Stream the East Link WorkshopThe joint East Link workshop begins at 1:30 pm. Readers can watch a live stream online. Last night we sent the attendees of the workshop, the Bellevue City Council and the Sound Transit Board, a letter expressing what we think would be the best alignments going forward. The same study that inspired our letter will be the topic of the joint workshop. Update 4 pm: Publicola has coverage of the workshop. No massive news has come out of the talk. Meeting RemindersWith a busy meeting season, several reminders are due. We are having our first Eastside meet-up tonight at the Rock Bottom Brewery in Bellevue. Attendees should begin showing up at 5pm. Right before our meet-up, Sound Transit is holding a joint workshop with the Bellevue City Council discussing the new downtown alternatives recently studied. The workshop will be open to the public at Meydenbauer Center from 1:30pm to 4pm. Sound Transit is also holding yet another open house for the new alternatives next Thursday, February 18th, from 4 to 7pm (presentation beginning at 5pm). Late last year, we had a recap on a similar open house being held regarding the old alternatives in the DEIS. Lastly, the last of three First Hill Streetcar open houses will be held tonight from 4 to 7pm at Seattle First Baptist Church. This comes in light of recent new streetcar info. An Interesting RevisionWe’ve just gotten ahold of an earlier draft of the downtown Bellevue analysis, and there’s an interesting numerical revision. The earlier 2030 boarding projections for the downtown segment were: 5,500 for the C14E (I-405 alignment), and 8,500 for C11A (surface, two stations). The final numbers in Monday’s document were 6,000 and 8,000, respectively. This means that somewhere in the process, we went from a ridership difference of 3,000 between the two options – meaning C11A would have picked up more than 50% more riders – to only a difference of 2,000. The final draft is presumably the best judgment of both City and ST, but I hope this is discussed at the workshop. We’re following up with both agencies to get an explanation. An Open Letter on East Link C11A, the best alignment for East Link through Downtown Bellevue. In advance of the Sound Transit Board and Bellevue City Council workshop this afternoon, we decided to weigh in on which options would be best for East Link’s alignment through Bellevue. What follows is an open letter we sent to the Bellevue City Council and all ST Board members last night. The letter is a frank assessment of the options that came out of recent work from both the city and Sound Transit, and represents the collective views of Seattle Transit Blog. *** February 10, 2010 To: Dear Mayor Davidson and Executive Reardon: When regional voters overwhelmingly approved Sound Transit 2 in 2008, they put trust in elected leaders to select the best light rail alignment. Though the alignment selection process for East Link has gone longer than some had initially hoped, we welcome extended discussion on a decision that will affect generations to come. Our children and the city’s future residents are worth the additional time to do this right. A recent Downtown Bellevue concept design report conducted jointly by Sound Transit and the City of Bellevue has brought forward some novel alignments for segment C, an encouraging sign that progress is being made. East Link’s segment C will determine how Downtown Bellevue interacts with regional light rail. It is vital that the Bellevue City Council considers what’s best for Downtown residents, employees, and customers. The Sound Transit Board should combine regional and local concerns if they choose to change their preferred alignment. Earlier segment C options proved unsatisfactory, so we’re most interested by the recent report which brought three new options to the table: C9T, C11A, and C14E. We think the best alignment for Downtown Bellevue is C11A. If a grade-separated option is preferred for regional accessibility, C9T is the best proposed alignment. C14E is a novel and constructive attempt to save taxpayer money, but it does so at the cost of serving a major urban center; a regional investment like East Link shouldn’t cut corners. The letter continues after the jump… New Early Morning Link Trains Photo by Stephen de Vight [UPDATE 2/11 8:00 am: The online schedule now reflects the entire change as reported below, with some errors corrected. Basically two trips that used to start at Mt. Baker are now starting at Stadium instead.] As announced on, of all places, Mayor McGinn’s blog by staffer Aaron Pickus, Sound Transit has tweaked the routine of the first couple of trains in the morning to allow earlier connections to the airport. This change took is reported to have taken effect this morning and is not reflected in the printed schedule books available now. However, the online Link Schedule (.pdf) is accurate. The three changes are:
These changes allow earlier trips from downtown-ish to the airport, which used to be served by the 194. Pickus also helpfully provides this chart (pdf) of what buses can get you from downtown to Stadium at that time of day. That chart is also the source of the second train that isn’t on the schedule. I’ve asked Sound Transit why this change is so irregular, and about the schedule discrepancies. Wallace Hires Consultants to Promote Alignment Bellevue City Council member, Kevin Wallace. Publicola reports that Kevin Wallace, the man behind East Link’s C14E alignment that poorly serves downtown Bellevue, has hired some local insiders to promote his plan:
The full Publicola report notes that Wallace would likely be prohibited from voting on his preferred alignment if he were a Seattle city councilmember due to that city’s more zealous ethics laws, but Bellevue has more lax requirements. Wallace’s company owns some property near the C14E alignment that would probably have to be purchased if his alignment were selected. (For what it’s worth, I doubt Wallace’s motivation is to get his property purchased at market-rate since he could probably accomplish that more quickly and with much less scrutiny without having Sound Transit be the purchaser.) If Wallace’s proposed alignment is so good, why are we seeing a self-funded PR blitz promoting it? Well, while Wallace has brought forward a cheaper plan in a constructive manner, I think many would conclude just isn’t worth the trade-offs in accessibility, transit-oriented development, and ridership. No amount of lobbying is going to change those fundamentals. City Analysis Likely to Narrow Streetcar Options First Hill alignment analysis from SDOT. Click for a larger version of this image. (Thanks to Zef Wagner.) The city has released its preliminary analysis of the various streetcar alignments, and the data isn’t good for alignments west of Broadway. Both cost more to build, have worse travel times, and higher operating costs. It seems unlikely that the city will move forward on these options, despite intense lobbying from local hospitals. On the other hands, those routes do have slightly higher ridership potential. What’s a bit more surprising is that another Broadway Two-Way option seems to have come back from the dead. SDOT seems to be proposing one Broadway Two-Way route that runs the entire line on Broadway and another with an 11th Ave couplet. The former option wasn’t included in December’s round of public meetings and it’s good to see a fully two-way Broadway alignment back on the table. That option would be the cheapest and have the best bicycle integration. There is slightly bad news for the 12th Ave couplet alignment (which we’ve editorialized against). That couplet has the lowest ridership potential range of any option, perhaps reflecting the accessibility problems that occur with a couplet that’s pretty well separated. The alignment also has poor bicycle interaction since 12th Ave is a major north/south bike corridor and a slightly higher cost band. Update 10:45 am: Tony the Economist has posted a great comment that helps explain why the ridership potential numbers are so similar:
In addition, the numbers could actually over-represent 12th Ave couplet riders since none of the facts of riding the alignment — including its smaller walkshed — are really considered in a ridership potential model. Update 3:45 pm: Tony further informed us that the reduced walkshed is factored into the 12th Ave couplet ridership potential, since SDOT takes the midpoint between each station. I don’t think the incline of the hill is taken into effect, but that would likely have a small impact. Google Maps Getting Bus Data; OBA on AndroidThose looking to plan their King County bus trips on Google Maps (and on their iPhones) have been out of luck since Saturday’s service change. Fear not! The problem will be solved soon, according to Metro’s Twitter feed:
OneBusAway also faced some technical issues to do the service change (which is expected), but those issues are now fixed and most buses should now be tracked through the service. Just yesterday, One Bus Away announced the launch of an official Android client which follows the successful launch lsat year of a native iPhone app. New First Hill Streetcar info Two-Way Broadway, Alternative Cross-Section Well talk about a busy week. If only all weeks could be this exciting. I wanted to pass everything along ASAP because we have a good amount of competition from Capitol Hill Seattle and Central District news when it comes to pushing time sensitive news out and I don’t want us to be the last. All documents can be found at the streetcar website. The engineering drawings have been updated as well as some new analysis added. New Info:
UPDATE 1:45: To me the least interesting part of the report is the accessibility report which states the obviously just in technical terms. Essentially there is a pretty steep hill between Broadway and 12th Ave (duh) and any kind of moving sidewalk or escalator is ridiculously expensive (duh). The most interesting part is the new information on how the streetcar will impact bicycles done by Alta. The key findings are:
Updated but not new info after the jump. Meetup Reminder, and Please Come Early If You CanJust a reminder – this Thursday at Rock Bottom in downtown Bellevue is our first Eastside meetup! I’d like to encourage those who can to show up at 5:00. It’s fine to show up at 6, but let me put it this way – there should be a special guest or two, and the joint ST Board and Bellevue City Council workshop just down the street ends at 4:00. I will be there at 5, and I encourage you to as well! Getting Rid of 40/40/20
I’m not convinced that 40/40/20 — the policy where 80% of new service is sent to the suburbs, to gradually “correct” the disproportionately intensive service in Seattle — is a particularly great injustice. However, “not a great injustice” is not the same thing as good policy, and Metro has enough objectives to worry about that a purely artificial numerical target doesn’t make it easier to achieve the things we should actually care about. And in fact, it was a common sentiment in the King County Executive race that we should do away with this rule. Unfortunately, the buck stops with the King County Council, and there are effectively four Seattle seats and five suburban seats. I think discussion on this issue has been far too policy-oriented and not focused enough on naked political concerns. Any alternate formula for expansion or cuts, viewed in isolation, has to pass a simple test: do five or more Council members see this as helping their constituents, or not? In this effort we’re helped by the fact that Metro serves a fairly complicated set of divergent policy objectives. I see three basic strategies:
Of course, if you’re the kind of person that wants to see Seattle get disproportionately more bus service you’re probably also the kind of person that doesn’t want whatever it is they’re bargaining for in Enumclaw. But that really just brings us around to the question of “are you a transit advocate or aren’t you?” If you support transit expansion to the extent that it doesn’t interfere with any of your other political priorities, I think the answer is “not so much”. *Reagan Dunn is an example; logging rights are an example I made up. Bellevue’s Proposed 405 Station: Much Less TODWe reported this morning on a report covering new light rail options for East Link’s downtown Bellevue alignment and later showed that a 405 station is less accessible than other alternatives. We’ve editorialized in the past that Sound Transit should put the downtown Bellevue light rail stations in the right place, with that place not next to a freeway. Readers should know by now that we’re no fans of a 405 station. Neither is Dan Bertolet, the former HugeAssCity blogger who now posts at Publicola. Last Friday, he provided some data about the development potential of a station build next to 405 versus one that serves Bellevue Transit Center. Some arguing for a 405 station have incredulously claimed that a stop along the highway would have more transit-oriented development (TOD) potential, but according to Bertolet’s data, there’s much more developable land near the transit center. That land has the potential to hold many more jobs and residents:  The Bellevue Transit Center has more TOD potential than a stop near 405. (Image and data from Publicola.) Most of us know what greenwashing is; it’s when an otherwise terrible thing for the environment is promoted as green — such as advertisements in the bus tunnel proudly proclaiming that a local car dealership is carbon neutral. We’re seeing that cynical mindset spread to a new area in the Seattle region as transit options become more politically popular. Now we have transitwashing. Promoting ideas that seriously, adversely damage public transit’s usefulness being sold as something transit-friendly. Claiming a freeway stop has development potential because there are a bunch of low-density lots across a large interstate is transitwashing, and Bertolet proves it. Bellevue’s Proposed 405 Station: Less AccessibleAs a follow up to Ben’s post this morning, here’s a nice walkshed graphic from Sound Transit that shows the accessibility for the various light rail alignments that the report covered:  Walkshed for various East Link rail alignments through downtown Bellevue. Dark orange is five minutes of walking distance, with light orange representing ten minutes of walking distance. That C14E alignment, Kevin Wallace’s 405 station, performs the poorest for good reason. We shouldn’t build a station right next to a freeway and we should instead put the line downtown. According to the report, the other alignments serve nearly all of the 79,000 jobs downtown expected by 2030; Wallace’s proposal leaves fully one-fifth of downtown workers unable to walk to work from a station within a reasonable time. More than half of downtown residents by 2030 will be unable to walk to a light rail station within ten minutes. The high capture walkshed, 5 or less minutes, for Wallace’s alignment is pitiful with just 27% and 7% of jobs and households, respectively. If Wallace’s proposal to site a station on an interstate highway isn’t good for Bellevue’s downtown workers, downtown businesses, or downtown residents, then who is it good for?  Walkshed table from Sound Transit's report. For discussion on the other alignments in the above graphics, read Ben’s post covering the report on new East Link options. Update from Ben: I just noticed one more thing about these maps, and I doubt it’s a coincidence. We know 10 minutes is pretty much the outside of what people are willing to walk from a station. The largest block in the downtown square, on the left edge in the middle, is Bellevue Square. C14E is the only option that puts Bellevue Square distinctly outside that 10 minute walk. Kemper Development spokesman Bruce Nurse called me “presumptuous” for suggesting that Kemper doesn’t want transit users to go to Bellevue Square. Apparently “presumptuous” means “absolutely correct!” New Data: Two East Link Options Look Good C11A Visualization of the Bellevue Transit Center Sound Transit and the City of Bellevue have just released their joint analysis (PDF) of the East Link options for downtown Bellevue. East Link project manager Don Billen briefed me (and happily answered all of my questions) by phone on Saturday morning. Four options were studied, and two come out as rock stars – C11A, a surface option with two stations, providing great walking distance coverage to almost all of downtown Bellevue’s jobs and homes, and C9T, a more expensive tunnel option that provides decent walking coverage of downtown, plus reduced travel times that attract more riders from the east. Both of these alternatives get the segment 8,000 weekday riders in 2030. The two not-so-good options are losers for clear reasons. C9A, a surface version of the tunnel option, has the same downtown travel time as C11A, but doesn’t compete with C11A in walking coverage, especially as downtown grows. The City’s walkshed maps are similar to what Adam did for our First Hill Streetcar piece, using the actual walking times from the platforms to different destinations via the network of sidewalks and paths, rather than just drawing a circle at a particular distance. As a result, they give a much more accurate view of what’s accessible from a station. C14E is the other loser – the I-405 alignment that Kevin Wallace has proposed. Analysis found that a circulator bus would offer no significant benefit. It would attract only 6,000 riders, completely failing to serve western downtown. The real comparison here will be between the better two: what I’ll call the tunnel (C9T) and surface alignment (C11A). More after the jump (more…) Metro Service Change Retires Route 194Today marks the first day of Metro’s service change which, among other changes, has ended route 194. We should expect a uptick in light rail ridership going forward as airport riders switch to Link and as folks get familiar with the routes that now feed into the rail line. The very final 194 bus departed the Westlake Center tunnel station last night at 10pm. As per usual with service changes, services like One Bus Away will likely a few days where live bus tracking is down. Westlake Streetcar Plaza Open House Westlake Streetcar Plaza; Concept by Seattle's Department of Transportation. SDOT hosted an open house for the Westlake Streetcar Plaza last Wednesday. (For background, Adam covered the project in great detail last year.) The open house presented the project at the 60% design stage and took public comments. From this point SDOT will move towards finalizing the design and implementing the project. If you want to make a comment, do it as soon as possible. Construction is planned to begin this July and finish this November. A full report from the open house after the jump… Bus Violenceby MARK DUBLIN  "The 124", by Mike Bjork Around midnight Saturday January 23, a driver on Metro Route 124 was beaten unconscious by a passenger. She may have been too slow letting him off the back door. The driver is recovering. Several suspects have been arrested and charged. Local newspapers and TV covered the story. Accounts are online. The media knows the drill. And that’s just the problem. Situation normal. Now, even on rough routes, passengers don’t attack drivers every shift. Any 7-11 clerk is in worse criminal danger, for lousier wages and coverage. What mostly injures transit drivers is their own work day. Knee joint damage. Carpal tunnel syndrome. Back injuries. Those “gold-plated” medical benefits are legitimate repair bills for a forty hour week driving a bus. But on about a half dozen routes, it’s not only drivers who regularly face personal violence. Most transit assault victims are passengers, who pay fares and taxes for the system and get no compensation for abuse on board. For a transit system fighting for its political and budgetary life, its people’s safety is its own as well. I never drove Highway 99- no trolleywire. But Route 7 in the mid 1980′s also featured regular situations needing police. So I have a few suggestions about what “we” – meaning everyone who operates, rides, or cares about transit- can do to give ourselves the civilized travel people pay for, after the jump. News Roundup: New Bus Lines Bus mockup at the Seattle Children's Museum (photo by joshuadf)
Next Train Announcement TestingAs several commenters have noted, Sound Transit is starting to visibly test their next train announcements. Oran shot the video above. Testing is only occurring in isolated instances, and should be going on for the next month or two. I hate to nitpick, but I’m not a huge fan of the scrolling — it’s possible to legibly encode a lot of information on a small board without doing so. [UPDATE- in the comments Sherwin says that the display will generally be static, with only intermittent scrolling.] |
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