Month: June 2007

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

You know how I keep saying that the organized opposition to the fall Roads and Transit vote is, well, hard to take seriously?

Well, Seattlest has uncovered more evidence.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Bad news for Mercer Island park-and-riders, your Park and Ride lots will be delayed until the fall.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Study of the I-90 center roadway.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

What can I say, I suppose it’s “HOV Lane Friday” here at Orphan Road.

Driving back from Bellevue this morning, I noticed work had begun on adding HOV lanes on and around Mercer Island:

I-90 has a two-lane reversible center roadway between Seattle and Bellevue for buses, carpools and vanpools only. Traffic travels westbound in the mornings and eastbound in the evenings on the center roadway. However, buses, carpools and vanpools that are traveling in the opposite direction of the center roadway are forced to use general-purpose lanes. This makes buses and other high occupancy vehicles traveling between Seattle and Bellevue run increasingly late during rush hours, and reduces the benefits of sharing the ride.

The reversible center lane, used on I-90 and I-5 north of Seattle, naturally only works when the bulk of traffic is going one way in the morning and the other way in the afternoon. That may have been the case years ago, when the I-90 lane was first envisioned (and it’s still mostly the case on I-5), but it’s not the case any more on the Eastside. In fact, there may even be more people traveling East in the morning. Q.E.D., the buses suck.

Fortunately, when light rail is built across I-90, they’ll do away with the reversible center lane entirely, use it for the trains instead, and put standard HOV lanes in either direction. I suspect the work on Mercer Island is a precursor to that effort.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Cascadia Report offers a fix for getting traffic moving on SR520 now:

So here’s an idea: Immediately move 520’s westbound HOV lane to the left side from Redmond to Seattle. Instead of being stopped by merging traffic in the right-hand lane, buses and three-person carpools could speed through the corridor. Forcing cars with one passenger to merge from two lanes into one before crossing the bridge would be a dramatic incentive to take transit or carpool.

The change could be made almost overnight and would boost capacity. Demand for buses would soar and suddenly people would be willing to carpool, even if it meant sharing rides with (gasp!) strangers. If drivers really wanted more lanes they would be incented to support funding a new bridge.

It’s certainly an idea I’ve had myself from time to time, as I sat in traffic on the bus from Redmond to Seattle (I used to work out there). I can certainly sympathize with CR’s daunting tale of a nightmarish afternoon commute on the bus. So long as the Westbound traffic on 520 doesn’t back up past the 405 interchange, you’re usually okay. But if it does… ho boy, things can get gnarly pretty quick.

Unfortunately, CR’s idea to shift the HOV lane from the right-hand side to the left (thereby preventing buses from getting stuck in the 405 snarl) won’t work, from what I understand. It turns out that the HOV lane on 520 is an afterthought. It was a shoulder lane that WSDOT converted to an HOV lane after the fact. As such, it’s not safe enough for general-purpose traffic. (This is also why it has a 3-person HOV requirement.)

Here’s a 2002 report on the subject from WSDOT:

These shoulder HOV lanes can safely accommodate three-person HOV traffic flow, but not general traffic flow.

When the 6-lane bridge is eventually put in place, then it definitely makes sense to re-engineer 520 to allow general traffic in the right two lanes and HOV traffic in the far left lane. But that would require some major construction.

However, in the interest of being solutions-oriented, let me offer one of my own. The idea is simple: we could instantly reduce the traffic from Redmond to Seattle in the afternoon if we gave people an incentive to do a 2-person carpool. As it stands now, 2-person carpools get stuck in the general traffic along with solo drivers, so you might as well drive solo.

Since we don’t have the lanes to work with, we need other incentives. One option would be to pay people who do a 2-person car pool. How do you pay them? I’m not sure. Maybe they stop for some kind of coupon when they get to Montlake, or maybe we photograph all the cars and then send a check to everyone (by matching license plates) whom we can verify has a passenger.

The other option is good, old-fashioned public shame. Maybe make up bumper stickers or road signs that say “I’m doing my part to make this commute better… have you found a 2-person carpool?” I’m skeptical about such a solution, but since the majority of commuters coming back from the East side work for a few large employers, the community is tightly knit enough that social pressure just might work.

At the very least, we could make it easier for slugging to occur. I’ve been waiting at the bus stop on NE 148th in Bellevue several times and had a driver pull up and offer to take two people across the bridge to Montlake. Whether that reduces traffic or just makes for emptier buses crossing the bridge, I’m not sure.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Folke Nyberg wants to repair the viaduct. The consensus opinion is that you can’t repair it. And even if you could, Nyberg’s suggestions strike me as… odd. For example, I’m not sure how you “accommodat[e] emergency parking on each side of existing roadways” without tearing the thing down to widen it.

But hey, in the end, he throws a bone to monorail enthusiasts:

7. Considering an extension of the monorail line from the Seattle Center to the sports stadiums alongside the viaduct, with a possible extension to West Seattle and Ballard;

So hey, how bad can he be?