New Metro Bus Tracker

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Check it out here. I like the interface: clean, simple and optimized for mobile devices. I’ve been using this one for a few months, and it’s okay, but takes forever to scroll down to to the stop you want. I think organizing the data primarily by bus, rather than by stop, makes more sense, at least for my use.

I like the intuitive appeal of “I’m at this intersection, what buses are coming my way?” But in practice, there are just too many intersections for the interface design. And most of the time you’re probably really only interested in one or two known buses.

(via)

Link and Metro Meetings

Posted on by Andrew Smith

King County Metro is starting the process of planning South End service around Link ahead of whe n Light Rail opens to the airport. Sound Transit and King County Metro are looking for meeting members to help plan the process. I know Sims was talking about using McCellan/Mt Baker station as a transit hub for buses through that area, and I would bet that something similar is being planned for Tukwila.
The requirements for members:

The agencies are looking for sounding board members who:

  • Ride the bus frequently;
  • Live or work in an area that will be served by light rail; or
  • Would like to represent a specific community, ethnic group, or set of special-interest bus riders – such as students, night-shift workers, and people who are elderly or have disabilities.

Should be good. If you live in the Rainer Valley, Tukwila or Beacon Hill and ride the bus often, I’m sure they’d love to have you.

Bus Lanes on Elliott

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

If you’ve been wondering what’s up with the new bus-only lanes on Elliot Ave W, This week’s Getting There column has some answers.

I’ve also noticed that SDOT is paving the area of the street where the bus stops with concrete, instead of asphalt. This is being done at Metro’s request, they tell me.

Honolulu Light Rail

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Honolulu’s Mayor, Mufi Hanneman, has been pushing for light rail through the area for sometime. But recently attacks have intensified by an anti-rail group, whose website is appropriately named Stop Rail Now. What does Stop Rail Now want? Light Rail to get to the ballot.

Crazy, right?

Unlike many Mainland communities, Honolulu’s transit tax hike was never put to a ballot vote.

“Virtually every other city that has done a rail system since World War II has done a ballot question,” said council member Charles Djou, who opposes the project. “It is highly unusual that Honolulu is moving forward with this rail system without a vote.

“If we don’t put this issue on the ballot, this issue will never be resolved. This project will always be controversial.”

I do hope Honolulu builds the line, and I hope they get it to the airport. But that’s not why I’ve written this post. Here’s my question: are we better off or worse off that we have to vote on light rail?

Without a ballot measure, it would likely be impossible to get a light rail expansion through this year, because enough of the politicians in region are against it. But we likely could have got Prop. 1 through last year without a hitch. Still, there could always be a sense of illegitimacy about light rail that was not voted on. So what do you think?

Sound Transit Tests Link and Buses Sharing Tunnel

Posted on by John Jensen

Last Friday night, Sound Transit tested Link Light Rail sharing the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel with buses.  Buses and Link will share the tunnel until Link headways and/or extensions eventually re-align bus service to the surface.  Here’s how the test is described in this week’s Sound Transit CEO Corner:

Last Friday evening, after the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel was closed for the weekend, we successfully ran light rail trains and buses together in the tunnel.

This was a significant achievement — the first time ever that trains and buses ran together in the tunnel. Friday’s test was necessary to make sure the tunnel’s signal system works properly, allowing trains and buses to use the tunnel at the same time. The good news is the test showed that the system works very well and trains and buses can both safely occupy the tunnel.

Two light rail trains and nine buses were used in Friday’s test, which took about 90 minutes.

$7 Gasoline in 2010

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

That’s not a peak oil alarmist or a tree-hugging car-hater. That’s CIBC World Markets, trying to figure out the impacts on the economy.

Hence we must narrow our focus on those Americans where a European style shift in driving habits is currently feasible. People can’t simply abandon their cars if they have no other means of getting around, particularly in terms of getting work. There must be at least a public transport alternative.

As it turns out, roughly 57 million American households that own a vehicle have reasonable access to public transi4, slightly more than half of the number of households who own a vehicle (Chart 11). And applying the 80% vehicle ownership rate seen in Europe to this target group suggests a 10 million reduction in the number of registered vehicles in the US.

Where will this decline come from? The focus is on those who can least afford to operate a car when gasoline costs $7 per gallon. No less than 80% of low income Americans (or roughly 24 million households) with less than $25,000 annual income own a car. With gasoline bills surging to record highs, they will be the first to come off the road.

And presumably, he’s not even considering people that will accept a smaller or more expensive property to move closer to transit.

Meanwhile, in Olympia, increased funding for transit isn’t on the table — not even for buses that could help every jurisdiction in the state. Sound Transit 2, which could be the largest public transit investment in the state’s history, is on a knife edge.

And WSDOT is still talking ($) about $2.6 billion in highway improvements in Skagit County. (hat tip: Wesley Kirkman) The world has changed, but the machine keeps rolling along.

As 78% of real estate agents report clients showing “greater interest in city living”, we have NIMBY opposition to density, denunciation of “social engineering,” and opposition to the one technology — rail — that could support that density, while supporting bus technology subject to the same price pressures as cars.

What reality are these people living in?

Bradford Plummer at TNR says it best:

To put things in perspective, only about 5 percent of Americans used public transit to commute as of 2005, compared with about 50 percent in Japan and Europe, where pricey gas has long been a reality. It’s not clear whether the United States could scale up that quickly by, say, 2012, though it sounds like, among other things, it would be a good idea to get started now.

Get mad.

Via Sullivan.

Inside the Box

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
On SLU Streetcar

I’ve been thinking about what we can do about really crowded routes like the 15 and 545, where the buses are already articulated and are still absolutely packed, and literally can’t accept any more riders. The headways are already as short as is practicable with a bus in traffic, and it’s not clear that there’s the money to put more buses on anyway.

What if we tore out seats? Yeah, sitting down is more comfortable, but isn’t more standing room preferable to standing with someone’s elbow in your gut? Preferable to not being able to get on it all? Best of all, the cost of something like this is a rounding error compared to the cost of some other capacity increases.

I’ve ridden buses with this configuration in Montreal and Marseille, although I couldn’t find any pictures.

The buses I ride typically aren’t quite as crowded, so what do you guys think? Fewer seats on a selected set of buses?

Tacoma Link photo by Seatrans Flickr Pool contributor Oranviri.

Fanboy Poll Complete

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

Sound Transit’s unscientific opinion-gathering operation is complete. As we’ve remarked before, these things skew pretty heavily towards those who are heavily invested in transit expansion, or strongly opposed to it. After all, there were 5,661 web responses, and our best estimate is that our humble blog alone has about 1,000-1,500 readers!

Still, there are a few interesting trends, and it’s interesting to see where transit-fan opinion lies on the various questions.

Slide-by-slide commentary:

  • The difference between opinion gathered on the Web and over the phone (slide 10) is easily explainable when you look at the age distribution of each (slide 7). It’s clear that transit advocacy, quite understandably, is largest among the young. With Obama running and boosting youth turnout, that’s a pretty good argument for going to the ballot in 2008.
  • The distribution of voters (slide 8) is somewhat worrisome. The large number of responses from “North King” (Seattle and Shoreline), far out of proportion to its population, shows that enthusiasm in some of the other areas is a little lukewarm.
  • Slides 12-14: everyone’s in favor of the type of service most likely to help them.
  • Slides 15 and 17, a regional breakdown of plan preference, tell an interesting story. The 12-year plan does really well in North and East King, which after all will get pretty much the same benefit in less time. The other counties really want the 20-year plan, because it’s the only way light rail gets anywhere near them.
  • Slide 18. Everybody wants 2008.

I don’t think the others contain much in the way of useful information.

Conclusions? I think it’s pretty clear they should go to the ballot in 2008, as we’ve stated before. Beyond that, things are pretty muddled. I think ST needs to do some scientific polling of the various plans, and also wargame the various lines of attack opponents will use, and figure out both their effectiveness and the effectiveness of the counterarguments.

Basically, the 20-year plan can be attacked as too big and too long, while the 12-year plan can be attacked as Seattle-centric. It’s hard to rebut the kind of provincial thinking that makes the latter an appealing point. The “too big” argument, however, could be argued more effectively than in 2007. First, express the expense in terms of cents per day per household, rather than a meaningless number of billions; secondly, explicitly compare the whole cost of ST2 with the cost of road projects like I-405 widening. The realization of Tacoma residents than they’re paying more for the mobility of Eastside drivers than they would for a regional system should be eye-opening.

Personally, I’d be happy with any of the options. It’s most important just to keep the ball moving downfield.

Another Great Audit

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

Sound Transit had another solid audit report this week.

The annual financial audit for 2007, conducted by KPMG LLP, found that the agency complied in all material respects with federal program requirements. It found no reportable conditions or material weaknesses involving internal control, and no instances of non-compliance required to be reported under Government Auditing Standards.

Sounds like the kind of administration that we should scrap immediately, and replace with a directly elected board like the squeaky-clean Port of Seattle.