[UPDATE: A few points I should have made yesterday:
It’s interesting to consider that DC decided to move forward on this system at about the same time Seattle rejected starting theirs. The difference, I think, is an institutional setup where elected leaders make decisions, rather than one where they have to go to the ballot for (super-)majorities for nearly every budgetary decision.
DC has a similarly balkanized system: spanning two states and one-quasi state, WMATA runs the subway and some regional buses; then you have at least five county agencies running buses, and two different states running their own commuter trains.
Seattle Times editors: please count the newspapers in the video.]
Community Transit is auctioning off some old DART and paratransit vans on March 20th:
The auction will include 13 El Dorado 14-passenger mini-buses, as well as three 15-passenger vans and one eight-passenger van. The El Dorados are equipped with wheelchair lifts. Two of the El Dorados are not in running condition. All the vehicles are retired from Community Transit’s DART paratransit and vanpool fleet.
With Sen. Haugen apparently hellbent on granting private operators full access to public transit facilities, you could set up a service!
In a coincidence, longtime readers may recognize this as the same place I sold my car, and where (full disclosure) my mother-in-law works part-time and I know the owner a bit.
The last fare thread had a lot of complaining about differential fares between agencies. And although ORCA is intended to smooth over that complexity, in ideal world similar service would cost the same on each agency.
Judging from the comments, people seem to think this is really important. An interesting way to judge the actual priority people are willing to give an issue is to trade it off against other priorities. As it so happens, people hate fare increases, and given widespread budget crises there’s no way agencies are cutting fares. So here’s a thought experiment that gives everyone the fare parity they value so highly, while also raising some cash for transit:
Everyone adopts the Sound Transit fare zone map, with a new fare zone created for Snohomish County outside the ST district. Other outlying areas can be absorbed into the adjacent fare zones.
The unified fare system adopts the highest fares at each level. For adults at peak times, that’s $2.25 1-zone, $3.50 2-zone, and $4.50 3-zone. Off-peak, it’s $2.00/$2.50/$3.00.
If you like, raise Link fares 80 cents and .5 cents a mile to match Sounder. Use the same structure for the SLUT and Tacoma Link.
Form a regional fare board to approve all future fare changes.
Longtime readers know that I don’t wring my hands much over fare increases to plug the budget gap, because a large part of the burden is actually borne by employers and the federal government. What reservations I do have would be swept away by a more systematic way to get reduced fare passes in the hands of people who need them. On the other hand, I’m not convinced the reduced complexity would really be worth the ridership declines you’d create.
Bremerton ferry was once again down to one boat due to the M/V Kitsap having a cracked hull, discovered during a maintenance inspection. The route is back on a two-boat schedule with the 90-car M/V Sealth on the Bremerton run and the 34-car M/V Hiyu on the Pt. Defiance – Tahlequah route.
I wasn’t around for the public process of Central Link and I was curious to what was being considered before the preferred alignment was selected. I found a book of drawings from the 1999 Central Link Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) at the UW’s Engineering Library. Combing through the pages, I took some photos of a few pages that I was interested in. You can view the entire set on Flickr. Here are some findings that you may find interesting. It would be nice if someone who was involved could share their stories.
Focusing on the south section, there were quite a few alignment options. Getting to Mount Baker, there’s a I-90/Rainier path and the SODO/Beacon Hill path. Between Mount Baker and Othello, Link could’ve gone down the side of Rainier with a station at Columbia City then tunneling to a Graham St Station or elevated down MLK to Graham. There’s even a cross-section of a Graham Station in a cut below grade.
There was consideration of a center platform for Mount Baker Station. The Mount Baker Transit Center was going to be right next to the station instead of across the street. Rainier Beach Station had a full-fledged transit center. Both of them would be served by trolley buses.
You can see what Boeing Access Road Station might’ve looked like, complete with a Sounder platform and bus bays. Then there’s the Tukwila surface alignment on 99 or a Southcenter alignment with a station by the mall and an integrated Tukwila Sounder & Link station. We all know what we got in the end.
What I wasn’t aware of was the multiple options for serving Sea-Tac. Yes, there was an option with a station next to the terminal. There’s also one that expected shuttle buses to get people to the terminal, one integrated with the automated airport shuttle trains, and one that actually veered away from the airport before heading back to a station at International Blvd and S 200th St.
We’ve just learned that the amendment on SB 6774 to save Community Transit and Pierce Transit is dead. For those just tuning in, it would have allowed – not created, just allowed – transportation benefit districts to be created by those agencies. It failed through a scoping process – reportedly a Senator asked the lieutenant governor, Brad Owen, to rule on whether the amendment would be outside the scope of the bill. He ruled that it was outside scope, and the amendment was stripped.
The legislature as a whole, despite a few friends, did almost nothing for transit this session. Perhaps it would be appropriate to strip them of dedicated road funding?
Every day, when we discuss future transit options, how things are going, what we’re expecting, I see that a lot of us have very different metrics for how we determine success in our transit system. As a result, a lot of our discussions turn into debates about how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ something is today. I don’t want to discourage that – we need to understand what to do next and where the problems are today – but I want to encourage a broader discussion.
Let me start with a little about how I think about transit.
Almost all the time, I try to think on a hundred year horizon. I try to consider what we’re building for the next fifteen years, the PSRC goals for the fifteen years after that, and how other cities have grown in similar situations. I’m also thinking about not just Sound Transit 3, but ST4 and ST5 – how the city might affect what’s in those packages with their own investments, what our next north-south trunk might look like, and how we can change state priorities to help us build intercity rail.
[UPDATE: The bill is dead. Lt. Governor Brad Owen ruled that the Liias amendment was out of scope of the bill. ]
Late last night, the House voted to insist Liias’ amendment to provide Pierce and Snohomish with the tools they need to keep transit from falling off a cliff. This is great news for us, but there is one more step!
Now it’s up to the Senate – we need real pressure on your Senatorsto make this happen, and we’re very close. The last thing we want is to have this fight again next year when we’re trying to fight for a good state capital budget.
There’s a simple tool to find your legislators here. Please urge your Senator to concur with SB 6774! This is it for the session, and it’s the one fight we can actually win. Please help our friends to the north and south, and please comment once you’ve done so!
The Oregon Department of Transportation moved forward with purchasing two 8th-generation Talgo trains on February 26th, joining Wisconsin’s train order and saving roughly $6m in the deal. The trains are marketed for North American operations and meet FRA requirements. The trains will consist of 13 cars (instead of WSDOT’s planned 14-car trains), seating 285 passengers (instead of 300) and will have free wifi, a bistro/lounge car, coach and business classes, along with baggage and continued bicycle services. These will be built at the new Milwaukee, Wisconsin Talgo assembly plant. These will most likely not use the Talgo-Siemens BT diesel/hydraulic locomotive; however, the Wisconsin trains may use the cab car from the BT locomotive. The stimulus funded rebuilt GE P40 locomotives will be used to power these trains.
The way these trains will be integrated into Cascades is still to be determined. The WSDOT mid- and long-range plans did not consider that ODOT might purchase their own train-sets, even though the mid-range plan was drawn up during the time Oregon was looking at purchasing bi-level coaches and used locomotives, similar to what is seen on the Amtrak California and Surfliner corridors.
ODOT will continue to run 2 daily trains and is in negotiations with the Union Pacific Railroad to increase service to 4 daily trains; increase speeds to 79mph for the majority of the route (which mostly just involves improving grade crossing circuit timings); improve reliability between Eugene and Portland, including extending sidings and add double track in key bottlenecks; and reduce run times. Oregon continues to study the Portland and Western Railroad for a 150mph double track electrified corridor.
ODOT staff did not given any clues as to how they will deploy these trainsets when they enter revenue service in 2012, except that they will be used only in the Eugene-to-Portland segment. Given that constraint, one sensible choice would be to replace the two bus round trips that currently connect with Cascades trains that terminate at Portland.
Train and car after the collision, photo courtesy of KOMO News
[UPDATE 4:36pmAccording to Metro the accident is cleared, meaning Route 8 is back to normal. One can only assume the same is true for Link. Good job, emergency services, and good job, Metro alerts.]
There was a car-link collision just South of Othello at 3:30pm today. Fortunately, no fatalities, though it’s not clear from the P-I report if the car passengers were injured or not.
Link is likely be single-track for a while, but there are no other details on the service disruption at this time. Enough of the street is blocked that Route 8 is being rerouted on Renton Ave. between Kenyon and Henderson St.
Community Transit is 
