Link train to SoDo. Photo by Oran.
- Dealing with empty pits next to light rail stations, and elsewhere.
- A capsule summary of the efforts to get S. 200th station built early.
- Big-city transit systems prefer federal capital subsidies because operating subsidies would “reduce their leverage.”
- GGW discusses one of my favorite hobby-h0rses, appropriate design of urban parks.
- Sightline argues for saving the most productive routes, without really acknowledging alternate metrics for productivity or other transit system objectives.
- Pierce County comes out to preserve bus service.
- Seattle does mid-year budget cuts, and SDOT will face steeper cuts soon.
- Fifteen-year-old girl pleads guilty for infamous transit tunnel beating.
- Bike racks on Capitol Hill.
- Gas should cost as much as $4.60 a gallon to cover all the externalities. That’s about 2 bucks more in gas taxes.
- Cycle track on Dexter, maybe a precursor to one on Broadway; 7th Avenue buffered bike lane.
- Dan Savage argues for legalized jaywalking.
- LA’s 30/10 plan to accelerate their transit construction could “transform the way we invest in transportation projects across the nation.”
- TCC won their contest, largely thanks to your votes.
This is an open thread.
The legalized jaywalking argument definitely has its merits. However, I was witness a few weeks ago to a jaywalking incident on 3rd and Pine while waiting for the bus. Two young men (maybe teenagers) blatantly and brazenly strolled across 3rd, on a red light, causing busses to hit the brakes to avoid hitting them. Four police officers were standing right there and promptly ticketed them. I wonder how this type of behavior should be handled if jaywalking weren’t enforced, because this kind of thing happens all the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman
“His most famous design approach is Shared Space, also known as designing for negotiation or Shared Streets. Monderman found that the traffic efficiency and safety of urban streets improved when the street and surrounding public space was redesigned to encourage each person to negotiate their movement directly with others. Shared Space designs typically call for removing regulatory traffic control features (such as kerbs, lane markings, signs and lights) and replacing intersections with roundabouts.[5]”
His designs have been implemented in towns in the Netherlands, UK, Denmark, etc. Here’s a teaser:
We drive on to another project Monderman designed, this one in the nearby village of Oosterwolde. What was once a conventional road junction with traffic lights has been turned into something resembling a public square that mixes cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. About 5,000 cars pass through the square each day, with no serious accidents since the redesign in 1999. “To my mind, there is one crucial test of a design such as this,” Monderman says. “Here, I will show you.” With that, Monderman tucks his hands behind his back and begins to walk into the square – backward – straight into traffic, without being able to see oncoming vehicles. A stream of motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians ease around him, instinctively yielding to a man with the courage of his convictions.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html
That is amazing! Has anyone posted this to quiet the naysayers on the Slog post?
You could always just leave the law on the books but only enforce irresponsible behavior such as what you report above. As far as I know, this is the policy in most other major American cities—especially back East. I know I never even thought about the possibility of being ticketed for jaywalking until moving here a few years ago.
Or you could rewrite the law to require looking both ways and to prohibit disrupting bicycle and vehicle traffic flow.
From the numbers I was able to find, NYC has something like 14x the population of Seattle, but 30x as many pedestrian fatalities. Chicago has 4.6x the population and 6.25x as many deaths.
Obviously I can’t say what effect if any a lax attitude towards jaywalking has on these numbers, but they suggest to me at least that a “back East” position regarding jaywalking (and pedestrianism in general) is not without some important negative consequences.
What you need to compare is the number of pedestrians rather than the total population. A much smaller percentage are driving to their jobs in a City like New York. The huge numbers of people riding the subway are all pedestrians when they get off the train. A better comparison would be the number of people using transit in each city.
New York City subways carry 7.4 million people and the bus network carries 2.2 million people on an average weekday. The L.I.R.R., 330,000 people and Metro North, 276,000 people on an average weekday. Call it a nice round 10.2 million.
Combined ridership on Metro and Metro-operated Sound Transit service was 126.9 million in 2008. That equates to about 400,000 per weekday. So that’s 25X more people using transit in NYC. I’d bet that if you factor in the number of people simply walking you’re pretty close to the 30x number you site.
I really don’t see how you think transit numbers should be indicative of pedestrian numbers. Drivers are just as much pedestrians when they get out of their cars as transit users are when they detrain or debus. And I imagine drivers in NYC frequently have to park far from their destinations and walk the rest of the way, possibly just as far or more than a person would have to walk to a subway station or bus stop.
In truth, there’s crap for data to actually allow any meaningful comparison. Figures vary wildly on the % of folks who walk to work in any city. And then there’s the matter of how much walking they’re doing. The best measure of a pedestrian fatality rate would be fatalities per mile traveled, which is the measure used when people say things like “flying is safer than driving”. But no one collects data on how far peds & bikes travel each year, so it’s impossible to really compare from one city to another (or one mode to another).
Suffice it to say, though, that there’s little evidence if any that allowing jaywalking makes anyone safer.
….And where did I claim it did? I know of no evidence either way (and unfortunately Savage doesn’t cite the source for his claim that it does—-anyone have that book?), but if jaywalking did increase safety that would be like a happy tertiary benefit, not the cause for legalization.
Because most people that drive to work park in an employer provided lot or a paid lot/garage right next to where they work. If you’re riding transit you more than likely have a couple blocks to walk at each end of your trip (unless of course it’s a P&R at one end). Hence you’ve got millions of pedestrians pouring out onto the streets from the NYC subway.
@Jason: Whenever someone says that back East everyone jaywalks and the cops don’t care, the implication is that jaywalking has no negative impacts, and Seattle is silly for being so anal about it. I’d argue instead that the evidence at least suggests that there may be negative impacts, and thus we shouldn’t be so quick to want to emulate NYC and the like.
Andreas: Well, I certainly do think Seattle is silly for being so anal about jaywalking. I also haven’t seen any evidence that suggests jaywalking has any negative safety impacts, and I’m curious to get my hands on the book Savage quotes to source its claims that legalizing jaywalking improves safety.
In any event, comparing total pedestrian fatality numbers from various cities and drawing conclusions about the impacts of jaywalking laws on pedestrian safety—as you do above—without controlling for myriad other factors such as total number of pedestrians, traffic volumes, driver behavior, drunk driving incidence, speed limits, pedestrian facilities, intersection configurations, land-use patterns, and immigrant populations (to mention a few) is specious at best.
We currently call every intersection in the city a legal crosswalk. Pedestrians are will prevented from legally strutting in front of a car — and this type of subjective enforcement could replace our current jaywalking laws.
Spontaneous tailgate parties all over Seattle? How is a parking lot a “lively” thing that “graces” the city? As a home owner I’m not allowed to leave a project half done with temporary fencing and unscreened building material or debris. Tell the owners they can landscape it or the Parks Department will do it and put a lean against the property.
I really like the idea of taking whatever should be done in a 30 year plan and doing it in 10 years. So think of ST3 done by 2020. That would be nice. You can fund it with the higher gas taxes!
Let me see if I understand this; if the price of oil goes up Metro uses that as cover for a fare increase. When the price of oil goes down they lose more in fare revenue than they benefit from the reduced fuel costs so they need more fare increases (making it even more attractive to drive).
Because farebox doesn’t pay for anything like the full cost of service, when fuel goes up in price, more money is needed.
When there’s a recession, even if fuel drops, sales tax drops more.
I don’t think you really want to understand any of this. :)
I understand it just fine. The spike in gas prices were a windfall for Metro. The additional fares in 2008 from people looking to transit when filling the SUV started costing over $100 more than made up for Metro’s cost of fuel. The cost of fuel may have jumped from about $8/hr to $12/hr for operating a bus but you only need two extra riders to absorb that increase.
Bernie,
That’s what we mean when we say Metro’s model is “unsustainable”.
I’m not sold on the cycle track on Dexter just yet. The first thing that pops in my head is how safe is it going to be for cyclists to pass each other. Sure it’s 6′ wide, but who knows… That and then you’ll have people on the passenger side of a car definitely not looking before opening their doors. eep!
I think it would be an improvement. As it is the bike lane is just a bicycle symbol in the driver’s-side door zone. With the cycle track there would be a 2-foot buffer zone and then a 6-foot track, so there should be enough room to avoid opening doors.
And I really like the island bus stops. As it is when a bus pulls into a stop, bicycles either have to wait for it to clear or try to pass it in the car lane.
Like I said, I’m just not sold on it yet. Drivers who parallel park next to a bike lane are probably more aware that they are opening their car door into a bike lane versus a passenger who typically opens their door into a sidewalk. But you’re right – there’s more padding available with this cycle track than there currently is with the bike lane.
Well, the number of cars with passengers is relatively low. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the number of drivers that are not conscious of the bike lane today is probably higher than the total number of passengers that exit cars on the right side.
And it goes without saying that cyclists need to be paying attention to cars that are parking (or just parked) and act accordingly. Drivers or passengers opening doors is often fairly predictable if people are paying attention.
Agreed – I mentioned before about the street car crossings is that people need to be aware of the hazards around them.
That said, and without seeing more detail about this cycle track, is how “closed off” this will be… as in, if there is going to be a curb on both sides of the cycle track, then my ability to move around a hazard will be greatly reduced versus me being on a painted bike-path.
Cyclist Mike: I was going to comment that there’s just a “buffer area”, not a median, between the cycletrack and the cars, which would allow for easy maneuvering of obstacles. But then I noticed that the buffer area is between the cycletrack and the parked cars. So the track will be closed on one side by curbs, and on the other by a row of parked cars.
To me this sounds incredibly dangerous. Cyclists and pedestrians are more generally unpredictable than cars, and I think I’d take an open “car lane” over a closed-in cycletrack any day. A buffered bike lane sounds much better to me. Of course it’s all a moot point for me as I’m one of the cyclists who avoids Dexter in favor of the Westlake parking lot. It’s really quite disappointing that the city is putting all this effort into Dexter instead of Westlake, where there are more dangers to cyclists but where more and more cyclists ride to avoid the hill on Dexter.
Andreas – Exactly! And I think someone pointed out (maybe it was in that article) that Dexter already has the highest bicycle traffic of all the streets in the city. I don’t know what the numbers are for car/ped/cyclist accidents, but it seems to work well as it stands now… it could just use a re-surfacing. I think what will end up happening is that you’ll have the slower cyclists in the cycletrack while you have more of the faster riders in the car lane anyway. We may not find out until this is implemented.
The cyclist in me says we should be working on other streets to enable them to be more bike friendly, but the city in me says we need to make sure we don’t turn it in to a bike only city and hamper the flow of traffic by turning every 4 lane road into a 2 lane road. It’s a fine line to cross and I’m very interested in seeing how the Nickerson road diet works out.
Should be a significant improvement—especially for those who feel uncomfortable in mixed-traffic—but I am curious about the width. The one Portland installed last year has a 7-foot lane and a 3-foot buffer. And I think NYC’s 9th Ave. cycle track is wider yet.
Video of the City Council Transportation Committee Special Meeting 6/16/2010
Agenda Items: Electronic Trolley System, Public Comment
http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/watchVideos.asp?program=tsc
It’s 90 mins and I can’t watch now but would love to hear highlights.
I’m only about 1/3 in, but a couple of interesting things so far:
- Metro is the only trolleybus operator in North America with no off-wire capability.
- For the Bredas, it’s what has been discussed here before: the bus shells are old and have issues, whereas the propulsion systems are fine. But they’re saying the opposite is actually true for the Gilligs: the electric powerplants are from as long ago as 1979 and the manufacturer is no longer in business, so Metro has to fabricate their own replacement parts.
Interesting! I wonder if it would be possible to combine the two…
I watched and posted my summary:
http://www.orphanroad.com/blog/2010/06/city-council-etb-special-meeting
Thanks for posting your summary, I didn’t have time to watch it myself. I really hope that the city can come together and not only save the trolleybus system, but improve it. With all our cheap hydro power we should have one of the premier trolleybus systems in the world.
As this is an open thread, I would like to suggest that Metro and ST impose a preemptive ban on vuvuzelas on all buses and trains.
Ban Football games from Vuvuzela concerts!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=134628129887183
That’s awesome, just joined!
Coming from Chicago where when I first arrived years ago, I got laughed at for waiting at a cross walk for the “walk” sign. Now, I’m going to have to consciously remember to not invoke my Chicago pedestrian habits when I arrive back in Seattle.
From a 2001 Seattle times news article:
“Seattle’s legendarily law-abiding pedestrians, waiting obediently in the rain for the “walk” signal, have become almost as much of a sight for gawking tourists as the flying salmon at Pike Place Market.”
“Retired Seattle Police Chief Patrick Fitzsimons still remembers looking out the window of his hotel room when he arrived in Seattle in 1979. “I woke up at about 4 in the morning,” he said. “I looked out the window and it was raining, and there weren’t any cars coming as far as I could see, but there were three guys down at the corner waiting for the light to change, and I said, `This is a very special town.’ ”
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20010123&slug=jaywalk23m
I just got back from a Sound Transit open house at Roosevelt. It was the first North Link final design meeting, but I’m guessing there will be quite a few more in the next few months and years. There was a lot of interesting stuff, but the biggest thing that was new to me is that they are looking at changing the tunnel portal between Roosevelt and Northgate from south of 75th to north of 85th, with all of that tunneling done by a TBM. Also, the TBM would be launched southward from the new portal, instead of northward from Roosevelt Station, making it so that they don’t have to have tons of trucks collecting all the spoils from Roosevelt Station.
I was at the session too, and at least from their description, moving the portal to 85th seems like a win-win since it will reduce the impact at the Roosevelt site, and apparently will cost less than having the portal at 75th (since they won’t need to disrupt onramps to / bridges over I-5 for their work).
Where is Seattle’s 30/10 plan? We need one desparately!
Well luckily all of our planned transit projects will be done in just 13 years, not 30, and I’m not sure it would even be physically possible to do them much quicker. If we didn’t have that revenue shortfall perhaps we could leverage our future revenues to get more money to build the Link extensions all the way into Downtown Redmond, to Alderwood, and to Downtown Federal Way, but unfortunately we’re probably just barely going to be able to get our current ST2 plan built…
This might help the Seattle only extension of LINK to West Seattle and the trolley to Ballard projects.
Financing bonds from the Federal government sure beats selling them on the open market. Should be less cost to do, as you shouldn’t have to pay the Fed’s a commission on the bond sales. And we should be able to get fixed rates near zero if we get the same deal that the banks are getting!
And of course there’s the ST3 package. That vote could come in 2012, and ST could work on the LINK line to the South.
There is no way ST3 is happening by 2012. The underlying studies won’t be done till mid-decade.
What happened to the Pacific McKay Building in SLU? I thought it was being moved as part of the Mercer Project but I see nothing on that block. Please tell me it wasn’t demolished!!!
They saved most of the interesting bits and they are going to integrate them into a new building after the Mercer Street project is done.
http://www.djc.com/news/re/12018241.html
Yeah, “deconstruction” is what being a Seattle Landmark will get you.
thanks, i guess thats better than outright demolition.
there was another terra cotta building that i think met a similar fate a few years ago as part of the sound transit stub tunnel next to the paramount theater, what is the status of that? where would they reconstruct that?
You must mean the Pande Cameron rug shop building. It was affected by the construction, but it wasn’t torn down because of it. The rug shop moved out when the street was torn up, and then the owner had the building torn down because he wanted to build a 40-story condo building on the site. That was before the recession, now it’s just an empty lot. I don’t know if they saved any of the facade or terra cotta elements.
I didn’t know that. Pande Cameron is now in a beautifully restored brick building on Westlake! Several formerly vacant classic buildings are getting renovated in SLU, partially thanks to the bad economy I’m sure. Tesla is in one, a daycare in going in on Mercer, new restaurants, etc.
thats probably it. i could have sworn a few years ago i saw all the pieces of terra cotta inside that building being carefully labeled and packaged.
If 30/10 works out, Antonio Villaraigosa will be forever known as the man who built L.A. a transit system! He’ll have earned a place in the urban-planning pantheon with Georges-Eugène Haussmann and Frederick Law Olmsted.
Ugh….The Mariners special service is ending. Now press release official: http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/NewsCenter/NewsReleases/2010/June/nr061016_Mariners.aspx
Probably one of the dumbest rulings I’ve come across.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/todays-paper/Vancouver+bicycle+revolution+about+shift+into+higher+gear/3164096/story.html Vancouver is getting a bike-share system next summer! Seattle has to at least start considering it. People say it wouldn’t work here because Seattle is hilly, but despite our hills we have some of the highest bicycling rates in the nation so there’s no reason to think that bike-sharing wouldn’t be successful here as well. Also, people point out the problem with helmets, but as this article says, Melbourne has figured out how to deal with that and Vancouver is going to follow their lead. That preliminary study done by some people (I think students) at the UW is a good start, and now, or at least when the economy gets better, the city should start thinking about implementing a bike-share program in greater detail.
There are electric assist systems that work really well. Got smoked going up hill on the commute to work recently and then caught up with the guy at a traffic light where he revealed he’d been using the boost on the hill. Pretty slick system.
vancouver also just opened a new two way cycle track on dunsmuir, looks pretty nice too.
Vancouver Debuts Two-Way Bicycle Lane
http://www.planetizen.com/node/44684
Separated bike lane on Dunsmuir Street now open
http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/transport/cycling/separated/index.htm
When I had a bike, the U-lock fit nicely through the holes in the helmet, so I could lock the helmet to the bike when it was parked. Maybe Bikeshare could do that.
(I also used to sling a light jacket to the lock too, so I could go into clubs without having to check my coat, and still have a jacket to ride home in.)