February 2009 – Page 2 – Seattle Transit Blog

Washington’s Stimulus Cash

February 24, 2009 by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

This is exactly why Obama should have gone around the state legislatures and given the stimulus money directly to the relevant municipalities. It’s also why it’s better that any transit funding happen later this year in the transportation bill, where there’s more time to change around funding formulas and give money for rail projects directly to the agencies that know how to spend it, instead of the state governments who will, by their makeup, disproportionately favor their more rural areas.

Bellevue Way

February 24, 2009 by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Via STB, I’m glad to see the Bellevue City Council has chosen the Bellevue Way alignment. I’m still pretty concerned about the potential for Eastsiders to fight this, however. It strikes me that the Bellevue Way alignment will probably be as controversial as the MLK alignment for Central Link, with the difference being that the property owners along Bellevue Way can afford more high-priced lawyers. We’ll see.

State Stimulus List

February 24, 2009 by Andrew Smith

Here’s a doc with the state’s stimulus list for their highway money, and here’s a map (links via Publicola). The list is all bad, and there’s not even a single project in Seattle, home to 10% of the state’s population and 30% of the state’s jobs. Nice work, Olympia!

I can’t say I expected anything different.

Bellevue City Council Chooses Bellevue Way

February 24, 2009February 24, 2009 by Andrew Smith

Update: Thanks to Bernie in the comments, we have the map and the details of what the Bellevue City Council wants. It differences quite a bit from what Sound Transit has put in the draft EIS.

Original Post: The Times is reporting that the Bellevue City Council has choosen the Bellevue Way alignment as their preference for East Link through South Bellevue (back story here). The Sound Transit board has the final say, though I have a hunch they will go along with Bellevue Way, which seems obviously better than the I-405 alignment to me. The council also picked a prefered route through Downtown Bellevue and Bel-Red.

It looks like the preferred route through South Bellevue is a modified B3, and the preferred route through downtown Bellevue is C2T. The modifed route was not studied as part of the East Link draft Environmental Impact Statement, and there’s no word on whether Sound Transit would build that route. Their prefered Bel-Red route is the D route, and was decided last week. C2T may be Bellevue’s prefered route, but they are going to have to pay for the tunnel themselves: there’s no money in the East Link plan currently for a tunnel alignment there, and the tunnel is about $700 million more than a surface alternative.

Not Quite There

February 24, 2009February 24, 2009 by Adam Bejan Parast

NE 40th Bike Lane As some of you may know it has been over a year since SDOT and the city council approved the Bicycle Master Plan. SDOT has done a great job and spent millions of dollars (via bridging the gap) to implement the plan. Recently SDOT released a progress report highlighting a lot of the work that they have already done, and plan to do over the next year.

Some of the highlights are 56 miles of new bicycle lanes and sharrows, 15 miles of signed bicycle routes, and most recently on-street bicycle parking.

As a daily bicyclist I see the benefits every day but at the same time I see things like this. On and off over the past months few months the bike lane that I use every day has been blocked by shipping containers. Now this isn’t the end of the world but to me it is still very symbolic of how bicyclist and bicycle facilities are view. They are seen as amenities, not essential infrastructure. With that attitude bicycling will not become more prevalent.

To add to the irony of all this, SDOT and the DPD are hosting a presentation, Bicycling: A Sustainable Choice by the director of Copenhagen’s DOT this Friday. Copenhagen is the standard barer of bicycling in Europe and makes Portland’s bicycle infrastructure look modest at best, not to mention how it makes ours look.

As an aside I’m a new contributor to STB. I’m currently working on a masters degree in transportation engineering at UW and I formerly blogged over at OrphanRoad.

Meet-up: Minor Schedule Change

February 24, 2009February 22, 2009 by Martin H. Duke

The doors still open at 6, but the program doesn’t start till 7:30, so no need to rush to make it there by 7.

News Round-Up: VMT Tax

February 23, 2009February 23, 2009 by Andrew Smith

10th & Commerce — 10th and Commerce, photo by raggiesoft.

The time-lapse video of one of the walkways going in at Sea-Tac is pretty cool.
Puyallup wants BRT. I wish people pushing for a particular form of transportation – including those pushing my favorite, light rail – would not say their system reduces congestion, as Puyallup spokeswoman Glenda Carino did. With the exception of some sort of tolling, congestion pricing or otherwise, nothing really reduces congestion. This BRT will just provide a nice alternative to a lot of people. Go for it, Puyallup!
The National Journal has some experts discussing the merits of the VMT tax idea John mentioned last week.
The Transport Politic had a great piece on the VMT tax, showing that the gas tax as currently collected is broken because: 1) the tax doesn’t rise with inflation, 2) people are driving less and c) people are driving more fuel efficient cars. Highly recommended that you read the whole thing.
WSDOT is holding a preliminary open house about the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement Tunnel tonight.

West Seattle
5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009
Madison Middle School
3429 45th Ave. SW, Seattle
Served by King County Metro bus routes 51, 55, 56, 57, 128
We’ll never know whether John McCain would make a good president or not, I bet he would have been fine overall. But from the standpoint of this blog’s topic, surely it’s better that we didn’t elect the guy who doesn’t know the difference between high speed rail and light rail.

South Bellevue Battle Heating Up

February 23, 2009February 22, 2009 by Andrew Smith

South Bellevue Construction - August 2008 — I-405 in South Bellevue, photo by WSDOT

In a story that should surprise no one, some residents in South Bellevue are fighting to push East Link from the Bellevue Way alignment to the I-405 alignment. You can see the two alignments here. What is surprising is just how hard they are fighting: the Surrey Downs Community Club has had an East Link comittee for two years, and every East Link open house or Bellevue city council meeting on Eastlink is full of those folks.

The mean spirited part of me almost wants the alignment to be on Bellevue Way just to spite them, but even warming that part of my cold heart, it’s difficult to argue that the Bellevue way alignment isn’t the right one. The South Bellevue park-and-ride already a has 519 stall park-and-ride facility with bike racks and bike lockers, and has good connections with buses travelling on I-90. As the Times article points out, the I-405 alignment would put a station on 118th St, which is a two-lane street. Not just that, but the daily ridership of Eastlink with the 405 alignment would get 1,000 riders fewer a day than East Link with the Bellevue Way alignment. It’d be a shame if the NIMBYs got their way on this one.

News Round Up

February 22, 2009February 22, 2009 by Andrew Smith

The Seattle Weekly’s blog has a photo of a chandelier going up in Mt Baker station. I still haven’t been inside that station.
I agree with the first letter
here for the most part, that basically density requirements around transit stations make much more sense in Seattle than in Sumner and I’m not really sure density requirements around Sounder stations make sense at all. Sumner, for example, has 8,500 people in 6.7 square miles. That’s less than two people per acre net density. Even if you get a net density of 10 in the half-mile radius around the station there, you add 5,000 people to that city, more than 50% of its current population. Does anyone believe that all of those people would take one of the eight daily Sounder runs? Thankfully that requirement got striped out of HB 1490, it really only made sense in Seattle where zoning was that high anyway.
The second letter there is good for a laugh.
We now know the name of the bus driver arrested for selling drugs on the number 42 bus, Ricky Beavers. He’s out on $50,000 bail, and I think I know where the money came from.
I think my coverage of the stimulus has been much better than Mike Lindblom‘s, if I do say so myself, and I don’t mean that as a complement to myself. That Times piece is nothing more than paraphrasal of the PSRC’s press release. No wonder the Times is running out of money and the P-I is ceasing print production.

February Passes Good Through Early March

February 22, 2009February 22, 2009 by John Jensen

I went into Bartell Drugs Sunday night to buy some bus tickets (a book of $1.75 tickets at $21) and found an announcement indicating that the March PugetPasses were having some manufacturing issues. The local transit agencies will be accepting February PugetPasses into March. You find more information on Metro’s website.

And yes, most of our media relations with Metro are done in the form of announcements posted at Bartell Drugs.