These guys look like they are having a great time. Full set here.
Swing on BART
News Roundup: Northwest in the Global Media
Some stories we haven’t mentioned over the last few days:
- The BBC does a story on American high-speed rail, and highlights Amtrak Cascades. (H/T: Erik)
- Metro GM Kevin Desmond profiled in Mass Transit Magazine. (H/T: Orphan Road).
- Sound Transit awarded the contract to upgrade the Sounder track between M Street in Tacoma to Lakewood, thanks to $4.6m in Federal Stimulus.
80 Days
In 1980, San Francisco’s Muni Light Rail began operations in the Market Street Tunnel, the first light rail subway line built in the US after World War II. The Sunset tunnel opened in 1928, and the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1917.
1980 was also when the famous New York City transit strike took place. Photo gallery of the strike here.
Classification of Transfers by Headway Length
After reading Martin’s post about the SW Seattle service changes here, here and here I wanted to add a few comments about transfers. Basically, not all transfers are equal. I know this is pretty basic but this point gets overlooked a lot, especially in places like Seattle, where few routes have less than 10 minute headways. Ever ask how to get somewhere by bus and be told to “take route # to ___ and transfer to blah blah blah blah blah”? Yeah you kind of glaze over and zone out when they say transfer. In these circumstances lots of people decided to drive, take a taxi or don’t even make the trip.
Continue reading “Classification of Transfers by Headway Length”
Guest Post Series: 81 Days
by GREG NICKELS, Mayor of Seattle and Chair of the Sound Transit Board
With 81 days until the opening of Sound Transit LINK Light Rail, here is the third of my posts on the long road we’ve traveled.
The first meeting of the eighteen member Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (RTA) Board took place in September, 1993. I remember very well taking my seat at the table amidst much excitement and high expectations (I am the last of the original RTA Boardmembers still on the Board). King County Councilman Bruce Laing (R-6th) was elected the first RTA Board Chair. A former Hearing Examiner, Bruce was known to all as the epitome of the “honest broker”.
Following the 1988 Advisory Ballot and through the planning process (JRPC) a core of Metro staff formed the backbone of the effort. With the creation of a new, independent government it was time to expand and hire “permanent” staff to conduct the environmental and engineering work necessary to place a measure on the ballot (the State legislation contained a number of requirements to be met prior to going to the ballot, including engaging an “Expert Review Panel”).
The first hire was to be an Executive Director. The RTA Board chose Tom Matoff (former General Manager of the Sacramento Regional Transit Agency) because of his experience in developing Sacramento’s initial light rail project. Tom was a true believer in light rail and felt that a successful, inexpensive start would pave the way for future extensions, earlier rather than later. This came into conflict with the aspirations of many Boardmembers, particularly those from the outermost parts of the three county district who wanted any plan to include them (this turned out to be quite a drama later).
The emotions were high, the debate heated, but in just over a year (on October 28, 1994) the RTA Board adopted a $ 6.7 billion, phase 1 (based on the JRPC Plan) rail and bus proposal to send to the ballot. The three County Councils were required to vote on whether to continue as part of the RTA and therefore send it to the ballot. After weeks of hearings the three Councils all voted affirmatively in December. The region’s voters would soon be deciding on a Mass Transit plan – for the first time in 25 years!
The mayor’s previous posts: Counting Down to Link, Light Rail’s Beginnings
Diversity, the Street Grid, and Obama’s Election
Nate Silver from the always wonderful FiveThirtyEight political blog gave a fascinating TED talk about racism’s role in the 2008 election. Through the course of his speech, Silver recognizes the differing patterns of diversity in cities compared to rural areas and briefly talks about the benefits of the street grid in facilitating diversity. He raised one particular point that struck me: cul-de-sac development was, in Silver’s opinion, a contributing factor in the rightward shift of the nation’s politics in the 1980’s. While I’d need to see more information to back up this hypothesis, it is an interesting theory.
You can watch the full speech below:
We always say that it’s impossible to talk about transportation without talking about land use. Is it possible to talk about land use without talking about communities? How do you think the street grid or lack of it affects your community?
Olympia Update: Transit Does Pretty Well
With the legislative session coming to a close, we have some good news to report.
To start with, SB 5433 passed the House with both an authorization for King County to use ferry district taxing authority for transit (discussed in more detail here) and the Simpson amendment to allow transit agencies to ask for transportation benefit districts (discussed here). TCC just broke that the Senate was tied tonight, with Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen making the tie-breaking vote to pass the bill. This is great news for all transit agencies, but especially for Metro.
The transportation budget passed. The I-90 asset assessment remained essentially as Rep. Simpson wrote, funded and inclusive of ST in the process – and moved up a month to be complete by November 1st. Rep. Clibborn’s $10.6 million for R8A preliminary design work survived – and I understand Senator Jarrett supported this as well, although he wasn’t on the conference committee. Regional Mobility Grants survived partially, with $33 million of the Senate’s original $45 million, but I’ll take it – $8 million is included for the $39 million we still need to get Sounder to Lakewood. There was also funding for a third Amtrak Cascades run to Vancouver starting next year, and the final version of the bill kept in the House’s “Seattle pays for overruns” Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement provision.
Given how bad things looked a month ago, this isn’t bad! In addition to the obvious thanks for Rep. Simpson taking the lead here, I also want to recognize that Rep. Clibborn and Senator Jarrett both played roles in making sure all this funding stayed in place, so thank you to them as well. Perhaps we’ll never know what goes on in those conference committees (ahem, transparency initiative?), but we seem to have fared well enough.
Of course, now that we’ve gotten an inch, next budget session I expect Oregon-like funding for light rail and hourly bullet train service from Canada to Portland. Also a pony.
82 Days
When Sounder opens to Lakewood, it’ll be 82 miles long. With daily ridership last quarter probably over 10,000 (it was over 9900 in the fourth quarter of 2008), I’d imagine the ninth train plus that extension should get us over 12,000 – if we don’t hit 12,000 before the extension opens in 2012!
In 1982, both the Tohoku (March) and Joetsu (November) shinkansen lines opened, providing high speed rail service north of Tokyo. We’ve got a long way to go in this country before opening two high speed rail lines in the same year!
Meet-up Details
Once again, our meetup will be at the Ocean City Restaurant in Chinatown (609 S. Weller St.) We’ll start at 6pm on Monday, May 4.
We will once again have surprise guests.
And again, to reserve a spot toss in $5 / head via paypal (button below) and let us know at seattletransitblog@gmail.com. That money will be used for appetizers and any other expenses related to the function. We also ask that you actually get dinner there while you’re at it, since they were nice enough to get us the space for free. It’s inexpensive and delicious.
If you really don’t want to go the advance payment route you can pay $10 at the door.
Deadline for registration is Saturday, May 2.
Stanwood Station Contract Awarded
Interwest Construction of Burlington has been awarded the contract for Stanwood Station. Construction on the $5 million dollar project will begin mid-April and due for completion in late September. Service will start in October serving 4 trains, 2 Northbound and 2 Southbound trains.
The platform will be an unattended open air platform, like Tukwila Station. The station area will have room for expansion for a enclosed building and could be turned into a full multi-modal station.
The platform will be 17×750 feet which will accomodate the future 14 car long Talgo trains or a 9 car long bi-level train. The last passenger train that served Stanwood was in 1969 when Great Northern Railroad stopped in the town. Fares is expected to be around $13 to 20 dollars.