The report has a lot of detail. Looking at the 2009 report (should have looked at 2010 since this is a “planning” report and 2009 uses 2007 data) there’s some interesting numbers for the 550. Eastbound and Westbound are relatively balanced during the commute, as I would expect. The data is hard to actually interpret without a 2007 schedule. For example for AM Peak they list more Pass/ Rev Hr Westbound but more Pass/Trip Eastbound. The numbers are pretty close and you can tell that eastbound buses are slightly more crowded but there’s a few more trips westbound. You can’t get an actual head count without knowing the number of trips but given that they have more service westbound there’s still more people going into jobs in Seattle than doing the “reverse” commute. Evenings there are more people going into Seattle than coming to the eastside which makes sense. What’s slightly surprising is that trend is true by an even wider margin for night service. I guess people take cabs home? But what’s weird is total eastbound boardings were 2,887 and total westbound was only 2,773. Which would seem to indicate people moving from their apartment on Capital Hill into their cubical at Microsoft at a much greater rate than expected :=

Or just click this link: http://seattletransitblog.com/2009/11/20/mcginn-wants-your-ideas/#comment-83634

It has for each ST Express route, Sounder and Link: route history, a historical ridership graph, performance assessment data grouped by weekdays and weekends including daily boardings, passengers/trip, pass/revenue hour, cost/boarding and an assessment score, boarding activity broken down by time of day, and stop level boardings/alightings. The depth of information for each route is much greater than what Metro provides.

http://soundtransit.org/x1195.xml

Or Metro’s just a black hole from which information never escapes.

To be fair, KC Metro is has been much more forth coming with information than ST which says on their website, “Not all Sound Transit reports and publications are available online. If there is a specific item that you would like to review, please contact us.” Yeah thanks, file a public information disclosure act action. Metro provides ridership data by route broken down into peak period, vs midday vs night and route justification scores. ST provides yearly data not even broken down by route number.

Regarding the 11 re-electrification, it was shot down along with the route 15 and 18 re-electrifications because Metro didn’t have the gumption to fight a small number of NIMBY neighbors. Besides, attitudes have changed and people in Madison Park want to fight global warming just like other Seattlelites…okay, maybe not exactly like other Seattlelites, but still…

I’d also say we have to really think about the true cost of any minimum parking requirements. For a development with an underground garage that is roughly $40,000 per space and an additional $400/year in maintenance costs. Should we really be asking anyone who wants to rent or buy space in the building to subsidize car storage if they don’t want it?

As I said earlier, I’d be for eliminating parking minimums entirely within Seattle and even imposing parking maximums in especially dense areas with good walking/transit access.

The worst thing would be to impose excessive suburban style parking requirements where a space has to be provided for every possible employee or customer in commercial space and every possible tenant over the age of 16 for residential. This leads to the sort of stupidity where a 1000 sqft restaurant has to have 15 parking spaces or a 3 bedroom apartment has to have 4.5 spaces available for use.

I don’t have the answer, but the first step is to recognize everybody’s expectations/needs. Suburbanites will shop at the malls if they have to pay for inner-city parking. Seattle businesses are right that they suffer because of this (maybe?). And sometimes city dwellers do have to drive somewhere, or want to invite their relatives/friends into town for an evening without a $10 parking bill. And handicapped people who can’t walk far or uphill are another issue.

Almost everybody is obsessed with free parking, including city dwellers. They circle for half an hour looking for an on-street space (free after 6pm, and always cheaper than the pay lots). I lowered my stress by sometimes being willing to use a pay lot, and to pay for my suburban friends’ parking when I direct them to such.

So clearly the problem is the “free parking” mentality. But on the other hand, $10 for a few hours is a lot of money. So a reasonable compromise would be $1-3 everywhere. Of course, we can’t dictate prices to private lots. And there remains the fact that the suburbs have free parking everywhere, and it’s seen as a basic right.

I live in a 1920s building with no parking, but I think that building new condos with no parking is totally unrealistic. If 5% of Lake City residents don’t drive regularly, putting in 5% fewer parking spaces than units is a reasonable compromise for now. On Capitol Hill, residents regularly lease parking spaces in neighboring buildings if their building is full. That may be less feasable in less dense areas, but it’s a point worth considering.

Re handicapped parking, all street parking is free with a disability permit. The city does this as a concession because there aren’t enough disability spaces. Some private lots have disability spaces but charge regular rates for them, as in the Seattle Center lot.

Doing some digging the land for the two properties are NC3-65 (“pedestrian-oriented shopping district”) From what I can tell per city code 23.54.015 in commercial zones 1 parking spot is required for each dwelling unit. Though I am not entirely sure how each of the projects has more parking spots then units and I am not sure what if there are any differences in parking requirements for “pedestrian-oriented shopping district” over auto oriented zones. Never the less there are many apartment buildings in commercial zones as city code allows this.

I really don’t understand what you’re proposing or what you’re trying to achieve, but in general I’d say that connecting riders with destinations is the important thing and trolleywire optimization games are very much a second-order concern, unless changes incur a lot of capital cost.

Alas, they’ll just read Drudge instead of watching FNC. ;-)

Thanks for the temperate reply. And I admit that I no longer live in Seattle so my view of 125th and LCW is definitely out of date. It may in fact be possible for a two person family living there to have one car only.

That said, Patrick sort implied that the number of spaces in those developments are decided by Seattle ordinance and that the developers would prefer to include fewer spaces if they were allowed to. Does anyone know what the mandated number of spaces for new apartment development in Lake City is? If so, can you please post it so we can see if in fact the developers are exactly at the mandated minimum or have exceeded it?

That will tell us whether Zach’s proposal number 2 would have any effect. If the developers are going to build at least one space per unit anyway then sure, revoke the ordinance. But don’t expect any change to development patterns.

I will say that if there is such an ordinance and it’s citywide, it probably should at a minimum be modified to reward non-car development in certain areas of the city that can support it.

What do you think about the idea of the diesel 48 running the south end of the #8 and putting the 8 on 23rd to save wire? The replacement electric “717″ on 23rd would need layover space in the north U-district, but that’s not as hard to come by as is space at the south end.

Since the 717 is in nearly all of the Rapid Trolleybus options it seems likely that those additional service hours including the layover time are baked in the cake. The #8 could terminate at Mt. Baker TC or go all the way down Rainier to keep the Rainier Beach to Seattle Center service depending on the budget. If it turned at Mt. Baker there would be no increase in service or layover hours.