Need by Purpose and Subarea

On Monday I wrote about the Regional Transit Task Force (RTTF) reduction policy. Today I’m going to touch on the growth policy with a few of my concerns. Less work has been done on this to date and it is therefore more conceptual than the reduction scenario.

The RTTF has advanced the concept that service growth should be based on two principles, responding to existing transit demand and supporting regional growth. The image above shows the results of this conceptual approach. To get these results Metro staff used one measure for responding to demand and six measures for supporting regional growth (details here). Using these measures and a scoring system a “desired minimum level of service” is calculated. If current transit service doesn’t meet this desired level of service, then a need has been identified and future service hours will be used to address the gap between desired level of service and current level of service.

This type of analysis is good because it is objective and based on context, not arbitrary policy, but it has limitations. The hard part is determining what measures to use, what ranges to use, and what weighting to give each range. Unless all factors are rigorously linked to a factual basis they can become value judgments. Select a certain set of measures, ranges and weights and you can skew results. Using objective measures is much better than the alternative, but I think this concept has to be significantly refined and I’m uncomfortable where it stands.

First off, I’m worried by the whole premiss of a “desired minimum level of service” will cause Metro to focus all of its effort and money on building lower productivity routes up to that level of service. To be clear, I’m not saying that I think investments in these corridors should not occur, but I don’t see a clear path that leads to higher frequency all day service on corridors that exceed these minimums, which most of the core routes and RapidRide routes already do. There must be some measure or set of measures that leads to better service for the highest ridership routes or else service improvement on most of the above mentioned routes will only occur with crowding.

On the topic of crowding “ie following demand”, only one measure, with a high threshold, is used. Commuter routes must have a load of 1.0 or greater for more than 20 minutes or a load factor 1.2 or greater for more than 20 minutes for local routes. This is meant to deal with peak period loads and should be addressed as a necessity not an extra. I get the feeling that task force members are counting this as part of Seattle portion of the pie, when in fact this is necessary to meet the basic capacity needs of the most productive routes in the entire Metro system. This extra service will go to peak periods, doing very little to increase off peak frequencies or span of service. Excluding these service hours only 17% of total service hours will go to improve west subarea routes to “desired minimum level of service” while 33% goes to the east and 31% go to the south.

One thing I’m not clear on is where this leaves other non “frequent arterial”, ie 30 minute or better headways all day long service, which is makes up 47% of east subarea service hour. If this means that the county is de emphasizing this type of service I think it would be a step in the right direction.  It if does not, then any additional service hours for those types of service will heavily favor the east and south subarea.

So I said before, it’s a good start but I have some serious concerns with it.

East Link

On Tuesday Monday night, the Bellevue City Council met once again to continue ongoing East Link discussion, albeit mostly revolving around the B7/BNSF route.  Oral communications were taken initially with comments from Will Knedlik, a longtime Sound Transit critic, and three other citizens who more or less testified against the City continuing to pursue B7.  Knedlik did not talk specifically about East Link, but urged Bellevue to take the lead on subarea equity in refunding $350 million of prematurely issued bonds which would ultimately scrape more money into the East subarea.  The real fireworks did not start until council discussion, which is below the jump.

For rough notes and minutes taken in real-time, I’ve attached a spare PDF here.  You can also view the meeting in its entirety on BTV.  You can find our background and rundown on East Link here.

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Velib Station, Paris (wikimedia)

In a recent list of projects PSRC recommended for federal funding was $150,000 for a “King County Bike Sharing Project.” Intrigued, I asked Metro planners Ref Lindmark and Eileen Kadesh about the details.

See also this City of Seattle/UW report on bike sharing.

What is the program’s total cost, and what are the other funding sources?

Grant funding is critical to getting the program launched. The capital cost of launching a program is estimated to be in the range of $3500 – $4500 per bike. Operating costs are estimated to be in the range of $1200 – 1600 per bike, and are normally funded through subscription fees.

King County has been awarded $150,000 in Transportation Enhancement money for 2011 to fund business model development, site selection and right-of-way permitting. Our application was for $1.83 million ($1.68 million for construction)… We will continue to pursue funding opportunities from a number of sources prior to there being an actual program.

County funds are not being proposed to fund this program.

When would it open?

Launch is currently planned for early summer, 2012.

More after the jump…

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by STEVE THORNTON (better known as Fnarf)

WSDOT via Orphan Road

Like Martin, and Frank over on Orphan Road, I am viewing the upcoming design unveiling for the space where the Alaskan Way Viaduct currently sits with intense dread. I am an unabashed Viaduct supporter; I love it to pieces, and think it’s not guilty of most of the charges leveled against it, which to my ears all too often betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what cities are for, but I recognize the reality that it’s probably coming down. So then what?

I feel that Seattle is under a decades-long assault to destroy its meaning as a city, in some ways just as devastating as the previous decades-long assault from the highway-builders (maybe even longer if you start with the monstrosity that is the 1928 Second Avenue Extension). Cities are civic places: but what the planners seem to have forgotten is what kind of civic places they are. Cities are markets; they are places where people gather to exchange goods, services, and ideas. Parks do not make cities. Boulevards do not make cities. Dense blocks of commerce make cities. Commerce, commerce, commerce. Rainier National Park is not a city. Manhattan is a city.

It’s incredibly fashionable right now to decry “consumerism”, and Seattle has a surplus of people bleating for parks and plazas, to overturn “the tyranny of the automobile”, to “restore Puget Sound”, to “connect to the waterfront”, to “focus less on consuming and more on families”. These ideas, when applied to central areas of cities, can be — almost always are — counterproductive. There are millions of examples, many of them right here in Seattle. We’re about to build another one.

I feel confident that each of the four finalists whose plans will be unveiled on the fifteenth will all feature gorgeous watercolors with a lovely forest green as the primary color, because we all want green. But those watercolors are always, always misleading. Green is not what we’re going to get, no matter how many trees they plant or happy skateboarders they draw in or feet of roadway they obscure. I have a list here of some things in particular that we don’t want.

More after the jump...

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Impact on Ridership

The Regional Transit Task Force (RTTF) has been looking at both reduction and growth scenarios. Today I’ll give you an update on the reduction scenarios and tomorrow I’ll give you an update on the growth scenarios. It’s worth noting that the Council has given the RTTF more time to conduct it’s work, which certainly seems necessary.        

As I reported a while ago there is generally agreement that reductions should be made based on productivity. After all if you want to increase the efficiency of a system, productivity is the measure to use.        

As more scenarios are developed the obvious is emerging, any cuts based on productivity will be best for the west subarea, worst for the east subarea and roughly neutral for the south subarea. On the flip side it appears significant efficiencies could be attained from redesigning Metro’s transit service. This could be good or bad depending on the specific change and your point of view but it would certainly impact the west subarea most, simply because it has the most service  as well as the most service “artifacts” that can create a less than optimal system. Both of these things, getting rid of subarea based service allocation and redesigning the bus system obviously aren’t politically easy to do.        

To further explore other reduction options Metro has added three new reduction scenarios R0, R2, and R3. R1 was the first reduction scenario discussed and had a refreshing and balanced approach, essentially a system designed by transit planners, not politicians.        

• R0: Productivity based reductions, regardless of subarea.
• R1: Reduction made using a three screen process regardless of subarea. First unproductive service (less than 10 riders per platform hours or 50 passenger miles per platform hours) are removed, reduced or redesigned. Second service is added back according to goals of connecting housing and job centers, ensuring mobility for minority/student populations, and lifeline services over broad geographic areas. Third system design efficiencies are applied. This means leveraging ST service, consolidating routes, prioritizing frequent arterial service, etc.
• R2: Productivity based reductions, done on a subarea basis. Reductions per subarea are based on percent of service hours each subarea currently has (west 62%, south 21%, east 17%). This essentially is Metro’s current policy.
• R3: Uses the same three screen process as R1 but applied by subarea as in R2.

Lots more after the jump.  (more…)

Sound Transit's most recent preferred alternative on the left, and Bellevue's on the right

Tonight, the Bellevue City Council will meet once again to discuss East Link (agenda here), and more specifically the B7 route, something that Sound Transit has repeatedly tried to move forward on.  We reported earlier this year that the council had approved some $200,000 for four independent studies essentially aimed at critiquing ST’s job in the DEIS as well as studying B7-related elements.  When those studies were complete, it was discovered that there was no new information that suddenly made B7 the rock-star alignment that some of the councilmembers were expecting.

At a study session last Tuesday, Bellevue Mayor Don Davidson once again questioned the “sufficiency” of information available for B7.  Staff was then instructed to prepare discussion materials for tonight’s meeting to see if the council wants to pursue “additional studies.”  According to talk over the grapevine, the pro-B7 quorum’s intent is to bring B7 up to a similar level of engineering as Sound Transit is doing with B2– not at all an easy or cheap endeavor.

According to the study session materials (PDF), the City has a remaining $270,000 left in East Link study budget.  Considering that Sound Transit has discretion to dictate the final alignment, it’s beyond me why the council isn’t choosing to spend this money on wiser investments– like mitigation or neighborhood impacts for B2/B3, things that people actually care about.

The study session will begin tonight at 6pm in the 1E-113 room at Bellevue City Hall.  Bellevue or Eastside residents interested in East Link planning or even just prudent fiscal governance are encouraged to attend.  You can read about this blog’s endorsements and opinions of the whole saga here.

fastcodesign.com

From here, via here.

Image from Northwest Vietnamese News via the Rainier Valley Post

The Sun Break compares our headline favorably to the Times:

But in the Times headlines, light rail is always implicitly the agent of destruction: light rail “injures two” (who tried to make an illegal left turn in front of a sign marked No Left Turn), a woman “sustain[ed] injury” when she ran into the light rail, and a girl talking on her cellphone who stepped into the trackway was “struck by light-rail train.” In none of these cases did the illegality, incompetence, or obliviousness of the person who caused the accident make it into the headline.

I think it’s imp0rtant to point out that headlines at The Seattle Times are not written by the authoring reporter, so the blame usually falls on a nameless editor rather than Mike Lindblom or whomever reported the piece in this case (“Seattle Times staff”). There’s also no reason to blame a vast anti-rail conspiracy rather than simple sloppy thinking.

Still, this kind of thing matters. Whether I’m browsing a newspaper in print, on Twitter, or on their website, I’ll read a fraction of the stories; for the ones I don’t care about as much, the headline forms my entire impression of the issue. Inaccuracies like this one affect the perception of the vast majority of readers that don’t follow the subject closely.

'Connect the Dots' promotional banner

Recently, Metro began a destination marketing scheme called ‘Connect the Dots’ specific to Route 245 on the Eastside.  The scheme emphasizes access and corridor destinations over generic coverage.  In addition to marketing and promotion, Metro also plans for various other improvements, ranging from bus stop branding to new bike rack installation.  From Metro spokesperson, Rochelle Ogershok:

The promotional campaign is designed to increase awareness and trial of the Route 245.   The campaign includes public events at key areas served by the 245, employer outreach, and residential mailings.

This is not really a new type of marketing effort for Metro.  We have done several route specific promotions in the past.  We target routes that have extra capacity — either on the buses and/or at the park and ride lots and focus our efforts on ways to get more people on the bus.  Those can be new people that have never ridden, or existing riders who we would like to ride more.

According to Ogershok, the promotional campaign is funded by grants specific to the 245 and will last into early 2011.  You can take a look at the ‘Connect the Dots’ brochure here (PDF).  Some general thoughts below the jump.

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Location of bus stops on the Montlake Lid (WSDOT)

Yesterday, the SR 520 ESSB 6392 Workgroup held a meeting to discuss draft recommendations on various aspects of the SR 520 replacement project. Transit supporters will be disappointed to learn that very little has changed from the last meeting regarding bus stop locations and transit flow from Montlake Blvd to the UW Triangle. The second Montlake bascule bridge is thrown further in doubt with the Seattle City Council representative expressing concern with its construction timing and the need for a second bridge, while WSDOT staff are developing transit travel time and pedestrian/bicycle level-of-service measures that would trigger construction of the bridge. The bridge is expected to be the last piece of the project to be constructed, sometime around 2016-2018.  If you haven’t already, read Martin’s writeup on the changes coming to Montlake Blvd and the presentation from the meeting.

Analysis of the transit proposal and its impact on transit operations will be detailed in a technical report to be released on Monday, September 13. That same day at 2:30 pm, the Seattle City Council will convene a special committee meeting on SR 520. The public will be able to comment on the report and technical white papers until September 24. The next and final workgroup meeting is tentatively scheduled for November 18, 2010.

In attendance were representatives from WSDOT, SDOT, the University of Washington, Sound Transit, King County Metro and the Seattle City Council.

More details after the jump. (more…)

[UPDATE: To be absolutely clear, "the limitations of simply bypassing that segment" below refers to the critique that Central Link should have gone straight to the airport via Marginal Way, instead of doing a sharp turn to serve SE Seattle.]

Sound Transit released per-station, per time-of-day boarding data (.pdf) from earlier this year, and it’s a treasure trove of information. Although overall ridership was substantially lower than it is at the moment, there are many interesting trends:

• About 51% of all trips begin or end between Beacon Hill and Rainier Beach, which illustrates some of the limitations of simply bypassing that segment to go straight to the airport.
• Westlake and Seatac are the powerhouses of the system, as is usually the case with a terminus.
• About 11% of trips are contained entirely within the DSTT.
• University Street and Pioneer Square are weak on weekends compared to the other two tunnel stations, unsurprisingly.
• The data suggests an average trip length of 7.6 miles, or 149,000 passenger-miles/weekday. That’s exactly half the length of the line, or University-Rainier Beach.
• The PM Peak Southbound is significantly stronger than the AM peak northbound, but mid-day Northbound is stronger. That suggests that Link’s AM peak is too early.

A pie chart is below the jump. Since each station gets credit for half a trip, the portion of all trips involving a station is actually double what is shown on this chart (i.e., adding up all the true percentages would get you 200%).

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A car made an illegal left hand turn and collided with a light rail train this morning, Sound Transit spokesperson Bruce Gray said.

The accident occured at the intersection of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd and Othello St at around 11 am. The scene was cleared and normal service resumed  by 11:35, Gray said.

No major injuries have been reported.

I thought I’d follow up on Martin’s post on Amtrak’s long-distance reliability numbers with some Cascades data that is highly relevant to the conversation.  Commenters expressed frustration with using mean performance as a single indicator of success, and many asked not only for Amtrak’s definition of ‘on-time’, but also to see median, mode, and ‘full-distribution’ data for Amtrak trains.  The problems with ‘mean performance’ have already been kicking around the transit blogosphere lately, and I see little reason to simply reiterate something others have already said well.  But I always find it useful to add data and visuals to a conversation.

By Amtrak’s on-time performance definitions, trains can be 10-30 minutes late (depending on route distance) and be considered ‘on-time’.  With such a wide scope, the concepts of ‘on-time’ and ‘reliability’ begin to drift apart in meaning.  Reliability should mean a consistent travel experience, both qualitatively (comfort and service) and quantitatively (speed and on-time performance).

Check out the chart above.  Using data from the invaluable Amtrak Train Status Archives, I charted the performance of two morning train segments (#510 Seattle to Vancouver BC, and #513 Vancouver BC to Seattle only) for January 1-June 30 2010.

More after the jump…

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Count and Combined Headway of Buses Currently on Montlake and Pacific

We have been pretty adamant on our concerns about bus connections between SR-520, Husky Stadium, the UW Triangle and the rest of the U-district over the last few weeks. This connection must be done right and that means uninterrupted and high quality bus lanes between SR-520 and the intersection of Pacific St and Pacific Pl at the very minimum. A few reason why this is so important:

• Current bus service on Montlake/Pacific/15th currently has a combined headways as low as 1.5 minutes.
• The SR-520 HCT plan calls for three BRT routes, one new route and two upgraded routes (271 and 540), all traveling on Montlake/Pacific/15th Ave
• Routes 43, 44 and 48 also travel on 24th/Montlake/Pacific/15th and already exceed service levels for RapidRide
• Even with best case scenarios Montlake/Pacific and Montlake/SR-520 will still have an LOS of E in the afternoon (pg 15, Note this is an old design, the newest design will have a worse LOS).
• Community groups don’t want a second bascule bridge built, even though all new space will be allocated to transit, carpoolers, bicyclist and pedestrians.
• WSDOT is removing the Montlake flyer stop without providing new operating funds to mitigate this change
• WSDOT is removing the ramps to Lake Washington Blvd which will worsen traffic south of SR-520 on Montlake/24th Ave
• Husky Stadium Link station neccesitates fast and reliable bus connections to the rest of the U-district and SR-520 especially if transfers to Link are to be “forced”.

Below the jump are two graphics showing which bus routes contribute most to this extremely low combined headways. Routes 43, 44, 48, 271 and 540 are the lions share of the trips.

Service on the 271 and 540 will need to increase by roughly by 4-8 buses trips per hour per direction to meet goals set in the SR-520 HCT plan and a new BRT route would add 6-10 trips per hour per direction during peaks. Additionally if ST/Metro wanted to end other routes like the 255 or 545 at Husky Stadium roughly an additional 10-16 buses per hour per direction need to be accommodated.

All of this additional service put together could add roughly 20-30 new buses per hour per direction to Montlake/Pacific/15th, roughly doubling bus service from current levels. While nothing is certain, decisions made now must be able to accommodate a scenario like this and details of transit operations must be worked not now, not later.

Graphics after jump (more…)

Celia Kupersmith, photo from Sound Transit

Back in June, Sound Transit announced that it was hiring Celia Kupersmith to replace retiring Deputy CEO, Ron Tober.  Kupersmith has now joined ST, bringing experience from her work in San Francisco where she was the GM of the Golden Gate Highway and Transportation District.  The district runs transit service between San Francisco and Marin/Sonoma counties.

From Sound Transit’s press release:

“Celia is a nationally respected transit leader who brings extensive engineering, capital project management and operations experience to Sound Transit,” said Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl. “She will play a pivotal role in delivering high quality transit projects and services to the people of our region. We couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome her aboard.”

“Few transit systems nationally are growing as fast as Sound Transit’s, and none offer the professional challenges and opportunities that exist here,” Kupersmith said. “Sound Transit’s success in the years ahead will come from working with a broad range of partners including local governments and local transit agencies to deliver projects and services with tremendous focus on efficiency. There is not another agency in the country that could have lured me from the Golden Gate Bridge.”

While Tober left big shoes to fill, we wish Kupersmith the best of luck in helping carry out ST2.

Photo by VeloBusDriver

The next in a series of workgroup meetings is happening tomorrow:

ESSB 6392 Workgroup meeting

Date: Thursday, Sept. 9

Location: Puget Sound Regional Council Board Room, 1011 Western Ave., Suite 500, Seattle

Time: 3-5 p.m. technical presentation to the workgroup (includes public comment)

Who: WSDOT, Seattle Department of Transportation, University of Washington, King County Metro, Sound Transit, Seattle City Council staff

Topics: Workgroup members will discuss draft recommendations including roadway operations, bus stop locations and connectivity, light rail accommodation, Montlake Bascule Bridge phasing and traffic management plans. The workgroup will accept public comments at the end of the meeting.

If you can articulate problems with the way bus service will work in the Montlake neighborhood (and you should), it would be good to show up. Then again, the presentation may very well reveal they fixed the problems. Meeting materials might be posted here in advance of the meeting, but at the moment they’re not.

Empire Builder Train, photo by Mike Bjork

Contributor Emeritus Brian Bundridge relays these numbers:

COAST STARLIGHT

Northbound Into Seattle (Train #14)
June On Time Arrival = 73% (Average Arrival 19 Minutes Early)
July On Time Arrival = 74% (Average Arrival 8 Minutes Early)
August On Time Arrival= 74% (Average Arrival 8 Minutes Early)

Southbound into Los Angeles (Train #11)
June On Time Arrival  = 93% (Average Arrival 19 Minutes Early)
July On Time Arrival  = 87% (Average Arrival 3 Minutes Early)
August On Time Arrival  = 84% (Average Arrival 3 Minutes Late)

EMPIRE BUILDER

Westbound into Seattle (Train #8)
June On Time Arrival = 63% (Average Arrival 11 Minutes Late)
July On Time Arrival = 71% (Average Arrival 2 Minutes Late)
August On Time Arrival = 48% (Average Arrival 25 Minutes Late)

Eastbound into Chicago (Train #7)
June On Time Arrival = 13% (Average Arrival 54 Minutes Late)
July On Time Arrival = 42% (Average Arrival 69 Minutes Late)
August On Time Arrival = 23% (Average Arrival 83 Minutes Late)

• 

  RapidRide Shelter, by Atomic Taco

  WSDOT and BNSF sign Memorandum of Agreement to spend intercity rail stimulus money.

• Intercity Transit punts till next year the decision on ceasing the Dash Shuttle.
• Mike Lindblom has an excellent survey of Metro’s labor situation.
• Two new members on the Community Transit Board.
• GNP Railway applies to run freight and “excursion” trains as far south as Redmond in the old BNSF corridor. The reaction, from Cascade Bicycle Club and Redmond, is negative.
• Juanita in Motion to have a Kirkland Community Bike Ride, Saturday from 10am-12pm, to introduce people to bicycling amenities. More here.
• This will make some readers’ heads explode, but ORCA being held up as an example of how to do something right. The author is right that DC and Seattle transit have many structural similarities in terms of agencies.
• SR 167 HOT lanes more popular, still losing money.
• A life quietly saved by an alert driver.
• Beefed up security at FWTC.
• Seattle doing relatively well, for an American City, in pedestrian safety. (H/T: Josh Mahar)

This is an open thread.

WSDOT Image via HugeAssCity

With all the disagreement about how to replace (or not) the viaduct’s car capacity, there’s been very little discussion of what the waterfront will actually look like. The entire purpose of burying the freeway, after all, is to create a wonderful urban space.

Luckily, that’s about to change, as Seattle has chosen four architects (out of 30 applicants) to present their visions to the public:

The next step in the selection process will be public presentations on September 15 at Benaroya Hall’s S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium (200 University Street, Seattle) from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (please note the time change). This will be an opportunity for Seattleites to hear shortlisted designers explain their skills, experience and approach to the project, as well as ask questions. The lead designer will be selected in part based on the quality of their presentation and ability to engage the public.

See also Crosscut for a discussion of the candidates.

I’m actually very fearful for this process. I sense an uncritical sentiment for “green space” — which, if poorly designed, can be dead 300 days a year — and a certain segment of the population who wants to make sure that no one makes a profit on this. I, for one, would like to see some commerce and development mixed in with the parkland.

Today Obama accounted a new plan to spend $50 billion dollars on our transportation infrastructure. From my perspective the news worthiness of this isn’t so much the money, after all $50 billion dollars won’t go too far, the big news is that it hints at what the surface transportation reauthorization might look like when congress gets around to it. This could include:

• Use of an infrastructure bank, allowing for front loading of projects, which is good news for LA’s 30/10
• Consolidated and possibly mode blind federal funding structure based around broad goals (preservation, mobility, air-quality, etc.) rather than todays structure with hundreds of mode specific and narrowly defined programs
• Livable communities becomes an important federal funding priority among other “soft” goals of our transportation system
• Integration of HSR efforts with the rest of the transportation funding structure

Initial reaction from the Transport Politic. Press release below the jump. (more…)