Month: April 2011

• Oh no! Sound Transit is trying to indoctrinate children by offering teachers optional lesson plans about transportation!
• Seattle has lots of public art, more coming thanks to spending billions on transit.
• Beacon Hill Station area plans moves forward.
• Transit bill moving to conference committee in Olympia
• Bellevue widens net in ethics probe.
• AWV replacement tunnel ballot measure court date May 13.
• Friday is Earth day, so don’t drive.
• Gas prices rising and you want to know how to stretch your gasoline dollar? Don’t drive.
• But how could I stop driving when there are new highway lines being built all the time?
• Rapid Ride money may be coming after all.
• The failure of regionalism?
• San Francisco Bay Area’s Bart getting extension from Fremont to San Jose
• New Columbia River crossing a highway boondoggle in disguise? Still annoyed that Vancouver gets LRT on its bridge but we won’t.
• EU could ground flights in favour of HSR? Probably cheaper than building new airports.
• U-Link Construction update! TBM madness!

This is an open thread.

Two sets of meeting dates coming up. Bad news first, Pierce Transit cuts meetings are happening over the next couple of weeks starting tomorrow night. The the good news: North Link open houses are happening over the next couple of months. Dates below the fold.

[Update: Bruce points out in the comments there is a Sound Transit Capitol Hill station meet at Peet’s on Broadway tomorrow from 11 am to 2 pm.]

Continue reading “Meeting Dates”

Metro has been ramping up its promotional campaign for Route 245, most recently offering free ORCA cards for Eastside residents to try the service.  The promo branches off of the route-specific marketing that Metro was doing for the 245 last year, called ‘Connect the Dots.’  According to Metro’s website, the full offer is valued at $15, which includes a free ORCA card along with a $10 E-purse voucher:

We’ll send you one free ORCA card, valued at $5, plus a $10 voucher to load on your new card. That equals two round-trip bus rides on Route 245 or any other Eastside route. Plus, you can get on and off along the way with the free ORCA two-hour transfer. The ORCA card is yours to keep and reload for all the regional buses, trains and ferries in the area.

More below the jump.

Continue reading “Metro Offering Free ORCA through Route 245 Promo”

Route 30 currently winds its way from Seattle Center to a variety of endpoints near Sand Point. At the City of Seattle’s request, Metro is changing the evening and weekend routing:

On evenings after about 6:30 p.m., and all day on weekends, the route currently ends at Magnuson Park and turns around inside the park. The City of Seattle has requested that Metro stop bringing the bus into the park because of concerns about heavier vehicles traveling on park roads, so Metro needs to choose an alternate route in the area.

Metro has identified two possible alternatives for the east end of this route on nights and weekends. In both of these, the routing is the same as the current routing as far east as the Princeton Avenue NE bridge. And with both alternatives, passengers could transfer to Route 75 to travel farther in either direction on Sand Point Way NE.

The 30 will either serve Hawthorne Hills or turn south to serve Laurelhurst and Children’s Hospital. Share your opinion at the website.

London Hire Bikes animation from Sociable Physics on Vimeo.

Metro bus riders will be sitting on slimmer and more modern looking seats when they get on board King County Metro’s new 40-foot Orion VII Next Generation buses and 60-foot articulated New Flyer DE60LFR buses, according to photos on Flickr by punkrawker4783. The 4One Aries seats are the same type as those used on Community Transit’s local buses and in Vancouver TransLink’s buses. I don’t have any word yet on when these buses will be in service but it should be very soon.

The new seats are a radical shift for Metro, which traditionally used fully upholstered seats and over the past decade, seats with a higher back rest than typical urban buses. The slimmer profile seats create more leg room and make the bus interior feel roomier. The stainless steel construction and padded inserts should make maintenance easier. And the design of the seat along with Metro’s new grippier vinyl pads should make the seat reasonably comfortable.

The seats used on most Metro buses are too bulky. The black plastic seat backs “box” people in, look really ugly when vandalized, therefore cheapening the look. The smooth vinyl covering and angle of the seat bottom make slipping off the seat all too common, though this has been partially solved with the more recent seats. And some people may find them cramped. A lot of people are going to miss the deep soft cushions and head rests.

You can view photos of the new buses and seats on punkrawker4783’s Flickr page.

The Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee III (CTAC III) has an online survey that you should take. CTAC III is a committee that has been flying a bit under the radar but is very important for any future Bridging the Gap type proposal;

Resolution Number 31240 states the City’s intent to convene a Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (CTAC) III to advise the Mayor and City Council on transportation funding alternatives and priorities. The 14-member CTAC III will be appointed by the Mayor and Council and will recommend new approaches for funding improvements to Seattle’s transportation system. Guidance from the city’s engaged stakeholder communities will help develop the framework and shared vision necessary to address the city’s commitment to affordable, safe and efficient movement for persons, goods and services.

The first task of CTAC III is to develop a proposed project list and spending plan for anticipated revenues generated by the $20 annual vehicle license fee (VLF) through the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD).

The second task of the CTAC III will be to undertake a full review of the city’s transportation funding system and evaluate and examine the potential for a ballot measure asking Seattle voters to fund additional transportation projects.

H/T Natalie Wiley

At yesterday’s briefing to Sound Transit’s Capital Committee, a subset of the Sound Transit board, Link staff brought forward an improved design for the Brooklyn subway station. Two months ago, we reported that Sound Transit had chosen a low risk, but less effective, station design – a single entrance halfway between NE 45th St and NE 43rd St on Brooklyn. That plan would have been a poor choice for many reasons, notably reducing station visibility and increasing the surface walking distance for most users.

Sound Transit has now confirmed that they’re moving to this new plan – a north entrance just behind the Neptune theater, and another prominently on the corner of 43rd and Brooklyn. See full presentation here. This design maintains the lower risk that originally caused the one entrance plan – keeping the station box away from UW Tower (the former Safeco building), while significantly improving station accessibility. This is very encouraging – it continues to show that Sound Transit is taking pains to ensure their long-term infrastructure is designed well from the beginning.

With the internet once again ablaze with talk about Westside light rail, it’s a good time to mention my essay on the subject from 2009, which I think has held up pretty well.

What’s changed since then is the city’s fiscal situation, already dicey last spring and continuing to deteriorate. Meanwhile, this is thinly sourced, but I’m hearing the cost obstacles to even a half-hearted line to West Seattle continue to mount. Furthermore, my more reliable sources tell me that city officials that discussed federal New Starts options with Sen. Patty Murray were told flatly that any such money was going to go (sensibly, in my view) to Sound Transit 2, rather than any sort of city project.

However, there are rail projects that cover many Westside neighborhoods and are still affordable, affordable enough to fall under the federal “Small Starts” program. Obviously, rail projects fall on a continuum between streetcars mixed with traffic and light rail that isn’t. Traffic separation can be achieved with money, as when Sound Transit rebuilt MLK to preserve auto right-of-way, or with political will, overcoming local interests to repurpose on-street parking or lanes of traffic.

I’m of course talking about the Ballard/Fremont streetcar, last seen in the city’s May 2008 report. At a midpoint capital cost of $155m — much smaller than the future seawall measure, for instance — and 26 months of construction time, the SDOT report projects 10 minute headways all day, 15 minutes at other times,  16 minutes from the Commons to Westlake, a net annual operating savings of $1.1m, and 2.2-2.7m annual riders.*

It’s appropriate to treat preliminary study numbers with a bit of skepticism. Ridership may very well be lower if the rest of the network isn’t built out, and costs will escalate as mitigation claims come in. Moreover, there are numerous mobility-enhancing extras, like an extra ship canal crossing, that would cost tens of millions more.

For all we know, the Transit Master Plan may actually suggest an affordable path to building full-blown light rail from Ballard to West Seattle. If that doesn’t occur, a souped-up Ballard streetcar would be a dramatic improvement for one quadrant of the city, return many benefits of full light rail, and fall well within the available resource limits. Combined with some transit, bike, and ped projects for the rest of Seattle, and sufficient political will to make sure Ballard rail is fast, this is something Seattle can do and will vote for.

* By comparison, Central Link had about 7m riders in 2010.

There’s a lot of fun happening in the other Washington these days, but this is starting to get ridiculous: Congress doesn’t want to raise the gas tax in order to shore up transportation funding is instead looking at letting investment decline in transportation.

Congress may have to consider a smaller highway-funding bill than initially planned because of a steep drop in revenue from the federal gasoline tax, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said Thursday.

…

Lawmakers haven’t reached a consensus on how to plug the gap. President Barack Obama and leading lawmakers have rejected increasing the 18.4-cent federal tax on a gallon of gas.

Mr. Baucus said that without action, federal aid to states for highway projects would fall to about $28 billion a year from about $42 billion currently.

The gas tax funds not only highway projects, but transit and alternative transportation programs as well. The Obama administration put out a budget with a large transportation increase, which was nice but we knew would never happen. After that, House Budget committee chair Paul Ryan came out with one less than half as large. Now we’re considering cuts of 33% on an annual basis for the foreseeable future.

Reducing transportation investment would be a really sad affair, whether you support roads or transit. This is coming at a time when the “Report Card for Americas Infrastructure” gives the US’s infrastructure a D rating. Being hesitant to raise gas taxes at a time when prices are high and the economy is struggling through an anemic recovery might be good politics, but letting transportation investment decline would be terrible policy. Fortunately some alternatives exist and it’s possible to pay for transportation from the general fund. But it’s not obvious these alone will be enough to make up for so large a decrease in funding, much less the large infrastructure debt, assuming they even get through congress. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to decreased funding, after all, decline is a choice.