Month: July 2007

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Matt Rosenberg at Cascadia Prospectus has a good post laying out the challenges and potential benefits of developing passenger ferry service along the Willamette River in Portland. The basic challenges, though, are universal. The Willamette is nice in that it’s a navigable, North-South river that basically follows the major interstates through the region (or vice-versa). Seattle’s lakes and sounds follow more irregular trajectories.

Nonetheless, the challenges are similar. Money quote:

Getting to and from the dock at each end has to be convenient and quick, or the premise can’t go much further than a seasonal novelty. Marketing campaigns would need to highlight the “portal to portal” time advantage for specific foot ferry routes versus driving and other transit modes, as well. Softer sell “enjoy the ride – skip the traffic” pitches have value, but can only gain traction if travel time comparisons work.

Additionally, the more daily commerce that can be situated in proximity to foot ferry transit nodes – grocery stores, dry cleaners, even day care centers and schools – the greater the appeal.

Thus we see the challenge of going back to the water for our transit needs. In the last 100 years, we’ve begun build away from the water. The downtowns of our newer cities — Bellevue, Kent, etc. — are built near highways. And with good reason: hugging the coast like the Sounder/BNSF does between Everett in Tacoma makes for a long and winding route.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

the P-I opines:

While this will produce slightly more bus traffic along Third, it’ll alleviate some of the congestion elsewhere, which, especially during evening peak hours, can turn into a hot, crawling mess. While the mayor’s at it, we recommend banning cars from Pike Place, the perpetually gummed up cobblestone street running in front of Pike Place Market, making an exception for delivery trucks.

Agreed.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

The Seattle Times‘ Bob Young was on KUOW’s Weekday this morning, discussing all things Port-related. He suggested that, although its true that the Port is no longer interested in owning Boeing Field (which it would get in exchange for the BNSF corridor), it might still be interested in managing the airport.

Also, Young noted that the Port commissioners’ pushback against the deal may have been motivated in part by a desire to push back against Ron Sims, who’s been giving them a hard time over the Lora Lake Apartments, low income housing that the Port wants demolished in advance of the third runway at Sea-Tac.

Sims seems to enjoy sparring with the Port. Two years ago, they fought over Southwest Airlines at Boeing Field and the implications for light rail at Sea-Tac.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

A tax on shipping containers seems like an eminently reasonable way to pay for improvements to freight mobility, but apparently the Port of Seattle, the industry, and the Governor all disagree.

David Schaefer, spokesman for the Port of Seattle, said the unfunded rail projects are extremely important to the port.

“Freight projects are a big deal for us,” he said. “We’ve built the maritime infrastructure here for our port, and we have the capacity in our harbor to do double what we do now in terms of containers. We need to be sure we can get them in and out of Seattle.”

He said the port was one of the many voices against the shipping-container tax because it believed the tax would put it at a competitive disadvantage with other U.S. ports.

In other words, “it will hurt the port if we don’t get these new projects, but it will also hurt the port if we have to pay for them.”

I realize that the Ports of Tacoma, Portland, and Vancouver, WA, are all competing for the business. But the Port of Seattle’s in a pretty sweet position overall: it’s the fourth largest container port in America, and the 20th largest in the world. It takes a full day less to get here from China than it does to get to Long Beach, CA.

If these projects are really that important to the Port and its customers, aren’t they worth funding? It’s not like they’re being asked to foot the whole bill. For example, the tax would cover just $94M of the SR509 expansion, which is a billion-dollar project overall.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

USA Today explores the idea:

Fourteen states, six counties, 10 regional governments and 52 cities have complete streets policies, according to the National Complete Streets Coalition. In Illinois, a complete streets bill awaits the governor’s signature. In California, a bill passed one house.

Massachusetts and at least 11 cities — including Seattle, Honolulu, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Madison, Wis., and Jackson, Miss. — have approved complete streets policies since last year, the coalition says.

Some states, such as Oregon and Florida, have had the equivalent of complete streets policies for years, but the “overarching concept jelled just in the last few years,” coalition coordinator Barbara McCann says.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, plans to sponsor a federal complete streets bill, spokeswoman Jennifer Mullen says.

It’s interesting that it seems to be gaining support higher up than the local level. This is good, I guess, because streets tend to overlap jurisdictions. Even in Seattle, though, bike lanes can get nixed if there’s even a hint of local opposition.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

I have to admit, this shocks me, and makes me very happy:

Over the past year, Metro has conducted random fare inspections on MetroRail and found that 99 percent of its patrons are paying the full fare. In other words, only 1 percent of rail riders violate Metro’s fare rules.

This rather remarkable stat-istic was further validated June 27 when Metro police “blitzed” the rail line with 20 officers inspecting fares over a 20 hour period. Roughly 25,000 riders were checked. Of that number, only 282 had to be issued fines up to $200 or given a warning for failure to pay.

I know that Europe relies heavily on the honor system, but this is the first I’ve heard of a U.S. transit system using it so successfully. If it can work in Texas…

Oh yeah, and if you build it…

On an average weekday, the 7.5 mile Red Line carries between 40,000 and 50,000 area residents and visitors. This outstanding usage was not projected until the year 2020. For special events, like the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, single-day ridership has exceeded 64,000. These numbers add up to the indisputable fact that Houston’s rail line is easy to use and has earned the distinction of being the most successful light-rail line ever built in the United States.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Big day for transit news, I guess. The Port of Seattle is no longer interested in King County Airport. This is a big blow for Ron Sims, who now needs to find another way to pay for the BNSF rail corridor. The deal had been conceived by Sims and the old Port director, Mic Dinsmore, but his replacement has other ideas:

The Sims-Dinsmore deal drew fire from county council members who regard Boeing Field as an asset far more valuable than a recreational trail and who also are worried that the port would be less sensitive than the county to community fears about jet noise at the airport.

Port commissioners raised concerns about the actual value of the 77-year-old airport and the potential liability its owner would bear for the costs of cleaning up PCB contamination of a spur of the Duwamish River just across East Marginal Way from the property.

However, on the plus side:

[Port Executive Director Tay] Yoshitani told the Rotary Club the port also supports public ownership of the BNSF corridor — and is “willing to put significant dollars toward such a purchase.”

$103 million is a lot of money. There are only a few agencies that can swallow that: the Port of Seattle, Sound Transit, and the State of Washington (incl. WSDOT). I can’t think of any others with sufficient budgets. Maybe a collaboration between the Port and Sound Transit? Maybe ST could spend a few million less on glass walls and come up with the scratch? Just askin’….

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Bus-only 4-eva, says the Mayor:

“With tunnel work coming to an end, this is a tremendous opportunity to improve transit service downtown and help people get where they are going quickly and efficiently,” Mayor Greg Nickels said in a prepared statement Friday.

Bus-only downtown streets are a feature of many American cities, including Denver, Portland, and Philly. Unfortunately, businesses on those streets tend to suffer when cars don’t come down there any more. At least, that seemed to be the effect in Philly when I lived there.

Making it bus-only during rush hour, but open other times during the day, as the Mayor’s decided to do, seems to be the right compromise. The signage will have to get better, though, now that it’s a permanent thing.

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Pretty little things, ain’t they? One of the pluses of not implementing rail in 1968 when we had the opportunity, is that instead of having ugly, heavy rail like SF and DC, we’re getting some good-looking, svelte light rail. The minus, of course, is that it’s 40 years late. :)

More here.