Month: July 2011

A sampling of TV commercials for JR East’s Suica (Super Urban Intelligent Card). Their penguin mascot is way cuter than what we got.

The Sound Transit board on Thursday officially selected an alignment for East Link, which services the South Bellevue Park and Ride, and also tunnels under downtown Bellevue. The line will be entirely grade-separated from the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel to Hospital Station in Bellevue.

There are still some gates to pass through before we can be sure that this alignment will happen. The City of Bellevue and Sound Transit have to sign a final, binding agreement. Bellevue has to actually produce the $160m they’ve committed to the tunnel, and Sound Transit has to find about $150m.

The uncertainty about how ST will fund its share prompted the two no votes in the 15-2 decision, King County Councilman Larry Phillips and Mayor Mike McGinn. One possibility brought up in the meeting is to find funds in the North King (Seattle/Shoreline) subarea, where tax revenue is bouncing back strong and projects have come in under budget.

I’m hearing murmurs that some Seattleites are outraged. There are two questions here: what are the impacts on North King projects, and what are the legal and “justice” issues of using North King money to pay for East King projects? In short, the answer to the first question is probably “not much, but be careful;” to the second, “none at all.”

In terms of project impact, it’s really impossible to say at this stage. To state some principles: Northgate to Downtown is the biggest slam dunk transportation project in the state and ST should not compromise there on scope or schedule. Taking money obviously increases risk, but there’s lots of project to cut before Northgate is threatened even if things go terribly. Cleaning out North King’s petty cash may eliminate consideration of Seattle’s desired add-ons, like a $30m Aloha extension to the First Hill streetcar.

As for the justice of it all, I’m entirely unmoved. There’s a lot of ambiguity over what is an “East King” or a “North King” project, and typically that ambiguity has favored North King because East has the money and North has the demand. For instance, East King is paying (for now) for the entire East Link project, starting at the DSTT and including the Rainier/I-90 station. Similarly, spokesman Geoff Patrick confirms all Eastside ST buses – 540, 542, 545, 550, 554, 555, 556 – are paid for entirely by East King, even though Seattle residents definitely get more than zero benefit out of them.

This chart summarizes Metro’s most recent stop-level Automatic Passenger Count (APC) data from Route 36. The bars show the average daily number of boardings and deboardings by stop, and the origin of the bars is the average daily “load approaching” for each stop; i.e. the number of riders on the bus as it approaches each stop. Thin colored lines show the load approaching by time period. This is the passenger data Metro’s planners refer to when they do their work.

There are lots of caveats that accompany this data. A degree of error is intrinsic to APC technology. In the average, these errors are statistically “washed out” to a higher degree as the sample sizes are increased. Thus there is more confidence and less error in the all-day average than in any one time period, and similarly between (say) the mid-day data than the night data.

The data do not quite begin at zero probably because of the complicated configuration of the 36 at its northern end: some trips are through-routed as 1s, others terminate at 3rd & Lenora, others (diesel peak trippers) at 6th & Lenora. It’s also worth noting that the data begins at the Fall ’09 service change, when the 36 was extended from Beacon & Myrtle to Othello Station, so the data partially reflect the initial bedding-in of Link and the revised 36 alignment, when ridership patterns had not yet adjusted to the new network.

Here are a few things that stand out to me:

* S Jackson St, including the parts outside the RFA, is a blockbuster ridership corridor with a constant on-off churn, comparable to 3rd Ave. This bodes will for the First Hill streetcar’s ridership.

* Density and land use drives ridership. Even ten minute headways doesn’t seem to motivate residents in Mid-Beacon to to ride the bus to shop at the commercial area at Othello, whereas the data suggest that happens much more between North Beacon Hill and Little Saigon. Ridership fizzles out, with the bus steadily unloading as it leaves downtown.

* I wonder if the early morning ridership spikes that begin and end at 5th & Jackson could be related to Sounder? The VA hospital is evident in the “Beacon/EXIT [VA HOSP]” AM/PM peak data.

Those of you who live or work on Beacon Hill, please let us know in the comments what else you see in this data that I’ve missed.

We complete our weary journey through Seattle’s High Capacity Transit study by looking at the First Avenue Streetcar. There was no BRT option evaluated here. Although a streetcar has 24 times more capital expense than an enhanced bus, it has triple the number of new riders and runs near capacity throughout the day. In fact, the First Avenue Streetcar ranks third according to my favorite efficiency metric, ANC/NR, behind the 4th/5th streetcar couplet and Eastlake BRT, at $2.59. The bus is considerably worse at $3.14.

To wrap things up, here’s a handy summary chart of the 11 options with some of the key metrics:

In spite of what some commenters seem to think, I’ve actively refrained from endorsing any particular mode or corridor in this survey. What’s best really depends on what you value most and the external financial situation. Politics matters, too: even if these projects are more cost-effective than those out in other neighborhoods, the plan is going to have to spread some love out to the other priority corridors to win a citywide ballot.

• Investigator finds no conflict of interest in Kevin Wallace’s dealings.
• Bellevue City Council “encouraged by recent progress” on East Link.
• When buying locomotives, Amtrak has its priorities wrong.
• Federal budget cuts could wipe out what the $20 tab fee would get us.
• Take Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan survey.
• Metro is looking at eliminating the 2nd and Columbia bus stop to improve traffic flow. Comment here.
• Community Transit’s system reorganization process grinds on. Of course, the option I like best is least popular with survey respondents.
• Seattle’s Walk/Bike/Ride challenge has loads of prizes this summer.
• Photos from the Burien CRC meeting.
• Redmond’s doing a transportation master plan too.
• Seattle Council chatters about asking for less than the full $100 tab fee.
• People resent losing their free parking subsidy.
• Bellingham coal terminal plan could mess up Amtrak Cascades.
• Federal Way looking at legal options because light rail might not get there.
• Crosscut’s Kent Kammerer writes 1,000 words about the forces behind Roosevelt upzoning, doesn’t manage to use the word “environmentalist” once. The environmental argument for density is dismissed in one throwaway clause as a fix leaf for developer profits.
• Environmentalists suing PSRC over greenhouse gases lose.
• “If You Shop at Bellevue Square, You Contribute” to Tim Eyman.
• America’s lack of transportation investment is hurting Al Qaeda.

This is an open thread.

This blog hosted a meetup Tuesday night and it was great to see some of our readers come out to say hello. Our guest speaker for the evening was Michael Taylor-Judd, perhaps the only person running for city council who is a regular reader and commenter!

Adam took a great panorama shot of the audience. It feels like you’re there, man.

Thanks to the Diller Room for hosting us free of charge. What did everyone think of the venue?