Photo by Atomic Taco

Following the failure of a sales tax increase last month, the Pierce Transit Board of Commissioners authorized staff on Monday to begin work on 35% cut to take effect in October:

The Board directed staff to go forward in reducing the system by approximately 35% by October, 2011.  All service and staff reductions will occur by that date.  These actions will stabilize the agency’s finances and allow for short and long-term sustainability…

Dates and times for the public hearings will be announced in a later communication.  The Board will take formal action for the October service reduction at their May 9, 2011 meeting.

The PT Tomorrow website is a pretty good preview of what cuts would look like. Personally, I’d like to see PT shrink its service area and focus on maintaining good service in the core cities, also shrinking the electorate to districts much more likely to vote to improve service.

Sound Transit is hosting an open house about the S. 200th St station, which is likely to open in 2016 but could slide to 2020. It’ll be at Seatac City Hall at 5pm Wednesday night.

NYC Brownstones, photo by flickr user Professor Bop

Last week I started looking for answers to some questions I had about transit oriented development. Today, I want to see if I can answer the question “are we doing enough to keep supply in pace with this increased demand?”

According to this report, “Hidden in Plain Sight; Capturing American’s Demand for Housing Near Transit”, sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, Fannie Mae and the Surdna foundation, in 2004 there were just 6.1 million households currently residing within a half-mile of a fixed-guideway transit station in the US. By 2025, the report estimates there will be at demand for at least 14.6 million households, which represents a quarter of new households expected. According to the authors, there could be even more if growth rates increase or gasoline prices rise more than expected.

This is good news, right? Maybe not. According to the study, there were 3,341 fixed-guideway transit system stations in the US in 2004, but the number was only expected to grow by 630 stations by 2025. That number may be a bit off today- a number of transit systems are in various stages of construction across the country right now. Still it’s certainly correct in order of magnitude if not precise. My next post will highlight some of what could happen if the gap is not closed, but today I’d like to talk about ways of doing just that.

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Strategic Plan for Public Transportation

Yesterday Executive Constantine released The Strategic Plan for Public Transportation. Since his election, Constantine has shied way from the spotlight, focusing on making county government operate as well and efficiency as possible. The Regional Transit Task Force (RTTF) was a key element of this with relation to transit. In general the strategic plan shouldn’t be a major surprise. It lays out what should be expect from Metro as an agency, i.e. safe operations, access to service countywide, support economic growth, etc.

More interesting is the updated accompanying Service Guidelines, which outlines the process by which Metro plans service. Before this point service proposals to the RTTF didn’t had firmly defined performance thresholds, it was more about the general approach not the actual numbers. Specific performance thresholds are now proposed. Also Metro has carried forward the “screen process” for planning with several changes.

First Metro looks at land use and social equity. Next service is added back that surpasses certain cost recovery, load or connection threshold or requirements. The next step is the largest change. Peak service is then added over the previously defined all-day network with the requirement that it is more than 20% faster than all-day routes and riders per trip is 90% of a competing route. The document also outlines service design guidelines that are very similar to what the RTTF recommended.

This is all very promising and exciting.