comments
Mike McGinn at a town hall meeting on Beacon Hill last month. Photo by melissajonas.
Mike McGinn at a town hall meeting on Beacon Hill last month. Photo by melissajonas.
The Beacon Hill Blog Mayoral Survey is now closed. Here are the results:

  • McGinn: 61.5%
  • Mallahan: 33%
  • That dude sleeping on the bench in Triangle Park: 4%
  • Other: 1.5%

Will these match the final numbers? Time will tell.

At least two people attempted to stuff the ballot box by voting repeatedly (and obviously). Any votes that were the result of such ballot-box stuffing were removed from the final total. This left us with fewer than 100 responses, so it is a very small sample.

Life on the Hill

Top of the Hill: Your favorite mayoral choices

3 Comments

It’s taken us longer to compile results from last month’s Top of the Hill survey than we expected. There are still a bunch more results coming, but since absentee ballots for the upcoming election are landing in everyone’s mailboxes this week, we wanted to get one of the results out to you sooner, rather than later.

We asked, “Who’s your favorite mayoral candidate at the moment?” As of September 11, when the survey closed, these were the results:

mayor-survey-9-11

Mike McGinn had a huge lead on Beacon Hill with 53% of the vote, followed by Joe Mallahan with 15%. “That dude sleeping on the bench in Triangle Park” had a relatively strong showing, with 9%. (For the first week of the survey, the anonymous Triangle Park guy was actually leading the race.) 6% of the “Other” responses were “I don’t know.” Current Mayor Greg Nickels had 6% of the survey responses (the chart does not show this correctly).

The survey closed on September 11, so your opinions might have changed, or not. What do you think now? We’ve posted a new survey to find out what you currently think. Beacon Hill folks only, please.

Life on the Hill

Top of the Hill Survey Results Part 3: Wishes and reasons

22 Comments

The next group of results in the Beacon Hill Blog Top of the Hill are about the things we want, the reasons we live here, and the reasons why some might consider leaving Beacon Hill. Previous results are here, and there will be more results soon — stay tuned.

(Editor’s note: As with the earlier results, some of these results don’t add up to 100% because people gave multiple answers.)

mostneededamenity

What do you think is Beacon Hill’s most-needed amenity? We asked for one answer here, but some people listed as many as 17 different amenities!

It seems that, for the most part, Beaconites have food on their minds. The most popular answer was “More restaurants/cafés/coffee shops“, given by 29% of those surveyed. It was followed by requests for two specific kinds of establishments that people would like to see more of: a pub/brewpub/gastropub (a few people specifically mentioned Columbia City Ale House or West Seattle’s Beveridge Place Pub as the type of establishment they’d like to see here), mentioned by 18%, and a pizza restaurant, mentioned by 17%.

More retail in general was mentioned by 14%. 9% of you want more or better grocery stores (and a fair amount of you mentioned Trader Joe’s); one neighbor mentioned the need for a full-service grocery store south of Beacon and Columbian. Some of you are craving hamburgers; 8% of you want a restaurant with hamburgers, sandwiches, and general old-fashioned American “comfort food”. (Many people who gave this answer added that it needs to be kid-friendly, too.)

Beacon Hill once had a drugstore or two, and 8% of you think that a drugstore is our current most-needed amenity.

One neighbor’s answer to this question was a veritable wish list of places:

“pizza joint. drug store. vietnamese/thai/korean restaurants. flower stand. antique/junk/vintage store. ice cream stand. street vendors. vintage clothing store. hamburger joint. wine store. tea house. dessert/wine bar. book store. more of any kind of restaurant. A bread bakery. farmers market.”

Another neighbor’s answer was pragmatic: “Cops and social services that will deal with the dopers in and around Beacon Hill Elementary playfield and that bus stop on 14th across from the school.”

bestreasontoliveonbh

What do you think is the best reason to live on Beacon Hill? That’s an easy one: “location, location, location.” 57% of you said that the Hill’s central location and proximity to other places you might want to go are the best reasons to live here. (10% gave a related, but distinct, answer — our easy accessibility to I-5 and I-90.)

33% of you cited the “the United Nations diversity” of the Hill as a best reason to live here: “There’s no majority. You look at the faces on the 36 and it looks like the world.” Apparently our neighborhood is not just diverse, but friendly as well: 21% of you mentioned your nice, friendly neighbors. One neighbor wrote, “I feel like it’s an incredibly friendly place to live, and that our neighbors genuinely care about one another. And that’s not even our neighbors who profess to live in ‘community’ households the way that we do!” Another said, simply, “My neighbors rock.”

16% mentioned the affordability of living on Beacon Hill, and 8% specifically mentioned the new light rail.

bestreasonmoveaway2

On the other hand… what is the best reason to move away from Beacon Hill? Lack of retail and other amenities in our business district was the reason selected by 29%. One-third of people who gave this answer (10% of the overall total) explicitly stated that they wanted those amenities to be walkable. 12% of you specifically referred to a lack of restaurants, pubs, or coffee shops. Crime is a concern mentioned by 18% of you. 6% mentioned decreasing affordability, and another 6% mentioned noise (almost entirely airplane noise, but one person mentioned light rail noise as well).

7% of you said that there is no reason to ever move away from Beacon Hill. However, two optimistic people said that the best reason to move away would be “winning the lottery.” And one neighbor faced the sad reality of life on Beacon, answering “hard to pursue career as singing cowboy on the hill.”

Life on the Hill

Top of the Hill survey results, part 2: food and fun

4 Comments

The next batch of results in the Beacon Hill Blog Top of the Hill reader survey are about food and fun on the hill. We’ll be bringing the rest of the survey results to you periodically over the next few days. Previous results are here.

(Editor’s note added 9/21, 2:56 pm: As with the earlier results, some of these results don’t add up to 100% because people gave multiple answers.)

What is the best restaurant on Beacon Hill?

What is the best restaurant on Beacon Hill? We knew El Quetzal was well-liked but didn’t expect it to be as much as an overwhelming favorite as it was. Apparently lots of us are fans of their tortas and huaraches: 40% of respondents selected the tiny Mexican restaurant on Beacon Avenue as the best restaurant on the Hill. Its closest competition was the Java Love/Baja Bistro combo, with 21%. A few other restaurants were mentioned multiple times, including Kusina Filipina (5%), La Cabaña (4%), Thai Recipe (3%, and just barely qualifying as Beacon Hill, since it’s almost at the bottom of McClellan — but we’ll take what we can get), and Inay’s (2%).

3% of you don’t feel any Beacon Hill restaurants are up to snuff, so you go to Georgetown or Columbia City. Then there was the guy who said the best restaurant is “Chevron.” (Hey, the seasoned catfish there is actually really good.)

(Editor’s note: Commenter cliff rancho points out that it’s actually the Shell station that has the tasty catfish. We don’t know if any nearby Chevron actually has edible food or not.)

The award for most misspelled restaurant on Beacon Hill goes to Kusina Filipina. Survey respondents spelled it: “Kuisina Filipina,” “Cusina Fillipina,” “Cucina Philippina,” “Kusina Flilipina,” and “the Filopina kitchen next door that I can not spell.” Only one person spelled it right.

What is the best evening hangout on Beacon Hill?

What is the best evening hangout on Beacon Hill? All right, we admit that this is one of the questions we asked hoping that our readers would tell us about some potential places to go in the evenings that we don’t already know about. Unfortunately, the pickings are still a little slim up here.
Continue reading Top of the Hill survey results, part 2: food and fun →

Life on the Hill

Top of the Hill Survey Results Part 1: Names and changes

8 Comments

The first Beacon Hill Blog Top of the Hill reader survey closed last week. We’ll be bringing the results to you periodically over the next week or so. Here’s the first part of the results.

The survey started with a couple of basic questions:

Where do you live on Beacon Hill?

Where do you live on Beacon Hill? We did know that we had more readers in North Beacon than any other part of the hill, but were surprised to see how many more. 63% of survey respondents live on North Beacon Hill, 32% on Mid-Beacon, and only 4% on South Beacon. North Beacon is probably slightly denser than the rest of the hill, but not so much that we’d expect that sort of difference.

If you live on Beacon Hill, how long have you lived here?

How long have you lived on Beacon Hill? This answer surprised us a great deal, though perhaps it should not have. The leading answer by a mile, was 1-5 years, chosen by 38% of respondents. It was followed by 5-10 years (20%), 10-20 years (18%), 0-1 year (14%), 20-30 years (5%) and more than 30 years (also 5%). Particularly interesting here is that this indicates that 52% of us — at least, of those of us who read the BHB and fill out surveys — have been here for five years or less.

As the disclaimer in the last sentence indicates, however, we are well aware of the statistical limitations of our survey. Does it represent all of Beacon Hill well? Probably not. We probably should have taken more demographic info, to get a better idea who might be answering the survey. Still, it does seem likely that Beacon Hill has a lot of newcomers these days.

Continue reading Top of the Hill Survey Results Part 1: Names and changes →