Check your flight after leaving the train

The Port of Seattle announces:

A new Flight Information Display now welcomes light rail riders heading into the Airport. The six-foot tall, nine-foot long display is located on the SeaTac/Airport Light Rail station’s mezzanine level just before the skybridge to the terminal. The LCD display, contained in a weatherproof stainless steel enclosure, gives light rail passengers access to flight information as they exit the trains.

While you can check flight status online, the new display is a welcome addition. The blue screens are so bright you could see them from the other side of International Blvd. So when will Sound Transit return the favor and install train information displays in the airport? People getting off planes and heading into town want to know.

U-Link TBMs Being Assembled in Fife (Sound Transit)

• Surplus ST buses, what to do?
• $1m for upkeep of public stairways in Seattle.
• Threats of violence drove the climbdown on bus ads.
• Looking for CT’s double decker buses.
• Cary Moon brings the numbers on the DBT and surface/transit/I-5.
• Kemper Freeman and Bellevue Downtown Association part ways over light rail.
• A 520 bridge tolling primer.
• GNP Railway threatened with Chapter 11.
• Cops bust a fake bus pass scheme.
• STB alum Eric Butler messing with ORCA cards, highlights security issues.
• Federal Way skyscrapers are dead.
• CT board unchanged.
• Vice President Biden announces a framework for intercity rail investments.
• Dense development along rail lines takes time.

This is an open thread.

The early election results from Pierce County are not good. Andrew Austin of TCC broke down the district results, and found that it passed strongly in Tacoma, lost narrowly in Gig Harbor and Puyallup, and was slaughtered in the exurbs. PT’s reserves run out in 2012, so expect a 35% service cut over the next year or so.

Meanwhile, Jefferson County voters passed an identical tax rate increase to preserve their transit service. This will not only avoid a 22% service cut but actually allow modest increases in the coming years.

Two observations:

• While there is no single reason the PT measure failed, I question any decision to put transit measures in obscure elections. Low-turnout elections are likely to miss young people, who are an important pro-transit constituency.
• Fans of agency consolidation living in other counties should consider this result and the Prop. 1 results from 2008 and ask themselves if they really want their fates tied to the Pierce County electorate.

February 2011 Downtown Service (Click for full, Source: Metro)

Metro has updated their maps. Take a look. As Jack Latteman said at our last meetup, 3rd Ave is now a rainbow of frequent service.

Former Bellevue mayor Terry Lukens introducing 'Move Bellevue Forward'

One of the sad things about Bellevue’s East Link debate is that from a regional perspective, it has tampered with the city’s can-do reputation.  With Bellevue being perceived as the “party of no” in all of this, a lot of people (especially those left-wing crazies from Seattle) like to think “to hell with Bellevue!” Or “light rail straight to Redmond!”  The truth is a lot of Bellevue residents voted for ST2, are eager to see rail, and are pretty peeved by recent opposition to Sound Transit.

Last night’s Bellevue city council meeting was probably the most spectacular evidence of this as 40 or so members of a new coalition called Move Bellevue Forward (MBF)* filled the council chamber to support Sound Transit’s preferred alignment, B2M.  Though East Link was not on the discussion agenda, it was a light rail kind of night as the new group came out swinging with testimony from Terry Lukens, Connie Marshall, and Mike Creighton, all former Bellevue mayors.

More of last night’s meeting below the jump (video available on Bellevue TV).

(more…)

Recall that we’re having an informal meetup tonight at 6pm, at the Columbia City Ale House. Be there.

Score: Capitol Hill 7, First Hill 0?

Despite our present trend toward quantifying everything, I still frequently prefer to make more qualitative, intuitive judgments about the livability of neighborhoods.  The single best shorthand I know is an affirmative answer to the question, “If I lived here, would I walk to the grocery store?”   Consider Capitol Hill, where in just over a square mile there are 7 major grocery stores, sewn together by dozens of small markets and convenience stores.  Or walk around Lower Queen Anne; Metropolitan Market is quite the neighborhood anchor, isn’t it?

So it’s a great loss for First Hill that its only full-service grocery, M Street, shut its doors last week.  King 5 quotes a customer named Tony Lucas, “It’s like a desert out here.  The closest one is on Broadway and University.  I’m not going to walk that far.”  There is still easy transit access to groceries – including Metro #2 and #12 (to Kress, Pike Place Market, Madison Market, Trader Joes, or the Broadway/Union QFC) – but losing easy walking access considerably diminishes urban quality of life.   Walk Score gives the intersection of Boren/Madison a score of 97, a “Walker’s Paradise”, while giving Broadway/John an 89, merely “Very Walkable.”  Could anyone possibly walk around those two areas and argue that those scores are merited?

If you live car-free or car-lite, give thanks for your neighborhood grocery stores, patronize them liberally, and show them the value that comes from having a dense pedestrian customer base.  Walkable neighborhoods can’t afford not to have them.

Ride Free Area (Source: Metro)

VeloBusDriver had a great post this weekend with a “to do list” of changes to Metro’s current fare system that he thinks should be implemented if Metro decides to eliminate the Ride Free Area (RFA). While I’m not going to dive into which changes I think are needed, at least not now, I want to emphatically state that the outright elimination of the RFA without significant improvements to Metro’s fare system is unacceptable. The question shouldn’t be whether to have a RFA or not, it should be what improvements can be made to the fare system so that the RFA isn’t necessary.

I’m actually optimistic that elimination of the RFA could be a net positive change but only if Metro takes a holistic look at the fare system, including both how it’s structured and how it’s collected. Previously I wrote about how Rapidride’s fare system in incompatible with the RFA.

Below is VeloBusDrivers full post.

Metro is currently studying the effects of eliminating the Ride Free Area in Downtown Seattle.  While I favor the elimination of the Ride Free Area for a host of reasons, it is critical that fare collection be fully optimized before implementation of such a policy.  The steps below would incentivize ORCA use, speed boarding, and also streamline collection of payments:

• Ubiquitous ORCA availability at drug stores, grocery stores, Coinstar vending machines, train stations, airport, hotels, etc…  $10 for a pre-loaded $5 ORCA card with a small built-in profit for the vendor should be possible.
• Tourist-friendly ORCA cards with day and multi-day passes should be readily available
• Provide discounts for loading large dollar amounts onto ORCA cards to further incentivize ORCA use
• Coaches would be tap/pay at front door, exit through rear door except at high volume stops such as transit centers and certain downtown stops.  Designated high volume stops would have off-bus ORCA readers and drivers would open ALL doors.

More after the jump. (more…)

H/T: Atomic Taco.

KC Metro

Oran already wrote about some of the ORCA and fare results, but those come from a Metro-commissioned survey of riders on the A line, for which you can read the summary or the full survey results. The press release indicates that weekday boardings have increased from 6,000 on the 174 to 7,500 on the nearly identically routed A Line. Metro doesn’t regularly release route ridership figures but Spring 2009 numbers are here.

I don’t know what there is to say except that people like it when service improves. I was somewhat amused that the most popular suggested improvement was “less fare enforcement,” above.

Banner at Tukwila International Boulevard Station promoting the ORCA Card

One of the more striking results from Metro’s RapidRide A Line customer survey is the ORCA usage rate and why people do not use ORCA to pay fares (page 30). 55 percent of those surveyed don’t use ORCA. Of the top reasons for not using ORCA, 32 percent don’t know where to obtain the card, 32 percent say it’s not convenient to obtain an ORCA card, 14 percent don’t know what an ORCA card is, and 7 percent can’t afford to buy one.

I’m surprised to see Metro not promote ORCA more prominently along with RapidRide’s launch. If customers only knew that they could conveniently purchase and reload an ORCA card at RapidRide’s northern terminus, the Tukwila International Boulevard Link station, we wouldn’t have the results we see above.

Tukwila has four self-service fare vending machines (TVMs) that take cash and cards, and speak in three languages. What Metro could do is produce a banner or two (or use existing ones), some in-bus placards and maybe record a message to be played periodically on the bus promoting ORCA (like on Sounder). That alone could eliminate 78 percent of the reasons people don’t use ORCA. Metro does have a brochure explaining how to pay on RapidRide in seven languages but it doesn’t explain what ORCA is or where to get it.

Without TVMs at every stop, RapidRide greatly depends on ORCA and multiple doors to speed up boarding. One less cash payer equals many seconds less dwell time at each stop. Multiply that over each person and each stop and many minutes are saved. ORCA readers at every door would also help.

The good news is when people do use ORCA, 69 percent use the off-board reader at stops (not every stop has a reader). On the proof-of-payment (POP) system, 84 percent said they were checked for proof of payment by a fare enforcement officer and 58 percent thought the number of inspections was appropriate. I hope this means positive encouragement for continuing and extending POP.

For comparison, 44 percent of Swift riders pay fares with ORCA. So Metro, don’t feel too bad. The upcoming B Line also has an ORCA vending machine at the Bellevue TC terminus. The rest of the RapidRide lines do too. And Metro didn’t have to spend a dime for those machines. So please take full advantage of them!

No more bus bunching on purpose

King County Metro silently fixed a major scheduling mistake for routes 71, 72, and 73 in the February 2011 service change. Those routes together provide frequent service between Downtown Seattle and NE 65th St in Roosevelt via the University District. Buses are supposed to arrive at evenly spaced intervals (headways), about every 7.5-10 minutes during most of the day and at least every 15 minutes from 5 am to midnight. However, the combined schedule for those routes in the past six months had buses arriving at irregular intervals, leading to bunching and long gaps in service. The new schedule restores the even spacing (actually more regular than the Feb 2009 schedule) on weekdays. For some reason, the combined timetable is not available online but the new blue timetables are already out (photo excerpts: weekday 1, weekday 2, Saturday).

For example, people had to wait 18 minutes in the middle of the morning rush hour for a 72 and 73 to arrive simultaneously. If they missed those two, then they had to wait another 12 minutes, then another 5 minutes, and so on. This is a service that’s supposed to always arrive every 7-8 minutes during that period. Another frustrating case was having the last non-owl trip of the night arrive one minute after the trip before it, leaving people waiting an hour for the owl bus. That pair is now 15 minutes apart like the other late night trips.

When you design a high frequency trunk line created from less-frequent branches, it is important to have evenly spaced service to minimize wait time and bunching on the trunk. With this irregular schedule, buses are both bunched on purpose (by schedule) and unintentionally (by delays), leading to a reduction in usable capacity by having overcrowded buses trailed by relatively empty buses. This cannot be called “efficiency”, if that was the original intent. Intentional or not, Metro realized its mistake and fixed it, likely after a bunch of customer and operator complaints.

Photo by Atomic Taco

• Opponents to Pierce Transit Prop 1 are organized. Vote by Feb. 8.
• CT service change delayed till March 20th.
• Tolls on 520 likely to change behavior.
• Link park-and-rides allowed through 2015. El Centro on Beacon Hill looks to cash in.
• A new “urban design vision” for South Lake Union.
• How SDOT blew the first round of parking pricing.
• Metro is ditching the “waterfront streetcar” bus wrap.
• Luna Park BAT lane dispute is “final”: parking removed for morning peak only.
• Nickerson road diet appears to be “working.”
• Eastside transportation town hall now scheduled for Feb. 8th, irrelevant to you because you’ll be at our informal meet-up.
• Writeup on the “war on cars” debate. Followup arguments.
• More stupid ORCA rules.
• Bus shelter art.
• Extended hours for Tacoma Link for Saturday’s concert.
• The decline of carpools.

This is an open thread.

Sen. Haugen

Reports last year explained that Senate Transportation Chair Mary Margaret Haugen (D-Camano Island) singlehandedly killed the 2010 transit funding bill in order to keep transit advocates at the table for a 2011 package that would also address highway funding shortfalls.

The parallels to 2007 are strong. STB was founded for the purpose of advocating for the roads and transit package. Some writers thought the road projects were largely HOV lanes and therefore positive; in all cases, we saw that much light rail as a game-changer, essential to move forward at all costs. In the end, that wasn’t enough, as a coalition of environmental groups allied with rail opponents drove the measure to defeat.

In the end, voters (and leaders like Greg Nickels) vindicated the anti position by getting ST2 to the ballot in 2008 and passing it. Some people took away the lesson that compromise of this sort is never necessary. Personally, I think the composition of the electorate in 2008 was an under-appreciated cause of victory. I’d be sorely tempted by another game changer, like a large ST3 package, in exchange for roads.

Unfortunately, there’s little hope of anything so transcendent. Far more likely is a band-aid for Metro’s funding problems. And under those circumstances, there isn’t a lot of road for which transit advocates like me are prepared to vote. Since many highway supporters will also vote against any tax increase, the legislature will need the vote of moderate transit supporters, and should consider certain environmentally friendly features, in rough order of importance:

• a complete solution to the funding woes of transit agencies around the state;
• extreme emphasis on HOV and maintenance projects as opposed to general purpose capacity, particularly in areas where transit options are robust;
• for the highway and ferry portion, near-total reliance on gasoline tax, which helps to correctly price the negative externalities of driving and constitutionally can’t be used for anything else anyway.
• full funding authority for the transit portion of the deep-bore tunnel plan;
• accelerated improvements to Amtrak Cascades; and
• new local funding options for bicycle and pedestrian projects.

Here’s to hoping the urban legislators in Olympia are making clear that these elements are important.

A new design being considered by the council is far more walkable than the previous 177' option.

Monday’s notice about Bellevue’s open house for the future NE 15/16th Street arterial in the Bel-Red corridor didn’t go unnoticed by Bellevue planners, who’ve asked me to clarify the design options on the table for the arterial.  I’ve been a bit mouthy about one of the options, a 177-foot wide cross-section along NE 16th where Link would run along the center of the arterial in what is referred to as Zone 4 (PDF).  According to Rick Logwood of the Bellevue DOT, that option is no longer being considered, after recent council discussions.  Instead, a much narrower street is being considered, and one that I think is much more successfully scaled to pedestrians (see above).

Logwood also says that outside of the segment with center-running light rail,  the cross-sections are much narrower since Link will run off the street to the north:

Elsewhere, the typical section is much narrower.  The graphic shown has 177’ at the widest point in the entire corridor.  Where we are today in discussion is more on the order of 128’ – that is a significant difference – and will change public opinion.

The two perspectives (Alternatives: A, B) that do not show the LRT station are located between 120^th and 124^th Avenues NE.  As you can see the width is much less than what has been portrayed – where LRT is in fact in a different alignment.  The third is where the station is located, but reflects where the Bellevue City Council discussed reducing the number of travel lanes east of 124^th Avenue NE to one through lane in each direction.

The other urban district in the corridor where light rail runs off to the north is referred to as Zone 2 (PDF) (the Spring District)– NE 15th Street between 120th and 124th Aves NE.  The two perspectives that Logwood mention show cross-sections with 4 travel lanes, 1 turn lane, and 1 parking lane.  The only difference between the two options is the addition of a cycletrack in Alternative B.

As far as the design options in Zone 2 go, their conduciveness to walkability can be debated.  Personally, I would like to see one travel lane in each direction for the entire corridor, but that wish usually never works out politically.

Next bus times a reality for RapidRide but not for Link

Up to the minute bus arrival times have been appearing on many of the message signs at RapidRide A Line stations with caveat message “Testing is in Progress”. The displays show times for the A Line and any other Metro route serving that stop, though other routes may not be accurate because they aren’t equipped with GPS yet.

I was watching the sign at S 176th St/SeaTac station. I arrived at the station seeing 5 minutes to the next bus and about 5 minutes later the bus arrived. The sign changed from “1min” to “due” as the bus became visible in the distance. It’s quite accurate, with buses arriving within 1-2 min of the predictions, though some stations showed an arriving bus as 2 minutes away. There was one case where it predicted around 3-4 minutes and the bus arrived 8 minutes after the previous one. I’m not expecting clockwork here, just a general idea of how long the wait is. One Bus Away seems to be using the tracking data as well.

So when will Link get better real-time information? The answer ranges from probably not in a long time to as soon as possible.

This started as a short post but obviously isn’t any more. For those unfamiliar with reading bills, like me a few weeks ago, the “Bill Digest” gives you an very simple overview of the legislation, and the “Bill Analysis” or “Bill Report” gives you a more detailed description if available. “Fiscal Notes” tells you what kind of financial impact a bill would have.

Important Bills:

SB 5416 –  This bill would limit the use of toll revenue in the same way that gas taxes are through the 18th Amendment. Senator Haugen, who is the Chair of the Transportation Committee is a sponsor of this legislation. If there is any bill you should fight it is this bill. It will set the exact opposite precedence that needs to be set. Tolls and transit are the keystone our transportation future and they must be integrated, not segregated.

HB 1536 – A temporary $30 dollar car tab tax we previously wrote about. This bill certainly is good but the timing of the bill has been troublesome for Pierce Transit’s Proposition 1. Agencies certainly need more money but there are so many morally imperatives needs this year in Olympia any new taxing authority is going to be hard to get.

HB 1382 – Moves forward with the implementation of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes on I-405. The end goal of this bill is a continuous one or two lane managed corridor on SR-167 and I-405 from Puyallup to Lynnwood. The bill essentially moves forward a two phase “Option 4″. Phase 1 converts the HOV lanes on I-405 north of Bellevue into HOT lanes in addition to one general purpose lane (existing and new and already funded by existing revenue) between Bellevue and SR-522 in Bothell. Phase 2 is a high capital, unfunded phase and fills in the gap between SR-167 and Bellevue with a two lane HOT system and direct flyover ramps between SR-167 and I-405.

Lots more after the jump. (more…)

photo by Zargoman

Every time we have a Link ridership report readers like to make predictions for next year. Blog comments are low stakes, so if that’s entertaining for people so be it. In the long term, there’s pretty good reason to think ridership will increase substantially because:

1. People will naturally sort themselves so that those very interested in living near a train line will displace those not so inclined;
2. Barring an absolute fiscal or engineering catastrophe, more stations will open and serve more trips, even on the existing segment; and
3. Barring continued chaos in the finance and real estate markets, all those empty pits on MLK will be developed.

I’m personally confident that all those trends will emerge over the next decade or so. In the short term, however, those secular trends are likely to be totally swamped by variation in employment levels, fuel prices, tourist arrivals, Metro service levels, weather, and Mariners and Sounders attendance. These things are hard to predict and short term variations don’t have much to do with the long-term viability of Link.

In other words, no matter what ridership does in 2011, that’s not substantial confirmation or refutation of your beliefs.  If it comes back strong, it doesn’t mean that 2010 can be dismissed as an isolated blip below expectations. Similarly, if it’s flat or slightly declining, that doesn’t “prove” that Link’s future ridership growth is a mirage.

See also Zach on models.

Publicola is hosting a debate tonight at 7pm to talk about what the media has dubbed “The War On Cars”. Should be interesting. Details via Facebook after the jump.  (more…)

Here’s another variation of my Link stem-and-leaf schedule. If you looked at that schedule closely, you will see a consistent pattern to the departure times. Trains are always spaced at scheduled headways (7.5, 10, 15 minutes), even at transition points between peak and off-peak. You will see that trains depart Westlake for the airport “on the sevens”, at 7, 17, 27, 37, 47, 57 minutes past the hour, during off-peak hours and almost all day on weekends. Since the schedules rarely change and are simple enough, they are easy to memorize and communicate to others.

Realizing that, elements of this design could be simplified further while providing more details than the current Sound Transit presentation. Though the template for this was the schedule book, I think this would be more suitable for station schedules. The schedule book needs to have the timepoint-based schedules in addition to the basic summary.

The schedule data for my mockups came from One Bus Away. That may soon no longer be possible, as commenter Tim, suggests:

In the future, expect One Bus Away to show headways instead of exact times. (If available) real time information will help decide what time to add the headway information to. Example: 08:00 and the line runs every 10 minutes. With no real time available, schedule will show 08:00, 08:10, etc. With realtime available, and assuming the last vehicle passed at 08:02, you’ll instead see 08:02, 08:12, 08:22, etc. That is assuming that the operating agency plans on keeping headways and not schedules.

Eventually Sound Transit and Metro will no longer supply schedule data for both RapidRide and Link.

Let’s hope that both of them get their real-time arrival information systems in working order before deciding on pulling the plug.