In an under-reported angle, the various proposals to fill the State’s revenue gap had a valence for transit. Unlike other tax increases, a reduction in sales tax exemptions also impacts agencies like Metro and Sound Transit that rely on sales tax.
In the end, the legislature extended sales tax to candy, gum, and bottled water, raising $64m annually for Olympia. According to Metro spokesperson Rochelle Ogershok, that will result in about $3.3m for Metro. Every little bit helps, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $48m hole coming in 2012-2013, on top of 150,000 more hours of “low-impact” reductions through 2011.
Although CT will get some more money too, it would take about $2m to merely restart operations on Sundays and holidays, before purchasing any service hours for those days.
My sources tell me that there wasn’t much of a push by agency lobbyists to steer legislators in a more exemption-oriented direction. Given that Mary Margaret Haugen was clearly, in retrospect, going to block any explicit help for transit, that would appear to have been a mistake.
Dan Bertolet in PubliCola makes a compelling case that we aren’t thinking big enough on 520:
• keep the existing freeway between the water and I-5 (it’s the floating part that’s the safety risk) [UPDATE:Many commenters have pointed out that this is not correct.]
• for a six-lane design, designate two transit lanes, two HOV lanes, and two general purpose lanes
• for a four-lane design, designate two HOV/transit lanes and two general purpose lanes
• for a four-lane design, limit use to transit and HOV only
• and how about the most radical solution of all: take the bridge out and don’t replace it? [See also Knute Berger's thought-provoking piece on this idea.]
The second, third and fourth of these are all clearly awesome from a transit advocate’s perspective, and would presumably cost less than the WSDOT’s current plan. As a result, they wouldn’t have the effect of robbing funds from higher transit priorities. More after the jump.
TCC assesses the state of the legislature. The House is getting better, but the Senate is a disaster. As for this session, “virtually every bill transit advocates supported (…) died.”
Amtrak Cascades ridership increases 16.7% over six months, highest in the nation.
Wheelchair lifts on ST coaches (574, 590-594) recalled, not every bus will serve wheelchairs.
Montlake activist (and STB commenter) Jonathan Dubman says a wider 520 is OK if it means light rail. The Council is moving toward the Mayor’s position, too.
This is a reminder that we are having a meet-up tonight at the Taphouse Grill starting at 5:30pm. The venue is all-ages, and about a block from Westlake Station. Martin says the happy hour is fantastic (which ends at 6:30pm), so there’s already a terrific excuse to come to the meet-up.
Slog has an interesting report on the Capitol Hill Community Council and its fight for the city to fund a study an extension of the First Hill Streetcar north to Aloha:
“If we’re going to build it, let’s build it right,” says Tony Russo, who designed the Capitol Hill Community Council’s kickass Broadway streetcar proposal, and has lobbied the city hard to extend the streetcar to the end of Broadway Avenue. “We need cycletracks and the extension, and we need them both now.” The Capitol Hill Community Council has been fighting to get an Aloha Street extension back on Seattle Department of Transportation’s agenda since it was cut due to the project’s budget constraints. An Aloha extension would cost an estimated $20 million dollars to build.
However, the Capitol Hill Community Council says this $20 million dollars isn’t pressing—the city has several years to come up with the money while it works on the main leg of the streetcar, and, as Russo put it, “Obama’s throwing money at streetcars right now.” Their concern is funding the $750,000 preliminary engineering study and environmental review, which they say needs to be completed by June of this year when SDOT and Sound Transit finalize contract agreements for the streetcar line. Currently, the scope of the contract is written to terminate construction of the streetcar at Broadway and East John Street, at the light rail station.
The report goes on to say that SDOT doesn’t believe that there is any deadline for preliminary engineering, which is consistent with my reporting. The issue is probably better explained as follows: Right now, Sound Transit doesn’t provide any funding to do preliminary engineering on an Ahola extension, and it would be easier to study the extension at the same time we plan the current streetcar plan. (Similar to how East Link is planning a connection between Overlake and downtown Redmond, even though it will probably be many years before that segment begins construction.)
However, Seattle’s Department of Transportation can’t study the Aloha extension without money to do so. It would make sense to ask ST to provide the funding for planning the extension since the streetcar budget is scheduled to come in millions under budget and the Mayor has said a top priority should be extending the line to serve north Broadway. And if ST doesn’t give the city the opportunity, then the city could lose out on federal money since the extension won’t be “shovel-ready” for a future round of streetcar funding.
That’s the larger point: if ST doesn’t step up to the plate soon, no one will and the Aloha extension will most likely have to be entirely funded locally rather than with federal aid. And that means that the relatively cheap extension is unlikely to be built soon.
After a year spent lobbying states to develop “alternative” revenue sources for replacing the federal government’s rapidly shrinking budget for roads and transit, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood rejected Pennsylvania’s request to implement tolls on I-80, citing a law that prevents such funds from being used for anything but the roads where they’re raised.
This is unfortunate in two ways. First, quite aside from transit advocacy there’s a pretty strong case that congestion pricing on existing roads would improve the situation for drivers and freight traffic. By restricting the use of this money you put a cap on how much you can charge this way.
More importantly, transit advocates have been contemplating tolling as the next big source of transit revenue, as there is little appetite for a further increase in the sales tax. Those interested in finding a way to have an ST3 vote this decade may have to find the cash somewhere else.
The good news is that the law in question is the 1998 transportation bill, so this isn’t some kind of long-standing precedent.
As we told you over the weekend, the Bellevue City Council is having an extended study session (PDF) tonight to discuss the Sound Transit Capital Committee’s recent recommendation for B2 modified and C9T as preferred alternatives for East Link. This will be an important meeting as the council is expected to discuss the collaboration of a “term-sheet” with ST to move forward on C9T. We’ve mentioned that the B7/C9T combination that the council favors is likely financially infeasible. How the pro-B7 four-member quorum will respond is anyone’s guess.
A coalition of B2 and C9T supporters, led by the newly formed group Citizens for Responsible Transit (mentioned in our past news roundups), is expected to be in attendance tonight to support the capital committee’s decision. For any Bellevue residents, potential future East Link users, or general pro-transit folk, we encourage you to go out and support reasonable alignments that will serve the South Bellevue Park and Ride and the downtown core. The study session will be at 6pm atBellevue City Hall in conference room 1E-113. Oral comments will be taken at the beginning.
If you want to be the cool kid at Wednesday night’s meetup, you can attend the groundbreaking for Stage 2 of the I-90 two-way HOV project at 1 pm that afternoon, at the Mercer Island Boat Launch (3600 E. Mercer Way). This project replaces the HOV express lanes in the center roadway so that light rail can be built there. In the view of reverse commuters like me, it also improves on them by providing a carpool lane in both directions at all times of day.
The community built around STB should be proud of this particular event, as your emails were an important element of the campaign to prevent the legislature from defunding this project in 2009.
Two nights ago, we told you that the Sound Transit Capital Committee chose to pursue a recommendation of B2 modified alignment for East Link’s South Bellevue segment, and C9T for the downtown segment. Those who have not followed our coverage on East Link closely may not be familiar with B2, which had been forgotten until recent. The route, shown in the map at right, is similar to B3 but avoids the unnecessary curve away from the Surrey Downs neighborhood. Trains would instead run straight up Bellevue and 112th Ave before entering the downtown segment. The modifications are mostly regarding guideway type (at-grade, elevated, etc.) and side-running segments along 112th.
We have a few commenters who were present at the Capital Committee meeting. Bob Bengford graciously brought back his own report:
While Claudia [Balducci] walked cautiously about Bellevue City Council’s 4-3 majority preference on the B routes, there appeared to be general consensus that South Bellevue Park and Ride was a critical stop along the route and needed to be on the alignment – both in terms of accessibility for park and ride users, but perhaps more importantly, for the great connectivity with other bus routes. We heard that Mercer Island’s council had sent a letter expressing their concerns over impacts to their park and ride should South Bellevue be excluded on the Eastlink Route.
[STB is] willing to go to the barricades to fight and delay other “done deals” (e.g. the execrable Alaskan Way Viaduct tunnel plan), which delays will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. However, they will accept the decision of the powers that be in this case because it is agreeable to their pre-existing position…
For the record, I think the deep-bore tunnel is very likely to happen, given its deep political support. If anything kills it, it’s likely to be the design spiraling out of control, or some sort of Brightwater-style engineering catastrophe. Given the fact that there is, in my view, a superior surface/transit option, that also happens to cost considerably less, I’ll take my opportunities to point out that I think that the project is, at its core, unnecessary, and the highly questionable specifics of the viaduct deal.
I also think the current WSDOT plan for 520 is likely to proceed with at most mild alterations to the West side. I think some simple changes, mentioned repeatedly, could greatly improve transit access. On the other hand, the larger changes that Mayor McGinn has implied aren’t tied to any specific plan for the bridge.
That’s not a shot at the Mayor, who’s been in office for just over 3 months, has few planning resources, and whose first task is to blow up the coalition that has coalesced around the current plan. At different times, though, he’s hinted at light rail on the bridge immediately, tracks laid in the lanes, structural changes to allow for rail, and reduction of the Portage Bay crossing to four lanes. More after the jump.
Bloggers always hear jokes about mom’s basement and pajamas. Locally, some of that image is fading thanks to the great work of Publicola, West Seattle Blog, Capitol Hill Seattle, and others. Another sign of the times is that when Seattle’s Mayor feels like has to respond to critics on his 520 study, instead of sitting down with the Times, he blogs.
Maybe this will convince mom to get off my back.
[UPDATE from Martin: the most interesting thing to me in the Mayor's blog post is the proposal to save money by building only four lanes between Montlake and I-5. While that would be terrible for 545 riders, for those heading to UW (or using Link to get downtown), there shouldn't be that much impact. Judging from the cost maps for Option A+ and the four-lane rebuild, this would save at least $150m and potentially much more.]
WSDOT has (basically) responded to McGinn’s report concerning the feasibility of light rail across the new bridge 520. McGinn’s report showed that unless the current design is modified, light rail will probably never be feasible across the bridge, but WSDOT says that light rail is possible across the span:
Will the new SR 520 floating bridge be able to accommodate light rail?
Yes. WSDOT engineers have designed the new SR 520 floating bridge so that additional supplemental pontoons could be added in the future to support the weight of light rail.
That response really seems, well, not true. The opening “yes” has little to do with the rest of the statement, because even without changes to the pontoons, the current design will effectively preclude light rail. (That’s the difference between “physically being able to carry trains” and “accommodating light rail.”) Additional pontoons are just one issue that McGinn’s report called out; it also spoke to two other concerns that would be significantly harderto accomplish with a retrofit. As we wrote earlier this week:
The west approach (meaning through the arboretum) would have to be at least 10 feet wider than the current A+ alternative to accommodate light rail without having to significantly modify the structure later.
Through the arboretum, the bridge must be wider (or have a gap) to allow light rail to enter and exit the center HOV lanes and diverge from the freeway.
While these changes would be difficult to add during a retrofit, we have no clue how much they would cost to accomplish if we do things “right” from the beginning. The difference is important: if voters choose to put light rail across 520 and the only marginal cost is adding more pontoons and installing rail infrastructure, we could be save hundreds of millions of dollars compared to retrofitting more difficult design changes. The cost and disruption would be so great that a retrofit of these changes is practically infeasible, meaning that light rail would never cross 520 even if all of the transportation experts said it should. (Which is a big assumption, since right now no single 520 alignment looks very useful.)
As we predicted, the Sound Transit Capital Committee made a recommendation of B2 modified and C9T for the preferred alternatives earlier today. Bear in mind that this is a mere recommendation and that the ST Board will make its official decision later this year. For those unfamiliar with the East Link alignments, B2 runs up straight up 112th Ave SE as opposed to B3 (the original preferred alternative), which curves away from Surrey Downs and back west on Main Street. C9T is the newest tunnel option that we’ve been covering. We’ll have a more detailed break-down later.
[UPDATE 4:23pm] An alternative recommendation of C11A for the downtown segment was also made.
Bus bunching is something that’s often mentioned as a problem spot for bus reliability and particularly frustrating when riders have to wait 20 minutes longer than expected only to find two buses rumbling along one after the other. As it turns out, however, bunching isn’t some systematic anomaly that no one has the answer to. While there are a lot of factors that end up fluctating actual headways (as opposed to scheduled headways), late buses only exacerbate tardiness, therefore resulting in bunching.
Apparently the two-minute warning is the best we’re going to get without infusion of money technology. Via ST spokesman Bruce Gray:
By contract [with GE Transportation Systems] we only provides a 2-minute warning and a train arriving message. We do not have plans for continuous count down arrival clock.
While agreeing with almost all of Ben’s post on 520, I’d like to make a subtle distinction about what I think should happen, as opposed to what will.
I agree that it is extremely unlikely the State will modify the bridge to easily accommodate light rail, as that would cost more than $400m and introduce some project delay. I agree that 520 is not a particularly high priority for rail and probably isn’t even in the cards for ST3. And I agree that in the abstract a Sand Point/Kirkland alignment is superior to one over 520, although I’d add several more shades of uncertainty on that point in the absence of any serious engineering analysis on either corridor.
Given that uncertainty, it would certainly be nice if we preserved the option of going over 520. The question is how much that is worth. I’ll leave comment on how McGinn is or is not damaging his relationship with Olympia to the political hacks. From a pure resource-allocation perspective, it’s really a question of where the hundreds of millions come from, and how much of it must be done during the bridge’s construction.
If it comes from the gas tax kitty for the bridge, then that’s great; taking gas tax revenue reduces the pernicious things the State can do with it. If it’s coming from somewhere else (a TBD, tolling, or anything else that could be used for transit) I’d agree with Ben that there are other priorities that are more important on both the East and West side, especially since we may not need that investment after all. Similarly, if most of the required changes can be deferred to the moment of rail construction, and the immediate needs are relatively inexpensive, then the core objection that the bridge is not rail-ready is a stronger one.
I don’t think Mayor McGinn’s planning has advanced to the point of seriously looking at immediate costs and revenue sources, but they are crucial to the validity of his points.
