"Link, SB SODO Station, 4:39pm, Monday", by Oran

• Sound Transit Board approves the agreement to lease the center lanes of I-90 from WSDOT. Basically, the money ST is putting into building the outer HOV lanes is offsetting the rental cost, and then some.
• ST awards D-to-M Sounder contract to low bidder MidMountain, after initially spurning them for PCL because some forms were late. The $40.8m bid is $800,000 below PCL’s and $26m below the original estimate.
• Ballard resident petitioning for a Sounder station. STB’s previous discussion of infill stations is here.
• John Fox seeks to get Yesler Terrace declared a historic landmark, preventing its redevelopment.
• SDOT bringing the evidence on road diets.
• Attempt of private bus lines to sue Metro for competing with them falls short.
• New lawsuit alleging that purchase of BNSF Eastside corridor was illegal.
• It’s official: Bellingham (not the Whatcom Transit District) to vote on 0.2% sales tax increase in November to save bus service. More background here.
• SDOT counting bikes and peds, needs volunteers.
• Tacoma way ahead of Seattle in enabling urbanist development.
• WSDOT looking at HOT lanes on 50 miles of I-405, for the second time.
• APTA circulating a petition to Congress for more transit funding.
• Dog patrols on Amtrak Cascades this month.
• Stabbing at the South Hill Transit Center.
• Bikes on buses are great but I’m not sure about cars on buses.
• Fun with next train signs.

This is an open thread.

Photo by Atomic Taco

Facing a steep cut in service in 2012 and planning a February ballot measure to stop the bleeding, Pierce Transit is making some non-service cuts, mainly by hitting their non-union employees.

On August 26th PT announced the elimination of management positions. Nonunion employees will also not get wage increases in 2011, and will have to pay more for their health care. The savings will amount to $1.2m through 2012, a fraction of their $50m annual long-term deficit. That’s in addition to $72m in savings through 2012 achieved with previous staff cuts, fare increases, and deferred capital projects. And of course another fare increase is coming down the pike.

The TNT has more about PT’s main labor cost:

Those cuts, however, will not apply to the bulk of Pierce Transit’s work force. Some 845 transit union members won a contract that calls for a 4 percent hike this summer. Agency officials wanted to renegotiate; union leaders refused, saying their members earned their wages and benefits – and suggested there are other places to cut.

“We’ve asked (to renegotiate) twice, and they’ve said no twice,” said agency spokeswoman Treva Percival. “Their contract is up again next year. Negotiations will probably start in the spring.”

Tour Group at YMCA

Last night Feet First (great pedestrian advocacy group) hosted their second Walk & Talk tour guided by Tom Rasmussen. The tour started in the Triangle of West Seattle (bounded by 35th, Alaska, and Fauntleroy) and headed east stopping at destinations along the way, ending at a casual reception.

The first stop was the YMCA followed by the new “Link” development. The Triangle is an interesting area. Up until just a year or two ago the whole area consisted mostly of light manufacturing and auto dealership, a large number of which are out of business now. The area is prime for redevelopment, due to its location and underlying zoning. As a casual observer of developments in this area over the last few years it’s interesting how omnipresent the themes of transition and parking are.

More after the jump.

Several large developments are stalled due to the economy while Link is set to open sometime next year. I was surprised and very please with how Harbor Properties, which is developing Link, chose to deal with parking in the development. A majority of the parking is provided below grade, with an off-site surface lot acting as a relief valve. This is a great solution for a transitional area like this where demand for parking from residents could be higher than supply in the garage, but will most certainly shrink as the area becomes denser and a car-free lifestyle becomes easier.

While this area of West Seattle has always enjoyed good service to downtown Seattle, Harbor Properties certainly is hyping RapidRide which will stop just a block away. They will be including a real-time information display in the lobby of the building. For those interested in a bit of back story about the RapidRide alignment wrangling check out the West Seattle Blog. Additionally, there is a Triangle Advisory Workgroup dealing with issues in the area. Take a look through some of the documents if you are interested.

Look for more of these tours accross the city as well as PARK(ing) day (9/17) hosted by Feet First.

UPDATE 12:28 Detailed map of RapidRide C Line with BAT lanes and TSP.

xkcd

Critics of transit investment – especially rail investment – frequently cite a failure to achieve a budgeted ridership estimate as evidence of the ineptitude or corruption of the agencies planning the lines in question.  While I never wish to discourage due criticism, ridership estimates are constructed via theoretical models, and critiquing a model for being wrong is tautological, akin to critiquing a human for being mortal. Frustrated at popular confusion over the nature of modeling, I thought I’d write a post on the limitations and capabilities of models.  To my mind there are four main points:

More after the jump…

(1. Ridership models attempt to quantify what would otherwise be qualitative phenomena; they translate dynamic human behaviors into static numerical inputs. Any number of input factors (endogenous variables) may be included in the construction of the model, such as tolerable walking distance, seasonal weather patterns, political affiliations, other transit connections, demographics, while other inputs are excluded (exogenous variables), such as unforeseen economic recessions.  In short, modeling is all about throwing numbers at sentiments in search of rigor.  (For philosophical problems with this approach, see Nancy Cartwright’s “The Vanity of Rigour in Economics”)

(2.  Models aggregate particular behaviors upwards to create generalized assumptions. Such “bottom-up” science is inductive, and it has long been recognized that such reasoning is useful but tricky.  You may see 1,000 black cats and conclude that all cats are black, only to see a white one.  Similarly, all transit riders are willing to walk ½ a mile, until they aren’t.  Etc etc…

(3.  Simpler models are better.  One tricky feature of models is that they are better at sketching a picture than painting it.   The more variables one includes, the more sensitive (i.e. touchy and error-prone) the model becomes.  Thus modelers try to select only the core components driving behavior.  Never let anyone impress you by boasting about how complex their model is.

(4.  Models don’t do any real work; rather, they merely actualize the assumptions they contain. The incredible ability of models to describe system dynamics far exceeds human capacity, but the inputs the models contain are usually entirely human-derived.  A model is thus like a psychiatrist; you litter it with anecdotes and it tells you what they mean.  But they don’t give you any information about the veracity of the anecdotes themselves.

Despite these many flaws, models nevertheless tend to outperform human judgment alone.  While they may never be right, they’re almost always close.  Models do a wonderful job of establishing baseline approximations from which to tweak, experiment, and innovate.  When we use predictive models to aid the formation of transportation policy, we should only do so with a clear understanding of their limitations. Variances of 10-20% from modeled estimates are par for the course, and patience should be afforded to transit agencies when their models either under- or (more often) overestimate ridership demand.  The real success of a transit service is its relative and ongoing performance once its baseline is empirically (rather than theoretically) established, and by this criterion Link is doing very well.

odmp.org

Today Pierce Transit resumes its “not on our bus” program, involving uniformed personnel increasing their presence on buses and around bus stops. It is designed to cut down on “unlawful and disruptive conduct on bus routes, at transit centers, and at bus stops near certain high schools.”

This is the second time they’ve done this. Last year’s effort yielded 750 “contacts” with 68 riders receiving 90 day bans from Pierce Transit. Banned riders are posted in the operator’s lobby and the historical recidivism rate is only 3%.

Full press release after the jump.

TACOMA, WA – Starting Tuesday, Aug. 31, Pierce Transit, the Tacoma Police Department, and the Tacoma Public Schools are partnering for “NOT ON OUR BUS,” a zero-tolerance enforcement operation of unlawful and disruptive conduct on bus routes, at transit centers, and at bus stops near certain high schools.

Uniformed Pierce Transit Police, Security Officers, and Service Supervisors, along with Tacoma Police Officers will increase their presence on buses and conduct spot checks of identified bus stops and boarding areas near high schools.  Undercover Pierce Transit Police and Security Officers and Tacoma Police Officers will also be riding buses and monitoring transit centers to enforce the State of Washington and the City of Tacoma’s Unlawful Transit Conduct Codes.

Riders who are found to be violating the Unlawful Transit Conduct Codes may be held immediately accountable by exclusion from Pierce Transit services for 90 days.

From October 30th through November 20, 2009 the “Not on Our Bus” effort was implemented to address a number of “Quality of Life Issues” on buses, at transit centers, and at bus stops near certain high schools.  The program was highly successful and yielded a safer transit environment for student passengers, and the general public.  Nearly 750 contacts were made, resulting in 68 ninety-day exclusions from Pierce Transit services for disorderly behavior or criminal activity.

Emphasis areas:

Pierce Transit Routes: 1, 2, 10, 11, 16, 42, 51, 53

Pierce Transit Facilities: Lakewood Mall Transit Center, Tacoma Community College Transit Center, Tacoma Dome Station, Tacoma Mall Transit Center

Tacoma Public Schools: Foss High School, Lincoln High School, Mt Tahoma High School, Oakland High School, SAMI, Stadium High School, Wilson High School

For information about the State of Washington and the City of Tacoma’s Unlawful Transit Conduct Codes, visithttp://www.piercetransit.org/alerts/rcw.htm.

Tacoma has been kicking around the idea of adding a Link stop at Commerce & 11th, which would cut the stop spacing in that stretch from about 1/2 mile to about 1/4 mile. The Tacoma Daily Index has lots of detail on this project, which would cost about $135,000.

You can watch the Council Study Session on this subject right now (scroll all the way down to “Tacoma City Council Study Session”).

(Via The Transport Politic Twitter Feed).

After a Metro audit recommended doing away with the trolleybus system to save money, there’s been a lot of anxiety about its future and questions about the conclusion that the system is, in fact, more expensive. In response to these concerns, the King County Council commissioned a detailed study on the cost/benefit tradeoffs associated with trolleys. Last week Dow Constantine’s office transmitted a plan to conduct this study.

In this kind of thing assumptions and ground rules are all-important. After considering a wide array of technologies, Metro has narrowed down the comparison to diesel-electric hybrids vs. trolleys. Conventional diesels, battery electrics, compressed natural gas (CNG), and fuel cell systems were dismissed for various reasons.

The evaluation criteria fall into five categories: environmental impacts, likely to favor the trolleys; scheduling impacts, likely to favor the hybrids; cost advantage, which the audit gave to hybrids but is disputed by trolley proponents; and both the impact on both state/federal grants and existing legal agreements, which I can’t even begin to assess.

Importantly, the cost study will include a sensitivity analysis of energy costs, which will capture the benefits of relatively stable-cost electricity. The study is expected to begin this fall and release a draft report early next year. Some other thoughts about the trolley argument here.

If you last checked this blog Friday around lunchtime, you should go and read the substantially revised SR520 post from Friday afternoon. It’s of great interest to anyone interested in effective transit over the new bridge.

"Metro banishes Mercer Island to the bottom of Lake Washington", by Oran

Mercer Island is going to experiment with a shuttle van up Island Crest Way to feed the Park & Ride, which on average is 100% full:

City Administrator Rich Conrad said Metro has agreed to supply a van and assist the city with the task of searching for a securing parking. So far, the city has agreed to provide volunteer drivers…

The need for a north-south shuttle stemmed from lack of parking at the two-story Park and Ride, which was expanded more than two years ago in an effort to add more parking. Parking spots increased from 250 in 2006 to 447 in 2008 after a two-year, $19.1 million expansion project.

What’s curious about the article, an earlier article on the subject, and a related editorial in the Mercer Island Reporter, is the failure to even mention existing Metro bus service. The 204 provides mid-day and weekend service in that corridor, while  the 202 covers both directions in the peak and goes on to Downtown Seattle. In either case, headways are roughly a half-hour. Both are middling routes by Eastside performance standards, a little below average but by no means dogs.

I suspect that making the shuttle distinct from Metro may save money by not having to pay into Metro’s relatively high cost structure. It’s elsewhere referred to as a “vanpool experiment” and there’s talk of volunteer drivers, so it’s clear they’re looking to do it on the cheap. On the other hand, not integrating with the network is only going to make it harder for people to find out about it and make it less reliable.

Attempts to contact Mercer Island leaders and staff on the shuttle proposal did not produce a response. More on the parking shortage after the jump.

It must be said that said that the parking crisis is partially a result of earlier shortsightedness by the Mercer Island Council:

“Sound Transit came prepared to expand the lot — they had enough money to add hundreds of stalls — but the Council opted for a smaller expansion,” Conrad said.

He said the Mercer Island City Council asked Sound Transit to almost double the size of the lot, which held 257 cars before the expansion, and spend the other money allotted for the project on building more parking space east of Mercer Island. The Council hoped that doing so would reduce the number of cars from off-Island that tended to park in the Mercer Island lot, Conrad said…

Sound Transit suggested building a taller lot to cut costs per stall, but the City Council opposed this idea to protect the surrounding neighborhood.

Oops!

(H/T: Jonathan Frazier)

From Grist, measuring governments at all levels:

Photo by VeloBusDriver

Josh Cohen reports on Beacon BIKES:

According to Beacon BIKES! representative Dylan Ahearn, the group thinks the bike master plan is too focused on creating a neighborhood-to-neighborhood bike network that caters primarily to the commuter crowd. His group wants to create an intra-neighborhood network that helps people (especially children) ride safely between Beacon Hill destinations.

“When I’m biking around the neighborhood, I try and imagine whether it’d be safe my five-year-old daughter to ride on the road,” said Ahearn. “If we can [create facilities that] accomplish that, we’ll have succeeded.”

As mascot of the casual cyclists, I have to say “Bravo”. I don’t begrudge the regional trails and other improvements that serious bicyclists have won for themselves, but improvements to one- and two-mile trips can open up a whole new population to bikes. That builds the political coalition, but more importantly makes bicycling safer for everyone by building the presumption of drivers that there are bicycles around.

In my feeble experience cycling, I’ve found that it’s that one-to-two mile threshold under which it’s faster than taking transit, give or take the specific circumstances of the trip. That kind of mobility is important for people looking to go without a car, or a family going to one car. Long trips and long commutes are about recreation and exercise; the shorter ones are about practical mobility. There’s nothing wrong with the former, but it’s the latter where the masses are.

[Note: This post is a substantial revision of two posts that were accidentally written based on outdated materials and taken down. If you did read those, you'll find that the situation for SR520 buses has gotten substantially worse.]

Proposed Montake Dual Bascule Bridge Cross-Section (WSDOT)

Last week’s SR520 meeting had lots of pictures of how Montlake Blvd is to be configured when the project is done. The plan includes a transit lane in each direction to improve connectivity between the interchange and the Husky Stadium light rail stop, absolutely critical if the Montlake Flyer Stops are removed to save money and reduce the overall width of the interchange. The bad news is that some compromises in the project, made with good intentions, will make this connection not quite as smooth as it might otherwise be. You can find the meeting materials here, especially the key presentation.

Proposed Cross-Section at Hamlin St. (WSDOT)

Note that there is no Southbound HOV lane in the picture above. More after the jump.

HOV Lanes

The Northbound HOV lanes will be on the inside to facilitate the large number of buses turning left onto Pacific Blvd. Unfortunately, that means that buses serving stops directly adjacent to the station will end up either not using the lane or fighting across the traffic.

Southbound, the picture is even worse. Lanes will be on the outside to support buses headed south beyond SR520 like the 43 and 48, meaning eastbound buses will have to make their way through traffic to a left turn. Furthermore, the HOV lane ends somewhere between the bascule bridge and Hamlin St, so the 43 and 48 will have to fight with the traffic merging on and off of SR520.

Bus Stops

WSDOT (Click to Enlarge)

The takeaway from the diagram above is that the involved agencies haven’t really figured out what to do with bus stops in the vicinity of the light rail station. However, there are two oddities with the stops further South:

• The Shelby St. stop serves routes traveling in the inner HOV lane, so either the stop will have to move to an island or buses will have to weave in and out of traffic to serve it.
• Buses destined for Seattle stop several blocks south of the SR520 offramps, so there is a clunky transfer for people going from the Eastside to destinations around 23rd and 24th Avenues.

I think the whole bus plan for the West interchange has to go back to the drawing board. If the deletion of the Flyer Stops is not to make bus trips much more laborious, there must be an effective connection between SR520 and the UW Link station so that it’s an adequate alternative to continuing downtown. I would suggest three critical changes:

• Northbound HOV lanes on the outside to support a stop on the Eastside of Montlake and close to the Link station. This allows riders to disembark without waiting for a left turn onto Pacific and avoids a street crossing. This would also support the marooned Shelby stop.
• Southbound HOV lanes on the inside to avoid all the SOV traffic using the on and off ramps, and allowing uncongested progress to the HOV ramps.
• A stop for 24th Avenue-bound buses somewhere in the vicinity of the direct-access ramp stops to allow transfers for riders headed South.

It’s come to my attention that I somehow managed to pull the materials from the July 22nd SR520 working group meeting, instead of the August 19th one. I’ll be doing a complete rewrite and getting something correct up shortly.

Sorry for the confusion.

Yesterday, Vulcan Real Estate unveiled an electronic transportation and amenities kiosk in the lobby of Amazon’s Phase 2 building.  The first of its kind, the touch-screen kiosk features both static and real-time information for neighborhood transit services and amenities.  If you want to get a preview on how it works, you can view the kiosk’s testing in the Youtube video above.  The project is the result of a public-private partnership between Vulcan, Metro, and the City of Seattle, which requires a Transportation Management Plan for Vulcan’s properties.  At the bare end of the plan, the City requires racks for paper brochures and schedules.  The kiosk, however, takes it up a few notches.

From the official press release (PDF):

Traditional transportation management plans include racks of brochures in downtown office buildings that display local transit agencies’ schedule information. These materials require regular updating, printing and distribution.  Because the kiosks are automatically updated, they provide a more user-friendly, eco-friendly, and accurate solution for riders. With the touch of a button, users can view real-time arrival times for Metro bus routes, find streetcar stops and arrival times, as well as pinpoint nearby restaurants, shops and services on an interactive neighborhood amenities map.

More below the jump.

Several prominent transportation officials were present at the unveiling, including Metro GM Kevin Desmond, King County Councilmember Larry Phillips, and SDOT director Peter Hahn.  Vulcan plans on rolling out seven more of the kiosks in the lobbies of all South Lake Union Amazon buildings.  Depending on feedback and how well the first is received, the developer may also consider implementing them for its other neighborhood properties.

The kiosk interface, featuring real-time information for each bus stop. Photo courtesy The Fearey Group.

The kiosk features a base map along with a main menu for both ‘Transportation’ and ‘Amenities.’  Under the ‘Transportation’ menu, users can select information from six sub-menus: bus, streetcar, Link Light Rail, bicycling/walking, ferries, and Zipcar, the first two of which have real-time information powered by the OneBusAway platform.  One can find a stop for next bus information or search for a neighborhood bus route, which gives the option of expanding the map to view the full route.  A moving streetcar/bus icon even tells you where along the line the vehicle is in real time.

The menus for Link, biking/walking, ferries, and Zipcar feature static generic information about the modes and respective routes.  I did notice, however, that Link’s menu had an adult fare from Westlake to SeaTac at $2.55, five cents too high.  The biking/walking menu maps out neighborhood bike routes and the Chesiahud loop.

The ‘Amenities’ menu is similarly divided into six smaller sub-categories: shopping, services, arts & entertainment, hotels, and schools & churches.  All of the sub-menus list each amenity by alphabetic order in a scrolling sidebar.  The amenities are also laid out on the map, and when touched, display a brief description about the selected amenity.

Though the kiosks will only see small-scale implementation for now, the use of dynamic electronic technology is a far better improvement than the typical rack of bus schedules we’re used to.  Thanks to the availability of open source data, the kiosks make transit more attractive for neighborhood visitors.  Hopefully, we’ll see more of these in the near future.

Prototype shelter.

This week will feature the installation of new RapidRide shelters along the new Pacific Hwy South A Line.  Like Swift, the shelters will be branded differently than normal shelters.  You can check out pictures from the RapidRide blog, which also has other miscellaneous info for the new line.

From the blog:

Metro is installing the first RapidRide shelter frames this week on the A Line corridor, which is also sporting RapidRide banners from light poles to let people know about the new service. Still to come as the launch date draws near: more shelter frames, ORCA fare card readers, real-time arrival signs–and glass in the shelter frames!

The A Line is scheduled to commence service on October 2, 2010 during the fall service change.

Matt over at Orphan Road poses some questions about Seattle’s plans to show the available number of parking spots outside of downtown parking garages:

1. Would knowing the number of stalls available in a parking lot get you off the street any faster?
2. If E-Park does work, would you expect the number of cars in Seattle to increase due to experiencing less congestion (i.e. induced demand)?
3. If the answer to #2 is “yes”, is encouraging driving ok in this circumstance? Why?

I’ll attempt some non-authoritative guesses to advance a conversation.

Continued beyond the jump…

1.Let’s establish a theme of using some standard economic concepts, with the most fundamental concept being cost. We know there is an actual dollar cost for paying for parking, and there is a time cost to driving around looking for parking; what is less obvious is that there is an “information cost” for finding where garages are and how empty they are. Reducing that information cost for garages could help some drivers park faster. Presumably, the answer to the question is yes.

As an aside, the most tangible and self-aligning of these “costs” is the price signal of dollars. We can guess, then, that just reducing information costs regarding parking probably will not have a muted effect compared to San Francisco’s far more ambitious plan to move street parking prices with demand is based. That plan is based on a clearer economic model and seems to be more consistent with urban values than just advertising parking information

2. Let’s start with the end of the question: the phrase induced demand. This term is thrown a lot in transportation circles, but we must use it carefully. Building a new highway or other transportation corridor that opens up previously “very, very costly” commute patterns has been shown to induce demand, since the new roads just encourage people to move along the highway corridor.

Clearing just some parking congestion downtown should probably not be view through this lens: it is not a dramatic reduction in the cost of driving downtown. Parking is still expensive and it’s still generally not worth going through downtown on the way to another location. Simply eliminating a driver, or ten drivers, from a given road does not “induce” demand, because — for that road to be a desirable corridor — the demand must already exist. And keep in mind, for many drivers, the cost of taking transit is less than driving as it is, and marginal changes won’t significantly alter that dynamic. With that in mind, even slightly reduced congestion downtown does reduce the cost for most of those who had a potential downtown trip and thus, because the demand curve slopes downward, we would expect some more cars in total to use downtown streets.

3. We must decide two things: a) does efficient movement on streets “encourage” driving?, and b) does the total amount of cars using downtown in a day matter? (Is it not “ok”?)

a) So long as government is tasked with operating streets they should probably operate them as reasonably efficient as possible. Efficient operations of streets may reduce the cost of driving compared to leaving those roads in disarray, but I’m skeptical we should be happily shy from reducing the arbitrary costs of driving such as congestion or the inconvenience that comes from information costs. “Encouraging” policies probably look different: cheap street parking costs, a lack of tolls, and building new highways. So, I don’t think the premise of this question is helpful.

b) From a vehicle-miles-traveled perspective and from an environmental perspective, we shouldn’t be so sure. If the effect of the parking program that the average downtown car is traveling fewer miles and idling less looking for parking spots, the mere existence of an additional car on downtown streets at some time during the day may not be a serious problem. But additional cars may mean additional driving outside of downtown, so we can’t be very conclusive in either direction.

So my answer to Matt’s third question is to reject the premise of the question. My conclusion is I see no terrible harm with increasing the ability to traverse downtown with a car, so long as the major feeders into downtown (such as highways) are not expanded and the transit options are still generally lower cost than most driving. And my point, separate from my conclusion, is that just as we should be skeptical of a new highway’s promise to end congestion, we should be skeptical of our own biases.

Still, while the modest policy from SDOT is probably shouldn’t earn too much ire, it probably also doesn’t deserve much praise. A parking model with better price signals, for example, would result both reduce congestion while bringing up fewer pointed questions from car skeptics like Matt.

Photo by Zargoman

• Husky Stadium station gets final approval, nighttime work to begin.
• Webcams cover Husky Stadium station and Capitol Hill station construction.
• Bus driver Q&A.
• A new blog just about Walking in Seattle.
• Tell Pierce Transit how you feel about their planned fare increase.
• Mulling over double-track in Edmonds.
• Homeowner fears a Link sinkhole will wreck his Capitol Hill building.
• Dan Savage right, as usual.
• 10-year-old allegedly leads an assault on the 7.
• Support for tolling 167.
• An intro to the local transit system.
• A 60-mile traffic jam in China.
• The high cost of free parking, in the NYT. And this just in: parking minimums drive sprawl.
• No Mariners train on Saturday from Everett.

This is an open thread.

Over the last few weeks the bicycle community has been frustrated by the “road diet” discussion. The thought is, road diets are implicitly good, so why aren’t more people supportive of them? Why aren’t opponents of plans swayed by the fact that streets that undergo road diets have been shown to have enough capacity? And why don’t opponents seem to care about the safety of pedestrians, cyclist and motorist alike?

Seattle Likes Bikes, Publicola, Seattle Bike Blog, and the SDOT blog have all weighed in, mostly in response to the now infamous article by Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times, although the discussion certainly applies to every project that aims to improve safety. The consensus is that discussion about these projects must not become car vs. bike, both because these projects are not about that and because this construct does not allow for a productive discussion on how to improve the road for all users. Road diets or whatever you want to call them are about making our roads work better and more safely for everyone. It would probably be better to call them “safety and operational enhancement projects” because that really is what they are.

They make left turns easier and safer, make through travel smother, allow pedestrians to safely cross previously dangerous intersections, and allocate space for bicyclist to safely ride out of the way of motorist. As someone who lived close to Stone Way before and after the road diet I can tell you it did wonders regardless of whether I was driving, biking or walking.

Today at 9am KUOW will have a piece on road diets, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be very balanced. Tune in and if you feel so compelled call or e-mail KUOW your comments.

We haven’t posted much about the minor Council/Mayor scrum over the Commercial Parking Tax (CPT) and the seawall. However, this Streets for all Seattle letter of August 5th clarifies the transportation angle:

We are writing today concerning the proposal to fund seawall-related work by raising the existing 10% commercial parking tax (CPT) to 12.5%. While Streets For All Seattle coalition members recognize the City’s obligations on the seawall replacement, we believe that allocation of our limited, flexible transportation funds to a single, capital-intensive project would unnecessarily curtail the opportunity before us to engage in a holistic transportation discussion during the budget process.

As I understand it, the CPT can only be used for transportation improvements and is capped at 20%, 10 points above its current level of 10%. The Mayor would like to have a property tax measure this year to pay for the seawall and dedicate the CPT revenue (according to PubliCola a 5-10 point increase) “toward road maintenance, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure,” in the words of McGinn spokesman Aaron Pickus. More after the jump.

Meanwhile, the Council wants to raise the CPT only 2.5 points and dedicate that funding to seawall planning, and a few other downtown-ish projects, thus deferring the big seawall tax measure to a later date. Council President Richard Conlin points out that a seawall ballot measure must “wait until better times to go to the voters for a property tax levy to support the majority of the funding for the project… there needs to be a full campaign and a careful explanation of the need and benefits for such a ballot issue to be successful.” Meanwhile, the CPT can be raised to address immediate planning needs without a public vote.

As taxes go, it doesn’t get much more benign than a parking tax, which discourages driving to the most transit-accessible neighborhoods in the city. On the other hand, Conlin pointed out that the CPT essentially applies to downtown and must be seen to fund downtown projects; and that if it goes too high Conlin fears it will drive shoppers out of downtown. Council Transportation Chair Tom Rasmussen added that “the City has doubled that tax in the last few years.”

Seattle, using Bridging the Gap funds, will be implementing “Complete Streets” on 15th Ave S and S Columbian Way on Beacon Hill. The latter will improve connections with the Columbia City Link station. Beacon Hill Blog reports:

You are invited to stop by the Open House and view project plans, provide feedback and chat with the project team. The event is Tuesday, August 24 from 5:00 – 7:00 pm at the Jefferson Community Center Meeting Room, 3801 Beacon Avenue South. You may also email your comments to walkandbike@seattle.gov or call 206-684-7583.