After diligently ignoring the good news only the day before, the Times at least acknowledged the positive in the much more significant annual report of the Sound Transit Citizen Oversight Panel (pdf).
Find out more about the panel itself here.
The report is an outstanding, concise, independent summary of the state of the agency. Here are a few tidbits that jumped out at me:
The Seattle Sketcher is a blog by Gabi Campanario where he showcases his sketches of daily things. The site is great, and I particularly love the sketches of bus commutes, they really seem to capture the experience of commuting by bus. Here’s a couple of examples.
Looking through these, I start to come of with different bus rider types. The “playing with cellphone guy”, the “reading paperback guy” and the “talk to friend lady”. So, what are the different sorts of bus riders? And what type are you?
Update: This morning the DJC reports that Sound Transit real estate people have toured the facility and are considering buying it. The six-storey garage is at 2460 Fourth Ave. S and has 970 stalls. The garage is likely to cost more than $20 million.
Original post published Jan 29 at 9:35pm is below:
The DJC ran a piece about parking around Light Rail station, and the rules changes that the city is looking into. It’s easy to figure out what to do in Southeast Seattle: residential permits and only short stays for those without permits. But what can be done with Sodo? Here’s the gist:
Few people live in that neighborhood [Sodo], but there are numerous small businesses, many of them industrial. The Manufacturing Industrial Council estimates that between 40,000 and 60,000 people work in Sodo.
One problem is that commuters are already parking in Sodo and taking the bus, according to SDOT planner Dante Taylor, who has been going door-to-door in the neighborhood collecting feedback on parking proposals since December.
Most of the local businesses don’t have parking lots, and rely on street parking.
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Almost 1,300 parking spaces around the sports stadiums will be lost during Alaskan Way Viaduct construction, … Another 50 spaces will be lost to construction on state Route 519, … another 200 spaces will go away temporarily while First Avenue South is paved and Spokane Street viaduct construction … The city estimates there are 4,500 parking spots in Sodo now.
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Some employers in Sodo want SDOT to issue parking permits for their employees.
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With more commuters likely to be parking in Sodo once the train starts running, some people are wondering why SDOT doesn’t buy the post office parking lot, which is very close to the Sodo train station and is up for sale.To support a “pedestrian and transit-friendly environment,” the city has a policy that discourages parking lots, Shepard said.
“Parking lots attract cars but they are not always good neighbors,” Shepard said.
You can learn more about the City’s light rail parking designs here. I’m going to look into which parking lot is the post office lot mentioned in the DJC article, but you can see the station here, and notice there’s a Post Office facility directly to the west of it. I kind of torn. On the one hand, I think a park-and-ride in the Sodo area, especially one very near to the Spokane Street Viaduct, is a great idea if the number of spots is sufficiently large to attract riders. On the other hand, that lot could be a great candidate for some TOD office space.
So what do you think about permit parking for workers? How about a park-and-ride at Sodo station?
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Downtown Seattle has around 79,574 parking stalls, with an average occupancy rate of 65%, which means we have at least 54,500 cars parked in lots downtown. Traffic flow downtown is around 96,400 cars per day. If we assume that 90% of these cars drive in and out of the city every day, that means that 96% of car traffic in the city can disappear if we remove the parking lots.
You might call this idea insane. How will people go to work, or the movies, or go shopping? That’s where the idea gets interesting. You probably recall that we’re almost done building a light rail line through the city to the south, and we’ll soon continue it northward. What if we built a giant parking structure south of the city, and another one north of the city, and located them both right at our new light rail line?
For every new stall we build, let’s remove one from downtown. This will free up room downtown for more retail, more businesses, and more residential units. As traffic declines we can add streetcars and make some areas pedestrian-only areas. The freeway will clear up as fewer cars queue up at exit ramps on I-5.
We’ll keep some cars around – they’re great for delivering goods to businesses, or if you need to get through downtown to somewhere else less accessible by rail/bus. But our downtown is very walkable, so it’s a shame we’ve given up so much to cars.
As Ben S said, the best way to prevent bike theft is to have a lot of bikes. The cyclists watch out for each other. I’d add that the best way to make cycling safe is to have a lot of cyclists.
Of course, virtually all of our major news outlets think it’s major scandal, need to know information, when a Sound Transit error causes costs less than 0.01 percent of their budget.
Yet curiously, their interest in the details of agency management falls away when yet another state audit reveals the agency is fully compliant with state law, and has adequate internal controls (pdf):
The Transit Authority complied with state laws and regulations and its own policies and procedures in the areas we examined. Internal controls were adequate to safeguard public assets.
In response to a whistleblower report, the Auditor also checked out $164,000 in other possibly improper payments to local nonprofits. The auditor found that $8,050 of that was actually improper, of which $3,200 was spent after ST received a warning from the auditor.
Guess the headline in the Times today? I know that this is the way the media works, and I’m glad the whistleblower filed his complaint and forced an end to illegal expenditures. At the same time, when public perception is skewed by this kind of selective reporting, it doesn’t help voters make intelligent decisions about the agency.
While we’re on the subject of governance, four ST projects received local engineering awards. They don’t sound like a big deal, but they’re better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
A report issued by the “Tolling Implementation Committee” recommends tolling only the 520 bridge, and not the approaches closer to I-405 or I-5. The committee decided that too many motorists would live 520 and drive on surface streets to avoid the tolls, worsening traffic in neighborhoods before the bridge and resulting in overall lower toll revenues. The decision is now in the hands of the state legislature.
In related news, the feds say it’s okay to toll I-90 to help pay for the new 520 bridge. The majority of people who do not live in Bellevue, Newcastle or Mercer Island support tolling both bridges.
Via StreetFilms.
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
The 520 tolling commission says we should only toll the bridge, not the approach roads. While somewhat disappointing, this is unsurprising, considering the neighborhoods on either side seem to have incredible amounts of political clout, and don’t want to see traffic increase in their neighborhood. What’s specifically disappointing is that the committee is using the wrong metric:
"State staffers and consultants estimated that charging tolls beyond the ends of the bridge would raise just 7 percent more in toll revenue. "I don’t think we receive a lot of money (considering) the consternation costs," Hammond said."
The increase in toll revenue has never been the issue. It’s about using tolls to manage demand, especially West of I-405. As it sits, the commission’s recommendation rates a 1 out of 6 on the old congestion pricing aggressiveness scale.
On the plus side, it looks like we’ll need to toll I-90 to hit the $2B revenue target, so that’s a start.
Quick items from around the transitsphere: