[UPDATE: As commenter Chris points out (and confirmed in the report), the $200m in savings on Moving Forward is actually due to putting less money into the Battery St. tunnel and the viaduct North of Lenora St. Most or all of this money would have to be put back in for the Surface/Transit option. This reduces the Surface/Transit option savings to roughly $100m-300m plus overruns. We're still peeling the onion.]
I just chatted with Kadeena Lenz of WSDOT, who pointed me to this report (pdf). The Moving Forward project cost has dropped from $1.1 billion to $900m due to some unanticipated savings from not having to redo the Battery Street tunnel; of that, $300m is supposed to come from the Port of Seattle, and $600m from the State.
McGinn doesn’t include port contributions in the budget, so I think it’s fair to score this as a $600m $800m shortfall in his budget plans, not $1.1 billion. (Split the difference!). To get his surface/transit plan, delete the $1.9 billion tunnel from the chart above, add $553m for I-5 improvements, about $170m for transit, and about $200m more for local roads. Then remove $400m in tolling, and you get a little under $600m $800m not covered by the State, the feds, or the Port of Seattle.
Oddly, aside from the moving forward issue, McGinn’s cost estimates for surface/transit are about $175m higher than Nickels, so you can give him credit for that difference if you like. It also has to be said that the cost overrun risk is lower for surface/transit than the tunnel.
The bottom line: assuming the State and Port are willing to spend $2.7 billion no matter what, surface/transit is cheaper for the City and County by $300m-$500m $100m-$300m, but it isn’t free.
Mike McGinn has a response to the yesterday’s Nickels challenge. He identifies the funding sources and sketches out a $2.4 billion budget for surface/transit that fits the revenue. That’s more than you can say for the deep-bore tunnel, which is currently roughly $1 billion short in identified sources.
The Nickels campaign identified the surface/transit total cost as $3.5 billion. Looking at the chart, it appears the key discrepancy is that Nickels includes $1.1 billion for “Moving forward” projects (the work already underway on the North and South ends.)
It’ll take some more digging to resolve the discrepancy.
A day after the City’s Metro service cut meeting, the Great City Initiative (founded by someone named Mike McGinn) is hosting a brown bag on the proposed repeal of the head tax.
I’m of two minds about this issue. On the one hand, even if revenues are coming in ahead of schedule, there’s no shortage of need for small-bore projects like sidewalks. On the other hand, I agree with Tim Burgess that a higher parking tax is a much more transparent and lightweight way to discourage SOV driving into downtown. Retailers, of course, might feel differently. Anyway, as long as the parking tax increases in line with the head tax reduction, I feel no particular attachment to that revenue source.
I wish somebody would get me a job downtown so that I could attend some of these. Press release below the jump. (more…)
Amtrak Cascades #517 departing Seattle by Brian Bundridge
[Update 2 from Brian Bundridge: The Amtrak Reservations System now has the train available, starting August 20, 2009. The trip is slated to be 8 hours and 15 minutes to cover the 320 mile distance with a cost between $48 to $65 one way between Vancouver, B.C. and Portland, Oregon]
[Update from Brian Bundridge: The Amtrak Reservations System curently does not show the additional train in the computers yet. This should be fixed sometime this week.]
WSDOT reports that the second Amtrak Cascades round trip to Vancouver BC, extending the existing round trip that currently terminates in Bellingham, will begin service on Wednesday the 19th. The new service is expected to maintain the existing schedules, with a Vancouver morning departure at 6:40, and an evening arrival at 10:45.
For people like me who enjoy spending a weekend in Vancouver, this will make a Friday departure from Seattle feasible for an extra night. This is the first through service between Portland and Vancouver since 1979, when the Amtrak Pacific International left Vancouver at 11:25 am and arrived in Portland at 8:25 pm. This is also the first change to Seattle-Vancouver service since the current round trip started fifteen years ago.
At the moment, this train is only a pilot project. Service will only last until after the Olympics and Paralympic Games this winter. This would be a great time to talk to your state representatives and senators about fighting to keep this service operating!
There’s a whole McGinn-Nickels spat right now over the deep-bore tunnel, one that has a few more hard numbers than usual. Dominic Holden at Slog has the best rundown of those numbers.
To summarize, Nickels has numbers showing that the surface/transit option costs the City $936m — slightly more than the deep-bore tunnel ($930m plus overruns), because the State would reduce its contribution in accordance with the $700m difference in cost.*
McGinn has the beginnings of a good response here, but its validity depends on three ultimately empirical questions**:
1. To what extent can State gas tax money be diverted to those $936m in costs under the Constitution?
2. Is the “City pays for overruns” thing enforceable or not? I haven’t heard a legal opinion from anyone without a direct stake in the viaduct fight.
3. Could McGinn negotiate a better deal with the State?
Perhaps a legal mind better than mine can answer the first two of these questions. Kerry Murakami of the Post-Globe attempts to answer the third by asking some State legislators.
*Partly because the anticipated $400m from tolling would evaporate.
**Assuming the Nickels numbers aren’t shown to be inaccurate.
There were two press releases from the County Council about Executive Triplett’s Metro budget proposal:
First, Julia Patterson, who was one backer of the “Council Plan” last week, criticized the Triplett plan for not doing enough to cut waste and therefore triggering more bus service cuts than necessary, as well as cutting too deeply into Metro’s operating reserve.
Second, Councilmember and Executive Candidate Dow Constantine also criticized the plan for cutting too deeply, while otherwise stressing his common ground with Triplett.
The rhetoric about cutting waste is premature prior to the report on the September 1 audit. However, there are very real differences between the Triplett and Council plans, listed below the fold:
UPDATE: I’m told it’ll be Triplett attending, but not Constantine.
I really wish I could make this, but the City of Seattle is hosting a brown bag meeting at noon, August 12, at Seattle City Hall. Many key players will be there.
It’s unclear to me if they’re going to introduce anything that we haven’t covered already, but if anyone has the time to attend we’d appreciate a report in the comments, or you could even email us a guest report!
On Wednesday, Aug. 12 join Seattle City Council’s Transportation Committee for a special noontime session.
The format is designed to engage decision-makers and stakeholders in a frank conversation about looming Metro budget shortfalls and what they may mean to Seattle transit riders.
The discussion will include members of the city’s Transportation Committee, King County Council Chair Dow Constantine, Metro General Manger Kevin Desmond, as well representatives from the Downtown Seattle Association, Transportation Choices Coalition and city neighborhoods. Acting King County Executive Kurt Triplett is also invited.
Attendees will hear a presentation of proposed changes in service by Metro transit and a discussion by the panel participants, followed by audience questions.
Who: Seattle City Council Transportation Committee
What: Brown Bag meeting on Metro service cuts
When : Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009 – 12 noon
Where: City Hall, 600 Fourth Avenue – Council Chambers, Floor 2
Bike sharing is slowly coming to North America, and King County is kicking off the conversation in Seattle with a Expo today at the SLU Discovery Center (10am to 6pm) and tomorrow at Redmond Town Center (noon to 8pm). DC had the first bike sharing system in North America, but it failed to deliver due to a small and dispersed bike station network. This summer Montreal unveiled the first real bike share system in North America. Called Bixi, the system has 3,000 bikes and 300 stations. Bixi is similar to Paris’ Velib and other bike share systems in many ways. Hallmarks of the most successful systems are:
Electronic, subscription based systems that make riders accountable for bicycles while they are checked out (see Copenhagen’s city bike program for why)
Fare structures that encourage short rentals and thus high turnover (rentals shorter than 30 minutes are typically free)
A large, dense network of biking sharing stations (Paris’ stations are spaced at internals of 1000 ft)
Privately operated by advertising companies that are given adverting monopolies in the city (two big companies are Clear Channel and JCDecaux)
Unique, well maintained and theft determent bikes (Bixi won several design competitions for their bikes)
Real time management of the number of bikes at each station (from personal experience I know Barcelona does this very poorly while Paris does much better)
Implementation accompanied by significant investment in bicycle network infrastructure
Metro has already sent out a Request For Information so hopefully this event won’t just be a tease and something will come of it. Stop by today or tomorrow and check it out.
All serious Seattle candidates say they’ll fight for transit, but Mayor Greg Nickels has an especially sterling record on this score. On the most important issue facing this region — whether or not to build rail — Nickels has been on the right side of the argument, and in the cockpit of many of the key decisions. As Sound Transit enters another decade of crucial and complex projects, we want his voice to maintain the region’s focus on our ultimate goals.
As Mayor, one’s ability to impact transit operations is limited. However, Nickels has a solid record of finding ways to make a difference and to deliver. Through the Bridging the Gap levy, Nickels funded bus lanes, bicycle lanes, and partnered with Metro to get additional bus service outside the 20/40/40 framework. Nickels also put his political capital on the line for the Streetcar network — one that we support, and one that continues to be controversial.
We’re also pleased with the Mayor’s general willingness to overcome “neighborhood activists” to provide the livable density that is both an environmental imperative and critical to a livable, vibrant city. In liberal Seattle, associating oneself with the interests of Paul Allen can be risky, but we’re very excited about the path that South Lake Union has taken under the Mayor’s leadership.
Most important, however, is the Mayor’s instrumental leadership of Sound Transit. As Chair of the Sound Transit Board, Nickels was the critical player in getting Sound Transit 2 on the ballot in 2008, a move that looks even better in hindsight than it did then. It is his legacy.
That’s not to say that we have no disagreements with Nickels. In particular, we think he gave in too easily to other interests on both the Waterfront Streetcar and the deep-bore tunnel. We are especially concerned that enormous expenditure on the tunnel could crowd out the city’s other transportation priorities. But these concerns are balanced against a long record of leadership and results on our regional priorities.
We should also say a few good words about Mike McGinn. Mr. McGinn’s passion to build light rail at all costs is not quite that of Nickels, but his stance on the issues matches ours nearly perfectly. Indeed, if there were no incumbent in this race, McGinn would be a strong contender for our endorsement. However, given an incumbent with a strong record on the issues and a history of cutting through Seattle process to achieve results, substantial agreement is not enough to win our endorsement.
One reason I try to steer this blog into a fairly narrow focus on transit and land-use is that there’s no fundamental reason that pro-transit views have to go along with progressive ones, and I’d like to keep the pro-transit tent as big as possible. Although I’m pretty sure the whole staff is left of center to varying degrees and we all voted for Obama, there’s no reason to start going off on pro-lifers or whatever and alienating people that might just be interested in a decent alternative to congestion.
Additionally, I find it fairly perverse and frustrating that land use, parking, and zoning is one area where the conservative/libertarian ideology seems not to follow through. Given that these issues tend to tear apart progressives, allies on the right would be useful in bringing about positive local change.
This is all a roundabout way of introducing a not-especially-new Infrastructurist interview with pro-transit conservative William Lind. In the interview, Lind brings hundreds of words with serious intellectual firepower, and doesn’t once mention global warming or other environmental issues that dominate the discourse in the Seattle echo-chamber. It’s a useful reminder that there’s a whole arsenal of arguments out there that doesn’t require one to evaluate dueling climate models, ones that might win votes in the future.
Frank at OR has the details, although it’s obviously unscientific, and there is no apparent way to see if it’s from Metro, the City of Seattle, or somebody else.
Unlike most elections, we have an excellent choice of candidates in the King County Executive race. A strongly pro-transit voter could feel good about supporting a few different candidates if the voter felt strongly about some other aspect of the candidate’s platform or personality.
Nevertheless, we’ve chartered ourselves to consider the transit and land use portfolio of the candidates, and in our judgment Dow Constantine and Larry Phillips are the best of the group. Each candidate deserves your consideration.
Dow Constantine (Seattle Weekly)
Phillips and Constantine have been steadfast supporters of Sound Transit. Although there’s no immediate political action on Sound Transit on the horizon, we should see the groundwork for the Sound Transit 3 package form over the coming years. Further, it’s reasonable to expect some sort of crisis in the next few. In that event, we want an uncompromising friend of ST in the critical County Executive spot.
On Metro, Phillips has presented the most detailed plan to address Metro’s funding gap, though it is much the same as every credible plan to fix Metro’s problems. Constantine is deeply involved in addressing the Metro crisis through his chairmanship of the Regional Transit Committee. Constantine and Phillips have equally good judgment and candor to address Metro’s budget.
Both candidates represent Seattle on the King County Council and understand that cutting the highest demand routes makes no sense. Constantine received a degree in Urban Planning from UW and shows unique honesty when he says that Eastside commuter rail along the BNSF corridor is not going to happen. Phillips has a well-organized, strong campaign and when he met with us it became clear that he’s a true transit wonk.
Though he doesn’t haven’t as solid of a pro-Sound Transit record as his peers, Ross Hunter has very interesting ideas about tying bus service to density and has been critical in getting more funding authority for Metro in the legislature.
Nevertheless, we’re more impressed by Constantine and Phillips’s credentials than the others. Vote Dow Constantine or Larry Phillips for King County Executive. We hoped to endorse a single candidate, but the differences on transit between the two are simply too insignificant to make a meaningful distinction.
Our editorial board is Martin H. Duke, Ben Schiendelman, and John Jensen, with valued input from the rest of the staff. Read our Seattle City Council endorsements.
If you didn’t happen to make it to our blog meet-up last night at the Columbia City Alehouse, you missed out. First of all, going to a bar in Columbia City is a great excuse to ride our light rail line. Second, you missed great presentations from various politicos.
First up was Dow Constantine’s chief of staff, Chris Arkills. Dow’s running for Executive of King County and had planned to attend our meet-up, but the League of Women Voters failed to consult us when scheduling their candidate forum… So, instead, Dow sent a trusted adviser (and a fan of the blog) our way to talk about the West Seattle Water Taxi, Metro’s funding gap, and light rail. We’ll be endorsing for the executive race tomorrow.
Next up is Mike O’Brien, who’s running for Seattle city council, position 8. Just yesterday, we endorsed O’Brien and it was great to hear him speak. He is a very charismatic vote for land use, density, and transit. He speaks in depth about improving bus service in particular but within the confines of the abilities of the council job. Our one reservation was his hesitance to support streetcar expansion — he said he’d generally err on the side of more bus hours. For a corridor like 1st Ave in Seattle, this blog has maintained that a streetcar simply provides more efficient and better service than a bus where the density supports it. 1st Ave has that density, and we hope O’Brien comes around at least on this proposed line. O’Brien passion against the tunnel is unparalleled — well, except for one other guy…
Mike O'Brien and Mike McGinn
Last up was Mike McGinn, candidate for Mayor of Seattle. He spoke defiantly and eloquently against the SR-99 tunnel and pledged to prevent the tunnel from being built in this city. Obviously a proponent of the surface/transit option, McGinn used various questions to draw attention back to the tunnel and the resources it’ll require to build. Within a few minutes, the tunnel was compared to the monorail, Hillary Clinton, and RTID. Like O’Brien, McGinn has qualms about streetcar expansion and particularly finding a funding source for it. However, on most issues and especially land use, McGinn was convincing and earnest. We’ll be endorsing a candidate for Mayor on Monday.
After a lengthy Q&A, the Transportation Choice Coalition pub crawl met up with us and brought Jesse Israel along. We endorsed Israel for Seattle city council as well, and go to hear more of her thoughts. (She’s definitely a streetcar supporter!)
For a bit more depth, you can follow our Twittering of the meet-up. Thanks to all of you who showed up, especially the politicos who gave us their time.
There’s an important distinction that’s being lost even by knowledgeable and intelligent observers such as Scott Gutierrez of the P-I, and some people on our own staff.
RapidRide is not the same thing as Transit Now. Look at this slide from a May 20 presentation to the Regional Transit Committee:
As you can see, the original Transit Now plan — the 0.1% sales tax increase — was planned to pay for 590,000 service hours. Of that, only 100,000 service hours were devoted to RapidRide. 400,000 hours were for new conventional bus service both in “developing [read: exurban] areas” , and high ridership corridors. As the chart indicates, these 500,000 hours were subject to the 40/40/20 formula. Importantly, the RapidRide hours have some federal matching funds attached to them.
There’s a further 90,000 hours that come from “service partnerships,” where cities or corporations throw some cash (or capital improvements) into the pool. The City of Seattle, in particular, has made extensive use of this to circumvent 40/40/20.
No one will propose to cut RapidRide or the service partnerships and leave the matching funds on the table. The Triplett Plan wipes out all of the unimplemented “developing areas” and “high ridership/core” additional service. The Phillips plan, and what I’ve called the “Council Plan“, instead treats Transit Now as a separate account. Under these plans, therefore, instead of 590,000 service hours, the Transit Now extensions will amount to whatever 0.1% sales tax buys you, projected to be about 450,000 hours. That’s plenty for RapidRide, partnership service, and a whole bunch of new service to boot.
It’s also important to understand that all the Metro budget deficit and cut estimates use the full plan as a baseline. The baseline plan has about 3.65m service hours in 2009 and adds about 200,000 a year after that, thanks to both Transit Now and various WSDOT construction mitigation funds.
[UPDATE 11:42 am: Interim County Executive Kurt Triplett just proposed a different plan. The key tradeoff appears to be deeper cuts (especially to Transit Now elements that don't leverage matching funds), in exchange for stopping the fare increases at 50 cents by 2011 and not messing with the Ride Free Area. More reaction later.]
Last week, four suburban councilmembers released a plan to close Metro’s budget gap. It’s a serious proposal, with many details difficult to find from anyone running for office this year. The plan outline is here (pdf). Discussion of the plan elements and the merits of its claims are below the fold.
Dozens of pieces of email and many comments later, I’d like to follow up on what I’ve learned since yesterday’s post, and what I missed that makes me even more sure that this “post and beam” structure is not a good idea.
First, an apology to those of you from Tacoma. I was unnecessarily dismissive of the Dome District as a place for future development, and I didn’t mean for that to overshadow my argument – but that it did. Let’s say for the sake of argument that in thirty years, this area will be like the Pearl District, or at least in the process of changing, like South Lake Union. Maybe that will happen!
Next, my reasoning. As I mentioned yesterday, this is a project I’ve been well acquainted with for years. It’s not just extending Sounder to Lakewood that’s important here – as part of the state’s Point Defiance Bypass project, Amtrak Cascades will also move to this track to cut six minutes from trips in the corridor. For now, that means a total of 18 trains daily – ten Sounder, eight Amtrak – but not only might some of the Sound Transit 2 Sounder improvements add to this service, but more Amtrak Cascades service is very likely in the next few years.
And this gets us into the reason I think the berm should stay.
When post and beam proponents talk about the cost difference between the berm and their posts, they’re talking about the difference for a single track – some $1 million. They bring up the narrower profile – but that profile comes at the cost of space for a second track. In the Amtrak Cascades long range plan, a second phase exists for Point Defiance Bypass, adding a second track and increasing train speed along Interstate 5 in South Tacoma. That part of the plan would qualify for high speed rail funds, and it’s been on the books for a decade – but it’s been ignored by post and beam supporters, even though their own web site shows a graphic of two tracks on the berm. Building a second post and beam structure next to the first would be necessary in the long term, and cost nearly as much as today’s project, rather than simply being some earthwork and two new bridges.
The TOD impacts claimed by post and beam proponents also don’t hold up under scrutiny. Their web site shows images of shops and space underneath a railway, which I believe is the High Line in New York. This did happen a hundred years ago – but in the US, it’s very difficult for a public agency to incorporate (or even allow) private use or modification of their facilities. Tacoma isn’t really Manhattan, either, the demand for this kind of development wouldn’t really exist for a very, very long time even if it were possible.
What really, really rubs me the wrong way here is that this opposition group seems to be only a couple of months old, but they’re acting like they’ve been wronged. I knew about this berm in 2005. Where were they then?
In case you missed it, our meetup is tomorrow (Thursday) night at the Columbia City Ale House. People will gather around 6 and we’ll have guest speakers starting at 7. My understanding is that Transportation Choices Coalition’s pub crawl will be coming by the Ale House about 9, which is when we typically (officially) wrap up.
If you’re going to attend please say so in the comment thread of the other post. If you have an ORCA card or Link ticket there will be discounts.
Publicola helps us out by identifying another park-and-ride lot: less than a block West of MLK on Othello St., in front of a Safeway. It costs $30/month, which is a steal compared to some of the other lots.
Consult our list of other Link parking here. Share information (cost, location, operating hours) of other lots you’re aware of in the comments.
Here’s the first batch of STB endorsements. Recall that our intent is to focus entirely on transit and land use issues, and not consider (to the best of our ability) other issues. Given the relative impotence of Councilmembers to impact transit, we’re going to weight their attitude to development pretty heavily.
Our editorial board is Martin H. Duke, Ben Schiendelman, and John Jensen, with valued input from the rest of the staff.
