Construction has begun on the long-awaited D-to-M Street project.On October 26th Sound Transit provided a hi-rail tour of the M Street-to-Lakewood portion. Enjoy the video!
Amtrak again proposes to combine the Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle intoa daily service, eliminating the infamous 9-hour overnight San Antonio layover and adding a daily servicefrom San Antonio to New Orleans.Negotiations with Union Pacific are pending. Meanwhile, Amtrak signs a $466M deal with Siemens to build 70 new electric locomotives.
After taking a (wise) pass on this election, Denver will hold public meetings to determine how much sales tax authority voters might authorize in 2011. A ballot failure would mean completing only half of its ambitious122-mile rail expansion plan.
Ray Lahood warns new GOP governors that HSR money can’t be spent on anything else. Wanting the funds for themselves, New Yorkers take to Facebook to get Lahood’s attention.
A man sleeping in an Olympia tunnel loses both arms after being run over by a Tacoma Rail freight train.
Spokane unveils a novel online transit game to help market its long-term priorities, including streetcars/light rail between the Riverpoint Campus, downtown, and Division St. The game lets the user mix-and-match capital projects with potential revenue sources.
The local transit operators union that service King County’s Metro has agreed to forgo raises next year, according to a tentative agreement posted on the ATU 587′s website. The ATU is promoting the following compromises:
As we reported last week, transit operators will forgo a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for the first year of the contract, effectively freezing current wage levels. This will save about $7.8 million compared to the expiring contract.
In years 2 and 3 – beginning at the end of October in 2011 and 2012, respectively – bus drivers will get modest raises of 0.7% in year 2 and 0.6% on top of that in year 3.
In addition, drivers will receive a COLA based on local inflation in those out years. The COLA has no cap and just a 0% floor — so drivers can never face a wage decrease. This represents a major concession from the union, which had secured a 3% floor in the last contract
Metro will gain some “efficiencies,” the union document says, by allowing part-time operators to do more overtime work that is current given to full-time operators. Metro has long desired to pay part-time wages for some services, because a full-time overtime hour is much more costly than an additional part-time hour.
Overall, the proposed agreement looks like a good deal for Metro (and, thus, for taxpayers). Particularly important is the move toward giving part-time operators to get more work, which is a no-brainer savings for Metro and also seem more equitable because part-timers are often starved for hours. The rule change would allow part-time operators to take extra work that would put them beyond 8 hours in a given day, a change that Metro has been pushing for years, according to a part-time driver we spoke with.
The agreement means “fewer employees working more hours,” local ATU President Paul Bachtel told us in an email last night, “whether it be part-time working additional [trips] or full-time working overtime.” Bachtel said Metro’s part-time driver base would shrink due to “attrition,” which “means fewer benefit packages being purchased” — more savings for the transit agency facing a long-term budget crunch.
“The negotiated agreement is reflective of the recent audit findings, saves Metro money, provides more hours for both part and full-time employees,” Bachtel said.
Bus drivers don’t come away in a bad position: while a year’s inflation even if modest will give them a small real pay cut, the modest pay raises in later years may mitigate that or have drivers come out ahead. Metro operators are paid well compared to other agencies in the region, so it makes sense for their wage to mostly grow with just inflation.
Smaller changes in the proposed contract include the maintenance efficiencies — like buying able to buy some components instead of fabricating them — and the Union throwing its hat into the scheduling ring.
The proposal must be ratified by union members before entering effect. Spokespeople for King County Executive Dow Constantine wouldn’t comment to us, saying they have an agreement with the union to not discuss the contract until it’s approved by union members.
[UPDATE: Tonight Metro posted an update. Due to some bad data, there was a small error in the list of routes (now corrected below), and Metro warns you that Trip Planner may be inaccurate for the "some trips canceled" routes.]
Remember that Veterans’ Day is one of Metro’s “reduced weekday” service days. Lots of changes from the norm:
Routes that are canceled when the reduced weekday schedule is in effect:
Also, when the University of Washington is not in session, the following routes have designated trips cancelled (these trips are identified in Metro timetables with a “D”):
Seattle Children’s is spending $4m on local transportation improvements, and is holding a workshop on Saturday to gather community input. Below is a note from Paulo Nunes-Ueno, transportation director of Seattle Children’s:
Seattle Children’s Hospital and our co- sponsors invite you to the Seattle Children’s Livable Streets Workshop on Saturday, November 13 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. at the University of Washington’s Gould Hall. Seattle Children’s has committed to spend nearly $4 million on transportation improvements in Northeast Seattle, and we need your help envisioning potential projects.
In light of shrinking transit funding across the nation and a stagnant economy it isn’t surprising to see tension between voters, rider and unionized transit operators as agencies are trying to increase revenue and cut costs. EngineerScotty on Portland Transport touches on this topic from a Portland perspective, where tensions have been high. What I found particularly interesting is the dichotomy of progressives vs unions.
Dueling progressives at ten paces
This argument turned heated in the prior thread. One commenter, a long-time transit activist in town, wrote:
The real reason the bus measure lost (but not in Multnomah county where 9 of the 11 MLR stations are located) is TriMet’s too generous benefits package for its union workers. Riders are paying more and getting less, are Ops and Mechanics ready to share the pain?Which prompted the following response from another frequent commenter, who is employed as a TriMet bus driver:
One of the more unfortunate things about ORCA is that while the principal idea of the system is to reduce transfer penalties, the technology doesn’t always run the gamut when it comes to giving transfer credit for every fare payment. Group fares are probably the best example of this, where bus-rail transfers aren’t possible when paying for multiple riders with one card. One of the problems I see is that most bus riders (let alone drivers) still aren’t familiar with this function, and that those that are aren’t really aware that their payment cannot be transferred to rail.
According to Brian Brooke, an ST project manager, the ORCA card is designed with a “one card/one rider rule.” But given that you can pay for multiple bus riders on one card but not be able to transfer them seems to defeat the two purposes of ORCA in the first place: the one card/one rider rule, and encouraging flawless transfers.
Amtrak and WSDOT are adding 11 more trains for the busiest travel weekend of the year. The regular ones are listed here. The new ones:
Wednesday, November 24 - Train #511 – Departing Seattle at 1:30 pm; arriving in Portland at 5:45 pm
Train #514 – Departing Portland at 7:00 pm; arriving in Seattle at 11:15 pm
Train #503 – Departing Seattle at 11:59 pm with direct service to Portland arriving at 4:14 am. No intermediate stops between Seattle and Portland.
Thursday, November 25 - Train #502 – Departing Portland at 9:00 am; arriving in Seattle at 1:15 pm
Train #505 – Departing Seattle at 8:30 am; arriving in Portland at 12:45 pm
Saturday, November 27 - Train #502 – Departing Portland at 9:00 am; arriving in Seattle at 1:15 pm
Train #511 – Departing Seattle at 1:30 pm; arriving in Portland at 5:45 pm
Sunday, November 28 -
Train #511 – Departing Seattle at 1:30 pm; arriving in Portland at 5:45 pm
Train #512 – Departing Portland at 1:45 pm; arriving in Seattle at 6:00 pm
Train #514 – Departing Portland at 7:00 pm; arriving in Seattle at 11:15 pm
Train #515 – Departing Seattle at 7:00 pm; arriving in Portland at 11:15 pm
[UPDATE: commenter Advokat asserts that the Sound Transit bonds don't have defeasance provisions, and so the initiative wouldn't have any direct impact on Sound Transit. If so, that's one less horrible thing that this initiative would do. I've asked Sound Transit to clarify.]
Fresh off a victory making tax increases and closing of tax loopholes nearly impossible, initiative guru Tim Eyman has filed a number of initiatives to make things specifically worse for transportation. These are technically initiatives to the legislature, giving them the chance to act. Assuming Eyman’s organization collects the signatures and the legislature does not act, they would go to the ballot. According to the P-I, who broke the story, these are basically trial balloons for the November 2011 election.
All the details are at the Secretary of State’s website. There are several variations of a rehash of the $30 license fee issue, but I read the most recent one, Initiative 473. “Highlights” of a broad attack on vehicle taxes and fees:
Eliminate the ability of Transportation Benefit Districts to levy a $20 license fee without a public vote, as Seattle is likely to do soon.
Sound Transit’s Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET), previously protected in Court from a past car-tab initiative because it was used to guarantee bond payments, would have to be dedicated to immediately retiring those bonds. As of August, ST predicted that MVET would generate about 9.6% of its tax revenue through 2023. Eliminating it would put ST fully 32% below its 2008 revenue projection. Worse yet, to meet the 90 day deadline the agency might have to dedicate non-MVET funds to retiring the bonds, arresting progress on a wide array of projects.
Limits toll revenue to highway purposes on the tolled highway, ruling out use of any tolling revenue to fund transit. Apparently, Eyman favors Communist-style scarcity of valuable road space on I-90, rather than rational pricing consistent with supply and demand.
The measure also looks out for dangerous drivers by weakening fines associated with red-light cameras.
This is usually the space where people launch all sorts of personal attacks on Tim Eyman. It’s abundantly clear that this initiative, like his other creations, is a horror show for people who care at all about effective delivery of government services.
However, one can find anti-tax fanatics in every state in the Union, although ours are well-organized. In the right election, the voters of Washington are not at all alone in going along with these schemes that cut revenue without having to specify the matching spending cuts. What’s different here are the institutions: a State Constitution that enshrines the right of low-information voters to overrule legislators on complicated policy decisions and budgets.
The single best good-governance reform possible in Washington State is to amend this power away, placing us on par with such undemocratic, authoritarian structures as the U.S. Constitution, and 26 states including Texas, Iowa, New York, and Maryland. Unfortunately, at the moment such a move would be extremely unpopular, even among progressives who routinely have their core priorities gutted in this process.
GOOD and Transportation Alternatives are holding a photo contest to determine the best bus route in America. But the rules are strict:
the OBJECTIVE
Show and tell us why your bus route is the best in America.
the ASSIGNMENT
Take a photo with your camera phone (no fancy cameras please) and send it to us with a 140 character or less caption by Wednesday, November 10.
the REQUIREMENTS
Photos should be taken with camera phones and each caption should include the location and route. Please include your name and the best way to reach you.
Email your entry to: busroutes@goodinc.com
Tweet your entry to: @GOOD and use the hashtag #bestbusride
The judges include Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and “bus chick” Carla Saulter. We have a photogenic city and a lot of good photographers that congregate here, so we can win this if the weather holds up.
The Regional Transit Task Force’s final recommendations have been released. The report is chock full of interesting graphs about Metro’s performance.
Recommendation 1: Metro should create and adopt a new set of performance measures by service type, and report at least annually on the agency’s performance on these measures. The performance measures should incorporate reporting on the key system design factors, and should include comparisons with Metro’s peer transit agencies.
Recommendation 2: King County and Metro management must control all of the agency’s operating expenses to provide a cost structure that is sustainable over time. Cost-control strategies should include continued implementation of the 2009 performance audit findings, exploration of alternative service delivery models [read: contracting service out], and potential reduction of overhead and internal service charges.
Recommendation 3: The policy guidance for making service reduction and service growth decisions should be based on the following priorities: 1) Emphasize productivity due to its linkage to economic development, land use, financial sustainability, and environmental sustainability
2) Ensure social equity
3) Provide geographic value throughout the county.
Recommendation 4: Create clear and transparent guidelines to be used for making service allocation decisions, based upon the recommended policy direction.
Modifications and additions in the East Link SDEIS
Yesterday afternoon, the Sound Transit Capital Committee met to hear a presentation (PDF) on the release of East Link’s Supplemental Draft Environment Impact Statement (SDEIS). Since the release of the original DEIS in December of 2008, a number of new alternatives and modifications have been proposed, including four new downtown alignments (C9A, C11A, C9T, C14E), a significantly modified B3 alignment, B2M, and a modified D2A. There aren’t very many surprises in the SDEIS, outside of what we’ve already discovered in Sound Transit’s concept design reports (here and here).
Of biggest interest, but not to any great surprise, is the update of the B and C segments, of which debates have yielded the most theatrical spectacles. The newish B3 “114th design option” is a more radical alternative to the original B3, which curved away from 112th Ave to avoid Surrey Downs. The new design takes the curve further east out toward 405, likely costing a good amount more than the original. What the justification is for the modification isn’t really clear. A few of the updates to the B7/BNSF alignment include the completion of the I-405 widening project and a new WSDOT sound wall between the freeway and 118th.
Good afternoon, Sound Transit is hosting a public hearing this afternoon regarding the proposed service changes in the 2011 Service Implementation Plan (SIP) [Update: this is actually a joint hearing for the budget and the SIP]. Turnout is relatively light, without about 20 or so in attendance. This is a live-blog so please refresh for ongoing updates.
12:01pm: Fred Butler opens the public hearing and goes through public comment rules. Butler quickly reviews the scope of the changes in the SIP.
12:02pm: Mike Bergman, ST service planning lead, introduces the highlights of the Draft SIP.
12:03pm: Bergman goes through the proposed changes route by route. He starts with Snohomish County. You can view all the revisions online at ST’s website.
12:08pm:One of the highlights of deleting mid-day service on the 540 (Kirkland-U-District) is the availability for people to use the 255 and transfer at the Montlake Freeway Station.
12:10pm: Original proposed revisions for 545 will not take place after all, due to public input.
12:11pm: 560 to SeaTac/West-Seattle will be truncated at Burien at times outside weekday peak periods.
12:14pm: Route 566′s original proposed extension to Redmond will be deferred.
Meeting blitz on the Regional Transit Task Force final product: Larry Phillips at a town hall, TCC runs a forum with some task force members.
I can vouch for Carla Saulter’s observations on kids and transit. The toddler stage involves hauling a lot of stuff, so spacious, roll-on vehicles (ie, rail) are a huge plus.
The 540, originally slated to travel in the peak direction only during rushhour and hourly mid-day, will instead run in both directions during rushhour and not at all mid-day. It will also serve stops on Stevens Way.
Mid-day and Sunday service levels on the 545 will not be cut.
On the 554, Sunday service was to drop to hourly. Instead, this will happen only before 10am and after 7pm, on both Saturday and Sunday.
All other changes are still in effect. The whole revised SIP document is here. Open house and hearing information for tomorrow after the jump.
As we reported last week Metro is starting to look at service revisions in Bellevue and Redmond related to the opening of RapidRide B Line. Today and tomorrow Metro will be hosting open houses to get that process started. Also tomorrow in Seattle, several groups are starting to draft a mobility plan for the South Lake Union and Lower Queen Anne area. Lastly, there is an open house tomorrow about extending Sounder to Lakewood.
More information for all three below the jump. (more…)
Early returns from ballots so far show mixed results for the races that we’ve endorsed. The results will change as ballots continue to be counted, so here’s a rundown of whether our endorsements are ahead or behind. You can view full updated statewide results here.
WINNING
Patty Murray (United States Senate)*
Marko Liias (21st District, State Rep. Position 2)
Chris Reykdal (22nd District, State Rep. Position 1)
Joe Fitzgibbon (34th District, State Rep. Position 2)
Bellingham Proposition 1
LOSING
Initiative 1053**
Initiative 1107**
Charlie Wiggins (State Supreme Court Justice, Position 6)*
Jake Fey (27th District, State Rep. Position 1)
Geoff Simpson (47th District, State Rep. Position 1)
*Indicates toss-up.
**We endorsed ‘NO’ votes, so these initiatives are currently passing.
North Link Alternatives, from 2005 (Sound Transit)
Community Transit is in trouble. Like almost all transit agencies, they have implemented deep cuts with more to come, and no relief on the horizon: unlike most other agencies, they are out of taxing authority without action by the legislature.
However, there’s a lot of reason to be hopeful about CT’s future, for one reason: North Link.
Link serves a variety of purposes, and as a result it’s often not optimized to beat the express bus every time, particularly if passengers have to transfer. There are many opinions about that, but it certainly does make it less desirable to eliminate service that is somewhat redundant with Link, even if it’s not as reliable and less frequent.
In this case, a large number of CT Commuter buses are traveling a congested freeway between Lynnwood and Seattle with few or no stops. Link will likely have no segments at-grade with arterial traffic and therefore run at 55mph, and serve both the U-District and downtown Seattle on a single line. The 2005 issue paper indicates a 29 minute travel time from Lynnwood to downtown via I-5 and 30 minutes via Aurora, in either case faster than today’s buses with higher reliability. In the 2020s, CT could eliminate or truncate a whole class of routes and cut a huge operating expense without negatively impacting the passenger experience.
Of course, Sound Transit and North Link have budget woes of their own. However, within the Snohomish subarea it makes sense to rob every other program to fund high-capacity transit, as its existence will transform the ability of CT to serve local travel needs.
