Earthwork is the foundation which roads, whether highways or railways, are built on.

• Better access to NE 130th and NE 148th Stations
• SBB on bike access to lots of stations
• Northgate train testing has started
• Complete streets in Bellevue
• ST donating land for affordable housing; you can comment
• Olympia floats a big transpo package
• Bellevue’s ADU rules are not good
• Peter Rogoff talks about ST3 woes
• West Seattle, Ballard tunnels don’t seem so expensive now
• Another bill would let monorail authority fund light rail
• Uber, Lyft drivers now earning more
• PT Chief Sue Dreier retiring
• Comment on the curb space around Climate Pledge Arena.
• More research about high infrastructure costs
• Biden USDOT starts staffing up
• ST gets $1.4m from feds for commuter rail
• Sounds like infrastructure week again
• New stimulus proposal has $20 billion for transit

This is an open thread.

As the Sound Transit 3 news gets worse and worse, Sound Transit 2 continues a stream of good news as the bulk of the projects converge on opening. Today, we found out the South Bellevue parking garage will open in September, which restores the spaces for route 550 and 241 riders, and then some. This may be as much as two years before the Link line itself.

The garage has 1,500 spaces.

This publication is not a big fan of parking garages. But if there’s anywhere in the Link system there ought to be a garage, it’s here: hemmed in by a wetland and a neighborhood that won’t countenance upzoning (also up a steep hill), this station exists because it is on the way to downtown Bellevue, sits at an elbow in the line that allows it to draw from a wide swath of the Eastside, and proximity to two interstates.

As the County returns to full economic life, Metro is ramping up service. In keeping with their normal service reorganization procedure, there will be a citizen advisory board:

We are looking for participants for a workshop to provide input on how we prioritize what service to restore. 

Participants will: 

·         Attend a virtual workshop in the first two weeks of February 2021 to review Metro’s response to the COVID outbreak, 

·         Help Metro planning staff evaluate what types of service are most important to communities, 

·         Be compensated for their time and participation, and 

·         Be accommodated through interpretation and ADA access, as needed.  

If you are interested in this opportunity to participate in Metro’s planning, please respond to mjahshan@kingcounty.gov by January 21, 2021.

Longtime readers know I did one of these boards back in 2008 (unfortunately for me, well before one got paid to do so). It was an interesting window into the many considerations planners actually balance, as well as an education into what ordinary people in your community really think.

As always, I think people with a solid grasp of planning principles and a system view can be a useful corrective to narrower interests, as long they are willing to listen, open-minded, and empathetic.

• Kirkland considers 300′ towers around BRT stations while Seattle tinkers with 4-story buildlings around Link; maybe suburbs deserve HCT investment more than Seattle
• Point Defiance Bypass testing resumes
• Learn about last century’s streetcars
• Redmond hiring a transportation manager [UPDATE: this position closed in September]
• C-Tran will turn off diesel engines where pollution matters most
• Senate considering $10 billion for highway removal

This is an open thread.

SDOT blog:

Beginning today, January 11, 2021, the automated photo enforcement system on the Spokane St Swing Bridge (low bridge) will turn on, and unauthorized low bridge users will be subject to a $75 citation for every trip across the low bridge. 

To keep the low bridge clear for emergency vehicles – as well as transit and heavy freight – we’re saying, “don’t go low.” Instead, please use alternate routes when traveling to and from West Seattle by car. We will be monitoring low bridge traffic volumes in early 2021, and the data from January and future months will inform whether we can expand access. See our webpage for more details. 

West Seattle folks – let us know in the comments if anything’s improved.

• Free vanpools for West Seattle
• Uber prices rising due to new regulations on labor costs
• An excellent preview of the coming Transportation agenda ($) in the legislature
• Washington’s draft “Active Transportation Plan“
• It’s likely it’ll turn out fine, but the fact that the I-90 bridge is so innovative is a cause for concern as well as pride
• City rankings are dumb, and the article title is simply incorrect, but 10th best carfree city in the US sounds about right
• 20 years (!) of Tacoma freeway construction
• How to pick a bus battery
• Paid parking coming to the Junction
• Sounder mudslides are back
• Another grant means another “microtransit” program instead of just more buses
• Alon Levy reports that the Seattle Process is spreading, which is bad news
• Demand dropping, rents drop too, upending years of sloppy thinking about gentrification
• Seattle Children’s Hospital seeks a transportation planner

This is an open thread.

2020 was not… great, but 2021 will be a major year for transit openings and restructuring:

• Northgate Link will revolutionize transit in North Seattle beginning in September
• ST Express will have a ton of service changes at the same time
• as will Metro
• and Community Transit
• CT route 111 improves in March
• We should also expect Covid-19 route suspensions to melt away
• Sounder has new concession fares on March 1
• The Seattle TBD should restore (some of the) other cuts from the previous measure expiring

As this tumultuous year comes to a close, it’s time to look back on what the year has brought us. It all started with Connect/2020, which now feels like a distant memory. From there, we saw COVID-19 spread throughout the world and into our communities, with major repercussions on all aspects of life in 2020 and beyond.

• Is the Bike Master Plan obsolete?
• A “diverging diamond” interchange ($) seems like it might help some I-5 chokepoints in Seattle; kudos to Lindblom for acknowledging bikes, pedestrians, transit, and climate in an article about Lacey roads (!)
• A transit-aware list of hiking possibilities
• Essential workers get free scooter rides ($)
• Submit public comment on RapidRide I

This is an open thread.