Month: June 2011

I think I completely understand why the “Build a Better Bellevue” folks are pushing for a B7 light rail alignment through South Bellevue. They fear negative impacts of light rail on their quality of life and property values, and have little or no inclination to ride Link once it’s built. I doubt it, but their fears may even be legitimate; in any case, I think it’s essentially impossible to build any major infrastructure if you give that much weight to neighborhood micro-interests.

What I don’t understand is the argument behind a statement like this:

The public also does not understand the very extensive efforts that have been made by Sound Transit itself in seeking to:

• Direct elements of the study in such a way as to add to the costs of the B7R route, as well as to
• Complicate the construction of the city’s design preferences.

Sound Transit is a public agency, composed of human beings, that responds to incentives just like any other. They certainly have every incentive to design a study so that the “no-build” alternative, for instance, looks bad, so the argument that they might have done so is at least worth consideration if there’s evidence to back it up.

In the whole B2M/B7 scuffle, however, what’s the angle that B7 proponents think that ST has? Why would they try to slant the study? It’s an honest question, and I’m interested in hearing from B7 supporters more than people who are here to slag on BBB. For someone who doesn’t live there, the alignment seems like a fairly narrow technical question and it’s not all clear to me why ST would care beyond wholly legitimate questions of cost, risk, and ridership.

Yesterday Executive Constantine formally introduced legislation to enact a $20 “Congestion Reduction Charge,” or two-year vehicle license fee that avoids deep Metro cuts for two years, in the hope that legislative solution will emerge in that time. Metro also unveiled a new website that explains the measure in deep detail.

Mr. Constantine’s office hopes that at least six County Councilmembers will vote to enact the charge without the added effort of a ballot measure. By law, the Council cannot act on its new authority until July 22nd.

To illustrate the cuts, Metro released a plan for the first 100,000 hours of up to 600,000 service hours of cuts that might eventually be necessary (see map above). In the absence of the fee, these cuts would take place in February 2012. The plan would eliminate 20 routes altogether and reduce service on 12 others. These cuts are drawn from Metro’s lower performing routes and are certainly not the most painful ones on the horizon. That said, service reorganization proposals (like mine in the Rainier Valley) depend on the hours being cut here to make it work; when these hours disappear, those plans are no longer viable. And in spite of low ridership, these cuts do cause pain, and for no real gain to the transit system.

You can submit comments here.

There’s a definite trend in the comment threads towards indifference to deep Metro cuts, essentially because a lot of the casualties will be low-productivity. Now, we’re all taxpayers here and there’s certainly a point where service is so unproductive it simply doesn’t deserve to be part of the budget.

Where you draw that line is a pretty good measure of how pro-transit you are. One can always make a system more “cost-effective” overall by simply shrinking it down to a dozen or so of the best routes, but then you’ve simply given up on having a comprehensive system. Put another way, when sensible policies are in place the marginal service to be added or deleted is almost always somewhat inefficient.

It’s one thing to say that unproductive routes are being cut to divert resources to better ones, because there’s a greater good being served. But even a lousy route is someone’s most efficient way home, the route that is within easy walking distance for a disabled person, or one that makes some part of the county reachable by transit. No route has zero ridership, and I’m not going to dance on the grave of the 38 or the 42. It made sense for someone, even though the hours could be better used elsewhere.

Worse yet, some people think that cuts to unproductive routes make service cuts a good thing, so that the $20 license fee is counterproductive. It’s true that Metro has had a good crisis; as in many other organizations, periods of austerity dictate a close look at costs. But that process has basically played out with the new Metro strategic plan, which instructs Metro to periodically review its service in accordance with productivity metrics.

Given the new plan, the tax vote* is about whether we’re going to have a large, more efficient system or a smaller, more efficient system.

* assuming it occurs at all.

I participated in a media briefing at Metro Headquarters yesterday, which mostly described what dedicated STB readers already know: the $20 “Congestion Reduction Charge” (Vehicle License Fee) currently under discussion would basically solve Metro’s budget situation for 2012-2013, requiring no significant reduction in overall service, before then expiring and leaving Metro with a $60m budget hole. The hope is that the legislature will get its act together in that time and come up with a permanent funding source to plug the gap.

$60m translates to a 600,000 service hour shortfall, which does not include 350,000 hours of Transit Now service that’s already been deferred due to the recession, and hundreds of millions saved or replaced through labor concessions, squeezing layovers (thus reducing reliability), raising fares $1.00 over four years, new property taxes, and so on.

To get an idea of what 600,000 hours looks like, you can consult this spreadsheet (previously posted here), which is not a formal service change proposal, but a staff product intended to help politicians understand the level of cuts necessary.

The new news is that Metro’s fleet replacement surplus, raided to avoid deep cuts since the recession began, is in surplus mainly because there are 600,000 hours of cuts on the horizon. If all that service were to be preserved Metro would need in the ballpark of $100m in capital funds to buy buses for the extra service.

It has been a terrible year for the Empire Builder.  On-time performance over the last 12 months is hovering around 10-15%, and delays have frequently been 5-12 hours or more.  Service has been either truncated or canceled outright over 50 times so far in 2011.  While collisions with vehicles, our epic mudslides, and an Idaho rockslide have all disrupted service, the heart of the problem is flooding in the Devil’s Lake Basin of North Dakota.  As an endorheic (closed) basin, Devil’s Lake has continued to rise over the past decades as precipitation has increased, increasingly submerging the railbed and 2 key bridges.  (BNSF has not operated through freight service between Grand Forks and Minot for over a year).  Amtrak, however, limps onward on the troubled segment.  On June 15, BNSF and Amtrak agreed in principle to split the $100m cost of rebuilding 17 miles of the corridor, raising the railbed and rebuilding the bridges.

My personal opinion is that this amounts to doubling down on a short-to-medium term solution.  Bypassing Devil’s Lake may be the better long-term choice.  While those in and around Grand Forks would lose service, using the direct line between Fargo and Minot would be faster, more direct and significantly more reliable.  Politically, however, it’s a non-starter.

It is beyond frustrating that rainfall in North Dakota means that Seattle passengers can’t get to Spokane, etc…  Though famously subsidized, Amtrak operates without a shred of redundancy, so when things go wrong, they tend to do so spectacularly.  With sufficient equipment and crew, Amtrak could (and should) operate segments of the line when service is disrupted, especially between Seattle-Spokane and Minneapolis-Chicago.  Perhaps these problems will someday bring about state support for Eastern Washington service that is independent of the long-distance network.

In normal times the Builder is perhaps the premier long-distance train in North America, offering unrivaled scenery, a lifeline to the northern plains, and quality onboard amenities.  It’s a shame to watch the service degrade into chaos without the ability for Amtrak to adapt quickly.

Way back in the Bush administration, USDOT issued a rule that prohibit public transit agencies from providing special bus service to games if a private provider bid to provide the same service, regardless of the cost difference between the two.

After a time where that service disappeared, Sen. Patty Murray slipped a clause into the law that exempted Metro in late 2009. Although private providers sued, service continued through 2010 and this year*. Luckily, the P-I reports that a D.C. court has rejected the lawsuit:

In an opinion released Tuesday, the Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, finding that Murray’s legislation was constitutional and that “efforts to provide efficient and affordable transportation to sporting events aligned with legitimate governmental goals,” Murray’s office said in a news release.

*Although the Mariners didn’t cough up the money this year.

On the heels of the 20% June service cut, October’s now all set:

On Monday, June 13, 2011, the Pierce Transit Board of Commissioners approved a plan with some modifications for the final 15% service reduction scheduled for October.  These modifications include preserving the route 496 (Bonney Lake Park & Ride to Sumner Sounder Station) through February 2012, and keeping some transit connection to Northeast Tacoma…  Service to special events, including the Puyallup Fair and Tacoma’s Fourth of July Freedom Fair, were also eliminated.

The October reduction plan focuses on maintaining ridership, improving cost efficiency, and serving the largest number of people.  Most of the retained routes are located in higher population density areas where transit service has been historically successful.  Projections indicate this plan, when compared to a previous reduction proposal, will generate higher overall annual passenger trips, an increase in average passengers per service hour, and a reduction in the average cost per passenger trip by approximately 44%.

14 routes are being completely eliminated: the 26, 59, 113, 220, 406, 407, 408, 409, 413, 446, 490, 601, 602, and the Orting Loop, along with associated paratransit service. The full description of the cuts is in a handy .pdf, not reflecting the last-minute amendments.

The new, productivity-based plan is the result of some lobbying by transit advocates that drove a board decision to re-evaluate last month.

• As predicted yesterday, Regional Transit Committee approves new Metro policy unanimously.
• Report from Everett’s rail summit: DMUs to Bellingham?
• The Final EIS for the SR 520 bridge replacement.
• Dilemmas for CT Route 424.
• Google Maps now supports real-time transit data for Portland, not yet Seattle.
• Business lining up behind a $20 tab fee for Metro.
• With all due respect, if people in Rainier Beach don’t want to pay for parking enforcement then there’s no need for an restricted parking zone there.
• Not the way to get a bus driver’s attention.
• Families are not fleeing Seattle.
• King County VMT flat over the last decade.

This thread is open too.