77 Days

May 1, 2009 at 5:16 pm
by Ben Schiendelman

Hopefully I’ll be more accurate with this one!

Last year, Salt Lake City’s UTA ordered 77 vehicles from Siemens, reportedly the largest light rail vehicle order ever in the US. I don’t know if we’ll beat that – I think it depends on whether we order all of our 2020 vehicles at the same time.

1977 marks the year that the Washington State Department of Highways became the Washington State Department of Transportation. Thirty years later, they still mostly build highways.

Initiative 348 also came in 1977 on the heels of the creation of WSDOT and the implementation of a 2 cent per gallon gas tax. It was basically an early version of I-912, the Eyman attempt to roll back the 2005 Transportation Partnership Account (the 9.5 cent gas tax).

Link Estimated to Come $138mn Under Budget

May 1, 2009 at 4:15 pm
by John Jensen

Sound Transit’s wonky Quarterly Reports have been released with valuable but very detailed information regarding the progress of various Sound Transit’s programs. Of course, ST’s big ticket item is this year’s opening of Link light rail to the airport.

One cool bit is that Link’s initial segment, opening July 18th, and the airport connection, opening this December, will come on $138 million under-budget, Sound Transit estimates.

Of course, this adopted budget is significantly different than early light rail plans that fizzled early in the decade. Sound Transit says that its since-conservative planning was used to plan the ST2 extension that voters approved last November. So maybe we don’t have to lose sleep about transit cost overruns anymore.

Meet-up Reminder; Walk-up Poll

May 1, 2009 at 10:25 am
by Martin H. Duke

This is a reminder that the deadline to pre-register for Monday’s meet-up (with surprise guest!) is tomorrow, Saturday, May 2.  Click here for details.

If you’re planning to take the pay-at-the-door-option for whatever reason, we’d appreciate it if you could email us anyway at seattletransitblog@gmail.com, so that we can get a better headcount.

Montlake Bridge Closures

May 1, 2009 at 9:00 am
by Martin H. Duke
Montlake Bridge

Photo by Voght

Hey Metro, the Montlake Bridge is going to be closed from 10am to 4pm tomorrow for the opening day of boating season.

Can we have a rider alert on the 43, 48, 271, etc?

BRT in LA on Streetfilms

May 1, 2009 at 12:37 am
by Andrew Smith

Here’s an excellent video on the Orange BRT in Los Angeles. It’s interesting to see rail-emulation features of the line: dedicated right-of-way, off-board payment, low-floors, etc. However, on my trip on the Orange Line I noticed that some sections of the line the bus went through normal traffic on normal city streets. I also learned in a bit of research that, somewhat ironically, a part of the line was built on an old railway right-of-way Los Angeles County owned. The tracks were removed.  The line saw about 26,600 per day riders last year and cost about $330 million to build in 2004.

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