This weekend, there are several special rail related events happening in the Pacific Northwest;
July 3-5; Disney’s A Christmas Carol train tour will be open for display Friday and Saturday 9am to 7pm and Sunday 9am to 4pm. The train will depart early morning to Spokane on July 6th.
July 3rd: The Southern Pacific 4449 steam locomotive will be departing Portland’s Union Station at 8am for it’s long journey to Michigan for Train Festival 2009. The locomotive will be away for about 3 months as it tours the Midwest. There are tickets still available for day trip segments if your interested (short notice) This is the first time this century that a privately owned steam locomotive has traveled outside of its home terminal. The last locomotive to make this trip was the ATSF 3751 in August and September 1992. Union Pacific Railroad, which owns the 844 and 3985 steam locomotives travel yearly to various locations across the United States.
July 4th: The Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad will be having a party on both trains with free cake, flags, and live music on-board the trains.
As usual, Publicola gets a great scoop that will be very useful for transit fans trying to discern the difference between Larry Phillips and Dow Constantine:
Phillips said he disagreed with Constantine that the BNSF corridor shouldn’t be reserved for a potential Eastside rail corridor as well as for bike trails. Indeed, Constantine was the only candidate who said during the debate that he didn’t think the BNSF corridor was the right one for Eastside rail. Phillips also pointed out that Constantine actually voted for dual use.
I’ve been looking for something that would illuminate our STB endorsement process, but given the splits on this subject within our own staff, it just muddles the picture more.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that Westbound traffic on I-90 is going to be diverted onto the center roadway from July 5 until July 20. Obviously, traffic is going to be a nightmare.
Metro has released their plan for this period. They’re putting extra buses in service to allow some hope of at least starting each run on time. Here are the key paragraphs of Metro’s press release:
Reroutes – Because westbound traffic congestion is expected to be severe, Metro is planning to reroute all Seattle-bound service that travels westbound on I-90 from Snoqualmie, Sammamish, Issaquah Highlands, Issaquah and Eastgate. This will have little impact on bus boarding locations, except for one westbound stop.
Westbound buses that are headed for the I-90 floating bridge will be routed off of I-90 at 142nd Place Southeast at Eastgate and re-enter near Bellevue Way. This will divert buses around several anticipated I-90 choke points and give them a queue jump onto Mercer Island.
Routes 111 and 114 coming from the Renton Highlands will also avoid some portions of I-90. Mercer Island routes 202 and 205 will have a short reroute on the island to enter I-90.
All regular stops on all routes will be made except at the westbound Eastgate flyer stop above I-90. Passengers who normally use this stop will now board northbound on 142nd Place near the back entrance to Bellevue College. Look for signs directing you to this location.
Remember also that on Friday, July 3 virtually everything is on a Sunday schedule.
I think I misfired a bit by focusing on the bogus liability discussion and not on the broader safety issues John Niles was raising. (By the way, Mike Lindblom did a great piece on this subject back in 2004.) A few points and I’ll leave the subject — at least till the next accident.
We trade safety for convenience and cost all the time. Holding Light Rail to a standard to a standard beyond all other modes of transportation doesn’t make any sense unless you’re trying to stop light rail.
Almost everyone agrees that, all else being equal, grade separated is better than not, for many, many reasons. Some people really don’t like the visual impacts of elevated track, but that isn’t me. The problem is that all else isn’t equal. For various political and financial reasons grade separation simply wasn’t going to happen if this were to get built at all. If you put basically no value on having rail in the region that’s a small price to pay, but for the rest of us that’s a big deal.
Running Light Rail down the street is not a daredevil stunt. It’s done all the time in cities across the United States and around the world. There’s likely to be an adjustment period, but after that people will get used to it. There’s no reason to be an alarmist.
I went back and read John Niles’s report more carefully. I think the technical core of his argument is that non-passenger injuries should have been included in the FTA safety analysis, and therefore that the project should have been rejected by the FTA. Different strokes for different folks, I guess, but I should point out that (a) it’s far from clear, from a legal standpoint, from the document that one should include external injuries; (b) I don’t see any reason to view the FTA criteria as particularly valid, in a metaphysical sense, given the way we treat other transportation modes; and (c) given that the money is already awarded and spent, the whole argument is irrelevant.
All that said, the reason we’ve been given that there isn’t a short, tasteful fence along the length of the surface segment is that emergency vehicles have to be able to make turns and U-turns over the tracks. That’s a valid interest, but someone ought to do the analysis on whether that actually saves more lives than fencing the thing off except at designated crossings.
Some Tukwila residents are complaining about high noise levels from the elevated Light Rail tracks. The KOMO report seems to indicate that Sound Transit is going to mitigate it with either a sound wall or by soundproofing homes.
Oran recently took some video that might be useful for people to understand the noise levels on MLK, as compared to the general din of traffic. As someone who lives a couple of blocks away from MLK, the noise is distinctive from the traffic noise, if not noticeably louder.
Certainly the bell is the part that’s most distinctive:
Pierce Transit’s July 12 service change (pdf) includes an overall 5% cut in service. According to the News Tribune, that’s 33,000 service hours and about 300,000 boardings. As one might expect, it’s due to a $10m revenue shortfall out of a $121m budget.
Apparently, the agency has decided to cut low-productivity routes, even though that cuts off some people from bus service entirely. King County, fraught with subarea resentment, is still agonizing over that value judgment.
Pierce Transit has also worked all the cost-cutting gimmicks, like layoffs, dipped into reserves, and increased fares by a quarter. Interestingly, their farebox recovery is only 13%, well below King County’s.
We’re very fortunate that Congress funneled some of the ARRA (stimulus) funds directly to the PSRC, because Olympia was (and is) a black hole for transit.
We knew that state funding of transit is well below par in Washington, but a new report from Smart Growth America about the flexible portion of each state’s transportation stimulus funding laid out just how reactionary the legislature’s position is. No surprise here, but our state put exactly zero into public transportation,and 4% into bicycle and pedestrian projects. As Erica C. Barnett points out, 16 states beat us in the former category and 21 in the latter.
As the Transportation Choices press release observes, the road money wasn’t even spent well: 29% went to new highway construction, rather than clearing the sizable maintenance backlog on the state’s roads. This kind of project does little for driver safety and simply encourages sprawl, as well as being less job-intensive than regular maintenance.
This is a bit wonky and not quite transit related: but here’s an update on the march toward density in our area. According to the state Office of Financial Management (via the P-I), Seattle’s population grew 1.6% from April 2008 to April 2009, reaching 602,000 people. The state overall grew 1.2% to 6,668,200 and King County grew 1.3% to 1,909,300 (1% outside of Seattle). The state’s population growth has slowed from 1.9% to 1.2%, but Seattle’s growth has grown during that period from 1.1% to 1.6%. Why has Seattle’s population grown faster than the state at large and King County? Housing growth. King County added about 10,500 housing units from 2008 to 2009, while Seattle alone added nearly 6,000. Future growth in housing stock will likely slow over the coming years due to the housing bubble bursting, however there’s still fair amount of housing construction underway right now and the city’s growth will likely continue over the next twelve to eighteen months.
Growth management finally seems to be working: unincorporated King County only gained 2,030 people, or 0.59% from 2008 to 2009. This is offset by annexations of unincorporated areas. Still, main urban areas are accounting for much of the state’s growth. From 1999 to 2009, Seattle’s population grew 38,624 in total, a 6.9% uptick with no annexations. Bellevue grew by 10,773 people to 120,600, a 9.8% increase with 2,747 (2.7%) coming from annexations. Tacoma and Spokane have both crossed 200,000 this decade, with reaching 203,400 and 205,500, respectively.
I should caution that these are official approximations, and could end up looking very different from the official census that will be taken in 2010. The OFM creates these approximations from data such as driver’s licence filings, school enrollments and voter registrations.
Shortly after 5pm today, a car traveling on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South made an illegal turn against a red light and was hit by a passing Link Light Rail train. The driver of the car sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was transported to the hospital. We’re awaiting word about the train’s condition, but hopefully any damage was minor and it’ll be out looking beautiful on July 18th in just 18 days.
[UPDATE: John Niles, in the thread below, points out that he never uses the word "liable," and is instead using "chargeable" as a way of saying Sound Transit could have prevented it. There's a strong tone implying negligence in the piece, however, so readers can be the judge. -Editor]
Despite who’s at fault, the city is looking for ways to make the area safer. Earlier today before this accident, KIRO posted a story about merchants who are opposed to the installation new barriers designed to prevent car/train collisions, claiming they would hurt business. According to the story, a few business owners are threatening to block the track on opening day in protest. Seattle Transit Blog would like to remind our readers that standing on any railway, regardless of political motivation, is a very bad idea, and that your chances of successfully stopping a 2-car train are very low.
Also tonight in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, home to many STBers, a family crossing the street was hit by a car. There aren’t a lot of details about this incident yet, but Capitol Hill Seattle reports that at least three people (two of them young children) were transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and Seattle Police arrested the driver at the scene. Hopefully everyone injured will recover quickly. To John: should these children be responsible for the driver’s legal fees? Or maybe the city for not grade separating all the crosswalks?
Great news for the upcoming Sounders FC vs Chelsea game on July 18th, on top of Link’s grand opening, Sound Transit will be running 2 Sounder trains between Seattle and Tacoma and 1 train between Seattle and Everett!
The Tacoma trains will leave at 9:30 and 9:45am and arrive in Seattle at 10:30 and 10:45 respectively. Both trains will be making all stops.
The Everett train will leave at 10:00am and arrive in Seattle at 11:00am and will be making all stops.
As always, trains will depart 30 minutes after the end of the event from King Street Station.
For more information, check out Sound Transit’s special events
Add: I want to add and stress the crossings in SODO will be VERY busy between Link, Sounder, and Amtrak trains arriving and departing. Use extra caution when crossing over the railroad tracks, especially at Royal Brougham where there is construction for a new overpass.
On 10/10/10, WSDOT will be the first state DOT in the country to toll a existing facility that is currently untolled. A few months ago the state legislature passed ESHB 2211, authorizing the tolling of SR-520. The writing has been on the wall for a while, but still the fact that it passed is no less amazing. For comparison’s sake, not even NYC has stepped up to toll previously untolled bridges or tunnels into Manhattan. Toll on SR-520 has significant, and I believe overlooked implications for tolling in our region.
Background
WSDOT in partnership with KC Metro and PSCR won USDOT funding, and due to the Legislature’s actions will receive a $154 million dollar Urban Partnership grant. The Urban Partnership program aims to reduce congestion through the four T’s:
Transit ($41 million for buses and P&R expansion, $27 million or ferries)
Tolling ($63 million for installation and construction of tolling system)
Telecommuting ($0, build off of existing TDM program)
During the 2008 legislative session, the state tasked the partner agencies to go out to the public, propose tolling options, and report back. The work, documented here, surprisingly showed that 60% of those questioned (statistically significant phone interview) support tolling SR-520 to pay for a new bridge. This support went up when respondents were told that tolls would be collected electronically and that it would reduce congestion on the bridge. A majority of users also supported tolling I-90, however I-90 users strongly disapproved. Stated differently, a majority of users support tolling existing cross-lake travel on multiple facilities to pay for a new bridge with zero new general purpose capacity. Almost feels like the outer limits right?
Implications
I can’t overstate how significant I think this will be for tolling in the central Puget Sounds. SR-520 is at the focal point of forces that until now have not come together. In my opinion this will set a precedent, serving as a perfect example of the benefits of tolls while hinting at how system wide tolling might become a reality. (more…)
UPDATE: John Niles, in a later comment days later, points out that he never uses the word “liable,” and is instead using “chargeable” as a way of saying Sound Transit could have prevented it. There’s a strong tone implying negligence in the piece, however, so readers can be the judge.
John Niles and the Coalition for Effective Transportation Alternatives think Sound Transit should be liable for all car vs. train collisions, regardless of whether the driver is at fault, because they didn’t grade separate the entire line. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to apply that sort of standard to any other transportation project of any kind, anywhere, and see where it gets you.
I get that Niles and CETA don’t think that light rail is worth the investment; that’s a value judgment that I don’t agree with, but whatever. But this kind of spiteful maneuver — arguing that the buildout wasn’t expensive enough, and trying to make it even more expensive by adding liability — is utterly contrary to their entire history of complaints about the project, and makes a mockery of any claim that they’re just trying to make transit work as effectively as possible.
I look forward to Niles and CETA pushing for various local tax initiatives to make sure that all other lines in the region are grade separated, and vigorously fighting NIMBYs opposed to elevated segments in neighborhood meetings.
In 2020, Sound Transit is projected to open light rail service to Northgate, Downtown Bellevue, and Highline Community College.
The elevators in the Beacon Hill Station are supposed to take 20 seconds to travel between the platform and the surface.
Link will operate 20 hours a day every day but Sunday.
Some random flotsam from the internet:
Hugeasscity gets just a little bit suggestive about the Link opening. And they say we at STB love rail too much!
Trimet wants to exempt Portland’s buses from the Fareless Square. They figure the free rail options downtown are good enough.
Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl is spreading the light rail gospel in Honolulu. Attention Hawaii light rail boosters: STB staff speaking fees are extremely reasonable.
Last October, we discussed the fact that AIG’s failure cost some transit systems huge amounts of money. In agreements between transit agencies and banks, the banks would purchase transit vehicles, and the agencies would pay regularly in lease agreements. AIG insured the transit agencies’ payments – so when they failed, some of these banks used a clause in their contract to ask for immediate payment of the full vehicle costs.
In March, PBS quoted Carol Kissal of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority on the potential of these payments: “So this would mean, you know, no maintenance on track, delay, cuts in service. Repairs would go to the wayside.” It’s unclear if any payments to banks have been made as a result of AIG’s insolvency, but there is a question here – could last week’s accident be an indirect effect of our financial system’s mess?
The NTSB has said a test train at the location of the stopped train last week wasn’t detected by the automatic train control system. It’s not clear yet that maintenance money was an issue here, but it’s clear WMATA doesn’t have the money they need to keep running at their current capacity – they say they need $12 billion over the next ten years for maintenance, and they have nowhere near that available.
In good news for us, Sound Transit plans for operations and maintenance somewhat indefinitely. Part of the funding for Sound Transit 2 is operations and maintenance money, and even if we didn’t expand our system again in several decades, when the Sound Transit 2 taxes were rolled back, the Sound Move portion would continue to fund maintenance for Link.
Municipal Street Railway Opening, Ballard Bridge, 1918, c/o Seattle Municipal Archives
In 1922, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit to investigate replacing streetcars nationwide with GM-manufactured buses, cars and trucks – GM was losing tens of millions at the time and felt this was the only way to expand their market. The same year, Electro-Motive Engineering Company was founded, which later became GM’s division for the manufacture of locomotives – including those used on Sounder today.
There’s a serious effort to turn all but one lane of Bell St. into a linear park.
LA broke ground on their BRT Orange Line extension.
There’s a meeting in Tacoma tonight about extending Sounder to Lakewood, specifically on some crossings in the Dome district. Opponents demand a more expensive bridge option that preserves parking. (H/T: Douglas)
Photographer Joseph Songco, who is chronicling the “path of destruction” of light rail construction, is part of the free Artopia exhibition, Saturday, in Georgetown. Via Damon Agnos at Seattle Weekly. Preview Songco’s work here.
Mayor Nickels has proposed that, effective January 1st, the $25-per-employee head tax be repealed. It generates about $4.7m per year for roads and sidewalks, including transit-friendly road improvements, although it had not been allocated to any particular project.
Although driving jobs out of Seattle to less transit-friendly places is always a problem, there are two things to really like about this tax. First, it is waived for any employee that doesn’t drive alone to work, discouraging the commute mode that generates the most external costs. Secondly,while it may be true that higher-than-expected parking tax revenues offset the revenue loss, there’s a huge sidewalk backlog in North Seattle that could use that money. Seattle is the level of government where generic transportation funds are most likely to be spent progressively, and it’s a shame to take money out of this fund.
I hear a lot about electric cars. There’s the Tesla Roadster already, little “neighborhood electric vehicles,” and a lot of “soons,” like Aptera. With those in mind, why even write a transit blog? What’s the point, technology is advancing so fast, we’re all going to have cheap electric sports cars as they’re mass produced, right?
Simply put: I doubt it.
I’m not going to get into the urban planning issues here, and I’ll just point out quickly that we aren’t presented with anything like the full costs of cars today: in everything from the real estate costs of the land reserved for parking, to the funding of our highways (and most of it wasn’t gas taxes, something we’ll write more about later), to the innumerable environmental and health costs.
What I’m interested in is helping dispel the idea that affordable electric cars are around the corner. I’ll keep it short. (more…)
European indie rockers Art Brut don’t live in the fast lane, because they take the train. Check out this fun song sent in by reader Josh Mahar. We need more indie rockers singing about transit!
Some fun riffs on how transit is often slower than driving. But hey, I like browsing the Internet with my phone while busing to work. What do you do when you’re riding?
Transportation Choices Coalition’s blog has noticed a motion (PDF) for the next Sound Transit board meeting about Point Defiance Bypass. Apparently, WSDOT and Sound Transit jointly applied for a $6 million federal grant to help fund work to extend Sounder to Lakewood. The project is still short quite a bit, but this gets them closer.
Update: I wonder if we’ve written about this before. I don’t see anything about it, but it looks like this has been expected for a while.
In less pleasant news, we’ve learned that the FlexPerks program no longer offers a 15% discount on Amtrak Cascades travel for U-Pass and FlexPass holders. The program offically ended at the end of the year, but the coupon code continued working through the end of March. According to Metro, their reduced staffing no longer allows them to administer the program, and they let it quietly die.
