This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
I’m taking my son and niece on the light rail to find parks today, and found this resource. It has walking maps of all of the Rainier Valley light rail stations. It looks like it’s been around a while and people around here may already know about it, but I hadn’t so I thought I’d share.
[UPDATE from Martin: This post has long been scheduled, and has nothing to do with yesterday’s earthquake. It is a freakish coincidence.]
The Bellevue City Council could make a very bad decision Monday night, choosing to change its preferred alignment from the superior B3 alignment to the environmentally-questionable B7 alignment that skips the South Bellevue Park & Ride, instantly losing thousands of daily riders for East Link.
Transportation Choices Coalition has the details:
The City Council meets on Monday, March 1st to potentially reconsider its decision to serve the South Bellevue Park and Ride with a light rail stop. Last year, the City Council picked an alignment (B3) that would bring a light rail stop to this popular Park and Ride. The city council — with its two newly elected councilmembers — is considering switching its preference to an alignment (B7) that bypasses the South Bellevue Park and Ride, runs along the freeway and would serve the much smaller Wilburton Park and Ride, potentially leaving hundreds of transit riders in the lurch.
Show up on Monday and urge the council to keep light rail service to the South Bellevue Park and Ride.
WHAT: Bellevue City Council meeting to discuss the light rail alignment in South Bellevue
WHEN: Monday March 1 at 6:00pm. Public comments are taken at the beginning.
WHERE: Bellevue City Hall, 450 110th Ave. NE (one block from the Bellevue Transit Center)
Action on the B segment may be taken as early as 6pm, so please try to be there at or before then. Comments are scheduled for 8pm, but a stronger showing at six will be more influential. The meeting will be in conference room 1E-113, next to the council chamber.
Our own Sherwin has written a great article on the Bellevue City News blog on how many residents in south Bellevue support the B3 alignment. We ran an op-ed earlier this week against the B7 alignment. And in an open letter earlier this month to the city council, we shared our thoughts on segment B in South Bellevue:
[…] The South Bellevue P&R is a critical transit access point and must be served by East Link, since ST Express route 550 will no longer exist once light rail begins service. However, even the modified B7 has environmental concerns that leaders should consider carefully. We are confident the legal, financial, and environmental obstacles of crossing environmentally-sensitive wetlands will prove that B3S is the more practical and affordable alignment. […]
The final decision on the alignment comes down to the Sound Transit Board. Many on the board have expressed their desire to see regional light rail built in the best way possible; a good route will enhance the chances of future expansions of Link passing the ballot in the future and bringing light rail to communities that boardmembers represent, the thinking goes. Make no doubt: skipping the South Bellevue Park & Ride will hurt East Link deeply. The Sound Transit Board should overrule the Bellevue City Council if the council decides to be unconstructive rather than find an acceptable compromise.
As we reported in December, this year’s federal transportation budget includes $600 million in merit-rewarded grants that can go to highways but also to transit and even bike projects, much like the TIGER grants from the stimulus. The WSDOT Federal Transportation Issues blog has wonky details on how this $600 million will get rewarded.
The Democratic leadership in the Senate decided to split its jobs agenda into multiple, smaller voters. Last week, the body passed its first jobs bill with a tax break for new hires to incentivize businesses to hire in the rough economy, extend highway funding, and other small measures. It’s expected that the Senate will considering around $15 billion in TIGER-style transportation grants. That’s well below the $50 billion the administration had floated, but is still encouraging. Merit-based grants are a smarter way of doling out transportation dollar compared to giving money to states based on formulas, since state departments of transportation more frequently fund highways than transit.
While Senate first jobs bill funded the highway trust fund for many more months, but the House didn’t pass the bill this week and instead sent the Senate a measure to extend highway funding for a 30 days (so the House could amend the Senate jobs bill, if it chooses). The increasingly dysfunctional Senate was unable to pass the 30-day extension with a simple voice vote due to one Senator’s objection. Oddly enough, the department of transportation may simply not funded past this Sunday and could actually shut down. The House could vote on the Senate’s jobs bill early next week to continuing funding USDOT.
The highway trust fund needs regular advances from the general fund due to falling gas tax revenue.
The Stranger reports that Metro won’t renew its contract with Olympic Security, after a brutal beating of a teenaged girl occurred right in front of guards in the downtown transit tunnel. That beating became national news; Metro and the city have since increased the police presence in and around the tunnel.
It was Olympic Security policy to not intervene and instead “observe & report” altercations. Olympic Security’s president city sent a letter to county and city officials putting blame on Metro staff for that strict policy, saying that the transit agency had told Olympic to not make “physical contact” with others. Metro notes that the prior incidents that led to a clarification of the “observe & report” rules were not assaults, but instances like a skateboarder rummaging through the trash which didn’t necessitate physical contact to maintain safety. Publicola has the full report.
We all know transit funding is a mess – both Pierce and Community Transit are looking at huge cuts in service – their only option now to ask voters for regressive sales tax increases.
Transportation Choices Coalition is stepping up to help, with bake sales for both agencies next week to raise awareness of the issues. The legislature could still pass transit funding as an amendment on an existing bill, and TCC aims to let riders know what they could be losing, and how they can get involved.
The two bake sales are Monday, March 1st, from 7—9am at the Aurora Village Transit Center, and on Tuesday March 2nd from 7–9am in downtown Tacoma (9th and Commerce). We encourage you to go buy a cookie!
by CHRIS KARNES
On Wednesday, the “Build the Streetcar” campaign and the Tacoma City Attorney met to discuss draft ballot language for their citizen’s initiative to extend Tacoma Link. This move signals a go-ahead for a 180-day, 4,000 signature petition drive. This development comes after five years of attempting to use traditional political processes to move the project forward – previously covered on the STB (Tacoma Streetcar on the Slow Path).
The “Build the Streetcar Act” would authorize a 0.2% increase in the sales tax in the City of Tacoma to fund an extension of Tacoma Link from its northern terminus in the city’s Theater District to Tacoma Community College (utilizing a Transportation Benefit District – more on that later). The extension would cover a distance of 8.8 km (5.5 miles), with stops at the Stadium District, Tacoma General Hospital and along 6th Avenue – Tacoma’s most popular transit corridor. The approximately $100 million in funds raised would be added to the ~$80 million in ST2 funds, which voters approved in November 2008. It would require that they City dedicate a staff person as a Transit Director who would be tasked with leading a coordinated effort with Pierce Transit and Sound Transit to make the project shovel ready by November 2011.
Other components of the initiative include creation of a citizen Transit Commission, which would be tasked with overseeing progress on the streetcar extension, while crafting a thirty year transit plan for the city – mirroring current City efforts in Tacoma to improve bike-ped mobility over the next decade.
Initiative petitions will be available at the latest on Monday, March 1st. The campaign kickoff is slated for late March.
More information to available at BuildTheStreetcar.com
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
The Seattle Times has been running a full court press to build 520 in any way the state (and Microsoft) wants. It’s always felt to me that money drives news in our local papers (now paper), but with Microsoft paying $40,000 for a full page ad supporting the bridge it’s not even being done under the table. I don’t blame Microsoft for this – $40k is a great deal if it helps them get their multi-billion dollar road subsidy. When credible news sources have a conflict of interest, I at least usually hear a disclaimer in the story – not so with the Seattle Times. Should newspapers be ethically bound to drop or at least moderate stories that directly benefit them?
Evan Siroky at Tacoma Tomorrow has a detailed report on Pierce Transit’s long range budget situation, and it isn’t good. PT’s reserves run out in 2012, at which point the bottom falls out.
Using current revenue sources, annual service hours will fall by 57% – from 622,000 to 265,000, as the number of bus routes plunges from 51 to 23. The end of service would move from midnight to 9pm on weekdays, and from 10pm to 8 or 9pm on weekends. Weekend headways would increase to 60 minutes.
As the map above indicates, there would also be a substantial reduction in the areas PT serves. Unlike in King County, the PT district is not equivalent with the County. These unserved areas would still be paying taxes to support PT; should the lack of service persist, they would likely pursue the time-consuming and complex “deannexation” process.
PT also provides 33% of service from Tacoma to Olympia, and that would end.
Metro and Community Transit faced potential 20% cuts when their sales tax collapsed. Spokesman Lars Erickson explains that PT’s would be much deeper because “Pierce county experienced the recession earlier and deeper.” The long term deficit is about $50m/year. PTCT saved about $72m through 2012 through staff cuts, fare increases, and deferral of most capital expenses.
The good news is that Pierce Transit assesses a 0.6% sales tax, so they have a further 0.3% they can access with a public vote even if the legislature never comes to the rescue. The chart below the jump pitches what could be done with that money: a gradual increase to 638,000 hours, including a fourth major trunk route. The Pierce Transit board is likely to decide on a course of action this summer.
See also the TNT on this subject.
First, the bad news. We’ve discussed SB 6570 in the recent past. A state bill, it would allow private transit operators, such as Microsoft’s Connector service or airport shuttles, to use transit-only facilities, including such facilities as BAT lanes, flyer stops and transitways. Our Puget Sound transit agencies have responded in a letter to the chairs of Senate and House Transportation, calling out efficiency problems, costs, and safety issues that would be caused by the bill. Potential delays in HOV lanes, for instance, could cause agencies millions in additional operating costs.
The Federal Transit Administration has also weighed in on the issue, pointing out that projects receiving federal funds require a case by case evaluation to be opened to private transit operators, as opposed to the state bill’s blanket exception. The FTA says clearly: “such a use would appear to conflict with FTA’s rules where those transit facilities and highway lanes … were funded with FTA grants.” The state bill has an exception for state projects that receive federal funds, but this wouldn’t cover agency, city or county facilities, as the FTA points out – and Sound Transit, especially, builds a lot of HOV access ramps.
As we stated before, it doesn’t appear that legislators voting for this bill are considering its impacts, or legal obligations regarding receipt of federal funds. Senate Transportation clearly did not exercise due diligence before passing this bill out of committee, and we hope House Transportation does not make the same mistake.
Fortunately, there’s also good news out of Olympia. The state’s regional mobility grant program for transit, recently stripped of funding in the Senate, has seen $14 million replaced in a House Transportation amendment expected on HB 2838, the House Transportation funding bill, which passed out of committee yesterday. Representatives Mary Lou Dickerson (36th) and Marko Liias (21st) led this effort, and reportedly it passed unanimously. These grants have gone to a number of urban transit agencies in the past, generally to fund congestion reduction capital projects, and it’s good to see House Transportation sticking up for transit funding.