Ride transit to the big events!

Posted on by Brian Bundridge
Sounder and Mt. Rainier by Brian Bundidge
Sounder and Mt. Rainier by Brian Bundidge

Today marks one of the busiest days for transit agencies with several events happening. This is a good day for those folks whom haven’t had a chance to experience Sounder, Link, or ST Express buses as well.

Scheduled events today;

Sounders FC vs. Fire @ 12:00pm

Mariners vs. Indians @ 1:05pm

Seafair Torchlight Parade Run, starting at 6:30pm from Qwest Field to Seattle Center

Crowning of Miss Seafair, 7:00pm at Seattle Center

Seafair Torchlight Parade, starting at 7:30pm from Seattle Center to Qwest Field

Sounder departs Tacoma at 11:00am and arrives at 11:59am

Sounder departs Everett at 11:15am and arrives at 12:15pm

Link will be running normal service with some extra trains to handle crowding.

Seattle Streetcar will be running normal hours, ending at 11:00pm

Seattle Center Monorail will be running normal hours, ending at 11:00pm

KC Metro, Community Transit, Pierce Transit, and Sound Transit buses will be running normal Saturday hours with no extra services.

This is an open thread, have a great weekend everyone!

VIA Rail Engineers on strike

Posted on by Brian Bundridge
VIA Rail Canadian #1 by BCOL CCCP
VIA Rail Canadian #1 by BCOL CCCP

If you are heading up to Canada to take a VIA Rail train, you may want to hold off a few days/weeks as VIA Rail engineers are on strike. As a precaution, VIA begin canceling trains with the strike pending. Engineers and yardmasters have been working without a contract since December 31, 2006. This affects 350 engineers and yardmasters.

Refunds are available or you can change your tickets for a different date.

Link’s First Week

Posted on by Brian Bundridge
Link in SODO by Brian Bundridge
Link in SODO by Brian Bundridge

So with Link up and running for a week, here is a recap;

On opening day, 2 people got stuck in the elevator at Beacon Hill Station.

Many people complained about the rough wiggle the train made along the elevated segment.

TVM’s had their share of problems.

A power/signal outage shut down the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel for nearly a full day.

Trains were “light ridership” according to some newspapers.

Today I rode on Link and my observations are the following;

The wiggle in Tukwila is barely noticeable. The maintenance of way team at Sound Transit did a great job fixing this for both tracks!

Beacon Hill has some incredible food.

Sports fans are enjoying taking Link… the train I got off around 4:45pm had at least 40 jerseys waiting at Tukwila after over 200 commuters got off at Tukwila.

TVM’s all have been upgraded, including the Sounder TVM’s.

No power issues in the DSTT.

Ridership is steadily increasing. Both of my trains had easily over 200 people, which was shocking. The A/C on the trains did a good job keeping the temps cool.

How was your first week on Link? Good experiences, bad experiences? Considering this is the first week, I am shocked on how well this is going!

Link fares downtown unfair

Posted on by Matt Gangemi

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Today I took my first ride on Link. I’m currently a stay-at-home dad, and I took my baby son for a day trip. Since this was around noon, I asked my wife to meet us at Pioneer Station near her work. We were going to ride to King Station, get $1.75 sandwiches, and she’d ride back to work while we rode onward.

Her cost to ride Link one stop and back? $3.50. To get a $1.75 sandwich. It turns out that unlike bus transfers that are good for 90 minutes, Link requires a payment in each direction. There’s even a special section on the ticket vending machine for 2-way downtown only rides – $3.50.

How on earth is this a fair fare? Yes, she can wait for a bus – and actually decided to only ride Link one way to experience it and take the bus back. But since we’re running trains anyway, can’t we just charge some small fee that people would be willing to pay? Say, $0.25 a way. It’s not like it costs ST anything to have these extra riders, and this represents lost income for ST since people will just wait and ride the bus for free.

Link to the Mariners!

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

Safeco Field (Wikimedia Commons)
Safeco Field (Wikimedia Commons)

Tonight marks the first game that one can take light rail to see the Mariners play at home.  As a pretty serious baseball fan, that’s a big deal to me, and I’ll be there tonight.  Woo!

Given the need of transit agencies to get approval from a broad constituency, and the extent  to which the spread of jobs and homes makes it hard to serve many commuters, it’s important to look out for non-commuter markets that are suitable for transit.  Along with the airport, sporting events fit the bill for having expensive parking and ugly congestion not mitigated by buses.  It’s that combination that probably made the Airport a more attractive destination than Southcenter, which is easy and cheap to drive to.

There will be a non-trivial number of people whose primary interaction with Link will be through Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders, and (one day) Husky games.  It’s a market to which I hope Sound Transit makes a serious effort to provide a good rail experience.  That means some crowd control, perhaps an additional train or two for big events, and lots of assistance to expedite the ticket-buying process.

Meanwhile, Across the Sound…

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
www.islandtransit.org
http://www.islandtransit.org

The trains are great, but the buses that most of us rely on are still under threat.  In Washington’s rural counties, things are really bad:

  • Kitsap Transit, in the past year, has raised fares from $1.25 to $2 and abolished Sunday service.  Now, to save an additional $1m a year, they’re looking at trimming Saturday service to 8 hours a day and eliminating some more routes.  So much for that weekend foot-ferry outing to the peninsula!  (H/T: Gordon)
  • Island County has an August 18 ballot measure to raise the transit sales tax from 0.6% to the maximum 0.9%.  This is to avoid a 34% service cut.  Island Transit levies no fares and has no Sunday service.

Don’t panic, but move to a city and lock in your mortgage

Posted on by Matt Gangemi

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

This week’s Speaker’s Forum* speaker was Jeff Rubin, a Canadian Economist and expert on peak oil. Despite his prediction that peak oil will hit us next year, he seems much more relaxed than most who speak about peak oil. He claims several factors will actually help our economy. Although we won’t be able to afford to drive anywhere, we also won’t be able to ship goods from China – meaning that we have to produce these goods here, creating jobs. Of course our dollar will be worth much less, but we’ll probably survive.

When asked about how to get leaders to start caring about rail and mass transit he’s again very calm – he just doesn’t expect them to do anything until gas is $7 a gallon, but either now or later they’ll come around to mass transit. Rough quote: “Once people start giving up their cars and stand around waiting for a bus but no bus comes, it isn’t long before representatives will start getting phone calls.” Of course it’ll be much less painful if we start preparing now…

* I highly recommend subscribing to the free podcast. They have an in-depth hour long topic each week which is generally recorded at Town Hall.

Metro to Fund RapidRide with No Net Tax Increase

Posted on by John Jensen
King Count Executive Kurt Kurt Triplett announcing Metro funding increases.
King County Executive Kurt Triplett announcing Metro funding increases. Photo from West Seattle Blog.

RapidRide will be saved, announced interim King County Executive Kurt Triplett. Triplett announced plans today to use recent legislative authority to create a transit share of property taxes of 5.5 cents, while cutting other levies to make the plan tax neutral.

“This five-and-a-half cents for Metro Transit would provide 23,000 additional passenger trips a day on our most heavily used corridors during a time when overall bus ridership has jumped 20%,” the Executive said in a press release. This would amount to about $18m a year for Metro, compared with a structural deficit of about $100m a year.

The legislature granted property taxing authority of 7.5 cents per $1000 of assessed value for public transit. The legislature also allowed for enactment of an MVET, but the Governor vetoed that portion of the bill.

Funding would be used primarily to save the beleaguered RapidRide bus rapid transit network that Metro is planning to roll out over the coming years. Failing to deliver on RapidRide could have been politically infeasible given that the 2006 Transit Now! measure campaigned heavily on the idea of rapid, frequent, and fast RapidRide service servicing the fastest growing areas in King County. That measure that increased Metro’s sales tax authority by 0.1% to a maxed-out 0.9%.

The legislature mandated that a portion of the property taxing authority must be dedicated to SR-520 service. Metro is receiving millions in urban partnership funds to buy new buses for the 520 corridor, but no money from those grants fund bus service. Tolls are set to begin along span next year.

Since all of this funding will be used to fund RapidRide and SR-520 service, this additional revenue may not help avoid deep service cuts. Triplett said he will announce a plan next week that will outline the expected deep service cuts and perhaps fare increases. Last November, the King County Council approved a 50-cent fare hike that will finish phasing in next January. It’s hard to say how much more fare riders can stand to pay, particularly without some sort of hardship or poverty exemption.

Read on for more details after the jump…

Continue reading “Metro to Fund RapidRide with No Net Tax Increase”

Power outage in the tunnel

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

UPDATE 1:13pm: Trains seem to be back in the tunnel, but only for testing. The evening commute will be bus only in the tunnel.

UPDATE 11:27am: Maybe not quite this soon. Link’s back to Stadium-Tukwila for the moment.

UPDATE 11:09am: “Soon” means soon. Link is running its complete route again.

Link trains are serving Stadium-Tukwila due to a power outage affecting some control equipment.

Buses are still running in the tunnel.  No word on when it’ll be fixed, other than “soon”.