Here’s what happened at the January 12th ST Capital Committee meeting, the video for which is archived online. Nothing earth-shaking, but if I sit through a 90-minute video a post is going to come out of it:
Sound Transit is negotiating with Microsoft to build a pedestrian bridge across SR520 near the station on the company’s dime.
Civil Engineering nerds will enjoy the discussion beginning at approximately the 25-minute mark. Building light rail on a floating bridge introduces types of motion that have all dealt with separately before, but never in quite this combination. A gathering of the best and brightest have come up with two feasible solutions for the transition from the bridge peers to the floating sections, with the favored one known as CESURA — involving lots of little actuators to keep it steady.
The discussion of S. 200th Street design mostly covered what we already know. However, the owner of the airport parking immediately adjacent to the station has some TOD plans for the property, and ST is working with him to design the interface with the station in a sensible way.
Sightline has some interesting information about the impact of Gregoire’s proposed “Barrel Fee”, which would be the major revenue source for her proposed transportation package.
If you’re out to raise money for transportation projects, one of the more clever methods is the so-called “barrel fee” that is the centerpiece of Governor Gregoire’s new transportation package. It’s structured in such a way that it minimizes impacts on Washington by effectively off-loading the costs to oil companies and out-of-state drivers. In fact, my back-of-the-envelope estimate is that for every dollar residents pay, the state will net roughly $2.20 in revenue.
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Here’s where it gets interesting: Washington refines about twice as much oil as it actually consumes, and the governor’s barrel fee pointedly applies to petroleum products that are sold for consumption outside the state. That means Washington’s coffers can benefit from fees on twice as much oil as Washington consumers will actually pay for. (It’s similar, in some ways, to the way that some natural resource-producing jurisdictions benefit from extraction fees on products that are ultimately used elsewhere.)
So who picks up the other half of the tab?
For products that are refined in Washington but consumed elsewhere, the burden of the fee will fall on some combination of out-of-state consumers and oil refiners (and perhaps some oil distributors or marketers to a small extent). Certainly, the oil companies will try to pass the cost of the fee along to their customers, but in markets that are competitively supplied by other sources of fuel, it may be difficult for them to do so. That means the oil firms will have to carve the cost out of their profits.
Tomorrow, from 6 PM to 8 PM, King County Metro is holding an open house at Renton City Hall, to share ideas and solicit public feedback about Metro’s future RapidRide F Line, an improved local bus service that will replace Metro’s Route 140 in 2013. If you can’t make it, see my previous discussion of RapidRide E & F, which has links to alternate ways of sending feedback to Metro.
In the wake of voters rejecting a sales tax increase to preserve Pierce Transit service, outlying areas that voted heavily against the increase (and have lost most or all of their service) are trying to opt out of the Public Transportation Benefit Area (PTBA) entirely. Sumner is the latest casualty, joining DuPont, Bonney Lake, Buckley, and Orting. Background on the (complicated) PTBA exit process here. Routes 409, 496, and 497*, which connect various neighborhoods to Sounder, would be eliminated, potentially aggravating existing parking problems at stations.
Interestingly, this contraction may also affect vanpools. PT Spokesman Lars Erickson tells me that while vanpools that either originate or terminate within the shrunken boundary are fine, those that originate and terminate outside the PTBA may have to be eliminated under the law, pending a legal opinion the agency has requested.
The other interesting wrinkle is that all the cities above but Buckley lie in the Sound Transit district. Sumner is actually represented on the ST board by Mayor David Enslow. I have an email in to Mr. Enslow to see if he has any plans to try to mitigate the loss of PT service.
*The 497 serves the Pierce County portion of Auburn, connecting the Lakeland Hills subdivision to Sounder. The loss of Sumner would isolate Auburn geographically, and by law PTBAs must be contiguous.
There are few neighborhoods in our region that have as good transit service as the International Blvd area of Tukwila does. With that comes an opportunity to harness existing capacity and use it to stimulate development. Yet Tukwila is often overlooked when it comes to TOD and land use. Indeed, the town is largely suburban and low-density; however, it also has one of the State’s highest minority populations and is, geographically, situated at an important “crossroads” in South King.
Transit-wise, this geographic advantage translates into high-quality service at Tukwila-International Blvd to points north, south, east, and west:
A Line: Federal Way and points south along Pacific Highway.
Link: Sea-Tac Airport, Rainier Valley, Downtown Seattle, and connections north.
124: Alternative all-day service to Seattle via the Duwamish through Georgetown & SODO.
140: Burien to the west, Southcenter, Renton to the east, to be replaced by the F Line in the future.
Tomorrow, from 6 PM to 8 PM, King County Metro is holding an open house at Green Lake Presbyterian Church (64th & Linden), to share ideas about Metro’s future RapidRide E Line, an improved local bus service that will replace Metro’s Route 358 in 2013. I encourage readers to attend, and plan to be there myself. If you can’t make it, see my previous discussion of RapidRide E & F, which has links to alternate ways of sending feedback to Metro.
2000 and 2010 US Census Housing Statistics for City of Seattle
2000 Count By Units in Structure
2000 Percentage By Unit in Structure
2010 Count By Units in Structure
2010 Percentage By Unit in Structure
2000-2010 Count Change
Change in Percentage of Housing Units
1, detached
132,908
49%
138,309
46%
5,401
-3.4%
1, attached
5,919
2%
10,972
4%
5,053
1.4%
2
9,684
4%
9,223
3%
(461)
-0.5%
3 or 4
12,178
5%
12,383
4%
205
-0.4%
5 to 9
18,935
7%
19,615
6%
680
-0.5%
10 to 19
23,852
9%
25,485
8%
1,633
-0.4%
20 to 49
33,991
13%
36,030
12%
2,039
-0.7%
50 or more
31,708
12%
49,072
16%
17,364
4.5%
Total
269,175
301,089
31,914
A while ago in response a piece that Roger wrote, commenter BGCity wrote this:
“People like the quiet neighborhoods that they live in and the fact is that most of our city consists of, and most people live in these single family zones that resemble the suburbs in oh so many ways. The Urban faction, of which I count myself one, is in the minority…. Can anyone accurately claim that Seattleites want their quiet neighborhoods to be as urban as Belltown?”
Not to pick on BGCity, but I find this a common and inaccurate refrain when talking about density in Seattle. Let me unpack why I disagree. (more…)
How does the discussion about a "state bank" help TOD?
The recent economic downturn has inspired a lot of anger at banks, especially around the problem of credit (loans) given by banks for the purchase of homes. There has been enough anger out there to fuel calls for a “state bank” in order to offer a local, publicly motivated financial institution to avert such a crisis in the future. Unfortunately the current proposal, HB 1320, doesn’t offer much in the way of how such an institution would function in the face of Washington State’s constitutional prohibition on the lending of public credit. The discussions of HB 1320 do have implications for Transit Oriented Development.
The mortgages at the heart of the crisis were often given to people with no money down, insufficient income to make payments, and then repackaged and sold off as securities for a profit by banks. When people started losing their jobs, those loans went bad, creating a crisis for financial institutions that had purchased large numbers of these mortgages. The decision was to “bail out” those banks.
It’s easy to to forget how banks work. Banks take deposits from people with cash and then loan out that money. Banks serve the critical function of aggregating capital, lending it out with some risk, and then paying depositors some interest. There is a great video by Sal Kahn on how fractional reserve banking works, a good refresher on the banking system.
So why not open a “state bank,” run by the state government for the benefit of the people of Washington? It’s a great idea, but it’s not clear it could really work or solve the problems the Occupiers have with banks. There are two gigantic problems, one is surmountable and the other is not. (more…)
Transportation Advocacy Day is fast approaching and TCC is trying to get as many people to turn out in Olympia to speak with their legislators. I would especially encourage those that are outside Seattle to make the extra effort to turn out, as your legislators are likely more of a swing vote on the issues we care about than Seattle legislators. Info below the jump. (more…)
Starting later this month the waterfront design project will kick-off a series of topical meeting relating to specific interaction elements of the design. Readers will probably be most interested in the February 8th meeting, Mobility and Access, but I personally find the other topics, specifically the first and last much more unique and interesting. Information below the jump.
I’ve written here before about how density can aggregate demand for transit and that this is one of main reasons why density is so important. In an ideal world would be a very dense one where demand for transit is so high that a business case could be made to charge people what it actually costs to run transit and even make a profit doing it.
Here’s a story from Indonesia where transit authorities are going to extreme lengths to stop something called roof riding, the practice of riding on top of commuter trains.
The railway said it resorted to using the concrete balls after previous anti-roof-rider efforts – including greasing the roofs, spraying roof riders with colored water, and detentions and fines– didn’t stop the practice.
You might think that these roof riders are just free loaders, catching a ride for free on the train to evade the fare. Nope.
Adi [a transit official] told the Globe the real problem isn’t freeloading riders, but that there aren’t enough trains to accommodate demand.
Part of this story is about how different we look at things compared to the rest of the world. For some of us, a little bit of crowding or an extra minute wait makes transit inconvenient. For much of the rest of the world transit is the primary mode of transportation; cars are just too expensive and governments have built infrastructure to accommodate the car.
I’m not saying Indonesia is the ideal world. I’m sure it’s far from perfect. But I love the idea that there is a place where demand for transit is so big that officials are trying to keep people from getting on the trains with concrete balls. I don’t think anyone around here has any concrete balls, especially when it comes to serious up zones around transit. Until then we can dream and strive for a time when we run out of trains and someone has a profit motive to open another competing mass transit agency, either using rail or something else.
If there’s one thing we learned from our wacky weather week, it’s that no mode of transportation, steel, asphalt, or concrete, is immune to cold harsh weather. During the ice storm, there wasn’t a soul in the region that didn’t find trouble getting around. This included rail users, of course, when both Central Link and Tacoma Link’s catenary lines iced over and rail switches along the BNSF mainline froze. Buses, however, were hit much harder– jackknifed and stranded, many were left out on streets and highways near and far while those that did keep running were slow and unreliable.
During last year’s Thanksgiving storm, Link was lauded for its smooth performance as trains whizzed by parking lot traffic on I-5 and a record number of passengers boarded. The Seattle Times took the opportunity to pit it against Thursday’s ice storm woes, with a seeming interest in demonstrating light rail’s shortfalls. Too often, though, stuff like this turns into fodder for transit opponents, who’ll use it as a case example against building rail, even when the framing is simply saying that ice is more menacing than snow (which it is).
With Link this time around, the woes were attributable to a disadvantage in the electrification technology– the overhead catenary lines froze over, something that wouldn’t have happened with a third rail system or if, say, the line were entirely subway. But you can take just about any form of transportation and improve it in some way shape or form. Just like how switch heaters and third rail help trains fend away ice, studded tires and chains help cars and buses navigate the snow.
Things like this muck up discussions and debates over mode technology, especially when people make an emotional argument against a mode because of one experience they had aboard that mode. If last November was any indication, rail does hold a commanding advantage over road-based modes in inclement weather, not because of any technological ice/snow-proof advancements but because of the physical design of the rail trackway itself.
Whether it’s the track design or higher passenger capacity offered by rail, or the greater coverage flexibility from buses, the inherent qualities of any modal technology should be the real cornerstone of the debate.
*Disclaimer: The author is currently employed by Sound Transit. However, all opinions expressed in this article are completely his own and may not reflect the views of anyone else.
Update: Not two minutes after this post went out, someone emailed this from Art Thiel, which makes the same points, plus additional ones.
Every time it snows in Seattle, you get quite a few people complaining about the response. This time even the LA Times chipped in their derision this time. Complaining itself isn’t a bad thing – we can always do better and improvement is by definition good – but the largest complaints are often about inability of the drivers (especially buses) to adequately cope with the situation. I’d like to quickly explain why our local governments might be doing the right thing, and why local drivers (especially bus operators) aren’t actually worse than those where ever the complainers think good drivers and good snow responses are. (more…)
[Update from Sherwin 3:41pm - The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for the region until 4am tomorrow morning. The freezing rain has now turned to snow for most areas, so expect more delays into the evening and tomorrow as well.]
I’m a little late to the punch here, but Metro is proposing a last-minute addition to the June service change proposal, which will probably go before the King County Council next week (and was passed out of committee last week). The proposed addition relates to Route 25, a relatively little-used route serving Eastlake, Montlake, the U-District and Laurelhurst. The idea is shown on the two map excerpts above: between Campus Parkway and the U-Village, the current alignment on 15th Ave NE and 45th St (shown in blue) would be deleted in favor of Route 25 joining Routes 65, 68, 75 and 372 on Stevens Way and Pend-Orielle Road, passing the UW HUB.
The motivation behind this change is to consolidate all the routes going between the U-District and the U-Village onto one pathway, providing a more frequent and thus more useful service on that common segment. University Heights, the neighborhood served by the current alignment of Route 25, already enjoys much more frequent service to Downtown and other destinations just to the west on 15th Ave and University Ave; the stops on 45th St are little used. The change seems uncontroversial, and it’s pretty small stuff, certainly, compared to what we’ve discussed recently.
Nevertheless, if you have feedback or questions on this suggested change, email them to Metro planner Jack Whisner (jack.whisner@kingcounty.gov). The desire to have this included with the June restructure means the period for public comment is short: it ends January 20th (yes, tomorrow).
ORCA’s Joint Board last week discussed changes and enhancements (“new work”) for the next round of implementation in June called Maintenance Release 18. Much of the new work in MR18 has to do with the website and streamlining customer service. Work to be implemented in March (MR 17) will affect back office operations: Autoload enhancements, bank holds, business account management, RapidRide card readers at stations, and transaction history.
Currently, routine Maintenance Releases are scheduled 4 times per year. Costs for new work are shared among the agencies using a complex formula based on the previous year’s ridership, except agency specific work. There is $1.5 million in the regional fund for system enhancement. The agencies will address funding beyond that amount during 2013 budget process.
Due to the publicity for this meeting, Sound Transit’s CEO, Joni Earl, opened the meeting expecting the first public comment to be ever given before the Joint Board. Alas, there was no public comment. The next Joint Board Meeting is on February 13, 2012, 10:30 am at King Street Center’s 8th floor conference center. This is your chance to let the managers and staff of all seven Puget Sound transit agencies know your thoughts about ORCA.
Summary of the meeting and work items for June, after the jump. (more…)
It’s time for our third snow open thread. Just about all agencies regionwide are in snow operations, meaning reroutes, slow buses, lengthy delays, and some canceled routes entirely. If you’re about to head out, the smart thing to do is probably turn around and stay put. Otherwise, be sure to check emergency service revisions.
Any rider-to-rider advice is welcomed in the comments.
