Council President Richard Conlin. Photo from WSDOT.
The relationship between the Seattle City Council and Mayor McGinn doesn’t seem to be improving, and that could mean bad news for light rail supporters. McGinn promised to put a light rail measure on the ballot within two years of being elected — the most logical choice now being November 2011.
The revenue options available to McGinn have only shrunk in recent months as the SR-99 deep-bore tunnel, the crumbling waterfront seawall, and the SDOT funding shortfall have moved a variety of sources near their limits — or will in the near future. The city council is planning to soon create a Transportation Benefit District, according to PubliCola, to help fill SDOT’s shortfall.
A TBD would allow the council to raise serious revenue, with voter approval, through a high vehicle license fee, a property tax increase, a sales-tax increase, or even (unlikely) tolls on local arterials. But the Times notes that the city council — who would have to move any light rail measure to the ballot — is skeptical:
There doesn’t seem to be much fervor on the City Council to seek a near-term vote on light rail, in a time when basic services are threatened by recession and budget cuts, according to Councilman Nick Licata. “I think it’s been pushed back, and I don’t see the public necessarily supporting it, once they know what the costs are,” he said.
Councilman Tom Rasmussen, chairman of the transportation committee, is equally sour on trying a light rail tax anytime soon, even though he lives in West Seattle.
“We don’t even have light rail to the U District yet, and to Roosevelt,” he said, referring to Sound Transit lines due in the early 2020s. King County Metro’s RapidRide bus service, due in 2012 for Ballard and West Seattle, is more productive for those neighborhoods in the near term, he said. He suspects that a westside rail study would sit on the shelf for years.
Rasmussen and four other councilmembers are up for re-election next year.
In another political setback, the council’s transportation committee voted to approve initial funding for an updated transit master plan only after stipulating that the city must study high-capacity transit corridors in a mode neutral way, not picking light rail from the beginning. Though this decision is prudent, the council also added another delay mechanism: the second phase of funding for the master plan will only come after the council signs off on the first phase in January of next year.
The transit master plan must be delivered within a year, according to SDOT spokesman Richard Sheridan, if the council doesn’t delay it again. By the end of March, 2011, SDOT expects to be “heavily into modal analysis” which would include identified corridors, recommended modes, preliminary cost estimates, and a “menu of revenue options,” according to Tony Mazzella, who is the project lead for the master plan. It’s important to note that the transit master plan will not specifically favor one mode or one corridor, and may recommend bus rapid transit or rapid streetcar, or another mode, instead of light rail. My intuition is that light rail is the only mode with the capacity though the biggest corridors in the city.
For a 2011 measure to get on the ballot, there clearly needs to be more political momentum to get through a skeptical council. But if the council remains disinterested and local revenue sources continue to dry up, a local ballot measure might never come up to vote. Sound Transit doesn’t have revenue authority to build new light rail lines — beyond what was approved in ST2 — until the 2030′s. Even if the state legislature changes that, a local spur would certainly break ground much sooner.
The answer is mostly everywhere. To further nail the point Sherwin and John made yesterday, that the majority of Bellevue citizens support Sound Transit 2 and East Link, I made a map specifically showing only Bellevue precinct level results. The current East Link Preferred Alignment is also shown with both C9T and C11A options.
Click on map to download PDF version and enlarge.
While support and opposition is spread throughout the city, the map makes it easy to see what each neighborhood was thinking. 57% of votes from the two Surrey Downs precincts rejected ST2. Compare that to the majority of their neighbors in nearby Enatai, Bellecrest and Downtown who voted to approve ST2 and also the 56% citywide. Residents in precincts along the BNSF and Bel-Red corridor also had high approval.
Note that one precinct downtown is white. There was no data for that precinct. For those who want to dig in further, get the data extract and Bellevue precincts map.
The bus routes affected by the service proposals include Routes 110, 112, 116, 130, 408, 413, 414, 415, 416 and 477…
Details are available online and in a booklet being distributed on buses. A community meeting to discuss these proposals will take place at the Mountlake Terrace Library (23300 58th Ave. W., accessed by Routes 112 and 130) from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 19.
Public comment on all these proposals will be accepted through Sept. 6. A public hearing before the Community Transit Board of Directors will take place at 3 p.m. Sept. 2 at the Community Transit Board Room, 7100 Hardeson Rd., Everett (accessed by Everett Transit Route 8).
Comments are accepted in several ways:
via email - 2011changes@commtrans.org;
via regular mail – Community Transit Service Change, 7100 Hardeson Road, Everett, WA 98203;
via phone – (425) 353-7433.
Earlier today, Sherwin pointed out that a noted letter-to-the-editor author who fumes about East Link has blatantly lied in his letters. Among other claims, Mr. Hirt said that the “majority of” Bellevue residents “voted against” funding East Link. Sherwin pointed out that the districts that encompass Bellevue overwhelmingly supported light rail, and showed a graphic depicting the wide majority of precincts in Bellevue supporting Sound Transit 2.
Still, some commenters wanted exact numbers for Bellevue’s support. We’re here to serve: according to the 2008 precinct numbers provided by King County, 56% (28,901) of those who voted on ST2 in Bellevue moved to approve the package that included East Link, while just 44% (22,887) voted to reject it. 5,205 voters in Bellevue were happy with others making the choice for them, and chose not to vote one way or the other on ST2.
And there’s your data-driven fact check that the Seattle Times and the Bellevue Reporter were unwilling to do before publishing Mr. Hirt’s letters.
There’s no doubt that the debate revolving around East Link has yielded a number of lies. Most are complete nonsense, but there are few that can spread dangerous misinformation. I want to direct your attention to a letter from Bill Hirt, an anti-Link critic who has had a compulsive passion for writing an extraordinary amount of letters to local papers. From the Seattle Times:
The Council majority could simply refuse to grant those permits, stopping the light rail in its “tracks.” Stopping East Link would undoubtedly please Bellevue residents, the majority of whom voted against its funding in 2008.
Jarrett Walker at Human Transit makes the case for bus system maps that clearly indicate route frequency, and uses King County Metro as an example of how not to do that. It’s an argument I made in May, but treated with Jarrett’s usual eloquence and depth. As usual, go read the whole thing.
If a street map for a city drew every road with the same kind of line and label, so that Interstate 5 looked no different from the smallest gravel cul-de-sac, we’d say it was a bad map. But it’s not wrong, the mapmaker would say! No, it’s not, but it’s misleading. If we can’t identify the major streets, we can’t see the basic shape of the city, and without that, we can’t really make use of the map’s information.
The only thing I’d add comes from a conversation I had after I wrote that piece. Given the politics of city/suburb relations, a 15-minute frequency map is explosive simply because it illustrates how much better service is in the city. After all, only 11 of 35 high-frequency segments even leave the city, and none but Link on Sundays. That’s for good reason, but it’s also not what a lot of people want to see.
Today WSDOT is launching the first ATMS corridor (aka Smarter Highways) on northbound I-5 at 11am. Over the last year I have written about it here and here. This is the first ATMS system in the United States, and certainly is on the cutting edge of traffic management. Look for updates to this posts throughout the day as other media outlits report on it. I hope to vist the Traffic Managment Center tomorrow afternoon to watch the system in action.
Without doing much we have amassed quite a large twitter following and we wanted to say thanks to all our followers and make sure everyone else knew we were on twitter. As some of our followers might have noticed we have been much more active over the last few weeks (thanks to new smartphones) and we hope to take our twitter account up a notch.
In addition to the basic “On the blog:” tweets, look to our twitter account for transit related retweets, photos, videos, and blurbs that might not make it onto the blog but are interesting or funny nevertheless. Our tweeting will pick up during transit related events and meetings or when major travel disruptions occur. We hope our twitter account gives everyone, you and use alike, the ability to communicate and chat in a more fluid and casual manner.
So if you aren’t following us go here and add us. We use our twitter account to follow news from specific sources so please forgive us if we don’t add you back. However, if you want to get our attention just tag us at @seatransitblog and we’ll get back to you.
Also for your information there’s an effort on the back burner to get all this integrated, but for various technology reasons Sherwin (@sherwinhlee) and Oran (@oranv) have active feeds, heavily transit-oriented, and yet not part of the seatransitblog feed. Check those out too!
Add Route 14 to the list of Seattle bus routes undergoing a stop consolidation. On September 4, 73 bus stops will be cut to 53, affecting 19% of riders and increasing average spacing to 950 feet.
You can look at the list of stops, and comment before August 20th, at the website for this project. Previous routes that recently received this treatment are the 3, 4, 7, 8, 16, 28, and 49.
Buried in Mike Lindblom’s impressive followup on last week’s Link/truck accident was this:
Ironically, the Seattle agencies had just started training a new employee Monday [Aug. 2], to focus solely on customer updates. This person will be a “bridge” between the Link train-control center and the bus-control center, each operated by Metro in the same building in the Sodo neighborhood, said Gray.
The job includes writing customized messages for the electronic signs at stations; changing the announcements on public-address speakers; and feeding updates by radio to bus and train operators. Messages at stations have tended to be general and the public-address systems typically use automated messages, not specific live updates.
The new communications job was created largely to improve travel through the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, shared by buses and trains, where rush-hour congestion or electronic glitches cause occasional delays.
It’s good to see this happening, although one wonders why Metro and ST thought they could get away with not having useful variable message signs up to now.
As for the incident response, a lot of the most complete solutions, such as having bus drivers ready to respond, or more turnarounds, are expensive. What is relatively cheap, however, is pre-planned procedures and staff trained on how to execute them.
For instance, if a serious Rainier Valley disruption will lead to a bus bridge between Stadium and Rainier Beach, that bridge will take time to implement. Operators should know enough about the system to direct riders across the street to the 8 stop, which can at least get them to Rainier Beach and onto the operating Link segments. In the middle of the day, it might take at most 30 minutes for enough bus capacity to go by to take all of the passengers on to their destinations.
The July 2008 projections were the ones used in creating the Sound Transit 2 plans. The change in the August 2009 and August 2010 projections from 2008, in absolute and relative terms, are on the right.
Since each subarea essentially pays for its projects out of its own account, the breakdown by subarea is important:
North King (Seattle/Shoreline), already holding up relatively well, loses only an additional $43m over 30 years.
Snohomish, already bad, doesn’t get much worse; also, they are absolutely reliant on North King remaining whole to get to the County line, so the North King numbers are also very good news.
East King loses $223m, which puts the downtown Bellevue tunnel even further out of reach.
South King has the most precipitous drop since the last estimate, and is now in the worst shape.
The presentation also breaks out how ST absorbed last year’s $3.1 billion drop: $2.1 billion came from project reserves and from lower construction bids; $900m in lower inflation and financial contingencies; and a $90m cut in administrative expenses.
There will be a new financial plan in September, which the Board will discuss through the end of the year.
Revenue forecasts have fallen further from the original projections for Sound Transit 2. The latest estimates extend the shortfall from $3.1 billion over the life of the project to $3.9 billion, out of a $18 billion total program cost.
In the past, the extensive reserves built into project planning had shielded ST from the need to making fundamental changes to the plan. According to ST spokesman Bruce Gray, that may be no longer be the case:
This fall the Board will develop short- and long-term spending priorities during the normal budgeting process from September – November. Options to address the revenue shortfalls may include reducing project scope, extending project timelines and reducing operating and administrative costs.
Two weeks ago I traveled from Seattle to Los Angeles aboard the Coast Starlight. Since the dark ages of 2005-2006, during which the train was late 90+% of the time, the Starlight has done much to reclaim its status as a premier passenger train. After a mudslide knocked out service in the winter of 2008, Amtrak ‘relaunched’ the service with a renewed focus on amenities and on-time performance, and it has worked. In June 100% of southbound trains arrived into Los Angeles on-time, while 93% of northbound trains into Seattle arrived on-time. My own trip confirmed this improvement. For $220 I had an on-time arrival, wireless internet, bottomless coffee and fresh produce, simple but decent meals, tablecloth service with porcelain dinnerware and real flatware, a small but comfortable room, a hot shower, leather lounge chairs, a cinema, and a panoramic view of Mount Rainier, the Tacoma Narrows, the Nisqually River Delta, the Columbia River, the Willamette Valley, the Oregon Cascades, Mt. Shasta, the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, and the Central Coast of California.
Somewhere Between Lompoc and Santa Barbara
Though we often discuss how well-developed passenger trains can take modal share away from car and air travel – and Cascades has a good chance of evenly splitting the air-rail market over the coming years – long-distance trains are qualitatively different. They offer neither the on-off freedom of cars nor the speed of airplanes. They are often the only high-capacity transit service available across a large swath of rural America and they traverse scenic pre-Interstate corridors. Being a functionally unique service, long-distance trains compete only against themselves and their own expectations, and they will live and die on the strength of the experience they offer. Amtrak seems to have belatedly figured this out, and the Starlight is again a wonderful experience. It’s not the ‘Star-late’ anymore.
As a footnote, I think Seattle and Portland have largely not recognized that we have arguably the highest quality Amtrak service in the country. We’re not a hub like Chicago, nor do we have the frequency of the Northeast or California, but we have the two best long-distance trains and a unique corridor service with Talgo equipment everyone else would love to have. While in many ways Seattle is behind the curve, we can at least be grateful for the high quality of service we enjoy.
On the heels of Whatcom Transit Authority losing in their attempt (by 1.8%) to increase the sales tax and maintain service levels, the City of Bellingham is looking to step in and save bus service in the city itself:
Leaders of the newly formed citywide transportation district wants to ask voters for a sales tax increase this fall, instead of imposing a $20-per-year car tab fee, which could be done without voter approval…
An official decision to put the issue before city voters in November will be made Monday, Aug. 9.
The city would spend the roughly $3.8 million generated by the sales tax increase for annual street repaving, installing sidewalks and pedestrian crossings, and contracting with Whatcom Transportation Authority to replace bus service that’ll be cut this fall.
The license fee would have only added about $800,000 annually, so the sales tax option brings more revenue.
Voting in November, when turnout increases, and limiting the vote to the more pro-transit city itself seem like big winners to me. Those of you who live in Bellingham or know someone who does are encouraged to contact the City Council to support the vote, and then start registering young people.
Sound Transit finally began using the variable message signs (VMS) at SeaTac/Airport Station to tell passengers which train is next to depart for Downtown Seattle. The message, “THIS TRAIN TO SEATTLE”, is put up on the signs next to the train to depart. The other set of signs continue to say “Welcome to SeaTac Airport”. There was one case when they were wrong. Signs were pointing to a train going out of service and returning to the yard. Another train arrived shortly and when the out-of-service train left the station the signs switched to the correct train. That suggests the signs are operated automatically though I do not know for sure.
This is a good development in informing passengers and hopefully leads to some kind of next train countdown display, which we all are hoping for without any indication it’s going to happen. Past solutions that Sound Transit used include sandwich board signs and manually switched lighted signs at Tukwila International Boulevard Station before Airport Link opened.
For those of you who don’t know, TCC is a nonprofit that shares this blog’s values. Unlike STB, they do the things that really require full-time employees: lobbying Olympia and providing a pro-rail, pro-transit, pro-density voice on various government commissions and task forces.
I’ll be there, along with a few other bloggers.
Update: We just got word that Congressman Jay Inslee and King County Executive Dow Constantine will be in attendance. Inslee is rumored to run for governor in 2012, so it’ll be interesting to hear his thoughts on public transit.
The Economistfrets that all this Amtrak money will mess up our freight rail system, the world’s best; smart takes at the transport politic and Orphan Road. It makes you wonder if we’d better off shoveling more money into new track like California HSR rather than Cascades.
The PSTO blog hits back against Michael Ennis’s accusations of overpaid Metro Drivers.
I’m not sure from the name what “3G Wifi” is but Cascades should have it by the end of 2011.
Rainier Beach station to get new housing and 1.5 parking spaces per unit. Not ideal, but I have less problem with it when determined by the market than dictated by law. (H/T: Alex Jonlin)
Hollywood depicts non-drivers as deviants and losers. I think the case eroded somewhat by the massive overrepresentation of Manhattan in popular culture, but this is still a problem.
Last month, the South Lake Union Streetcar had record ridership, finally breaking the 2,000 mark with a weekday average of 2,193 boardings and a weekend/holiday average of 1,459. This is about a 15% increase over June’s weekday ridership, and a 9% increase in daily ridership over the same period last year. Weekend/holiday boardings were actually lower this year, likely due to the construction at Lake Union Park, which limited the number of fireworks viewers in the areas. You can view the full day-to-day breakdown here.
One observation to point out here is that historically, July tends to be the peak of streetcar ridership with summer tourists flocking into town. While the numbers have followed a curve in years past, Amazon’s continued move into the area may help buck that trend– two phases of the campus have now been completed with three more to go.
