Month: February 2012

Does the way we organize our politics and government in Seattle and in our region have any effect on transit and land use? Does the structure of our political institutions result in bad outcomes for transit-oriented development, for example? Would changing that system result in better or worse outcomes? That’s the question we should talk about more actively at urbanist and transit advocacy events, like tomorrow night’s City Builders. Does getting better transit and land use require fundamentally changing the way we organize government and elections?

Since my post at Publicola last week a number of different perspectives and thoughts have appeared in my in-box and in the comments. Here’s a cross section of those perspectives.

Change would make things worse.

This view is best articulated by Frank at Orphan Road, who suggests that tinkering with the way we elect the Seattle City Council could make land use and transit worse. He drills into district elections, suggesting that doing things that way would ensure NIMBY dominance, by giving neighborhood ne’er do wells elected office.

Change would make things better.

There is an odd assortment of bedfellows here. Councilmember Mike O’Brien has been exploring the idea of publicly financed elections, and John Fox has been suggesting district elections. Some commenters in other posts have offered ideas about ways to rig the voting system using proportional voting systems to get better outcomes. The problem is that the outcome of these changes is uncertain.

More after the jump. Continue reading “Us, Them, Right, and Wrong: How Do We Win?”

Although the ones later this year are a much bigger deal, there are a few changes that begin today:

• Route 149 changes to new DART Route 907
• Some Route 186 trips change to new DART Route 915
• Route 251 changes to new DART Route 931

Metro hopes the DART conversions will save a little money and are appropriate for the demand. The complete list of altered routes is 149, 186, 221, 224, 240, 251, 910, and 917, and new routes 907, 915, and 931.

Pierce Transit changes over tomorrow, Community Transit has a major change starting Monday, and of course Monday is Presidents’ Day.

Not to be confused with Bellevue’s Transportation Facilities Plan, or Seattle’s TMP, Bellevue is gathering initial input for its Transit Master Plan process. Their first step is to get ideas from this survey, open to anyone who spends time in Bellevue, transit user or not. You might win a gift certificate to one of Bellevue’s fine restaurants.

Critical issues to be addressed include:

• Identifying the city’s most important transit corridors that carry high ridership today, as well as potential new ridership markets that will emerge as Bellevue grows in jobs and new residents;
• Integrating transit capital facilities and services with walking and biking infrastructure, and using transit to make great places;
• Enhancing bus transit performance through roadway investments such as traffic signal priority; and
• Coordinating with Metro and Sound Transit to create a seamless, fully integrated, and user friendly network of transit services.

This is a good opportunity for me to bring up potential improvements around Bellevue College, a smallish capital project with huge payoffs in bus efficiency.

Another update just came in from Metro Deputy GM Manager of Services Development Victor Obeso:

The proposals Metro presented for feedback were designed to improve the efficiency of our service to serve more people to more places. Talking with you and others helps us understand how existing service is an important part of your lives and neighborhoods. When proposals include long established high ridership routes within a diverse and multifaceted setting, public outreach helps Metro weigh technical considerations with human factors.

We have received valuable feedback. We’ve heard that there are factors that deserve further review, analysis and understanding. As a result, Metro has decided to postpone the route 2, 4 and 27 proposals. Issues were raised of coverage and traffic congestion on Madison Street, and more information about the unique travel needs of those that live and work in the area is needed. For now, we are not proposing to change existing routing of this set of routes. Instead, we are proposing to just make small adjustments to the frequency and running hours of routes 4 and 27 consistent with demand.

Backing off the changes Route 2 and 4, by necessity, returns the Queen Anne-Madrona corridor more or less to its current structure, complete with the 4’s vestigial tail to Judkins Park. This is an extremely regrettable decision that abandons one of the most promising, pro-rider parts of the Fall restructure.

Last week, the New York Times penned a rather fascinating piece on New York’s Pennsylvania Station– no, not the architectural masterpiece that was once the city’s crown jewel, but the modernist hellhole that sits there now, buried under the bowels of Madison Square Garden.  While the city has been trounced with guilt, grievances, and lamentations since the demolition of old Penn Station, a decades-long plan to evoke the neoclassical grandeur of Penn has been in the works for some time now.

The Moynihan plan, as it’s known, would convert the adjacent post office to a new rail terminal.  Yet the plan is not without its drawbacks:

 It’s true that the Moynihan plan will eventually improve a few access routes to subways and commuter trains. But it will add no new tracks and have limited effect on the congestion and misery of Penn Station. New tracks aside, the challenge is at the bare minimum to bring light and air into this underground purgatory and, beyond that, to create for millions of people a new space worthy of New York, a civic hub in the spirit of the great demolished one, more attuned to the city’s aspirations and democratic ideals.

More below the jump.

Continue reading “Remembering A Bygone Era of Architectural Glory”

King County Metro has been a hive of activity this week. Without further ado, here’s the news:

Contrary to widespread reports, the status of Route 2 has not changed. Yesterday, in widely-circulated emails and reports on Capitol Hill Seattle and Central District News (presumably from the same source), it was claimed that the current proposal of splitting Route 2 had been taken off the table. This is simply false. All options for Route 2 remain on the table, including the current proposal, a return to current conditions throughout the Queen Anne-Madrona corridor, or some possible alternative that maintains the current alignment of the 2S while still streamlining service in the rest of the corridor. (Since the publication of this post, Metro has released a statement saying that the Route 2 changes have, indeed, been taken off the table. We regret the error.)

Feedback from Ballard, West Seattle and Delridge. In an effort to get a sense of what non-STBers think of these changes and promote STB to a wider audience, I attended Metro’s open houses this week. Of the attendees in the Ballard, many seemed to be from North Beach, Blue Ridge and West Magnolia, areas where all-day service is being cut or restructured to (effectively) require a transfer to get downtown. West Seattle was relatively quiet, with the excellent suggestion of scheduling the 128 and 20 to provide a timed transfer for Admiral District riders losing the 55 being all that stands out in my mind.

Weak sauce in Delridge. At the Delridge open house, local transit advocates complained vigorously — and, in my view, absolutely correctly — that North Delridge has been shorted in the Fall restructure proposals, with most of the new service proposed for their neighborhood abandoned in favor of maintaining service in much less productive areas, on top of the 125 being cut on weekends. Delridge is a growing, top-performing corridor with lots of transit-dependent riders; in a rational transit planning universe, it would have been the southwest Seattle RapidRide route. Instead, that area will arguably be worse off after the Fall 2012 restructure than today.

More after the jump. Continue reading “Metro News Roundup: Route 2, Delridge and More”

Tonight from 6-8 pm, Sound Transit is holding a “meet the artist” event for Lead Pencil Studio, the team who will design the public art for Brooklyn station.

Friday Feb. 17, 2012 | 6 – 8 p.m.
Henry Art Gallery auditorium
University of Washington
15th Ave NE and NE Campus Pkwy
(entrance on east side of pedestrian bridge)

• New transit taxing authority has already cleared major hurdles in Olympia.
• President Obama’s transportation budget is great, has no chance of being enacted; would cover most of the cost of light rail over the Columbia.
• PubliCola talks waterfront.
• Renton extending Strander Blvd. to improve Tukwila Sounder access.
• Hotels going up near Lakewood Station.
• Seattle looking at upzoning SLU. Paul Allen would benefit financially, but he’s also right. Amazon announces yet another huge new development nearby.
• RapidRide C capital improvements going in.
• Overlake TOD project being sued over trees.
• Ferry system ridership stabilizes from a drop.
• The changing demographics of Ballard. And downtown Seattle.
• Parking rates may be too high in the International District.
• 60-unit TOD at MLK & Orcas?
• Surrey, BC is huge and growing.
• San Francisco’s buses are now enforcing the transit lanes. Would be useful here, if we actually had very many of them.
• U.S. House Transportation bill is flailing.
• Climate change and transportation.
• WSDOT’s pamphlet on the Kelso/Martin’s Bluff Amtrak Project. (H/T: Dan Carey)
• A new way to boost transit ridership.

This is an open thread.

Details:

Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012
3:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Puget Sound Regional Council
Board Room
1011 Western Ave., Suite 500
Seattle

If you cannot make the event, you can comment here.

Sound Transit is holding a “meet the artist” event Friday for Lead Pencil Studio, the team selected to provide public art for the Brooklyn station.

February 17, 2012
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Henry Art Gallery auditorium
University of Washington
15th Ave NE and NE Campus Pkwy

Continue reading “Meet the Artist Event for Brooklyn Station”

Yesterday, the Transportation Choices Coalition (and the Kitsap Sun the day before) wrote about a most unfortunate component of WSDOT’s plans to upgrade and retrofit Colman Dock. From TCC:

 WSDOT is undergoing a process to plan for the replacement of the Colman ferry terminal.  We fully support preservation projects and our state’s ferry system, but the current replacement project will eliminate the existing passenger ferry dock, which will threaten the King County water taxi and other passenger ferry services in and out of Downtown Seattle.

In addition to the Vashon Island and West Seattle water taxis, the Sun notes that, within the next few years, there will most likely be three cross-Sound public agencies operating passenger ferries to Colman Dock, from Port Townsend, Kingston and Bremerton. After 2015, where those services will dock, and how the money will be found to construct or upgrade such a dock, is not at all clear.

Continue reading “WSDOT Plans Would Displace Seattle Passenger Ferries”

The Federal Way Mirror reports that unnamed city officials are dissatisfied with ST bus service to their city:

City officials have expressed concerns about overcrowded buses, especially the ST Express Route 577 to Seattle. Commuters fill those buses at peak morning times, standing in line before sunrise, often waiting through one or two boardings before scoring a seat.

The chutzpah of this complaint is breathtaking. The 574, 577, and 578 all serve Federal Way* and cost ST a total of $12m a year. Federal Way politicians were last heard complaining that their city was paying in $13.5m a year in taxes “to not get rail”. Their legislative strategy consists of adding administrative overhead costs to ST and withdrawing from the district, which would solve the problem of overcrowded buses by eliminating them altogether, and keep light rail as far from Federal Way as ever.

* The 577 is almost exclusively for the benefit of Federal Way; the 574 and 578 have shared benefits.

It’s been a long time since I have done one of these updates but there has been plenty of work going on in our region. With the increase of rail traffic between Seattle and Portland, passenger train reliability has taken a noticeable hit. So what’s going been going on?

1. Recovery from the snow and ice storm added several slow orders. The on-time performance of most trains have mostly recovered and repairs along the BNSF Seattle Subdivision, Scenic Subdivision and Bellingham Subdivision are completed. Snow, ice, mudslides, downed trees, a small sink hole, and heavy wash from the Puget Sound all took its toll on the right of way. With these problems now fixed, track maintenance has ramped up. Those that ride Sounder and Amtrak should notice several pieces of Maintenance of Way equipment working between Tukwila and Tacoma for a tie replacement project and a rather rocky, rough ride on the corridor as the work progresses.

More below the jump:

Continue reading “Heavy Rail Update”

Clearly, the Earthscraper – a 65-story, zero-feet-tall building – is the solution to all concerns about height and massing while simultaneously enabling nearly limitless density.

Continuing their ideological attack on government spending, the GOP-controlled United State House over the last week has now decided to target dedicated transit funding. Streetsblog Capitol Hill has had up-to-date coverage of the events over the last week or so, as the house has blazed through the legislative process. Larry Ehl report that congress has now cleared 9 out of the 10 procedural hurdles it needed to pass a transportation authorization bill.

In response to the radical policy change proposed by the house, a broad spectrum of group have come together in opposition and area transit agencies are getting into it as well. Please add your voice by taking action through the APTA.

Below the jump is a joint press release from Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit, Pierce Transit and Kitsap Transit:

Continue reading “Puget Sound Transit Agencies Explain Impacts of Transportation Package”