July 7, 2009 at 8:29 pm
by Oran Viriyincy
 Photo by the Author Link light rail runs at grade on Martin Luther King Jr Way S with street traffic and pedestrians crossing the track at regular intervals. Coordinating signals to ensure that trains and cross traffic flow safely with minimal delays is an ongoing process that will continue after light rail opens for service.
Do you have questions about how traffic signals work together with Link light rail signals? If you do, please leave them in the comments. I will be meeting with an SDOT signal operations engineer this Thursday and will try to have your questions answered.
July 7, 2009 at 1:05 pm
by Adam Bejan Parast
 Ray LaHood at Sound Transit O&M Facility Yesterday, an assortment of federal, state and local elected officials welcomed US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to Seattle. LaHood, who has been something of an unknown quantity when it comes to transportation, is maturing into what I believe many progressive transportation advocates have been dreaming for. This comes as a surprise, due to his background as a Republican Congressman from the relatively small city of Peoria, Illinois.
The first sentences out of his mouth praised Seattle for creating such a livable city and limiting sprawl. Unlike what the name of his official blog, The Fast Lane, suggests, he has been surprisingly vocal in his support of livable, walkable, and bikable communities as well as high speed rail and all modes of transit. Last month, under his leadership, the USDOT, EPA and HUD formed an interagency partnership for sustainable communities which will coordinate and align efforts of all three agencies to improve the livability of our cities.
All of this has attracted the scorn of Newsweek’s George Will after LaHood implied that the federal government should encourage and support less auto dependent lifestyles. Obviously, George thinks that’s a bad thing:
LaHood, however, has been transformed. Indeed, about three bites into lunch, the T word lands with a thump: He says he has joined a “transformational” administration: “I think we can change people’s behavior.” Government “promoted driving” by building the Interstate Highway System—”you talk about changing behavior.” He says, “People are getting out of their cars, they are biking to work.” High-speed intercity rail, such as the proposed bullet train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, is “the wave of the future.” And then, predictably, comes the P word: Look, he says, at Portland, Ore.
(more…)
July 7, 2009 at 11:30 am
by Brian Bundridge
For those that asked; I have uploaded photos of two trains: the Southern Pacific 4449 on its journey out to Spokane, Washington and ultimately to Train Festival 2009 in Owosso, Michigan, and Disney’s “A Christmas Carol” display train in Seattle. I was quite busy =P
Click on the photos to see the gallery!
 SP 4449 by Mesa, WA by Brian Bundridge  The Disney Carolers by Brian Bundridge
July 7, 2009 at 5:01 am
by Martin H. Duke
 Another part of the June 17 Regional Transit Committee meeting was another round of discussion of Metro cuts. Once again, the Committee punted on giving Metro firm guidance on service cuts, instead holding out hopes that painless internal cuts can close the gap. The Metro presentation, which contains little new information, is available here.
Seattle Councilmember Jan Drago was something of an exception (43:00 in the video), as she read into the record a letter from the City requesting that:
- service reductions should be treated as “suspensions” rather than “cuts”, so that they would not be subject to the usual subarea criteria;
- emphasize ridership, transit-dependent communities, growth management goals, and slowed implementation of Transit Now, in that order. Transit Now investments that leverage external funding would be retained.
- Metro develop a “moderate ridership impact” scenario that falls between the high-ridership, pure-productivity approach and one that essentially cuts a bit from everything.
Drago remarked that the high productivity plan resulted in an “unacceptable” loss of 40% of Eastside riders, while the other plans were unacceptable to the West subarea ridership.
Both Issaquah Councilmember Fred Butler and Sammamish Councilmember Kathy Huckabay spoke in favor of higher fares to close the gap, in conjunction with various unspecified efficiency improvements.
The King County Council must decide on a cuts policy by September to allow them to go into effect by February, although there’s talk of delaying the decision to January 2010 and the actual cuts till June 2010. By burning through more cash reserves this way, the Council might get more time to scrounge for cash, and, it must be said, postpone a decision till after the election.
July 6, 2009 at 4:45 am
by Martin H. Duke
 Photo by citywalker Two tidbits from the June 17 Regional Transit Committee meeting, on which I’ll file a more full report later. Go to 1:45:00 in the video to follow along at home:
- When the Columbia and Seneca St. viaduct offramps are torn down with the rest of the viaduct in 2015-2016, the planned route for West Seattle RapidRide (and indeed, most buses from West Seattle) will follow SR99 until it reaches a new King St. offramp. From there, buses will make their way to the 3rd Avenue “transit spine” by using some combination of Main and Washington Streets. The city will upgrade the route with various transit enhancements, possibly signal priority, a transit lane, or queue jumps.
- West Seattle RapidRide (the “C” Line) has long been scheduled for a September 2011 opening. Now that tunneling details have emerged, Metro staff is concerned that opening the line then — when both SR99 and 1st Ave S are hosed — would really harm the RapidRide brand by not at all being rapid. While all the additional service hours would still appear on schedule, the branded elements of RapidRide (special paint jobs, fancy shelters, some off-board payment, arrival boards) may be delayed until 2012, when the Ballard line happens to be opening.
View the RapidRide C project page here. An earlier reaction to the RapidRide project is here.
July 5, 2009 at 8:22 am
by Martin H. Duke
Via Greater Greater Washington, Infrastructurist names 11 great, demolished train stations. No prize for guessing #1. 6 more here.
While we’re on the subject of intercity rail, Frank at OR points to this great NY Times Magazine piece on California HSR.
And on a completely unrelated note, the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel will be closing at 7pm each night this week. Buses will be diverted onto the surface streets.
July 4, 2009 at 4:02 pm
by Martin H. Duke
Lots of people have been emailing us about the news that Canada’s government has agreed to fund the border guards to allow a second Seattle-Vancouver round trip, one that will go all the way to Portland.
It’ll leave here in the evening, and come back in the morning.
According to the Times, it’ll start next month. The bad news is that the fix is temporary: it’s only through the Paralympic Games, which finish March 21, 2010.
I’m sure Brian will be back with more, but please resume your weekend merrymaking.
July 4, 2009 at 9:38 am
by Martin H. Duke
 Beacon Hill Station (Sound Transit) Thursday’s photo of UW Station set up a barrage of complaints in the comments about how ugly the station is. Art-hating barbarian that I am, my problem is much less the design of the station than the fact that it’s an isolated structure.
The quarter-mile radius around light rail stations are extremely valuable properties with which to do intensive land use. There’s a somewhat less valuable band out to a half-mile, and of course that’s often further constrained by topology, etc.
I’ve already ranted about how Husky Stadium isn’t very intensive land use, but Sound Transit isn’t doing us any favors by falling in love with the plaza-in-a-park design. You see this at Husky Stadium, Beacon Hill, to a lesser extent at Mt. Baker, and to a small degree even the other Rainier Valley stations.
I’m sure that promising to bring a plaza or a park is a much better selling point to the community than saying you’re going to bring a whole bunch more residents. Nevertheless, I’d be all for incorporating stations into a much larger building built directly on top of, or immediately adjacent to, the station, as is done at many of the downtown stations.
July 2, 2009 at 6:18 pm
by Brian Bundridge
 SP 4449 by Brian Bundridge 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.
Feel free to add on to the calendar!
Have a great and safe 4th of July!
July 2, 2009 at 8:15 am
by Martin H. Duke
 University of Washington Station U-Link opens in 2016.
Central Link (Westlake to Seatac) is 16 miles long.
Lots of items on this last day before the long weekend: (more…)
July 1, 2009 at 3:13 pm
by Martin H. Duke
 Photo by Slack Action 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.
July 1, 2009 at 12:05 pm
by Martin H. Duke
 Photo by Joshua Putnam 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.
July 1, 2009 at 5:59 am
by Martin H. Duke
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 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.
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