March 10, 2011 at 11:09 am
by Martin H. Duke
 Photo by Stephen De Vight This is an open thread.
March 10, 2011 at 7:10 am
by Martin H. Duke
 wikimedia Last week HB 1339, the Vulnerable User’s Bill, passed the House. The Senate already passed a different version and will now have to review 1339. The bill establishes new penalties for “negligent” drivers that cause serious injury to a bicyclist or pedestrian.
The base penalty is a $5000 fine, reduced to no less than $1000, and a 90 day suspension of driving privileges. The driver may opt instead to pay $250 plus administrative costs, attend traffic school, and perform a court-set amount of community service (up to 100 hours) relating to driving safety.
As someone who spends roughly equal time driving and bicycling, I’m glad the state is placing more responsibility on drivers, people with all the power on the streets. This bill is a step forward.
However, I wish there was a little less emphasis on punishment and more on prevention. People tend to discount the possibility that their divided attention will cause accidents, and I’m not sure piling on penalties will be effective. What I’d rather see is removal from the road of people that have demonstrated they aren’t responsible enough to handle a deadly weapon. That would mean license suspensions for years, not days, and jail for people who drive around without a license*. Although I don’t have a problem with the fines, I don’t think they’ll make us much safer.
* The current law says 10 days jail for a first offense, which is not enough.
March 9, 2011 at 11:30 am
by Ben Schiendelman
Today the Seattle Times has a lengthy front page story about undisclosed business deals Councilmember Kevin Wallace had with GNP Railway while also advocating for the B7 East Link alignment. GNP desired to run freight and passenger trains in the BNSF corridor.
While prodding the Bellevue City Council last fall to study possible use of an abandoned rail corridor for a Sound Transit light-rail line, Councilmember Kevin Wallace was negotiating an extensive business relationship with a short-line railroad that wants to run trains on the same route.
He and his father, Bob Wallace, signed a nonbinding agreement in December to invest in GNP Railway and help raise $30 million for expansion.
Wallace Properties Development, a Bellevue-based developer of commercial properties, also agreed in a “memorandum of understanding” with GNP that the councilmember would hire brokers to sell preferred stock, invest $500,000 of its money and manage land acquisition and development of passenger stations, possibly with shops, offices, industrial space and homes. Kevin Wallace is president of the development company.
The Wallaces signed the GNP agreement the same week Kevin Wallace explained in a Seattle Times guest-opinion column why it made sense for the City Council to spend $670,000 to study whether Sound Transit should put its light-rail trains on the old freight corridor.
Because this is a blog, I can speculate a bit more than the Seattle Times can, and this is my own opinion: I think the Bellevue B7 study work basically offers free corridor information particularly pertinent to the business deal between GNP and Wallace. It smacks of using city resources to save GNP/Wallace planning money in the same corridor.
Wallace should have recused himself from these votes, but if he had, they would have ended up tied at 3-3. This could be part of why Aaron Laing (another B7 supporter) is running for Bellevue City Council this year, despite the fact that the council already has a majority – with a 5-2 split for B7, Wallace could take a slap on the hand and safely recuse himself from these votes.
The real kicker? As far as I’m aware, Bellevue doesn’t have a law prohibiting conflicts of interest for the city council.
March 9, 2011 at 11:00 am
by Martin H. Duke
 Wedgewood Community Council Laurelhurst blog dug deep into some proposed changes on Route 65 to take place as early as October, but probably in 2012. As far as I can tell this isn’t on the Metro website anywhere:
The proposed changes would include more stops along 40th Avenue NE where Metropolitan Market, the new Fire Station and businesses are located. The revised route would also include a new stop at Children’s Hospital…
[Metro planners feel] that there is enough potential ridership from Wedgwood and Meadowbrook to Children’s Hospital that would be attracted to the revised service that would result in more riders for the route. [They] estimate that the increased travel time would be approximately three minutes and that this is a reasonable tradeoff for improved service to a very important neighborhood facility.
You always like to see buses take the most direct route, but sometimes the big nodes aren’t on the big arterials.
March 9, 2011 at 7:17 am
by Martin H. Duke
 2030 "Transit Emphasis Corridors" (from p.10 of the report); Blue is BRT, Yellow and Green lesser all-day arterial service Although Community Transit has suffered deep service cuts and has no state-granted ability to raise tax rates, it hasn’t stopped visualizing what Snohomish County’s transit network should look like in two decades.
The study, conducted by Nelson/Nygaard and completed last month, identifies key transit corridors and appropriate levels of additional investment for each by 2030.* It is a statement of aspirations, designed to drive future investment decisions, rather than a firm, funded project list. “Economic recovery and new transit investment will happen,” the report explains. “When it does, the new system that is built will be different than the one that we cut.”
Like many other agencies, CT is looking to support rapidly densifying cities like Lynnwood with frequent, rapid all-day service through less emphasis on peak-only commuter routes, very much helped by the fact that Link will be moving masses of people from Lynnwood to the UW and Downtown Seattle. More after the jump.
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March 8, 2011 at 1:16 pm
by Sherwin Lee
 Tacoma Link, by zargoman Public opinion has been growing increasingly favorable to Sound Transit, according to three recent surveys (PDF) by EMC Research. According to the surveys, ST’s favorable ratings are at a record high 67% and unfavorable ratings at a record low 18%. The numbers are more or less comparable to those for Metro, which are at 65% and 14%, respectively. Additional positives for Sound Transit include a 3.42 out of 4.00 grade, which has risen modestly since 2008. 70% of respondents also thought that ST investments have been worth it, a number strongest unsurprisingly in the North King subarea and weakest in the district’s outlying areas, like Snohomish and Pierce Counties.
Though the overall margin of error for the first district-wide survey is +/- 3.4%, it’s interesting to note that it’s much higher when you break down the sample size by subarea, ranging between 6.9 and 9.1 percentage points. When broken down even further by city, East King results post a margin of error as high as 21.9%, because of the diminished sample size. Nonetheless, the overall results were weighted for population distribution to give a more accurate representation of district-wide opinion.
Lots of other key highlights of the surveys below the jump.
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March 8, 2011 at 11:10 am
by Ben Schiendelman
Are you interested in how Seattle can build livable, walkable, transit accessible communities? The Seattle Planning Commission released their Seattle Transit Communities report (PDF) in November outlining tools and strategies for doing that. This Thursday at City Hall we have the opportunity to hear from three planning commissioners about what investments should be our highest priorities – like complete streets, transit stop improvements, mobile food, and more – and how we might fund them. While we’re in between major transit packages, these recommendations are the best things we can fight for to make the city more livable, so it’s important to be well versed in what our options are and what kind of benefits they bring. Take your lunch and bring along a coworker!
Seattle Transit Communities: Charting Our Path Forward
WHEN: March 10, 2011, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
WHERE: Bertha Knight Landes Room, City Hall
March 8, 2011 at 7:05 am
by Martin H. Duke
 wikimedia PubliCola reports, adds interesting details:
The bill has been substantially modified from its original version, which would have allowed King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties to pass a $30 license fee by a majority vote of their county councils. The bill that passed today pared the charge down to $20, excludes Pierce and Snohomish Counties, and requires a supermajority two-thirds vote of the King County Council, or a vote of the people, to pass the fee. (That last amendment was tacked on by Sen. Tim Sheldon (D-35), who ultimately voted for the bill.)
Aside from several rural legislators with unhelpful modifications and comments about a bill that only affects King County, interesting developments include Sen. Rodney Tom (D-Medina, Kirkland, Redmond, Crossroads) voting against the bill, and Transportation Chair Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen (D-Camano Island) sounding very positive about it. As a matter of speculation, the latter might be because a short-term bill like this one doesn’t interfere with her rumored plan to bind roads and transit together into a ballot measure next year. Sen. Tom did not respond to a request for comment.
The bill still has to pass the House. I figured earlier that the $20 tab fee would just about avert Metro cuts for the next two years.
The supermajority requirement means that the Council would need at least one Republican vote (likely Jane Hague), but it could still pass with Seattle and inner suburban districts only. A strict party line vote means it would go to the ballot, incurring additional delay and expense. This might also affect the horse trading around Metro’s proposed policy guidelines.
March 7, 2011 at 11:46 am
by Adam Bejan Parast
 Anonymous reader Update 3:37pm – Streetcar up and running again.
Update 12:17 – I just spoke to Linda Thielke at Metro. The streetcar was heading northbound on Westlake but for some reason the switch at 6th and Westlake malfunctioned, sending the streetcar onto the southbound tracks and causing the rear wheels to derail. A re-railing truck should be on the scene by 1 PM.
Publicola is reporting that the SLU Streetcar has jumped its tracks close to Westlake. We’ll post updates as they become available. I would expect delays or more likely suspension of streetcar service for the next few hours.
March 7, 2011 at 11:30 am
by Adam Bejan Parast
 Mayor McGinn and Portland Streetcar (Via Mayor's Blog) Last week Mayor McGinn and Councilmembers Sally Bagshaw, Sally Clark, Jean Godden, and Mike O’Brien traveled down to Portland to learn more about Portland’s transit system. Below is an excerpt from the Mayor’s blog.
One thing that we immediately noticed is just how much passenger rail Portland now has. It seems like you can’t walk more than a block or two downtown without crossing streetcar or light rail tracks. The streetcar line and the Max light rail lines provide great coverage downtown and form the backbone for the east/west and north/south lines that connect downtown to the city’s neighborhoods and suburbs. Portland has been working on this system since the 1970s, and in that time they’ve shown how rail can revitalize a city. We’ve clearly got some catching up to do, especially as Portland is planning new rail lines.
A key to Portland’s success has been using public right of way for most of the rail lines. It significantly reduces construction costs by eliminating need to acquire expensive new right of way. They have integrated rail onto existing surface streets in a way that works for cars and buses while helping to improve the feel and pedestrian experience of the street.
It’s great to see city leadership spending the time to learn about transit. It would be interesting to know what the take away message for the council members were.
March 7, 2011 at 7:49 am
by Sherwin Lee
 Can you tell this bus stops at the Montlake Freeway Station? Seattle’s famous geographical and topographical constraints are commonly cited for our high transit mode share here. For these very reasons, transit is often forced to consolidate and squeeze into major arterials just to avoid water and hills. The perk, of course, is frequent service along these arterials. The floating bridges are a great example of this– 520 service between Evergreen Point and Montlake is quite fantastic dayround because of the sheer number of cross-lake routes that are squeezed onto the bridge.
From an operations standpoint, combined service can be problematic, for two reasons. First, lots of service doesn’t always mean even service. Transit schedulers like to plan trips using time points and pulses at major hubs, so faster drivers don’t go off schedule and riders can transfer to connecting routes. Since schedules are primarily scheduled this way, buses can often bunch at the chokepoints where you do get combined service.
Second, the quality of combined service can be compromised if it’s not even branded as combined service. Often, you’ll see passengers pass one bus by only to take another a few minutes later heading to the same destination. More experienced riders are generally familiar enough with the system not to make such mistakes, but occasional and new riders tend to miss the mark.
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March 6, 2011 at 8:25 am
by Martin H. Duke
March 5, 2011 at 8:08 am
by TIM BOND
Sound Transit held an open house for the S 200th Station on Wednesday evening. This was an opportunity for the public to explore the station features and alignment. Sound Transit had many staff members on hand with over 130 residents in attendance.
South 200th Station will be an elevated station connected to SeaTac/Airport Station by a 1.6 mile elevated guideway. The station will feature off-street parking, a kiss and ride facility, bicycle amenities including racks and lockers, and a bus transfer area (currently the station area is only served by Metro’s RapidRide A Line—which stops a block away). The station itself would span over S 200th Street making it quite visible by those that pass by on International Boulevard.
The station and alignment are still under preliminary design. Sound Transit would like to accelerate construction and move the opening date from 2020 to 2016. The cost of accelerating construction is approximately $40 million (in addition to the estimated $300m for station and alignment construction). This is due to additional financing costs as well as operational costs for starting service four years early. Sound Transit applied for but was not awarded a TIGER II grant. So far, ST has secured or is recommended to receive $15m in grant funding:
- $7m of CMAQ funding for the right-of-way phase through grant competitions through the Puget Sound Regional Council.
- ST is recommended to receive a total of $8m (spread over 2 biennia) through the WSDOT Regional Mobility grant competition. The Regional Mobility grants are expected to be awarded by the WA legislature this spring.
There aren’t any open grants at the moment, but when there are, Sound Transit will be submitting applications. Sound Transit is also conducting value engineering to determine if costs of the project can be reduced. More after the jump.
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March 4, 2011 at 10:04 am
by Martin H. Duke
 Photo by Atomic Taco As the aftermath of the CNG Fuel Fire continues to play out, PT has decided to standardize their weekday schedule at a reduced level:
Beginning Monday, March 7th, Pierce Transit will operate on a modified Saturday Schedule with additional service. This means:
MONDAY – FRIDAY
Saturday level service for most PT Local Routes
Weekday service for Routes 26, 61, 113, 406, 407, 413, 444, 446, 495, 496, 497
It goes on to say that Routes 102, 490, 601, and 603A will also operate select trips on weekdays.
Intercity Transit will operate Weekday service…
SATURDAY & SUNDAY service will operate as normal.
SHUTTLE will operate regular Weekday and Weekend service.
It’s a good commonsense move to come up with a static plan, rather than improvise the service level each morning. For this afternoon’s commute, though, you’ll have to check the PT website.
March 4, 2011 at 7:25 am
by Zach Shaner
And now for something completely different. If you’re free tomorrow night from 5:30-7:30pm (or later for an afterparty), Hollow Earth Radio is sponsoring “Light Rail Dark Rail”, a series of live musical performances onboard Link. Performances start at IDS at 5:30, with “concertgoers” catching a southbound train at 6:00. Once at SeaTac, you’ll have a choice of northbound trains, “Light Rail” or “Dark Rail”, but you won’t know which you’ve chosen until it departs. Expect eclectic local music, nervous security guards, and surely dumbfounded passengers wondering what hit them.
March 3, 2011 at 2:22 pm
by Martin H. Duke
 Photo by Erubisu 27 This is an open thread.
March 3, 2011 at 11:25 am
by Zach Shaner
 Photo by Mike Bjork The 2004 Comprehensive Plan designated South Lake Union as an urban center, and it laid out ambitious growth targets. Since then we’ve seen solid growth in the neighborhood through the Hutchinson Cancer Center, Amazon’s relocation, and of course the Seattle Streetcar. But the real potential for densification lies in incentivized upzones, and to that end the City of Seattle has released a draft Environmental Impact Statement, South Lake Union: Height and Density Alternatives. It studies the environmental impacts of three zoning alternatives that would create space for 23,000-31,500 jobs and 15,000-21,000 residences.
More after the jump… (more…)
March 3, 2011 at 7:13 am
by Martin H. Duke
 Photo by dreaming_of_rivers Metro is going to eliminate a bunch of stops on Beacon Hill (and beyond) on April 2:
Currently, the corridors have a combined 137 bus stops south of S Jackson Street, with an average stop spacing of about 920 feet. The plan will remove 28 of these stops, plus two on East Marginal Way S, increasing the average spacing between stops to about 1,150 feet.
As a result of the changes, approximately 11 percent of Route 36 and 60 riders who board south of S Jackson Street will have to catch their bus at a different stop. When the project is completed, all riders should have a faster, more reliable trip.
Good news. You can comment here. Comments are due by March 21st.
March 2, 2011 at 2:31 pm
by Martin H. Duke
 Photo by Zargoman The quarterly ridership report is out, including all the 2010 year-end numbers. As always, there’s on-time data, per-route ridership counts and so on. I wish Metro could regularly release similar numbers.
ST Express ridership is trending down, which is widening the gap in (operating) cost per boarding between express buses and Link.
March 2, 2011 at 11:11 am
by Oran Viriyincy
 RapidRide buses in storage Metro’s RapidRide program may be in jeopardy if $68 million of federal Small Starts funding isn’t restored. As reported last week, the U.S. House of Representatives cut funding for transit capital investment programs in its continuing appropriations bill. In addition to cutting funding for RapidRide’s C (West Seattle), E (Aurora) and F (Burien-Renton) lines from the proposed budget, the House rescinded previously appropriated but not yet obligated funding for the B (Bellevue-Redmond) Line. President Obama’s budget proposal recommended full funding for the RapidRide program.
The B Line is scheduled to launch this October. Metro has ordered the buses and construction is ready to begin. The Federal Transit Administration is currently going through the process which would lead to an agreement, committing $9.3 million in funds to construction. A possible government shutdown would stop the process and the passed House bill would take that money away.
Congress is scheduled to resolve 2011 funding for the B and C lines this month and 2012 funding for the E and F lines this summer. Whatever happens, uncertainty with funding would delay the project and future RapidRide lines. Metro has to make a decision soon to purchase buses for the C and D (Ballard) lines.
Metro is looking to fund 44% of the cost of RapidRide capital improvements with federal grants. That’s $93 million out of a total cost of $210 million for six lines (A-F). Of the $93 million, $25 million has been secured for the recently opened A Line and part of the B Line. Funding for operating the service has already been committed by the King County Council.
With the shortfall in local revenue, Metro has been really competitive in obtaining federal grant money. Amenities like real time passenger information and the addition of more speed and reliability improvements were crucial in winning federal grants.
In a briefing on Monday, Metro’s General Manager Kevin Desmond has not yet outlined specific actions in the event of reduced federal funding but has said that Metro is constantly in contact with Washington’s congressional delegation. A loss in funds would result in significant reductions to the RapidRide program. Such reductions may include reduction in scope by eliminating amenities, delaying or cancelling future lines, or cancelling other services or programs to fund RapidRide.
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