As part of the Stride S1 line, Sound Transit is building a new transit center in Renton, adjacent to the existing South Renton Park and Ride. When it opens in 2028, it will be known as simply Renton Transit Center, and will replace both the existing Renton Transit Center in downtown Renton, and the adjacent South Renton Park and Ride. Commuters need not fret over lack of parking, as the new transit center will include a new garage dedicated for commuter parking that is larger than the parking at both current facilities that are reserved for transit commuters. With the transit center moving, bus service has to move with it, and Metro has made its first service proposal on what that may look like in its Renton Area Mobility Project (RAMP). Details below the jump.

Continue reading “King County Metro planning service changes for new Renton Transit Center” | 34 comments

At the Ballard Town Hall meeting Sound Transit made it clear that they do not want to make any major changes to the BLE plans to avoid starting all over with the EIS process. They did consider at some point starting with a connection between Ballard and Westlake and delay or even skip the second downtown tunnel (DSTT2). But that would require a separate operations and maintenance facility (OMF) at Interbay or connecting to the existing downtown tunnel (DSTT1). The tunnel is old and surrounding soil is unstable and therefore they concluded this would be very risky and costly. Tom Terrific however suggested a single-track maintenance tunnel connection which would connect at the end of the current tunnel by the Convention Center.

Continue reading “Ballard Starter Line” | 124 comments

Why safer streets keep losing to fire trucks. (Stewart Hicks)

This is an open thread.

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Election results: see yesterday’s Midterm Elections thread.
Put it on your calendars: Ballard Link Extension Draft EIS to be published December 11 (Sound Transit).

News and commentary from the past week or so, below the break.

Continue reading “Midweek Roundup: RV veto” | 66 comments

Ballot return closes at 8pm. The first batch of results is expected 15-30 minutes later.

As of 6pm on November 4, King County had received 878,871 ballots, representing 60.18% of the county’s 1,460,414 registered voters. King County Elections was expecting ~75% turnout. King County has counted about 73% of returned ballots.

Local elections STB is following:

• Seattle – Council District 5: Nilu Jenks | Julie Kang
• Seattle – Prop. 1 (transit service improvement): Yes | No
• King County – Council District 2: Toshiko Hasegawa | Rebecca Saldaña
• King County – Council District 8: Nick Duda | Teresa Mosqueda
• Pierce County – Prop 1. (transit service improvement): Yes | No

We’ll update this post with initial counts (expected shortly after 8pm) and later counts if results are likely to change. Key races appear to be decided; results are indicated in bold italics.

Please keep election discussion focused on local elections. Non-local elections may be discussed if explicitly related to local or regional issues regarding transit and/or land use.

Edit (1:18pm, 11/3): updated ballot return stats.
Edit (8:30pm, 11/3): updated with first drop results for watched races.
Edit (6:06pm, 11/4): updated turnout statistics.

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Kitchener-Waterloo light rail in Ontario, Canada is surprisingly high quality for North America (Not Just Bikes) NJB still finds something to rant about of course: some stations could be closer to destination entrances for disability access.

Bonus movies:

How to find Link at SeaTac airport. (SDOT)

Why the West Coast has no large cities directly on the ocean shore north of San Francisco. (Real Life Lore)

There’s a new Page Two article on the Columbia River Crossing by Yvr Lutyens. Click on “Page Two” at the top of the page to see all of STB’s unofficial reader-contributed articles.

This is an open thread.

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The ORCA consortium has a survey asking users about their experiences using ORCA cards and the fare payment system. The survey is open until mid November. The Friday Roundtable column is for short, light, interactive topics, so this is an opportunity to ask readers the same question: how is your experience using ORCA cards and the fare payment system in general?

There are several aspects to consider. There’s tapping an ORCA card, or using a credit card with the new open-payment system for credit cards. Using the readers may be better or worse on Link, regular buses, RapidRide, or Sounder. There’s obtaining the card and refilling it, at a ticket vending machine (TVM), at the MyORCA.com website, or getting a card mailed to you. There’s customer service offices. There’s the fare structure, and free transfers. There’s the times you have to explain the system to visitors or occasional riders at the platform or bus stop when it’s not obvious to them. And probably many other things.

My two biggest issues with ORCA are the time it takes to register a tap, and paying for part of a pass with an e-purse.

When you hold an ORCA card to a reader, the second-generation system takes twice as long to register a tap than the previous system did. So on buses I either have to hold up the line behind me, or tap and leave and assume it will either beep while I’m walking away or it won’t beep and I’ll get a free ride.

The second issue is when you want to split a pass cost between e-purse and a credit card. I switched to e-purse during the pandemic, and back to a pass this year. In the past at TVMs I’ve been able to use the $60 e-purse value for partial payment for the $108 pass, and pay the rest by credit card. I’d then have to do a second credit-card payment to put $10 back into the e-purse for occasional surcharges, because it had no option to take just $50 out of the e-purse and leave the other $10.

This year when I went back to using passes, the TVM wouldn’t even do that. The e-purse option was disabled, so the only choices were credit card or cash. That’s presumably because the e-purse value wasn’t enough for the entire pass. I didn’t want to leave $60 in the e-purse unused forever, so I went to Metro’s customer service office to make the kind of payment split I wanted. It would be nice if the TVMs could do this.

What are your impressions of ORCA?

This is an open thread.

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Survey: ORCA wants your opinion on public transit.

News and commentary from the past week or so.

News:

• King County Council Committee Reviews Plan to Replace Route 7 With RapidRide (South Seattle Emerald).
• Council Supermajority Passes New Licensing Law That Will Gradually Ban RVs in Seattle (PubliCola).
• Council unanimously approves bill outlining safety role of Traffic Engineer, tasks departments with drafting rules to require truck side guards for city contractors (Seattle Bike Blog).
• Safer connections to Rainier Beach schools now open along S Henderson St (SDOT Blog).
• Coming soon near Ballard Locks: $600K waterfront ‘condos’ for hypercars and superyachts (The Seattle Times, $; free via SPL).
• Most Puget Sound Cities Aren’t Keeping Up With Housing Growth Targets (The Urbanist). Here’s an alternate title: Seattle Can’t Carry The Entire Region’s Housing Slack.
• Downtown Highrise Project Still Under Fire as Design Gets Revised Taller (The Urbanist).
• Wilson Pledges ‘Striking Progress’ With Homelessness Shift (The Urbanist); additional coverage in PubliCola.

Continue reading “Midweek Roundup: ‘condos’” | 75 comments