We all know the state legislature is far too busy trying to patch the budget hole to do anything like avoid catastrophic transit cuts or deter the murder of cyclists on the streets. But there’s always time to mess around with transit priority! Publicola:
The bill, ostensibly aimed at encouraging private transit services like Microsoft’s Connector buses to Redmond, would also open up bus lanes to charter vans, airport shuttles, and unspecified “private nonprofit transportation provider vehicles.”
It would also allow those vehicles to park in park-and-rides at all hours…
Unbelievably, the Senate passed SB 657046-1. The 43rd District’s Ed Murray was the only one to vote against this bill. Dale Brandland (R-Bellingham) and Bob McCaslin (R-Spokane Valley) didn’t vote.
I don’t think a measure along these lines is necessarily bad policy, but this bill doesn’t contain anywhere near the protections necessary to prevent private operators from fouling up public transit. It allows exclusion of private operators only when agencies can claim a threat to safety in transit lanes, or the off-peak utilization in park-and-rides is at least 90%.
It doesn’t appear that there’s been any assessment of the bill’s impact on transit operations. It doesn’t offer a process for agencies to determine the impact before a private operator could, say, share an already full bus bay at peak – when transit planners today carefully manage bus loads to prevent long queues and ensure layover space.
The bill author also doesn’t appear to have a clear grasp of park and ride load (in peak or off-peak). We’ve heard from Sound Transit in the past that park and ride users tend to consider a lot ‘full’ and seek alternatives (like driving alone) somewhere between 70% and 85% of capacity. This makes sense, as users of these lots are planning their commute in advance.
Erica’s piece has more about the bill’s impacts – it doesn’t appear to have been thought through.
The Metro zone fare policy is praised for being simple, and indeed it is, even if it’s still wedded to the idea that all the jobs are in Seattle (Metro, unlike Sound Transit, doesn’t have different zones for East and South King County). If you cross the Seattle City Line, you pay a two-zone fare.
But what happens when a route drives along the city line? I found out the answer when I found myself on the 124 to the Museum of Flight. In this stretch, the east side of the road is in Seattle but the west side is in Tukwila.
Metro has resolved this dilemma by charging you a two-zone fare when you leave the border area, regardless of which direction you go. If you think it through, it’s a solution that successfully avoids any possible fare-avoidance shenanigans using Link.
Yesterday’s Downtown Bellevue open house for the new C-segment alternatives was rather uneventful, to say the least. As expected, the meeting was very similar to the first downtown open house last November, when public comment was being taken for the original DEIS alternatives. The Surrey Downs East Link Committee was out in full force handing out yellow literature asking for attendees to support B7 and C14E, two alignments we believe are simply the wrong way for East Link to go. As an incentive, they also handed out lollipops along with the flyers. Among the rest of the attendees, I recognized a few folks there as those who attended our meet-up last Thursday.
Katie Kuciemba, community outreach specialist for East Link, informed me that this time around, instead of allowing attendees to draw on the map plots, ST would be taking more general comments in lieu of people lamenting their individual qualms about the alignments. The overall mood of the open house was much tamer in comparison to last November’s, as there seemed to be a more balanced showing of supporters for each alternative. Below are some brief highlights of the evening presentation, much of which is old news:
With ST’s revenue forecast down 20% due to the recession, Don Billen quickly highlighted the appeal in the lowered costs of the downtown segments linked by an alternative B2A/112th Ave NE connector.
The downside to C14E’s restricted walking access was glaring, as Bernard Van de Kamp, Bellevue Regional Projects Manager, highlighted the Hospital Station’s more northernly placement, and its subsequent failure to effectively serve auto-row, an area that has been by marked as an ‘prime’ TOD zone by C14E supporters.
Van de Kamp also referred to the downtown ‘wedding cake’ node in saying that C14E was “not as good as the other alternatives” in serving the central core.
None of the questions explicitly criticized any single alignment, but were mostly logistical and objective queries.
Next Monday evening, the council is scheduled to hear public comments on the downtown segment. We’ll have more as soon as an exact time is scheduled.
Publicola has their ears to the ground and hears that the Seattle City Council seems unlikely to support a 12th Ave Couplet for the First Hill Streetcar:
A majority of the City Council now appears inclined to choose a route for the First Hill streetcar that avoids 12th Avenue and extends north all the way to Aloha down Broadway, assuming Sound Transit can come up with the money, council sources say.
A group of Capitol Hill residents has argued that the streetcar on 12th Ave. would precipitate economic development there; however, others (including PubliCola) have argued that the Sound Transit board voted to place the streetcar on First Hill as compensation for eliminating the neighborhood’s light rail stop.
A northward Aloha extension funded on Sound Transit’s dime seems unlikely, given the significant revenue gap that the transit agency is facing. It seems smart to partially design the extension so it would be easy to apply for federal funding in the future.
A few factoids that didn’t get to me in time for Monday’s Whatcom Transit piece, courtesy of WTA spokesperson Maureen McCarthy:
50% of WTA’s overall ridership is on these GO Lines.
“The cost for banners, shelters, shelter graphics and stop signs was approximately $250,000. There was also a budget for advertising and promotion, but the major costs of implementation were increased service hours and the $250K above.”
A survey shows that 37% of riders on GO lines are choice riders, who say they would otherwise drive alone.
For those of you who will be available this evening, this is a friendly reminder that Sound Transit is having their second Downtown Bellevue open housetonight from 4pm to 7pm (the presentation will begin at 5pm). The open house is expected to be considerably similar to the one held last November, when the original DEIS alternatives were being discussed. Today’s meeting will take public input on the four newer alternatives recently studied in a joint analysis (PDF) by ST and Bellevue, two of which look hot, the other two not so much. It will be held on the first-floor concourse of the Bellevue City Hall on the corner of NE 4th St and 112th Ave NE.
Expect the main battlefront to be situated around those for Wallace’s C14E alignment, and those against. There will also likely still be straggling B7 supporters, who are now finally facing mounting opposition from neighborhood residents in Mercer Slough and Enatai. We’ve editorialized multiple times against numerous disadvantages that the freeway alternative has across a number of levels. Below are links to our “recent” East Link coverage:
Last year’s recap of the South Bellevue open house, and the downtown recap.
Kevin Wallace introduces his ‘Vision Line’ proposal and his response to your initial concerns.
Previously, I wrote about how the quality of a transfer is affected by headways of the two transit lines, usually rail and bus. While this certainly is the most important determinant, the physical design of transfer stations is also important in creating higher quality transfer experiences. Walking time is important, and correspondingly factored into travel demand models.
Factors harder to quantify are also important. How visible is the connection? Do you have to cross a street? Is there weather protection? Are there seats? Transfer stations should communicate a unified and easy to use system which is approachable by those that don’t usually take transit or buses. Essentially, quality transfer stations are necessary to effectively motivate users to transfer, but insufficient on their own.
To illustrate this point I took two videos of transfers between Stockholm’s Metro (Tunnelbana Red Line T13), and two different bus terminals. The video above is exactly what you want to do. The video below is exactly what you don’t want to do. To simply say a transfer is “only 900 ft” or “only takes 3 minutes”, is missing the point. There is a good way to do it and a bad way to do it. Of course the transfer quality shouldn’t be the only factors looked at, but it certainly shouldn’t be overlooked.
In a few days I’ll be interviewing Darlene Pahlman, senior engineer on SDOT’s MLK Signaling project. I’ll be talking through how signal priority is working for Link. If you have anything you’d like me to ask her, please offer it in the comments.
USDOT announced their TIGER (Transporation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants today (PDF), which go to a variety of transportation projects nationwide. There were hopes that extending Link to S. 200th St could be accelerated 8 years to 2012, but those hopes died today.
UPDATE from Sherwin 6:54pm: To settle the confusion on exactly when the S. 200th extension will open, I emailed Geoff Patrick, ST spokesperson, about the matter. Here’s what he had to say:
The ST2 Plan has this project at 2020. There has been general discussion about the possibility of moving up the project since we have already finished the preliminary design and environmental work to South 200th. However, that is a significant policy decision that has not yet been taken up by the Sound Transit Board.
Andrew Austin, Policy Associate for Transportation Choices Coalition, is in Olympia today and reports that HB 2855, which would have provided new taxing authority to maintain transit service in King and Snohomish Counties, was not put to a vote by the House leadership. (Seattle representative Frank Chopp is the Speaker of the House.)
Bills had to pass out of their originating house by 5 pm today, so the bill’s failure to advance means means there will be no relief this session. We’ll have more in the coming days.
As reported in the Beacon Hill Blog and later in Publicola, three groups of SE Seattle residents have appealed the City’s attempt to fast-track finally proceed with upzones of the neighborhoods surrounding the Beacon Hill, Mt. Baker, and Othello stations.
There were also dueling columns in BHB: one by appeal signatory Frederica Miller Merrell, and an opposing one by BHB columnist Melissa Jonas. The prehearing for the Beacon Hill and Mt. Baker appeals have already occurred; Othello’s is at the Seattle Municipal Tower today at 10am. The hearing will be March 15th. If I read the DPD website correctly, there are hearings about Beacon Hill on March 9 and April 7.
If my neighborhood (Columbia City) comes up, I’ll be sure to attend; density is what creates truly walkable neighborhoods, by providing the economic intensity to support lots of businesses close together. The least that cities can do is remove regulatory obstacles to free-market attempts to provide that density.
Proposed Upzone - 25 ft on about 4 square blocks
[UPDATE: For those looking for the plan in dispute go here]
[UPDATE 2/16 7:30 am: Publicola says the bill is in trouble in the House.
UPDATE 2/16 12:00 pm: To lookup your legislator go here.]
HB 2855 is the bill that would allow a temporary $20 increase in automobile license fees and therefore avoid budget cuts in many of Washington’s transit agencies. This $20 increase can be enabled by a simple vote of each agency’s governing board (in King County’s case, the County Council). A further $30 is available to certain counties (basically, Puget Sound*) with a public vote. Bertolet says the $20 fee would provide Metro $28m/year, or about 224,000 service hours. We have 50,000 hours in service cuts planned through 2011, and about 385,000 in the two years after that. Arithmetic tells us a $40 fee should put Metro right on track for its pre-recession plans.
I don’t have the revenue figures for the CT district on hand, but a tax rise should enable the agency to buy back at least the elimination of Sunday Service, which would take about 48,000 service hours to restore completely. Most, but I don’t believe all, other transit agencies in the State actually have some sales tax authority remaining, although sales tax increases require a public vote.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the last day for it to get it out of the House. Transportation Choices has an action page allowing you to email your legislators. If it passes the House there are still obstacles in the Senate and the Governor’s office. Senate Transporation Chair Mary Margaret Haugen (D-Camano Island) is reportedly opposed, and Governor Gregoire chose to veto a $20 measure last year.
* Population > 1m; population > 500,000, adjacent to > 1m; population 200,000, adjacent to > 500,000. The Venn diagram suggests the second category is entirely enclosed by the third, but whatever…
Smaller transit systems generally don’t have the funding to have fast, frequent service, nor the demand to justify it. However, over the last few years Whatcom Transit has found a way to make their regular bus service a little more appealing.
It’s called the “go lines” program. No route in WTA’s system has consistent 15-minute headways, but there are signficant corridors where they collectively meet that standard. Beginning in 2005 with three lines, WTA rolled out a color-coded five line system (completed in January 2008) that connects Downtown Bellingham with major destinations, such as Western Washington University, the Alaska Ferry, and the Amtrak station, in addition to all of the city’s planned urban villages.
All five lines guarantee 15-minute headways on weekdays from 8 am to 6 pm, with longer waits at other times. In some cases this involved adding a few trips to meet the standard. The Red Line (to the Amtrak station) also achieves 15 minute headways on Saturdays. WTA and the City of Bellingham have also worked to give signal priority to buses on certain segments of the system.
Each of these lines (Red, Blue, Green, Gold, and Plum, map (.pdf) here) have distinctive signage. Unfortunately, “the fleet is not big enough” to allow the buses themselves to be distinctively marked, according to WTA spokesperson Maureen McCarthy. There are also some other routes that share part of a go line’s path, resulting in some potential confusion.
In spite of these problems, the Go lines have been a hit. For instance, according to McCarthy, ridership on components of the Green Line increased 260% after the go line was introduced. Indeed, in 2008 WTA had the highest ridership increase among small and medium-size systems in the nation (32%), and in 2009 experienced a 5% increase in an environment where most transit agencies had significant decreases.
Like virtually all other transit agencies, WTA is facing a funding crisis. Fortunately, they currently only assess a 0.6% sales tax, giving them room to raise more funding without involving the legislature. There is a ballot measure in April that seeks to raise taxes to 0.8% to simply maintain existing service. Polls indicate this measure is likely to pass.
Smaller agencies are often a good source of innovation in simple and low-cost ways to improve service by making it easier to use and understand. Here in King County, we already a suffer from a surfeit of bus brands, and it’s not clear we need another one. However, the Metro bus system is virtually incomprehensible due to the glut of peak-only and otherwise not-that-useful routes. Some effort to highlight more broadly useful routes (like the 15-minute map that Oran has been tinkering with) would make the system more usable for newcomers.
Memorial Bldg, Whitman College, Walla Walla (wikimedia)
We totally missed this election while it was happening, but Valley Transit (serving Walla Walla County) had a ballot measure Tuesday to raise the sales tax by 0.3% (to 0.6%) in order to avoid a 50% cut to existing bus service.
The latest results show it ahead by over 50 points, better than all the hospital and school measures also on the ballot*. Legislators should take note of the willingness of voters to raise taxes to maintain transit service, even in a bad economy and in a relatively conservative area of the State.
Transportation Choices Coalition Policy Director Bill LaBorde offered this:
Walla Walla residents are obviously passionate about their local bus system. It was local volunteers like Dan and Barbara Clark and Norman Osterman who stepped up to make tens of thousands of phone calls and knock on thousands of doors, urging Walla Walla and College Place residents to support their transit system and avoid cuts.
Optimism about Eastside Commuter Rail. I don’t understand simultaneous support for B7 and ECR; do people really think diesels and light rail will operate on the same track?
Seattle City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw says nice things about BRT over light rail, doesn’t prioritize trolleybus expansion. Money quote: “we need to have our cars… we have to be able to get around.”
Dan Bertolet notes that Downtown business and labor interests have launched a new website that promotes the SR-99 tunnel as good for transit, and then he points out that it isn’t good for transit at all. Just another case of transitwashing.
The Metro funding we were promised isn’t coming. The First Ave/Central Streetcar has next to no political support and no funding. West Seattle RapidRide is sold on the site as if it’s funded by the tunnel project when in fact it’s funded by the 2006 Transit Now vote. In fact, the biggest concern from transit activists with the SR-99 tunnel is the expensive project costs so much that it effectively prevents nearly anything from being invested in transit.
The so-called “Tunnel+Transit” effort looks like an effort to cynically confuse the public into thinking the project has anywhere near the transit service of a better surface/transit option. Maybe those who say we don’t need to open up the viaduct replacement debate again are right, but that’s no excuse to mislead the public about transit service that isn’t going to materialize. Notably, The Seattle Times is listed as a member organization of the effort.
[UPDATE 2/13 (Adam here): I sent some e-mails out inquiring about the website and if the creators of the website had permission of the sponsors and organizations to put their names on the website. There certainly is a difference in saying that someone supports the three-way agreement between the city, county and state, and saying someone supports a website that so blatantly mischaracterizes and bends facts.
The response that I got from e-mailing the website came from Gary Smith of Smith & Stark who said that he understands my concern and he will look into it.]
For next Monday, February 15th, President’s Day will see some reduced levels of service on several transit routes.
King County Metro will be operating under its WNUW scheduling (when there are no UW classes). The following routes that normally serve UW’s main campus will have a few designated trips cancelled (marked as ‘D’ under the timetables): 31, 65, 67, 68, 75, 167, 197, 205, 272, 277, 372.
Community Transit will have normal weekday service for local and University routes, but will be reducing service on several commuter runs (marked as ‘H’ in the timetables): 402, 405, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413, 415, 416, 421, 435, 477.
Sound Transit(including ST express, Link, and Sounder), Everett Transit, and Pierce Transit will be operating normal weekday service.
[UPDATE 7:17pm: The Mayor's office has released a statement, see below the jump.]
Recent footage released by Metro of a savage beating in the downtown tunnel last month has unleashed a firestorm of media coverage over the past few days. But it’s not so much the beating that has everyone peeved, it’s the fact that there were three uniformed security guards not only present during the attack, but passively watching as the 15 year-old girl ruthlessly beat her peer. Surveillance video shows the two girls fighting out onto the restricted trackbed and concluding with the victim lying on the platform with her head being stomped upon repeatedly. All the while, the three guards seem to be unwilling to make any daring moves to save the victim, other than radioing for backup.
So who’s to blame? The three officers? Metro? Olympic Security? Witnessing bystanders? The question has been very difficult to tackle because technically and legally, no one did anything wrong (attack aside). Olympic Security, contracted to watch the tunnel, is discouraged by contractual language to physically intervene, leaving its personnel to only “observe and report” (PDF) at best. The guards that witnessed the attack did manage to radio for emergency help, but were evidently powerless to stop or deter the beating.
