Seattle Transit Blog

Last week we described the latest concepts for light rail in West Seattle and Ballard. Today, we’ll talk about the path through greater Downtown, from Lower Queen Anne to Chinatown. In a deviation from the follow-the-monorail theme of other segments, the representative alignment skirts the edges of Belltown to provide a direct line to South Lake Union.

It’s all going to be tunnel, so there are only four questions to ask:

1. What side of I-5 should Midtown Station be? To the West, in the walkshed of the existing DSTT, or to the East, serving the density of First Hill while forcing two crossings of I-5? One issue with the 5th Avenue alignment is the foundations of buildings there.
2. Should the new Westlake be under the old Westlake, or just to the East?
3. How far apart should the SLU stations be, or should there be just one?
4. Under which street should the tunnel swing west: Roy, Mercer, Republican, or Harrison? Republican and Mercer turn out to have sewer conflicts that increase cost and risk.

Interestingly, using the evaluation criteria, all of the alternatives score worse or no better than the original alignment on every metric, except that (surprise) consolidating the SLU stations into one makes things cheaper and easier.

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Explore the interactive documentary from Hervé Cohen that reminds us that beneath the surface, we’re all connected.

Yesterday we discussed the first cut of alternatives for light rail to West Seattle.  Today we’ll focus on Ballard and Interbay at the opposite end of the line.  The general route is a familiar one, dating back to Forward Thrust in 1968, showing up again in the Monorail vote in 1997, briefly making an appearance in the 2013 Sound Transit studies and emerging in 2012 as the RapidRide D line, the second-busiest route in Metro’s system with over 14,000 daily riders.  While there have been many arguments about the merits of connecting Ballard via UW (arguments which almost certainly will be rehashed in the comments section below), regional and city planners have long preferred the downtown connection via Interbay and 15th Avenue W.

This route, however, presents no shortage of challenges.  Though 15th Ave is wide and flat, there are conflicts with Magnolia bridges, BNSF rail tracks, a golf course, and, of course, the ship canal crossing.  The route that appeared on the 2016 ballot looks like this:

After community input, there are 6 alternatives under consideration.

A few tradeoffs are at play in these alternatives:

• Stay west through Interbay and avoid conflicts with Fisherman’s terminal or hug 15th Ave and have a shorter route to Ballard
• Cross the canal via an expensive tunnel or a bridge with construction and permitting impacts
• Optimize the Ballard terminus for 2035’s riders or tilt towards possible eastward expansion

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On its way to producing a single “preferred alternative” in early 2019, Sound Transit is in a year-plus process of collecting public input and screening a number of variants on the Seattle “representative alignment” voters saw before the 2016 vote. These “Level 1” alternatives are getting some basic, qualitative analysis across a wide series of metrics (below). The Stakeholder Advisory Group is reviewing these alternatives and will make its recommendations on April 24th. An Elected Leadership Group will consider this and make its own recommendations, and in May the Sound Transit Board will move a subset of these alternatives forward for further technical analysis and public comment.
In West Seattle, the representative alignment is elevated tracks from Sodo to the Alaska Junction, with two stops at Delridge and Avalon. These three stations intersect the three main north/south corridors in West Seattle, each with frequent transit service.

Public comment and further analysis spawned five alternatives. If you stare at it a while, the map below actually makes them pretty clear:

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Local tax debates are in an odd place where the most visible revolt against “regressive” taxes is directed at property tax — a tax on wealth, if not income. There are, of course, hard cases, but I’ve been struggling to find a column with the right mix of sympathy and focus on the truly poor. In yesterday’s open thread Al Dimond did it for me:

There’s sympathy, and then there’s policy. The choices that cash-poor, fixed-income people have to make are tough; those people that are also house-rich often didn’t choose to be house-rich, and can’t access the benefits without taking on some risks. There’s lots of room for sympathy.

But it’s most fair and most practical (from a tax stability point of view) to tax both income and accumulated wealth. High-earners here get away with criminally low taxes and reform is needed so they pay their fair share. But it’s hard, from a policy perspective, to put property taxes first in line for relief in tax reform, rather than sales taxes. People with wealth in property have better choices and better means to make them than the poor people gouged by sales taxes and usage fees. California’s attempt to protect people from rising property taxes ended up being spectacularly poorly targeted, and easy for rich and well-connected people to effectively exploit to their benefit — in California people with lots of accumulated wealth are under-taxed as badly as high-earners in Washington, to the detriment of other taxpayers that bear higher burdens, and of the public realm generally.

We’d probably do better by encouraging (and sometimes subsidizing or even directly building) more diverse housing types in more places, so that people that do move don’t have to move so far, than by trying to build tax policy around people living in the same houses for the rest of their lives (then passing those houses on to their children). There are lots of non-financial reasons staying in the same home doesn’t work out, and people making those transitions for any reason need better options and more support.

In our interview with Cary Moon last year, the candidate shared an anecdote of an elderly homeowner who had to take in boarders to stay in her home. I wasn’t quick-witted enough to say it at the time, but this is the production of naturally occurring affordable housing. While no one likes to see sympathetic people be lightly coerced, dynamics like this operating at scale are the only thing that can solve the affordable housing crisis.

About two weeks ago, in the wake of her controversial decision to “pause” the Center City Connector streetcar project, Mayor Jenny Durkan announced the latest in the ever-evolving series of One Center City concepts. The unwelcome headline was a two- to three-year delay for the Fourth Avenue protected bike lane and other bike infrastructure. Mayor Durkan’s announcement was also paired with an interesting congestion pricing trial balloon. All of that may have distracted us briefly from taking a fine-tooth comb to the OCC materials, but it’s impossible to keep transit wonks away from poring over documents for very long. Seattle Subway gets credit for noticing a subtle change to the Third Avenue plans: “All Day Transit-Only Operation” on Third, one of the most exciting bullet points in the previous plan, became “extended transit priority hours” in the latest materials.

Metro’s Jeff Switzer told me by email that the wording change did not actually represent a change in planned policy.  He wrote, explaining the previous “transit only” language: “The term ‘transit only’ is sometimes used to describe this type of operation. Non[-]transit vehicles are not allowed to travel the corridor, but may drive on certain blocks, adhering to a series of turn restrictions.”  In other words, the current plan is to extend today’s peak-hour treatment to include midday on weekdays, without implementing any additional car restrictions.  Jeff’s answer came as a bit of a surprise (okay, a crushing blow), given SDOT’s comments when the previous slides were issued. (We’ve asked SDOT for comment as well, but have not yet received it. UPDATE: I spoke by phone with SDOT’s Andrew Glass Hastings this morning. He confirmed Jeff’s answers, but also shared that SDOT is studying a variety of strategies to speed transit on Third, beyond the OCC plan. We may have more to say about those later.)

It’s no surprise that we aren’t fans of the current approach. Describing the current situation as “transit only” doesn’t remotely reflect reality, as any rider of Third Avenue buses knows. Heavy car volume and turning cars frequently impede buses, particularly in the northern portion of downtown. Compliance by car drivers with the turn restrictions is low, probably because of a combination of driver confusion and willful flouting. And all of this is for the sake of a tiny percentage of users.  Bus routes using Third Avenue carry well over 100,000 daily passengers, with Metro estimating that 47,500 of them board at Third Avenue stops.  By contrast, when you subtract the 3,000 daily bus trips from overall vehicle traffic numbers, SDOT estimates that only 6,100 cars use the most congested portion of Third Avenue daily. Given the turn restrictions, many of those are using the street only to reach or exit nearby parking facilities.

It’s time for Mayor Durkan to intervene in this process.  She can and should turn Third Avenue over entirely to buses, at least during the day. That decision would be good policy, and also good politics. Read why after the jump.

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Ahead of the first neighborhood forums for the West Seattle/Ballard Link project, Sound Transit has published its full summary report of the early scoping project, which we covered last month. Some 2,800 individual comments were made at open houses, the online survey, and other forums, and many of them asked for the same modifications to the project: tunnels to Ballard and West Seattle Junction, better connections at transfer stations, and grade separation in SODO. Using these suggestions, Sound Transit has also produced some Level 1 alternatives for the project, which we’ll be covering in a series of posts this week (so stay tuned).

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• The “Melrose Promenade” takes shape.
• Why New York stopped building subways.
• The summary of the first round of ST3 public comments is out.
• Mercer Island Station work starting.
• Federal Way and Tacoma Link open houses happening now.
• Kitsap Transit now has a dashboard for fast ferry key performance indicators.
• It’s only been 6 months, but the early record of the Durkan administration is not at all promising.
• Seattle gathering data for Uber/Lyft regulation.
• Scenes from the District 3 MHA public meeting.
• SDOT’s Rainier Avenue plan not very visionary.
• Denny bus lane finally in sight.
• Kitsap County looking at a $20 tab fee, but just for roads.
• Having failed to get enough signatures last year, Eyman’s pushing a car tab initiative again.
• A clear explanation of why Link doesn’t have turnstiles ($).
• Putting a Link station under Union Station sure would be pretty.
• Wenatchee’s transit plan scales back after public comment.

This is an open thread.

JOBS: Two Transportation Program Operations/Customer Service Positions Open at Seattle Children’s: a Supervisor and an Administrative Coordinator

Seattle Children’s nationally-renowned Transportation & Sustainability Department has two open program operations/customer service positions.

Supervisor of Business Operations & Transportation Programs

This leadership position oversees the day-to-day customer service, business/financial operations, and administration of Seattle Children’s Transportation Department commute programs, including, but not limited, to commute concierge, new employee orientations, parking assignments, bike programs, Guaranteed Ride Home, and carpool, vanpool and transit perks. In addition to being responsible for supervising the department’s front line customer service staff, this position oversees the department’s daily and long-term business practices by administering, monitoring, and auditing financial transactions with internal and external stakeholders and participating in the annual budgeting and strategic planning process.

Our ideal candidate has at least one year of supervisory experience, excellent interpersonal and customer service skills, is a critical thinker and problem solver, is anticipatory, and has demonstrated experience with basic accounting and billing practices, supporting front line customer service teams, and maintaining databases. Read the full job description and apply online. The position will remain open until filled.

Administrative Coordinator – Transportation

The Administrative Coordinator provides a wide range of administrative, program, and business systems support as well as data management tasks. This position directly supports the department director and other department leaders by scheduling meetings, arranging travel, maintaining calendars, etc., and works with confidential, time-sensitive materials. This position is responsible for updating the team’s use of visual management tools to track, monitor and manage data, performance goals, and operational impacts and is a critical member of the department’s customer service team, providing front line program and customer support both in-person and via email.

Our ideal candidate is detail-oriented, anticipatory, has excellent interpersonal and customer service skills, can handle complex scheduling using Outlook, has experience with basic accounting and billing practices, and has the ability to handle multiple tasks and competing deadlines with a calm demeanor. Read the full job description and apply online. The position will remain open until filled.

Learn More About Seattle Children’s Progressive Transportation Programs:

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In another unfortunate setback for Vision Zero and the Move Seattle Levy, SDOT has elected to remove the dedicated bus lane planned for 24th Avenue to give more space to cars.

23rd/24th Avenue, home to the 43 and 48 routes and used by over 6,000 bus riders daily, is one of Seattle’s supposed “transit priority corridors” (a phrase that grows ever more meaningless), slated for RapidRide buses in 2024.  The 2015 Transit Master Plan called for bus lanes from Thomas St. to Roanoke St., almost all the way to the Montlake bridge.  As the plan has evolved, neighborhood opposition has increased and the bus lanes have been walked back, until this month, when they were scrapped entirely.

Another nice nugget: They got rid of the bus lane because people complained, not because data or research showed it wouldn’t work. What a joke. cc: @SeaTransitBlog pic.twitter.com/W2VhGEkl0M

— Seattle Bike Blog (@seabikeblog) April 16, 2018

The public comment is the usual incoherent mishmash (“make it safe for pedestrians and also we want to drive faster!”).  SDOT appears to have taken it literally but not seriously, as the saying goes.  Despite referring to the corridor as a “vital street for transit,” no effort will be made to improve bus service.  The agency is, however, proposing a “skid resistant surface” to be applied at the intersections where the most collisions occur.  So there’s that. And while the reduction in downhill lanes between John and Boyer will probably reduce driving speeds, the project has fallen disappointingly far from the original 2015 vision.

Several years ago, Jarrett Walker used Seattle as an example of “chokepoints” and transit design:

No North American city has more chokepoints than Seattle.  The city itself consists of three peninsulas with narrow water barriers between them.  Further barriers are created by steep hills in most parts of the city.  Nowhere in Seattle can you travel in a straight line for more than a few miles without going into the water or over a cliff.

…Transit planning is frustrating in such a place, but road planning is even more so.  Ultimately, Seattle’s chokepoints have the effect of reducing much of the complex problem of mode share to a critical decision about a strategic spot.  If you give transit an advantage through a chokepoint, you’ve given it a big advantage over a large area.

The Montlake area is one of Seattle’s major chokepoints, as traffic backs up in all directions approaching the intersection of Montlake Boulevard and SR 520.  Transit priority ought to be a no-brainer. WSDOT made the wrong call with the 520 offramp, which was quite unfortunate, but I expected more from SDOT.  As cost overruns pile up on other transit and infrastructure projects, red paint for bus lanes remains the cheapest and most effective way to move more people through our limited, chokepoint-filled right-of-way.

Last year we said goodbye to Zach Shaner, as he moved on from being STB’s paid writer to the next stage of his career. It was painful, but that spot turned into Lizz Giordano, who quickly became our go-to reporter on a variety of subjects. Now Lizz is moving on to a position at the Everett Herald, where she will deliver her brand of well-researched and technically curious writing to that audience. Our sadness at seeing Lizz leave is tempered by our excitement at her opportunity to work on a bigger stage.

If Snohomish County matters to you, subscribe to the Herald and support the creation of more high-quality journalism. But for us, this means we have an opening again.

***

We’re looking for a skilled writer with an interest in transit and land use issues and open to a part-time position. He or she would be responsible for a few pieces a week, although hours (and therefore output) are negotiable. Reporting skills are more important than domain expertise. However, knowledge of the local political terrain, transit operations, and land use issues are assets. Outside of the land use and transit beats, you’d be free to use the remainder of your time to pursue other writing opportunities.

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A 1983 documentary produced by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the Seattle Engineering Department about how Seattle got its groove (and groves) back.

This is an open thread.

On Monday, Community Transit announced that it would accept a $43.2 million Small Starts grant from the Federal Transit Administration, completing the last of the $73 million in funding required to complete the Swift Green Line. Portions of the line have actually been under construction for a year, thanks to special authorization from the FTA, and many of the future stations in Everett are paved and ready for new canopy “skeletons” to be installed later this month.

The grant was approved by Congress last year, but was threatened in President Trump’s proposed elimination of the FTA’s Capital Investments Grants program. Sound Transit spokesperson Kimberly Reason told The Times ($) that the program’s grants for Lynnwood Link and Federal Way Link are “still at risk” and that full funding agreements would not be signed until this summer for Lynnwood and next year for Federal Way.

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Sound Transit Operations & Administrative Committee meeting April 5, 2018
The escalator presentation runs from 8 minutes into the video until 1:08.

Last Thursday, Sound Transit staff gave a presentation to the Board’s Operations & Administration Committee in response to the March 16 breakdown of two down escalators on the same level at UW Station, resulting in long queues to enter the station during the evening peak period.

On March 16, one escalator was broken down for over two hours before ST personnel became aware it had stopped. Once the other broke down, staff miscommunication delayed calling the contractor that maintains the escalators — KONE — to come out and repair the escalators. Then, KONE took two and a half hours to get a repair crew to the station, despite being under contract to respond within one hour.

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Are you down for urban density? Speak up for abundant and affordable housing at the District 3+7 (Central Seattle, Pioneer Square to Magnolia) MHA public hearing on April 16!https://t.co/rnS6JE3JdU pic.twitter.com/sAJafzbHvz

— SeaTech4Housing (@seatech4housing) April 5, 2018

On Monday, you have a chance to speak to Seattle city council members about one of the greatest challenges facing our society: building more houses for people. In Seattle, our housing shortage does not arise either from a lack of technology nor of capital, but primarily from laws that reserve more than half of the city’s land area for the most spatially-inefficient kind of urban housing ever to achieve mass adoption — the detached single-family house, with mandatory setbacks and car parking — and stringently regulate development on the tiny slice of land where multi-family housing is allowed.

Unlike other challenges we face, many of which require help from reluctant or recalcitrant higher levels of government, we in Seattle control* our own land use laws. We have nobody else to blame for the invisible wall of exclusionary zoning that we allow to stand around our city. The good news is that we have elected City Council members who, mostly, understand our housing problem and care about rectifying it. Last week’s Council vote, to stop forcing many people who live in transit-rich areas to have parking spaces they may not want, suggests our council members are willing to turn concern into legislation, even over the objections of a vocal, litigious, and extraordinarily privileged ($) minority.

The bad news is that privilege dies hard. To listen to much of the testimony at a zoning hearing is to fall into a netherworld where building more homes will not help our housing shortage; where open resentment of immigrants and newcomers is acceptable; where people who live in pre-war bungalows that would never meet today’s codes denounce modern apartments as Dickensian fire traps and health hazards; and imagined slights by the city bureaucracy invalidate years of open public process. To be a person who speaks at these hearings, for the radical proposition that roofs over people’s heads are both a public and private good, is definitely Type II fun.

But speak we must. Housing in the city, both subsidized and market rate, is an ethical and economic imperative, and if we fail to speak for it, we leave our elected leaders out on a limb. On Monday’s agenda is the citywide HALA rezone, a long-discussed, modest rezone of existing urban villages, coupled with a linkage fee. This rezone is worthy in its own right, and you should speak for it, but it must be thought of as a beginning, rather than an end; a down payment on a much more extensive and diverse housing stock that we have yet to legalize. As Minneapolis is considering, we must fundamentally reexamine single-family zoning throughout the whole city.

• What: Public Hearing: Mandatory Housing Affordability in Districts 3 & 7
  
• Where: Seattle Central College, Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway
• When: April 16, 2018 6:00 PM (be early! — speaking is first come, first served)

If you’d like to join up with an awesome, supportive group of people, consider Seattle 4 Everyone or Seattle Tech for Housing.

* Well, mostly. The playing field isn’t really level — upzones go through an exhaustive state environmental process that the status quo mostly never had to.

• What a train trip across the US taught one Australian about Trump’s America. Among other things: Amtrak is slow.
• TNT: Pierce County should borrow trailhead transit idea. I’d argue that having a decent all-day frequent-service network in Tacoma should come first.
• Wave as they pass your car. Fast buses could be coming to a long stretch of Tacoma’s Pacific Avenue.
• First post-rezone U-District highrise proposal gets design review.
• Navigating the strange new world of mobility.
• Morning Crank: A “Reset” for Move Seattle.
• Alon Levy gave a pair of talks in the Bay Area about regional rail.
• With renovation costs up, enhanced station program ends early, amid controversy.
• MTA’s Joe Lhota admits defrauding the public about costs.
• Shoupistas Rejoice: Seattle passes parking reform.
• City Council emails show Rob Johnson’s leadership on safe streets.
• Mayor Durkan: A vision for a more vibrant downtown with fewer cars, more transit, and less pollution.
• Housing cars or housing people? Debate rages ($) as number of cars in Seattle hits new high.
• Hostel takeover: Adjusting to a new Seattle.
• Congestion pricing plan for Manhattan ran Into politics. Politics won ($).
• Is Seattle’s Climate Action plan a plan of inaction?
• You can’t be a “climate mayor” if you’re making more room for cars.
• Century-old hotel in downtown Tacoma could be renovated into micro units for UW students. More like this, please!
• Don’t leave bike shares on ferries. The Coast Guard will think you’ve drowned.
• There are too many cars in Seattle, but there’s no way I’m getting rid of mine.
• Too many cars, too few supermarkets: how Australia’s cities really stack up.
• Montreal métro: Green light for Blue Line extension.
• Under Trump, new transportation grants ditch bikes, walkways ($).
• Developer proposes ($) an 18-story building in Lynnwood. “There’s a lot of land and a lot of parking lots… We’re trying to bring a more urban environment to the area. Everybody has been planning for this for a long time. We’re taking the first step.” Good for them; good for us all.
• All-door boarding is coming for all buses on Third Avenue next year.
• Everett was the first to bury its streetcars.
• Business owners oppose south central light-rail extension; Phoenix moves ahead anyway. “Four lanes or no train” sounds, regrettably, like the Phoenix I remember.
• More poorer residents are driving cars, presenting new issues for transit agencies.
• The Ben & Jerry’s crash course in transportation economics.
• Amsterdam will finally open second Metro Line.
• London’s Congestion Charge needs updating.

This is an open thread.

For months, SDOT watchers have been agonizing over the fate of One Center City’s program of bus and bike lanes, as well as the Center City Connector streetcar and its dedicated lanes. Mayor Durkan’s new proposal to toll the city center makes these petty squabbles by comparison.

Obviously, there’s a lot of process before anyone pays a toll. But if, somehow, the proposal survives and sets tolls as high as necessary to avoid congestion, that implies open streets downtown. That is way better for transit than fighting block-by-block for bus and BAT lanes.

The big exception here is bikes: backpedaling on ambitious bike lane plans plus faster traffic flow actually makes the status quo worse for the two-wheeled. That’s all the more reason to switch the emphasis of One Center City from bus lanes to bike safety.

However, in a bad sign for anything happening at all, on Sunday Danny Westneat started off the equity backlash, though he at least proposed constructive alternatives like allowing specific cars only on certain days. Ultimately, there’s a finite amount of road space and we will ration it somehow. Today, it’s by willingness to put up with traffic delays, and tough luck if you need to get there fast. Congestion charges sort by a combination of wealth and the value of someones’s time, and tough luck if you put a very low value on your time. A rotation scheme is equitable except for those with access to multiple cars, a perverse incentive if ever there was one. But the main cost is that there are days where you can’t drive downtown at all at any price in time and money.

Personally, I’m simply not moved by the equity argument. The downtown core is well-served by transit from nearly everywhere. Driving there is already expensive and difficult, so the extremely price-sensitive take the bus or train. The great mass of working class people that drive to do their jobs are getting paid (or forgoing paid work) to sit in traffic. It is worth it for them — or the people that pay them — to give them clear streets to be more productive. And finally, congestion pricing is revenue-positive, providing space to compensate the handful of disadvantaged people hurt by such a system (also, congestion may cost Metro $100m annually, even more money that could be plowed into increased service).

Technical merit is never a guarantee that a project will deploy, but if it does Mayor Durkan will have a transformative transportation legacy in downtown.