This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Much more can be done — relatively inexpensively — to improve the transit user experience through improved signage, web sites, and the like. Here’s an interesting presentation from last year’s World Usability Day on exactly that topic:
STB super-illustrator Oranviri has done it again.
Raw data here.
Some random comments:
What do you learn from this? Share in the comments.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
No funding yet, just a resolution from Council.
I guess they want to qualify as “shovel ready” when the Obama administration comes to town with buckets of cash.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
The Alaskan Way Viaduct stakeholders committee is getting the sneaking suspicion that it’s being railroaded:
“I’m really, really unhappy the way this is coming to an end,” said stakeholder Vlad Oustimovitch, an architect from West Seattle. “Stage managing is going on to make [the stakeholder group] irrelevant. I’m uncomfortable sitting at this table.”
Last week, the stakeholders were briefed on the economic implications of the eight viaduct plans. The problem is there was no plan for them to review: The economist hadn’t released it.
I don’t have any direct knowledge of what’s going on here, but stakeholder committees are difficult to coordinate. They can be used to genuinely shape a solution, or they can be used as political props to provide cover. Either way, the agencies involved have to really want to include them, and have to bend over backwards to make sure they’re engaged.
If anyone has had direct involvement in the process, I’d love to hear from you, anonymity guaranteed.
The full Seattle City Council has approved the streetcar expansion plan that the Transportation Committee passed last week. According to those viewing online, the council passed a resolution supporting the expansion plans 6-3 after a spirited debate about alignment and funding. (We don’t yet on information on how each council member voted.)
The plan instructs the city to move forward with plans for four additional streetcar lines on top of the South Lake Union Streetcar: a Central Line along 1st Ave, a First Hill Line connecting Capitol Hill to the ID, a Fremont/Ballard Line, and an extension of the SLU Streetcar to the University District.
You can read the full resolution text online. In the resolution, the council states its desire for a Downtown connection between the SLU and the First Hill lines. The council also makes clear that it would like to prioritize the development of the First Hill and Central lines — certainly because the First Hill line was funded by Sound Transit’s Prop. 1 which passed last month and the Central Line is a likely candidate for state funds when a Viaduct replacement is chosen. The resolution does not contain any funding and for that reason actual construction of and funding for a given project would require further council approval.
The SLU line took just under over four years to move from concept to reality.
Second child born to a STB blogger, she was born Friday at 9am, 7 lbs, 12 oz.
She’ll never know a city without light rail.
Congrats, Andrew.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Via with a few changes.
“Local government finances are so dire, it is time to consider and enact an annual fee on pedestrians.
A $25 annual fee for walking is a natural outgrowth of the enormous amounts of trails, sidewalks and accommodations the region has made for pedestrians. Those funds would be useful for local cities and King County. It would also make pedestrians true members of the world of transportation, rather than free riders on the tax rolls.”
Sound ridiculous doesn’t it.
From President-Elect Obama’s weekly address today:
Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it . If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money .
Emphasis mine. Good policy? Sure. But let’s just say that our 4 layers of local government and local-planning-by-ballot-measure may not hold up too well under these sorts of constraints.
No one tell the NIMBYs when the meetings are this time…
Image: Jon Lok, Seattle Times
UPDATE: It seems Brad at Seattlest made almost exactly the same point a few hours before I did. Great minds think alike, I guess.
I just want to point something out here. This is barely worth a post, but I don’t think anyone’s considered the cost-benefit perspective here.
King County has or will spend something over a hundred million dollars replacing and upgrading their computer systems, if I’m not mistaken. The state Department of Revenue might be smaller than the county, but let’s consider what the alternatives actually are here.
The state collects billions in revenue each year. To replace that computer system would likely mean buying an entirely new system, running them both in parallel and cross-checking the results of any number of different types of collection by hand – and this for at least a year. Such a contract could be astronomical in cost – and during a time when the state needs to cut costs by five or six billion dollars.
So, three million dollars? While it sounds like a lot, I think having this happen and then repaying it is likely much cheaper for everyone.