Swift/SR99 Ridership Bucks the Trend

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
"Swift BRT at Airport Rd", by Dave Honan

Lots of juicy tidbits in this CT ridership press release:

Following local employment trends, Community Transit ridership decreased 4.6 percent in 2009. Total ridership on the agency’s buses, vanpools and DART paratransit vehicles was 11.4 million last year, down from an agency record 11.9 million passenger boardings in 2008…

Swift has established itself as the agency’s highest ridership route and helped contribute to an 11 percent increase in overall transit ridership on the Highway 99 corridor… In December, Swift had an average of 1,699 weekday boardings; in January Swift had an average of 2,367 weekday boardings; and in February Swift had an average of 2,660 weekday boardings…

Route 101, the local bus route that runs from south Everett to Aurora Village along Highway 99 as a companion to Swift, Route 101 ridership remains healthy and is second highest in Community Transit’s system, with an average of 2,218 weekday boardings in February….

Swift and Route 101 carried 4,878 passengers each weekday on February, compared to the 4,376 combined weekday boardings of Route 101 and Route 100 (which Swift replaced) in February 2009. That 11 percent increase on the Highway 99 corridor came as other transit ridership dropped 8 percent February 2009 to February 2010.

As ever, a couple of months of ridership numbers is too little to start drawing conclusions about the value of the project, but it does validate that improved bus service can increase ridership to some degree.  In particular, if Swift is able to reverse some of the atrocious land use in the corridor, it will have been a massive bargain.

Seattle Bicycle Freeway

Posted on by Matt Gangemi

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

In our attempt at making cities more friendly for bicycling, we often talk of bike paths as being the gold standard.  But cars never settled for paths – riddled with stop lights, crosswalks, and pedestrians – for their ideal commute.  I think it’s time to consider a bicycle freeway downtown.

My idea of a bicycle freeway would be an 8′ wide ribbon of concrete placed around 15′ in the air over a sidewalk.  There would be a simple railing on both sides, and would look a bit like a pedestrian overpass.  The bicycle freeway would allow bicyclists to speed past street-level obstacles and quickly enter the heart of the city.  Exit ramps would be curved and would be roughly level, which would be accomplished by exiting in the uphill direction (thanks to downtown’s hilly nature). 

Additional benefits would include a bit of shading and rain protection for pedestrians below, and the potential for hill leveling to allow for an easier ride.

 (please excuse the low-quality MS Paint rendering)

News Roundup: Bike Edition

Posted on by Adam Bejan Parast

This was a very big news week for bikes. This is an open thread.

March 18th: International Bus Driver Appreciation Day

Posted on by Sherwin Lee
Stop stealing the spotlight, Oran. (By Atomic Taco)

Tomorrow is International Bus Driver Appreciation Day.  Whether you only commute by bus, or run all your everyday errands on transit, we encourage you to show your appreciation through any way you can (try to keep it in moderation; drivers are more inclined to accept sealed food containers than a cookie produced out of your pocket). Even though it may be “Bus” Driver Appreciation Day, it certainly doesn’t hurt to say a quick thanks to train or streetcar operators if you manage to catch of glimpse of them (as long as you’re not disrupting them in the cab).

Last February already saw a Bus Driver Appreciation Week, but we know it’s never enough for what many drivers put up with.  For someone who doesn’t witness enough riders thanking their drivers when exiting out the front, here’s a big thanks to all our driver readers and their coworkers.

Sound Transit: Looking at Changing Fare Structure

Posted on by Adam Bejan Parast
ST Express Proposed Changes
Proposed changes to ST Express bus fare.

We were just informed that the Sound Transit board will discuss a “fare simplification/coordination and rate change” proposal at this Thursday’s board meeting Operations and Administration Committe. The initial draft of the fare proposal can be found here. Information about the meeting can be found here.

From my cursory skimming of the proposal the biggest news is not the fare changes themselves; as ST’s fare have only increased once since 1999 compared to four times with CT, Metro and PT. Rather the big news is the structural changes underlying them. ST Express bus service would see the largest structural changes, shifting from a Sound Transit subarea basis to a county basis.

The image above outlines the proposed changes to fare structure as well as price. I’m under the impression that this structural change is an effort to bring ST’s fare structure more in line with the county operated transit operators. In coordination with county agencies this could possibly leading to a harmonized although not necessarily unified fare structure.

The other change is to increase Link’s base fare by $0.25 cents and eliminating the distance-based portion of the fare for youth and senior/disabled. This will cut the number of possible link fares in half from 12 to 6 and bring youth and senior fares in line with Metro’s bus fares next year.

The Seattle Times will have a story with interviews tomorrow and I’m sure Martin will contribute more analysis in the coming days, especially since he wrote about fares here just a few days ago.

I’ll just leave you with a few thoughts. To me there are three competing objectives when designing fare structures; equity, ease of use, and system efficiency. Depending on the historical precedence and context of the transit system these competing objectives lead to different fare structures. Flat fares are easy to use but create large winners and losers and don’t manage demand well. Zone based systems are harder to understand, make the system more fair and more efficient. Distance based fares are complex, more fair and more or less lead to efficient use of the transit supply. In Seattle’s context equity and ease of use will be the two competing objectives that will shape any fare structure change. Stay tuned for more details in the coming days.

Should Drivers have Plexiglas Barriers?

Posted on by John Jensen

[UPDATE 8:00 am: This TV report provides some video of what the shields look like.  It’s hardly an airtight seal.]

The Seattle PI reports that Metro will install Plexiglas barriers between drivers and passengers in a handful of buses as a trial run.

After a bus driver was beaten and knocked unconscious while behind the wheel, officials with King County Metro Transit are exploring whether to enclose drivers behind Plexiglas barriers.

As a pilot project, security partitions will be installed in a small number of buses, General Manager Kevin Desmond said. More details, including costs, will be announced in the next few weeks, he said.

I’m not so sure that Metro’s limited dollars should be going to Plexiglas barriers. As the article notes, a barrier could cement a notion that buses are unsafe. And if a passenger’s first source of aid is behind a barrier, wouldn’t that make one feel less protected? While bus drivers can go through dangerous parts of town, it stands to reason that if a bus is an unsafe place to be then passengers and not just drivers should be protected. That means things like security cameras and a random police presence could be more effective for overall safety than Plexiglas barriers for drivers.

Bellevue City Council Backing C9T Downtown Tunnel

Posted on by Sherwin Lee
The C9T alternative (click to enlarge)

In an interesting twist at last night’s study session, the Bellevue City Council supported sending a letter to Sound Transit that would put the C9T tunnel option as the primary preferred alternative.  According to the Seattle Times, every councilmember in attendance supported the tunnel.  Only Conrad Lee was absent, who, in my last interview with him, said that he backed Wallace’s ‘Vision Line.’  Whether he would have caved with even Wallace giving his support to C9T, it’s unknown.

The bulk of last night’s discussion was mostly about cutting costs and looking for funding sources to pay for the tunnel.  From the Seattle Times:

The cuts — worth $104 million to $150 million — included contributing back to the project additional sales-tax and business-tax revenues the city receives as a result of the light-rail project, helping to make city property along the route more affordable and streamlining permitting, Sarkozy said.

Wallace railed against Sound Transit’s “bloated” budget and brought up the condition that Surrey Downs must be protected at the Main Street portal.  Yet despite all the discussion about “value” budgeting, we’ve already mentioned that a tunnel connection specific to the B segment (via 112th Ave) is vastly less expensive than one from B7, which the council controversially endorsed just last week.  However, if the pro-B7 tunnel support is riding on alternative funding, then there is a rather thin line between support for a cheap tunnel and C14E.

You can re-watch the meeting in its entirety on the BTV website.  The more important vote will come next week, when the council is expected to vote on the letter as drafted by city staff.

Route 28 Stop Consolidation

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
Route 28 (click to enlarge)

Route 28 is going through the same stop reduction process the 7, 16, 48, and 120 have over the last few years.  A total of 134 stops between Denny and N 145th St, spaced an average of 760 feet apart, will be pared down to 56 with a 1,300 foot (1/4 mile) interval.  On busy routes, stop reductions save time and therefore money, while improving the experience for most riders.

Comments about the stop closures can be submitted by phone to (206) 296-4511 or by email (with “Route 28” in the subject line) to community.relations@kingcounty.gov.

The reduction will be implemented on April 4th.  A complete list of stops scheduled for the axe is below the jump.

H/T: Commenter “Guest”

Continue reading “Route 28 Stop Consolidation”

More Weekend Sounder Specials

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

wikimedia

[UPDATE: To clear up some confusion in the comments, whatever net costs exist are borne by Sound Transit.  As spokesman Bruce Gray explained:

The teams have never paid extra for this service. It’s part of our job to serve major events. Since the first Seahawks train, we’ve had great response to these services and have found it to be a great way to introduce Sound Transit to some who would never otherwise use transit.

Consider this a marketing or PR cost if you like.]

Sound Transit is expanding their special sporting event service on Sounder to cover all weekend day games of both the Mariners and the Sounders this year.

As I’ve observed before, sporting event service is a nice combo for rail transit: expensive parking, high congestion that traps most buses, focused arrival and departure times, and an opportunity to serve a constituency that may not have the occasion to use your service otherwise.

Conservation Board Election

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

This is only tangentially related to transit, but most of you probably don’t know we have an election coming up tomorrow, and it’s one where you have to vote in person to participate. It’s for the King County Conservation District Board of Supervisors. The Seattle Times has a nice write-up on why things are the way they are, but the practical impact is that voter ignorance makes it much easier for special interests to capture the process.

There are 7 locations County-wide at which you can vote on Tuesday, including the Seattle Central Library. In keeping with our tradition here we won’t endorse in non-transit-related races, but take a look at the candidates and let everyone know in the comments who they should support.