Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 232-190 to defund the American Community Survey (ACS), one of the Census Bureau’s most significant demographic data-collection programs in addition to the decennial census.  The ACS, conducted annually, effectively replaced the long-form of the census and provides important data to planners and policymakers at every level of government.  The program’s elimination is just one assault in a long line of legislative actions against transit and cities by the House.

The impetus for the cut is that the ACS is too prying and too costly.  What supporters of the bill are forgetting, however, is that the data the ACS provides informs how hundreds of billions of dollars are spent and which programs they go to, including those that concern transit, housing, and urban infrastructure.   Elimination of funding not only has a major impact on public policy, but would also effectively kill academic research and private economic development programs vital to the health of cities.  The Atlantic has a good synopsis on what kind of effects this move has:

The issue is that the information collected in the ACS is used heavily by the federal government to figure out where it will spend a huge chunk of its money. In a 2010 report for the Brookings Institution, Andrew Reamer found that in the 2008 fiscal year, 184 federal domestic assistance programs used ACS-related datasets to help determine the distribution of more than $416 billion in federal funding. The bulk of that funding, more than 80 percent, went directly to fund Medicaid, highway infrastructure programs and affordable housing assistance.

Reamer, now a research professor George Washington University’s Institute of Public Policy, also found that the federal government uses the ACS to distribute about $100 billion annually to states and communities for economic development, employment, education and training, commerce and other purposes. He says that should the ACS be eliminated, it would be very difficult to figure out how to distribute this money where it’s needed.

House Republicans are forgetting that there is a lot of money, both private and public, directly and indirectly attached to the ACS.  While the Senate won’t likely reciprocate defunding the program, this move puts the program in a dangerous political crossfire that jeopardizes funding for cities whenever voters feel like electing someone new every election cycle. That makes it a risk too great to toy with.  Call your congresspersons today to oppose the cut.

Oran/Flickr

On Friday Transportation Choices Coalition is putting on a forum about the end of the Ride Free Area (RFA). The panel is gangbusters:

Tim Harris- Real Change News 
Jim Jacobson- King County Metro
Bill LaBorde- City of Seattle
Zach Shaner - Seattle Transit Blog

The talk begins at noon at Seattle Municipal Tower. RSVP here.

Joni Earl and Larry Phillips in front of TBM Brenda

Sound Transit held a media event underneath Pine Street, next to I-5, this morning, at the site of Brenda’s final breakthrough into the Pine Street Stub Tunnel, from where this photo was taken; local transit dignitaries also made some remarks. The face of the cutter head will be unmounted and rolled to the right (as we look at it) then hoisted up a shaft. The innards of the TBM will be similarly removed, but the shell will be entombed as part of the permanent tunnel wall.

I’ll post more photos this evening. Thanks to Sound Transit for having us there.

UPDATE: More photos.

Houses being demolished for Yesler Terrace housing project, Seattle, 1940. Photo by Seattle Post-Intelligencer, courtesy of IMLS

Update: The current Yesler Terrace project is 22-acres. The redevelopment is expanding it to 30 acres. So I’ve updated the math. Point still holds.

The Seattle Times ran an article about concerns over the Yesler Terrace replacement project. What jumped out at me:

[Hired land use consultant Matthew] Gardner is skeptical that Yesler can capture 10 to 15 percent of new residential development citywide, which he says the plan calls for. But Heartland points out that Belltown grabbed 22 percent of the city’s new housing in the 1990s.

Yesler Terrace is 22-acres, or about 3.4% of a square mile[1]  30 acres or 4.7% of a square mile. With 5,000 units and assuming only one person living in each unit[2], that’s a residential density of 145,455 106,667 people per square mile, more than twice one and a half times the density of Manhattan. The project will also have a good deal of office space, some open space and a community center.

The city can plan on putting 10-15% of new residential development citywide[3] on 3.4 4.7% of a square mile and 0.04% of the city’s area, with mostly mid-rise buildings, through the magic of density. In Black Diamond, 6,500 units are being built on 1,500 acres. I know I’m preaching to the choir, but this is why dense construction near transit is so important. Though we are building rapid transit access to only a small portion of a the city, it clearly could be very easy to accommodate all new housing construction in just the planned Link station areas. Sadly, we are mostly getting new parking lots and vicious fights.

1. It is possible the development project is larger than this, though I cannot find evidence of that.
2. Obviously there will be more than one person per unit.
3. I am not sure what time frame that is supposed to be over.

Image by Aren Roberson

Until Link goes more places, enthusiasts from other parts of the city will need excuses to come to the Rainier Valley. This week’s excuse is the Franklin (High School Arts Festival, Saturday, May 19th from 11am to 3pm. The school is clearly visible from Mt. Baker Station. From PTSA president Elizabeth Lowry:

The festival will feature student performances, including the steel drum band, kung fu team, jazz band, Quaker band and lion dancers, along with displays of visual art, ceramics and wood arts. Franklin High School is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

Plants and art will be for sale as well. See past Link excuses here.

It's Hunting Season on Capitol Hill!

The headline in the Capitol Hill Seattle blog pretty much says it all:

Facing ‘unprecedented wave’ of development, letter gives design board license to kill (bad projects)

Well I’m afraid to deliver the bad news, but no it doesn’t. Design review was never intended to kill projects whether they were deemed “bad” by the public or even by the design review committee. The purpose of design review is to provide “a forum for citizens, developers and the City to review and guide the design of qualifying commercial and multifamily development projects (emphasis mine).”

It is simply appaling that two sitting Councilmembers would write a letter fanning community hostility toward development and that they would imply that design review is a forum to stop projects. In fact, every design review committee I’ve attended the chair of the committee has to go to great lengths to remind neighbors who oppose a project that design review isn’t a way to change underlying zoning, stop a project, or even repurpose or redirect a project.

The purpose of design review was supposed to be to allow new development minor departures in exchange for modifying design in accordance with generally accepted design guidelines. Some neighborhoods have developed their own guidelines with more refinements. But as many have pointed out before, design review is a feeble measure for neighborhoods who want to “kill” new development. I think that’s a good thing and that’s what the law says.

I’ve suggested other ideas about how design review could be modified along with introduction of zero based zoning, but the truth is the design review is not a way to kill projects and  shouldn’t become a vehicle for that, ever. At best, design reivew is a give and take process to help move beyond neighborhood objections and get projects built.

Tom Rassmussen and Sally Clark should be embarrassed and ought to make an effort to counter the impression the Capitol Hill blog has created. All their letter and the post does is promote a common misconception about design reivew and add more frustration and costs to people who are trying to follow the law and get their projects built. And furthermore, it stokes an already frantic obession among some that we’re facing some kind of swarm of bad development. We need more housing options in Seattle and Councilmembers who will encourage and support growth, not make it harder for our city to accomodate more people by vilifying developers.

Today Puget Sound Sage released a new report on Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in the Rainier Valley. It  outlines changes seen in the Valley over the last decade, makes an environmental and social equity arguments for a greater emphasis on affordable housing and living wage jobs in TOD, enumerating racial justice principles for TOD,  and calls for urgent and aggressive actions and creation of tools necessary to achieve these principles. Tonight at 5:30 at the Filipino Community Center (5740 M.L. King Jr. Way South, Seattle, WA 98118) Puget Sound Sage will hold a panel discussion on their findings.

I have only had time to skim the document, but my first impress is that the report does a good job setting the context, honing in on specific problems of concern not usually focused on, and then proposing strategies to address these problems. Many of these strategies however, not surprisingly, require public money to get them off the ground as well as legislative changes on the regional and state level. I’m also very happy to see that the report is not a rebuke of TOD and development in the Valley, but rather in my reading, a call for TOD that more aggressively aims to benefit existing residents.

Below is a list of recommendations included in the executive summary. (more…)

More hot dogs please!

It’s hard to disagree with David Apert’s recent post titled “Affordable housing advocates should talk about land use… and land use advocates need to talk about affordability,” but I do. The problem isn’t that the two groups are talking past one another, but that they both make the same mistake, putting too much emphasis on housing price rather than pushing for fewer rules and less regulation of housing production. Obsession with price leads to price interventions that only make things worse. Consider the parable of the hot dog vendors.

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Suica Card, Wikimedia

In my previous post, I proposed selling carrots on Metro buses, and allowing people to use their ORCA cards for this purchase. 

ORCA cards have the ability for what’s called an E-Purse.  This stores money on your ORCA card for travel that isn’t covered by a regular pass.  I use my E-Purse* to pay for the occasional ferry trip, which is outside the coverage area of my pass, and deposit money into it using a credit card and ORCA’s website. 

When writing the carrot piece I had no idea if ORCA cards could theoretically be used to purchase non-transit goods and services.  After all, if your employer is paying for part of your ORCA card and recieving a tax benefit for doing so, it wouldn’t make sense to allow people to buy carrots (or anything else) with that money.  So I sent an e-mail to the contact page on the ORCA website, and recieved this reply (emphesis mine):

The E-purse that is on the ORCA card can only be used for transportation services.  The reason for this is to prevent cardholders who receive transportation benefits from using them for non-transit purposes in keeping with FTA and IRS regulations.  However, there is memory capacity on the card to implement a second E-purse that could be used for non-transit purchases.  Although this isn’t on our short term horizon, it may be something that we explore in the future. 

So it’s possible.  Let’s think of the implications of carrying real money on your ORCA card.

• Just as it’s quick and easy to board a bus using ORCA, you could pay quickly at convenience stores. 
• Pay for parking with a swipe? 
• Vending machines.
• Bus carrots.

Of course, these benefits would be incentives for more people to carry an ORCA card.  And it turns out that there’s at least two systems that have already implemented this – Tokyo’s Pasmo and Suica Cards.

* Which I always coordinate with my E-Shoes – it’s a bold look for a man.

U-Link construction, as documented by the Traylor/Frontier-Kemper joint venture.

This is an open thread.

Photo by papahazama

With U-Link coming online by the end of 2016, rail will serve some of our densest neighborhoods as well as one of the largest employment centers in the region.  To date, however, most of our attention has been absorbed by development opportunities and disputes further up around other North Link stations.  While the UW Station area is a less than ideal candidate for a dense interconnected grid of mixed-use development, it does provide a unique opportunity to reviving what has been a traditionally an auto-dominant area.

Because the station will be located just to the south of Husky Stadium and Montlake Triangle, a significant TOD barrier rests in the fact that the area’s immediate vicinity is all University-owned land, comprised of medical, athletic, and recreational facilities.  These are, by no means, small buildings, and the local geography and street network alone create irregularities in subdivision potential.  There are also major institutional hurdles to jump when even considering breaking up large tracts of University land for private development.

More below the jump.

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Photo by the Author

At a 2:30 press conference today at Tukwila Int’l Blvd Station, Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray and Chief of Police Ron Griffin announced the discovery that approximately 4.2 miles and 70,000 pounds of copper wire has been stolen from within LINK’s hollow elevated guideway.  With the exception of the stations themselves, all of the wire between Rainier Beach and SeaTac Airport has been stolen.   The copper wire sections – roughly an inch in diameter – function to isolate stray current that might otherwise be absorbed by the structure, slowly weakening it over a period of decades.  At current copper prices, the theft is valued well over $200,000.

Photo by the Author

Gray and Griffin were understandably unwilling to discuss the details of ingress points that allowed the thieves to access the guideway, but they did say that upon successful access there would have been no way to know that anyone was within the structure.  Gray stressed that there are no operational safety concerns related to the theft, and that the wire was strictly for the purposes of reducing stress on the concrete and rebar, thus extending the useful life of the structure. Sound Transit expects to replace the copper within 2-3 months.

Sound Transit is seeking the public’s help with any information that might lead to the discovery and arrest of the thieves. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the King County Sheriff’s office (206) 296-3311.

Oran/Flickr

Anecdotally, I’ve been having a lot more success with OneBusAway the last few weeks. I asked OBA point man S. Morris Rose if it has been restored to the accuracy level of, say, a year ago:

At some level, OBA per se hasn’t changed at all, but there have been fixes inside the KCM network that have fixed a lot of the problems. In one instance, there were problems with the integration of the new and old types of AVL data. In another, there were problems with buffering of GTFS-based real-time data. Brian Ferris- yes, he yet walks this earth- fixed both of those particular problems, and I would agree that things are much better now than they were before.

Have we returned to the Golden Age of OBA for KCM users? I think that’s overstating recent advances. (Bear in mind that OBA serves Pierce, Community Transit, and Intercity users. None of this applies to any of them- their level of service has been solid.) Things are better than they were, but not as good as they were before that.

Mr. Rose believes it is “likely” that by the end of the year OBA will reach new highs for data quality, as GPS rolls out and the raw schedule data better reflects holiday (and UW off-day) reduced service levels.

geoff271989/Flickr

• Inslee takes Mckenna and Kemper to task for attacking light rail.
• Positive feedback for WMATA, an oddity.
• May 14th Puget Sound Sage to releases report, hold panel discussion on how to ensure TOD is healthy, green and just in the Rainier Valley.
• Denver releases industry leading report on TOD and growing equitably. Seattle not that far behind with the Growing Transit Communities roughly a 1/3 of the way done.
• Downtown Target to open on July 29th, Capitol Hill residents have one less reason to go to Northgate.
• Vancouver’s TransLink long term planning and funding in disarray, sounds normal for a US city.
• Sunbreak details Seattle Subway, puts Amazon’s expansion plans in context.
• SLU is “family friendly”, not just for nerds and hip 20 somethings.
• More details of Amazon’s 3.3 million square feet expansion plans. Amazon not the only one with projects in the pipeline.
• 35th Ave NE half way through their interesting “Coffee Talk” lecture series. Place-making up next.
• Bauhaus buildings on Capitol Hill will be kept and integrated into new development.
• A few parts of Regulatory Reform look like they will make it through soon, other parts still up in the air.
• Using social media to define neighborhoods.
• Metro Matters: Moving Beyond the 42.
• The Renton Highlands gain national attention.
• ‘Ultimately, helmet laws save a few brains but destroy many hearts’.
• What is your bicycle style?
• Slideshow: Living in The New Metropolis

This is an open thread.

Yesterday brought the heartbreaking news that PubliCola is folding. Luckily, friends of STB Josh Feit and Erica Barnett are landing on their feet at Crosscut.

It’s a small ecosystem of local sources that focus heavily on transit and land use, so this loss will be keenly felt. PubliCola, and Erica’s writing in particular, was the closest thing to STB in the for-profit realm. It’s true that enthusiasts like us can cover many functions previously exclusive to the formal media, thanks to ease of publication and widely available source material on the internet. But volunteers with day jobs have difficulty covering press conferences, unrecorded midday board meetings, or hanging around city hall to pick up the tidbits that construct a larger narrative. I don’t think STB competes with other sources, but rather, complements them with additional information and in-depth analysis. One less sister publication will make our jobs harder, not easier.

Best of luck to Josh and Erica. PubliCola will be missed.

The President is making another swing into town tomorrow, May 10th.  That means you can expect lots of traffic tie-ups, which, in our bus-dominant world, means transit delays.  Two major closures to be aware of are at Convention Place Station and Pine Street.  Metro has more details here:

From about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Convention Place Station (CPS) in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel will be closed to all pedestrian access. Buses will continue to travel through CPS, but will not stop there. No passengers will be allowed to board or exit buses in the station, or access the tunnel from the CPS entrance at 9th Avenue and Pine Street.

During this time please board or exit all tunnel buses at the other four tunnel stations, or at their regularly posted surface street stops before they enter or after they leave CPS. Sound Transit Link light rail service is expected to operate normally in the tunnel during this time.

Additionally, from about 9 a.m. to about 4 p.m. on Thursday, Pine Street will be closed west of I-5. During this closure there will be no bus service on Pine Street between I-5 and 3rd Avenue.

Sightline, a Seattle bases sustainability think tank, which does a lot of unique, data-backed research in the transportation field, and is looking for help this summer. I wanted to pass this along this internship announcement via UW’s Community, Environment and Planning (CEP)  tumblr account, since it’s probably perfect for someone in our readership. Also above is a shameless plug for CEP, which both Sherwin and I major in, and Sherwin has a cameo in. I would encourage our young readers to check out both.

Sightline seeks a motivated, organized, and self-starting data geek for a summer internship. You must be able to demonstrate strong academic credentials, meticulous attention to detail, excellent data analysis skills, experience with spreadsheet software, a passion for simplifying complex data into a clear and understandable story, and a commitment to a sustainable Northwest.The project:  Assist Sightline’s research team in compiling, analyzing, and interpreting data on traffic and transportation from the Pacific Northwest and beyond. After decades of steadily increasing car traffic, vehicle travel has stagnated – even as state and provincial governments are planning billions of dollars to rebuild and widen urban highways.  Our look at traffic figures suggests that the region simply doesn’t need—and can’t afford—these costly highway megaprojects.  We need a research intern to help compile and analyze traffic trends, demographic data, state budget reports, and other sources of information that help us tell the story about the changing demand for car travel, and our declining ability to pay for more and bigger roads.

This position is unpaid. Sightline’s interns commit to working at least 24 hours per week for at least 10 weeks during the summer. Interns are provided with office workspace, including a computer and email account, along with a bus pass.

To apply: Please email a cover letter, resume, and at least one example of analytical work to mieko@sightline.org by May 21. Sightline Institute encourages candidates from all socioeconomic, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds to apply.

wikimedia

The Sound Transit Citizen Oversight Panel (COP) is an internal watchdog that observes Sound Transit’s various functions and identifies risk areas. They produce some of the more interesting reports to come out of the agency.

Anyhow, they’re looking for members of the public, especially from South King and Pierce Counties, with some kind of relevant expertise to fill some vacancies:

To Qualify You Must:

• Be a registered voter within the Sound Transit District
• Reside and/or work in King County, Pierce County or Snohomish County within the Sound Transit district boundary
• Have experience/skills in one or more areas of expertise related to the panel’s responsibilities-business and finance management, engineering, large projects construction management, public facilities and service, government processes, and public policy development or review
• Be able to attend meetings twice each month during normal business hours.

More application details are here.

Photo courtesy majinandoru

Update: Looks like Publicola’s Erica Barnett beat me to the punch prior to the publication of this post, tackling issues not addressed in this piece.  See her rebuttal for more.

The Seattle Times took yet another crack at Mayor McGinn’s parking and transportation policies today, arguing against proposed elimination of parking minimums near transit and furthering the “war on cars” myth so beloved by transit opponents.  The piece builds a rather misleading case with irrelevant data, essentially arguing that Seattle’s car ownership rate doesn’t support eliminating parking minimums.

There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of parking and land use at work in this piece– elimination of parking minimums has very little to do with how many households own cars citywide, and much more to do with the effects on real estate pricing that such requirements have.  Lynn Thompson, the piece’s author, doesn’t mention anything about the connection with housing, which was one of the Mayor’s primary arguments, nor does she address the issue that housing costs are artificially inflated when parking costs are bundled in.

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wikimedia

There was recently a long, passionate, and strange argument in the comment section of STB about whether food should be allowed on the bus.  Some of the more bizarre (to me) arguments include: buses are so slow, I need to eat at some point in the journey and people shouldn’t eat on buses because Americans are fat.

I have a solution.  I’ve been reading Darrin Nordahl’s book Making Transit Fun (we’ll have a review here in a few weeks), and this idea would fit right in to the theme. 

The idea:  change Metro policy to disallow all food except carrots.  Hire a pleasant, friendly salesperson to wear Metro orange from head to foot.  Buy large local organic carrots, wash and dry them, and cut the ends off (so carrot top litter doesn’t become a problem).  Then have her hop on and off not-packed-full buses, selling carrots for $0.50 each.  And give her an ORCA card reader to charge from your ePurse. 

Yes, carrots are loud.  But that’s part of the fun.  Imagine hopping on a bus and finding it full people crunching on carrots. 

Benefits include:

• Carrots are healthy.  There goes the Americans are fat argument.
• Carrots are food.  There goes the OMG I WILL STARVE argument.
• Carrots are clean.  They have little smell, aren’t wet or sticky, and have no wrapper.
• This would be fun.  It would support interaction between bus riders.  It might boost ORCA adoption, as you can actually buy something with it.  It might even drive up ridership, as people see the news stories about bus carrots.  It would certainly make the bus feel a little more friendly and inviting.