Tom Rasmussen Speaking

You missed a lot of fun. Tom Rasumussen gave a great rundown of the RTTF and how the hard work isn’t done, we now need to convince the Regional Transit Commission (RTC) that that RTTF was on to something. Stay tuned, especially if you work or live in a suburban city. Jack Lattemann who has been a planner at Metro for 16 years followed Tom, giving us a great data dump, state of the union type speech. Thanks to GGLO for letting us use the space and Tom and Jack for coming and speak to us. Below are my tweets from the night.

More after the jump.

Tom starts speaking:

  • Retail sales tax supports cities with large malls and car dealerships, not necessarily where ridership is.
  • Metro needs to tailor service to context, whether that be articulated buses or carpool.
  • In order to go to the state for more money Metro needs to show it is efficient. Big push from Jim Stanton of Microsoft.
  • Tom “the performance based allocation really was a breakthrough…. a unanimous recommendation.”
  • Talking about the nitty gritty of the RTTF and moving forward with the RTC.
  • Now talking about what the transit master plan is for.
  • Talking about Pacific Place garage. Jack Whisner suggesting that the city allocate more curb space to buses, increasing demand for Pac Place. (Joke)
  • No parking requirement in low rise zone with headways of 15 min service 12 hours on weekdays and 30 min 18 hours a day 7-days a week.
  • Tom explaining his transpiration ethic. He supports rail with electric buses. Wants regional rail, suburban cities are now excite for link.
  • cont. Needs to be grade separate or real exclusive ROW.
  • Tom – Business in Nantes France don’t want to lose parking in front of their businesses either. But they take it away and give it to buses.

Jack now:

  • Next up is Jack Lattemann from Metro talking about transit planning.
  • Jack talking about creating a non Seattle centric transit system in south King County. Serving transit needs in the community.
  • Metro always wanted to improve the 194 but they just never got there.
  • The revised routes 42 now has 112 riders a day. The route 8 took over.
  • The 8 now has 8,000 riders a day, putting it in the top 15 routes in the system.
  • This is like a state of the union speech, but for Metro. The 36 passed 10k for the first time.
  • 39 has stabilized at around 1,200 riders a day, down from before Link.
  • Looking to use Rapidride as a single consolidated route made up of previous smaller routes. Different model than Swift.
  • Jack has gotten emails about RapidRide because of increased security and better service. Ridership up around 22%.
  • Can pull 5-7 minutes from A Line and real time info will probably be working next month some time.
  • Major changes coming in February. Routes on First Ave will be moved over to Third Ave for short and long range reasons.
  • Jack got a look at the new downtown bus map, “a rainbow of service down third”.
  • Personal opinion of Jack. Bring good Rapidride features to the trolley routes like all door boarding. 1/4 of all Metro ridership.

Thanks to everyone that showed up, to those that didn’t make it this time, hope to see you next time.

18 Replies to “If You Missed the Meetup”

  2. Way to go Jack! Up 22% within 2 months puts it at 6186 per weekday(source: MT 2009 performance report, 2010 fare evasion report), and well on it’s way to the 50% increase within 5 years projected.
    Kudos to Metro.

  3. I was fascinated by Rasmussen’s answer to an excellently posed question–“Can you describe your transit system values”? None of the values and preferences Tom mentioned supported the creation of a $3.8 billion dollar tunnel through the sensitive waterfront area of the state’s biggest, densest city for the exclusive no access to downtown itself use by cars and trucks, a project in which transit is only an afterthought, and which completely contradicts the state and city goals of reducing greenhouse gas production.

    The Publicola tunnel debate at City Hall tonight will be pretty interesting. I hope someone alerts Erica and Josh about Rasmussen’s position here!

      2. Why does anyone ever use that stupid phrase? There are equally concise and less confusing ways to say any of the likely meanings, of which the correct one is almost never used anyway. Ban the beg-ers!

      3. Thank you, Bruce! “Begging the question” is one of the most mis-used phrases in the english language! People seem to like using it instead of what they mean, which is “raises the question.” A statement that begs the question is basically an answer to a question that doesn’t exist. So you call someone out when they are using circular logic and say “that just begs the question.” If someone says something that just brings up new questions, you say “that raises the question of…” Sorry for the pendantic response, but this mistake is becoming disturbingly widespread.

      4. Meaning nazi! Words and phrases don’t have fixed meanings. Meanings can evolve as people use words and phrases over time. Renaissance scholars wanted Latin to be the same Latin Cicero used and that’s why it’s only spoken in Latin classes and law courts now.

        Sorry, hearing people get anal about “begging the question” has become one of my pet peeves. You have to admit, the “wrong” use makes more intuitive sense than the “actual” meaning. You do not own the English language.

  5. I’d love to see more detail about “creating a non Seattle centric transit system in south King County. Serving transit needs in the community.”

    1. I was really glad he talked about this. Sounds like at least some Metro planners understand the need for non-downtown and even non-seattle routes.

      1. There’s a John Stanton, professor of structural engineering at UW.

        And there’s a John W. Stanton, telecom billionaire, who co-chaired the Puget Sound Regional Transportation Commission. They released a report to the governor suggesting a regional transportation authority, funding and planning roads and transit in a single agency a.k.a governance reform.

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