A $1.7 billion emergency transit bill passed the US House or Representatives Thursday by a 322-98 margin (wow). The bill, if it passes the Senate, would provide the money over the next two years to local transit agencies to help offset their increased operating costs. Hopefully King County Metro and the rest of the cash-strapped local agencies can get some of that money.
(Thanks to Gordon Werner for the link!)
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Larry Lange reports in the P-I. Here’s my favorite:
A third “surface” option similar to the second but with waterfront traffic handled using six lanes on Alaskan Way and Western Avenue. Estimated speed: 30 mph. With all three “surface” Third Avenue would be restricted to transit traffic downtown and 10-minute Metro “Rapid Ride” service is assumed on Aurora Avenue, West Mercer and from West Seattle.
Several of the other alternatives assume a First Avenue streetcar in the scenario. I don’t get that. I mean, a First Ave streetcar is cool and all, but how does it help displaced Viaduct traffic? All the people who jump on the Viaduct to get from Pioneer Square to Belltown? Then again, one of the other alternatives assumes a Lake Forest Park Park-and-Ride. How that affects the Viaduct mystifies me. But traffic flows are crazy things, and I defer to the experts.
Politically, though, it seems like the ones that make major changes to I-5 — like a single managed toll lane — are going to be the most difficult and time-consuming to implement.
Cartoon from Yesterday’s Issaquah Reporter
Doug MacDonald has written a series of anti-light rail pieces at Crosscut. You can read the comments where a lot of his arguments are taken apart, so I won’t bother going over it here. But I do want to show this. It’s the text of Resolution 667 from the Washington State Transportation Commission’s Website. The resolution was in 2004. This text in particular is interesting:
WHEREAS, all parties to the 1976 I-90 Memorandum of Agreement have approved an amendment to include Sound Transit as a party to the agreement and to reflect current understandings regarding the future configuration of I-90 that reaffirm the commitment to conversion of the center roadway for use by high capacity transit, specifically:
• High capacity transit operating in the center roadway is the ultimate preferred configuration for I-90;
• Construction of high capacity transit operating in the center roadway should occur as soon as possible; and
• Implementation of high capacity transit should proceed as quickly as possible, depending on the outcome of required studies and on the securing of necessary funding.
Now check out the signature page:
DOUGLAS B. MACDONALD
Ex-Officio Member
Secretary of Transportation
Now MacDonald is hanging out with anti-light rail pro-brt billionaire John Stanton. Just sayin’.
STB reader Jacob Langley noticed these oddly anti-rail fliers posted at the Convention Center Bus Tunnel station on the pillars.
Text of the flier:
Want your bus to run more often?
Sound Transit is asking for your opinion on what to do.
They have 2 main options:
-Build more Light-Rail, Trains and Trolleys before the one’s being built now have been finished and tried out. (Have you ever taken or seen how full the South Lake Union Trolley is?) And this would cost us quote a bit of money.
-Hire a company to plan where the tracks are to be laid
-People move, tracks don’t
-Tear down houses, stores, etc.
-It could be 12 years or it could be 20
-Or They Could Triple or Quadruple the Buses whose routes are already planned out which would not cost us near as much
-And this could be done in one or two years at the most
Learn ore on this website and you can contact them on this # or E-mail address:
Future/Soundtransit.org
Future@Soundtransit.org
1-866-511-1398
I think it’s kind of funny. I just want to point out the amount of money Sound Transit would ask for couldn’t even come near to doubling bus service. Also, the website’s url is http://Future.SoundTransit.org.
Note from Ben: The comment period is over anyway.
At the Seattle Weekly’s blog, Seattle rocker John Roderick has a “music” post about how much he dislikes Sound Transit. These days it feels like you can’t read a blog without reading something bad about light rail in this region, and even musicians in bands I like are no exception. Anyway, Roderick is way off on a few points:
First, in comparing Portland and Seattle, Roderick says it’s “paternalism” that Sound Transit decided to put link in its own riight-of-way down MLK. He says “unavoidably paternalistic message is that Seattle drivers are too incompetent, stupid or blind to navigate around a gigantic train that runs every fifteen minutes without being crushed beneath its wheels”. Uh, no. The message I received was that Sound Transit didn’t want to put cars right on the place that the train runs every six minutes, because they didn’t want to slow the train down. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard the argument against grade-separation.
Next, Mr Roderick says that the Capitol Hill tunnel project for U-Link “is a design which emphasizes everything that is exactly the opposite of what light-rail is good for… An elegant and effective form of public transit is destined to be an unloved and underused white elephant. If the light rail instead ran down Eastlake Way to the University district it could be built for a hundredth the cost, serve thousands more people, and be built in a tenth the time” There’s no way they could build a light rail line down Eastlike for $10 mn, even the SLU car cost $50 mn. And there’s no way it would serve more people: 40,000 people live with walking distance of the Capitol Hill station, and twice that many more live within a bike ride. Eastlake, on the otherhand, has just 6,000 people live in Eastlake, with few plans to build more housing. And there’s no way an at-grade light rail could connect the U-District and Capitol Hill in just three minutes.
I guess I shouldn’t fault a rockstar for not knowing about transit, but then again…
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Try doing this with a bus:
DART is updating its fleet of 115 light rail vehicles (LRV) by inserting a new, low-floor insert between the existing sections of the vehicle adding seating capacity and improving access through level boarding. The newly modified vehicles began service on June 23, 2008.
Known as Super Light Rail Vehicles (SLRV) because of the greater length and added passenger capacity, the SLRV will seat approximately 100 passengers compared with 75 on the current vehicles. Standing passengers on the vehicle can nearly double the capacity.
(via)
I’d like to welcome two new Bloggers to STB. Eric from Ride the Link, he mixed the great video of the tour of the Sound Transit facilities we went on last month, and John Jensen, the commenter formerly known as rizzuhj.
A few months ago, we mentioned that that Washington and Oregon state have been considering adding Light Rail over the Columbia River as part of a project to replace the I-5 bridge.
Today the Columbia River Crossing Committee voted to recommend a replacement bridge that includes light rail between Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR.
From the article:
VANCOUVER — Representatives of Oregon and Washington voted Tuesday night to recommend replacing the Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River with a new bridge and a light-rail extension to Vancouver, marking a milestone in dealing with a West Coast traffic bottleneck.
Those of you who are interested can find more information about the proposed alignments here.
Two Republican legislators from Virginia Beach have introduced a bill that would extend the light rail system now under construction in Norfolk to within blocks of the Oceanfront.
The legislation was put in by Del. Robert Tata and state Sen. Frank Wagner with little apparent discussion with local elected city leaders.
“It’s time for this to happen, whether they favor it or not,” Tata said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, in Olympia, the debate among the Democratic supermajority is not how much to fund Sound Transit, but whether to hobble it with navel-gazing governance reform.
Our Democrats are to the right of Virginia Republicans.
Via The Overhead Wire.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
In my previous post, I argued that:
1. Seattle needs a city-level mass-transit system – not to replace, but to augment the bus system.
2. King County is the wrong agency to build this.
There were several comments about how the branding a Seattle transit agency would be confusing. I’m not sure I agree (many other cities handle this fine), but I’m ok with not having a new agency as a requirement.
Here’s my proposed compromise: We build all of the infrastructure, buy the trains, then ask King County to run it. They may need to pay for a few new drivers, but it would certainly be an easier sell than having them come up with all of the initial capital.
Of course, this is exactly what’s happening with the streetcars. But I’d argue that streetcars aren’t enough. Unless they’re completely traffic-seperated, they’re just busses with increased ridership (good, but still slow and inefficient). What we need is a monorail-scale plan. We could still use streetcars (though light rail may be better), but elevate them, put them in tunnels, or just make their path completely seperate from cars.