SEATTLE — Sound Transit will drop the name “Red Line” for its light-rail corridor because of objections that the title evokes redlining, the former practice of denying home loans to non-white families in some areas of Seattle and other cities.
The Seattle Times reports that CEO Peter Rogoff said during a meeting of the transit board that the agency will select a new name by March.
The paper quoted Alex Hudson, director of the Transportation Choices Coalition, as saying, “We wouldn’t call it the Jim Crow line, and redlining was decades of racist policies on the same level.” She complimented the agency for listening to concerns from her group and others.
Dumb… How much will this cost, no waste…
Given this is Seattle, maybe they should all be “Red”.
Typical liberal lunacy, Symbolism over Substance. Too many people looking for ways to be offended. Many years ago, before CAC cards (military/government), we used a green card for specific access. We would be asked to show our green cards to the security personnel for access. Never knew that was racist. So, the left-wing socialists are creating this issue, more than likely causing delays and cost overruns, over a color. Political correctness and lunacy on full display.
Charles Landey – Yes, the MBTA Purple Line is referred to occasionally in news stories and in MBTA press releases. But not as much as the other line colors. They even have a Silver Line, which is a bus/ bus hybrid line which runs from the lower level of South Station to Logan Airport and north to Chelsea.
The Purple Line paint seems more of a Magenta color to me. Color-coding transit lines is now so common – it’s beyond foolish to ban colors because of “Political Correctness” as in Seattle.
All the hystryonics because the Cryps wanted equal time.
One of the dumbest things I’ve read in quite a while.
I find it ironic that left leaning Seattle is fleeing “red”!
GEORGE – “Must be wonderful to live in a place where there are so few real problems …… ” Like Norway, where the prime minister criticized IKEA because the flat-pack assembly books didn’t have figurines of female customers. Apparently, that was Norway’s biggest problem. As opposed to a Norwegian nahtsie shooting up a children’s camp and blowing up bombs in Oslo.
PURPLE LINE ???? MBTA’s suburban lines (i.e. former New Haven, New York Central, or Boston and Maine) are purple on maps and painted on the rolling stock. I’ve never heard them referred to as the Purple Line. That I know of only the transit lines are referred to by color – Red, Green, Orange and Blue. Until of course the Red Line is renamed. The Red Line could be renamed for John Adams, John Quincy Adams, or John Hancock on the Quincy/ Braintree end or for any number of goofs on the Harvard / Alewife end. I could vote for John F. Kennedy who attended Harvard and for whom a Red Line station is named in Dorchester (Boston).
According to Mirriam-Webster, “purple” can mean “marked by profanity.” As in “His language in public is so purple they had to stop broadcasting the meetings of the city council.” or “The book contains a few purple passages.”
It is also the newest color for Washington DC’s color coded transit lines, having been selected a number of years ago for a highly controversial light rail line that is currently under construction in MD. Maybe the color selection was someone’s idea of irony?
God help us. I’m glad I am old and will probably die before our society completely falls apart.
We had a coffee shop chain here in West Michigan called Beaners. Had the name for YEARS…but they had to get rid of the name a few years back. It actually had to do with BEANS as in COFFEE BEANS going into their particular coffee blend. But eyes were rolled and whispers were heard and that was that. Now its BIGGBIES. I can only imagine how the Big and Tall feel about THAT!
OMG…get a grip Seattleites. Whats next, Blue Line, Orange Line, White line..OMG the implications with THAT name.
Must be beyond wonderful to live in a place where there are so few real problems to solve that they can spend their time (and eventually, some money, to ‘re-brand’) on such matters…
The stupidity of this is astounding. The Sound Transit people who decided this should be sacked.
More Sat. nite, pre-steak way off…the not-so-trashy movie “The Graduate” featured my last red-lined Alfa Romeo Spyder….the 1969 “boat-tailed” Duetto, driving which Dustin Hoffman ran out of gas enroute. Besides having a miniscule gas tank, Alfas used the old-fashioned pendulus senders, which loved to swing wildly sending false readings to the gauge and causing the red warning lite to flash. Now if Hoffman had taken the train…..
While 1969 is a half-century back, that year also is a reminder of what passenger service pre-Amtrak existed…memento mori.
I could add my two cents to this discussion but after reading all of them I don’t feel the need to add any more comments about this ridiculous action.
But, I am sitting here wearing a purple “Bayou City Road Runners” sweatshirt and now I wonder why that color is so “wrong”. Can someone please explain?
CURTIS _ Way back in the 1960’s there was a trashy movie called Red Line 7000 or something like that. Did you see it ?????
Way off-topic…back in the day enjoyed “redlining” Alfa Romeo Spyders (body by Pininfarina) ’61 Giulietta, ’63, ’65 Giulias, etc. until the spun main bearing.
Im being serious, never heard of that purple thing
@ Richard, Purple? X rated? Im pushing 50, Ive never heard of a purple connotation, and I grew up in Chicago, not the suburbs, do tell.
I can certainly sympathize with Ms. Hudson on the subject of color choice. One cannot be too careful here. For Instance, I would recommend against a Blue Line. One would only connect that choice with “I’ve got the blues.” and Seattle does not need trainloads of depressed passengers. And certainly not purple with all its x-rated connotations! One should at all costs avoid stimulating the already overactive libidos of the younger passengers, especially since the line serves the campus of U of W. I could go on- but you get the idea…;.l
ANNA – Good post. The word is “niggardly”, once meaning stingy, parsimonious beyond stingy, whatever, but now banned from the English language and from our culture. The sacking of the mayor’s aide was an act of cowardice in our Own Country reminiscent of Jews losing their livelihoods in Germany in the 1930’s.
My mind keeps going back to the summer of 1969, my last with my parents who had a house in the “Atlantic” or North Quincy neighborhood of Quincy. The Quincy – Braintree extension of the Red Line didn’t exist yet, wouldn’t for several more years, so each day I took the MBTA bus (former Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway) to the Red Line station at Fields Corners, Dorchester (Boston) and then rode the Red Line to work downtown.
How stupid of me, all those Red Line trips, then and since. I never once realized the truth that by dropping a quarter in the turnstile I was promoting segregation.
Quite ironically, the Red Line actually was segregated in those days. Fifty years ago, no racial minority ever rode the Red Line south of Andrew Square, Boston, where African-Americans would transfer for buses to Jim-Crow Roxbury. (Today Quincy is a magnificently integrated city, but back then it was all white, as was the nearby Dorchester district of Boston.)
How stupid of me, every day riding a Jim-Crow subway but not realizing its very name, the Red Line, was in itself Jim Crow. It’s taken me the last fifty years until reading this blog, to realize that the very name of this Jim Crow train line was in itself Jim Crow. It simply never occurred to me!!!
In later years when I lived in Detroit I would fly into Logan Airport, ride the Blue Line (okay) to the Green Line (okay) to the Red Line now open to Quincy (not okay). How dumb of me not to realize. Seattle smart; Bay State born me stupid.
Also stupid were my parents – highly active in the Civil Rights movement in Massachusetts – who never protested the name of the subway being built into their city. And my brother, also a Civil Rights movement veteran, who now boards the train at the Quincy Adams station but fails to protest.
HOWEVER, this is STUPID!!!! I feel Chicago will follow next, however I grew up with “Howard/Englewood” or “Howard/Jackson Pk.” not the “RED LINE”, I cant say who’s more ‘extreme” in their beliefs but I don’t believe Chicago is so ” Come Mierda” like this, This is RE dickaliss!!!!!!!!!!!
It is NOT a “former” practice!!!!! Still here!!!
David Wire, there are plenty of distinct colors to name transit lines after…have you not been to a paint store in 50 years. Back to the topic, this is just stupidity on the part of some citizens…until I read this the only redlining I was familiar with is that done in your car, if this is some Seattle area thing then it’s local and not national news.