Metro has sketched the outlines of service restructures in 2021 and 2022 in budget discussions with the King County Council. The proposals include a reduction in bus service in north Seattle after Northgate Link opens, and a rebalancing of bus service throughout the County to conform with the new equity framework.

The largest change in service levels is in northeast Seattle. Nominally, the budget anticipates a total reduction of 170,000 service hours, of which 47,000 are deleted Metro hours annually as Route 41 is truncated. The balance are funded by the Seattle Transportation Benefit District. The budget assumes those hours will go away too with the expiration of the STBD taxes this year. After last week’s voter approval of new STBD taxes, the reduction in bus service will be less.

The new STBD taxes are expected to support only 170,000 hours citywide, not enough to replace most of the 121,000 STBD-funded hours in northeast Seattle, and anyway the focus of STBD efforts will shift somewhat to support more routes elsewhere. The new STBD legislation makes “any King County Metro route serving historically low-income communities in Seattle” eligible for support however many stops it serves outside of the city, and that will favor routes in the south of the city.

Metro staff indicated the level of STBD funding wouldn’t affect the map of service in northeast Seattle. Instead, the new STBD taxes would pay for increased frequency and span of service on the same network.

Continue reading “Metro restructures in 2021” | 30 comments

Metro’s proposed budget greatly reduces most capital outlays over the next several years. The RapidRide expansion has shrunk to just three funded lines, and base expansion plans have been mostly suspended. But there remains a $270 million investment in battery buses and associated charging infrastructure, $93 million of that by 2022.

Into the budget debate comes a remarkable report from Metro, laying out the steep opportunity costs of a transition to all-electric. Under the most likely assumptions, battery electric buses and infrastructure are 53% more expensive than a diesel hybrid fleet. Even with societal benefits including emissions priced in, it’s 42% more expensive. The added cost of a 100% transition from hybrid to battery is enough to buy 237,000 service hours annually through 2040.

The report shows the costs of electrification within Metro’s latest fleet plan. The fleet plan itself is remarkable, making stark how Metro’s plans have shifted with COVID and the recession. The number of buses operated by Metro will fall by more than one-fourth through 2026, and no service expansion is projected beyond that.

With budgetary reductions to the fleet plan amplified by the costs of electrification, Metro service levels will be reduced unless higher revenues are forthcoming. As Executive Constantine warned when transmitting the budget proposal a month ago, “Additional investments in electrification of the fleet [beyond 2028] will require a new revenue source, significant increased revenue forecasts, or a reduction in service levels”.

Continue reading “Metro’s fleet will be all-electric, also much smaller” | 65 comments

The Mayor’s budget proposal funds streetcar service in 2021 at current levels, with about 10% fewer service hours than before COVID. The Seattle Council however appears to be looking at further reductions, eyeing about $700,000 in operating savings for every 10% further reduction in service. Prospects for restarting the paused Center City Connector appear dim.

Overall, the City’s streetcar operations budget for 2021 is flat vs the original enacted 2020 budget. Cost increases nearly offset the 10% reduction in service.

Pre-pandemic ridership on the First Hill streetcar had reached up to 4,000 per day, with another 1,700 on the the South Lake Union streetcar. Recent ridership on First Hill had recovered from post-pandemic lows to about 2,000 per day. South Lake Union service, suspended for most of 2020, reopened on September 19.

Council Member Alex Pedersen, casting an eye at the empty office buildings in downtown, was skeptical last week about funding current operations levels on the SLU line in particular. There were several questions from Council about how much further savings could be wrangled by reducing service. Council President Lorena González cautioned against going too far. “If the cut is too deep, we’re signaling we’re abandoning the streetcar system entirely”. González sought further analysis of where a tipping point could be, warning “particularly on two lines that have already been built, and that are existing infrastructure in our city, I worry about whether we are setting them up for future failure”.

Meanwhile, the Center City Connector remains on hold.

Continue reading “Streetcar service may be cut again, as Center City Connector remains on hold” | 88 comments

On Thursday, Sound Transit staff presented a revised draft 2021 service plan, which the ST Board will vote on in November.

Three routes have changes in the revised draft, vs. the original draft:

• Link Light Rail would be upgraded to 10-minutes off-peak headway, as compared to the long-term continuation of 15-minute headway in the first draft. Late evening headway would be 15 minutes instead of the originally-proposed (and current) 30 minutes. These upgrades would take place as part of King County Metro’s March service change.
• Route 555 (Northgate to Bellevue), currently suspended, would continue to be suspended after Northgate Link opens. Metro route 271 would be expected to handle the reverse-peak ridership on the corridor.
• Route 586 (Tacoma – UW), originally slated for elimination with the opening of Northgate Link, would continue on, with a stop added at Federal Way Transit Center. The presentation did not specify whether the new stop would be added in March or September of 2021.

Continue reading “ST draft service plan revised for better Link frequency” | 35 comments

While there is a lot of lost service in the King County Metro network due to COVID-19 and its economic impacts, Metro has nevertheless managed to make lemonade out of lemons by assembling an increasingly robust network of buses connecting to Link Light Rail stations at frequencies that match Link’s temporary off-peak frequency of every 15 minutes. Link’s frequency is planned to be every 15 minutes during off-peak hours, until late evening, likely through 2021. Sound Transit is preparing for a long pandemic. The recent spike in new cases and deaths backs up their pessimism.

The following routes that serve Link stations outside of, or just on the periphery of, downtown have 15-minute off-peak weekday headway. (Link now runs every 8 minutes during the peak period on weekdays.) Unless otherwise noted, they also have 15-minute headway during the day on weekends.

Continue reading “15-Minute Link/bus network” | 20 comments

On October 8th System Expansion Committee received briefings on various capital projects. The centerpiece was a detailed review of East Link. The system is 85% complete, within the budget set in 2015, and on schedule for opening in July 2023. But there’s also some bad news.

Major civil engineering should be done in early 2021, and systems work by early 2022. Most of 2022 will be “pre-revenue” testing, and from September 2022 is 9 months of “float”. But some things are not going well.

Continue reading “Challenges, more closures for East Link construction” | 70 comments