Just about every year, we keep a close eye on Olympia during the legislative sessions to see if anything promising ever comes out for transit. Usually little does, but it’s a stark reminder of how much hope we have resting on the State’s shoulders. Once upon a time, before Tim Eyman declared war on transportation funding, the State did have a much more proactive role in ensuring local transit remained strong and robust. Over the years, unfortunately, State involvement and help for transit, either direct or indirect, has been measly at best.
At last month’s meetup with Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond, an attendee asked the secretary how important she thought the State’s role was in terms of supporting transit. While there was some mention of WSDOT-sponsored rail projects and hints of local funding options here and there, Hammond’s answer, much to our dismay, had strong emphasis on highway capital projects (i.e., HOV lanes, direct access ramps, etc.), which suggested a stronger obligation to fund “transit” projects if they also help cars, too.
Previously, I’ve written about one of Metro’s success stories, the 1997 Aurora corridor restructure, a change to the bus network that traded several infrequent routes for the Routes 16 and 358 that we know today. As I described at length in that post, during the day Metro was previously operating three separate routes on (or primarily on) Aurora Ave, each with different stop patterns, and two closely-spaced local routes in Wallingford; night service followed a quite different pattern.
In essence, this was a tradeoff of geographic coverage (in the form of closely-spaced routes, closely-spaced stops, and different route variants on one road) for improved frequency and a simpler service pattern on the remaining services. After an initial dip, the two remaining routes have outshone their predecessors in both ridership and rides per platform hour: a win for riders, taxpayers, and the environment.
In this post I’ll discuss another success story, the 2003 Ambaum/Delridge restructure, an analogous change to the bus network, this time focused on Southwest Seattle and Burien, with similarly excellent results, including today’s Route 120. Even better, most of this post is written for me, as I was kindly given a 2005 staff report from Metro analyzing the results of this restructure in detail; I shall quote and paraphrase at length from this report throughout the post.
Tolls started today at 5:00am but it will take weeks, or more likely months to get an idea of how SR-520 tolls will create a new “normal” for transportation in the central puget sound region. Regardless what was your experience like today?
How are you, friend and coworkers adjusting to tolls? Personally, I have become the commute trip advisor at my office in Totem Lake, where about a third of my co-workers live in Seattle. I expect transit ridership in the peak direction to grow but be constrained by Park & Ride capacity and I expect significant growth, as a percentage, in reverse peak transit ridership. Talking to coworkers I see reverse commute trips generally being much more “innovative” since transit service to employment centers on the Eastside is worse than to downtown Seattle.
This morning, Sound Transit released the specifics on the extended schedule for Link on New Year’s Eve. As was done last year, two extra trips will run from Westlake to accommodate late New Year’s revelers. Tacoma Link will also see extended service:
Sound Transit Link light rail and Tacoma Link trains will operate on extended hours Saturday, Dec. 31 to accommodate New Year’s Eve revelers. Link light rail will run two additional southbound trips from Westlake Station at 12:58 a.m. and 1:13 a.m.; the last northbound trip will depart Sea-Tac Airport at 12:20 a.m. and continue to Westlake.
The last northbound trip for Tacoma Link will leave the Tacoma Dome Station at 1:00 a.m.; the last southbound train will depart the Theatre District Station at 1:24 a.m.
The monorail will also be running its last trains until about 1am, so Link riders who will be celebrating in the Seattle Center area should have enough time to get back to Westlake to make their connection:
On December 31. 2011, the Monorail will be open until 1:00AM for the New Year’s Eve fireworks at the Space Needle. Due to regulations, the Monorail will carry its last passengers from Westlake Center to Seattle Center at 11:15PM. We will resume service from Seattle Center to Westlake Center once we receive the “ALL CLEAR” from the Fire Marshall (estimated to be 12:20AM).
It’s heartening to see accommodations continuing to be made for late evening service, but there’s plenty of precedent from other cities to do more. Many agencies across the country will run an extra service overlay on the evening of New Year’s Eve in addition to their regular Sunday frequencies, with some even offering fare-free service past a certain period, including neighboring Portland and Vancouver.
Obviously, with so many transit agencies under the ORCA umbrella here, there may be some policy complications to going completely fare-free for a certain time period, but from a technical standpoint, the ORCA system is capable of doing just that. With so many infrequent riders taking transit regionwide on the evening of the 31st, making service seamless would be a good step to leaving a lasting impression for our system.
This is a new low for spurious arguments against road diets. These are explicitly about safety, and now they’re worrying about microscopic increases in response time?
This is a reminder that tonight, starting around 5-ish, we’re having a meetup at the Elysian Fields near CenturyLink Field. We’re expecting good turnout from Sound Transit employees getting off work, and one or two of them might speak around 5:30. The event is all ages.
I have a substantial post coming up later this week about the 2004 Ambaum/Delridge restructure, which lead to the creation of what is now one of Metro’s workhorse frequent-service routes, Route 120, serving Delridge, White Center and Burien. To whet your appetite, I’ve obtained stop-level data from this summer; analysis and discussion after the jump.
Zach’s criticism of the First Hill Streetcar last week was admirably selective about its target, limiting the criticism to the Jackson St. Segment that is duplicative with high-volume bus routes. He was, correctly, complimentary of the new connectivity between Capitol Hill, First Hill, and Little Saigon.
My complaint with the piece is that the stated purpose of the line is a good one — to connect the hugely dense, regionally important First Hill neighborhood with the regional Link spine, and to a lesser extent, Sounder. The line’s routing clearly implies that it is not intended to connect the downtown core with First Hill: as critics point out, there are lots of bus lines that do a semi-adequate job of that.
I contend that it will do a good job of meeting its goal. From the North, passengers headed from points north to Swedish Hospital or Seattle University will do best to utilize the streetcar. All Sounder riders currently face a two seat ride (or a long walk) to access First Hill; the Streetcar will make it one seat. Northbound Link riders could switch to the streetcar or continue on to Pioneer Square or University Street and face the slog on a glacial, overcrowded trolleybus. We’ll have to see how the relative travel times work out for a variety of First Hill destinations (and a more direct route around Yesler Terrace and Little Saigon would have been better), but there’s reason to believe the streetcar will be a better option. Furthermore, I think it has a better chance of getting priority treatments than those buses ever will.
It’s true there’s duplication with buses that are carrying people down Jackson, but we should view the First Hill Streetcar as one part of an embryonic network. When (if?) the streetcar is extended through downtown, segments of the 7 and 36 running from Little Saigon through downtown will be redundant with the streetcar network and Link, and those hours can be reinvested elsewhere.
It may be that Seattle would have been better off (with respect to some metrics) deferring Jackson St. until it can extend through downtown, and instead investing the money to get to Aloha St. However, I doubt adding a single streetcar stop is going to bring many more riders to Link or Sounder, which is what ST’s projects should be about. Moreover, I doubt that it’s actually better for the underserved First Hill neighborhood, or for regional connectivity. It may be planning by consolation prize, in Zach’s wonderful phrase, but why doesn’t First Hill deserve one?
