Month: February 2012

Below is a summary of bills of interest that are currently working their way through the House and Senate Transportation Committees. Like last year there are a litany of bills that limit or ban red light running cameras and this year there are a good number of bills related to tow trucks. If you would like to take a look at other active bills working their way through the legislature follow this link.

HB 1217 – This bill would allow cities to lower speed limits to 20 mph on non-aertierial roads without an engineering study, which is currently required. This bill has already been unanimously passed by the House and has more momentum in the Senate where it stalled last year.

HB 2252 – This bill essentially tidies up language related to proof of payment systems for transit agencies clarifying the language and bringing it up to date with ORCA.

HB 2370 – “Expands the existing goals, objectives, and responsibilities related to the operation of an efficient statewide transportation system to include the health of the state’s citizens.” This is a good bill that will help to add health and active transportation as a major goal of the states transportation system. The bill has a large number of co-sponsors include Rep. Clibborn, chair of the House Transportation Committee, which is always a good sign.

HB 2601 – This legislation allow Regional Transportation Planning Organization (RTPO), in our case PSRC, to establish “transit service overlay zones”. These zones must have frequent bus service, minimum current or planned employment densities, minimum current or planned housing unit density, or be a regional center. These thresholds would be set by the RPTO.

The original bill included a categorical SEPA exception for developments within the overlay zone which had fewer  than 150 residential units or fewer than 100,000 sq ft of commercial space. This provision has since been removed from the bill. From my understanding, the provision was included as an incentive for development within the overlay zone, however with removal of the SEPA exception, this bill is essentially only enabling legislation that allows inter-governmental planning work between local and regional agencies in areas around high quality transit. The legislation does specifically say “frequent bus service” which would exclude Link. I don’t know if that was an intentional decision are just slopping language.

Continue reading “Legislative Bills to Track”

Tonight, from 5:30 to 7:00PM at Town Hall, is the second Waterfront Seattle open house, and the topic will be Mobility and Access; i.e. getting to, from and around the post-viaduct waterfront, ideally without a car. Much of the discussion will, I suspect, focus on transit along the Waterfront, and that’s appropriate and expected; tomorrow, we’ll have a summary of the event, with an open thread for discussion of anything waterfront-transportation related. In this post, however, I want to talk about improving one aspect of the much less sexy, but far more heavily travelled and regionally important Madison corridor, which connects the Waterfront to First Hill and points north and east.

One of the components of the Fall restructure proposal is splitting Route 2 and moving the south part of Route 2 from the Seneca/Spring pair to Madison/Marion, extending the route down to 1st Ave, where it would turn around without stopping. Route 12 would be split off from its current through-route to Route 10 on 1st Ave, and join Route 2S in the same maneuver, with schedules arranged to provide very frequent service. I mention this only by way of background, as we have debated the pros and cons of these proposed changes to death (and then some) in previous comment threads, and further debate in that vein is off-topic for this post. What we are discussing here is if this proposal (or some future similar proposal) goes forward, how we should improve this connection. Continue reading “A Better Colman Dock Connection”

Yesterday, I had a chance to discuss with Metro staff the details of the revised Fall restructure proposal that was released last week. From that discussion,  a few clarifications to my original post about this restructure arose:

• RapidRide D’s schedule did not change at all, but the headways listed in the public documents were changed to more precisely conform to Metro’s time period definitions. In particular, the D Line will operate every 15 minutes until at least 10:30 PM, seven days a week; and every 10 minutes in the peak direction from 6-9 AM and 3-6 PM (slightly less in the reverse-peak direction). In the common segment of Routes 15 and 18 from Downtown through Queen Anne and Interbay to Leary, riders are losing Monday-Saturday midday frequency (10 to 15 minutes), but riders on 15th Ave NW are gaining full-time frequent service.
• Adding back a handful of trips to the 15X and 55 was indeed done primarily to save money on RapidRide coaches that would be used only for one or two trips a day. Metro considered operating standard coaches on RapidRide routes, but decided that would dilute the RapidRide brand more than restoring those trips. In the case of the 15X, it also served to restore coverage to a pocket of Blue Ridge. At some point in the future when Metro has more money, these choices could be revisited.
• I was sloppy in my discussion of the stop-level data for Route 37. Of the inbound riders on that bus, 20% are at stops shared with Route 56 in the Alki area; 48% are between Alki and the West Seattle Bridge, who have access to Water Taxi shuttles; 32% are south of Hinds St. The last number includes a cluster of riders around Beach Dr & Carroll St, who, depending on how far you believe people will walk to useful transit service, may or may not be considered cut off from the from the bus network if the 37 were deleted. I remain unconvinced either that this route is viable in terms of Metro’s performance criteria, or that the small number of city residents who will unquestionably lose service (west of Me-Kwa-Mooks park) provide enough “geographic value” to offset performance figures that will surely be terrible.
• The increased midday headway on the 11 was indeed a typo, and never planned in this restructure.
• Also, within the next couple of weeks, I will elaborate on what I meant when I opined that the extended Route 1 was a “mess”, as well as a modification to that extension which would, I believe, be more useful to the riders served.

Finally, this isn’t quite in keeping with the topic, but I can’t find anywhere else to put it: Metro’s application for a TIGGER grant to help pay the costs of electrifying Route 48 was, unfortunately, not funded. This project was already in jeopardy due to the failure of Prop 1, which would have provided the local matching funds.

Thanks to those Metro staff for taking the time to meet and discuss these issues, and answer my many questions.

Now that a number of West Seattle-bound buses have moved from 1st to 4th Avenue, there is now a nice opportunity for an intermodal connection with Link at Sodo. From northbound buses, there is a straightforward one-block walk to reach the station, allowing easy transfers to the Rainier Valley, the airport, and (eventually) UW.

Unfortunately, there is no such easy transfer to southbound buses. The only options to pick up a bus are all the way up at Walker or several blocks west to 1st Avenue. Because the only through east-west pedestrian corridor is on Lander St,  in either case it’s just under half a mile. The coming Route 50 is being diverted from Spokane St. largely to serve the station, and will turn before it reaches the existing stop north of Lander.

The obvious solution is another southbound bus stop, possibly just after the turn onto Lander. Metro’s Linda Thielke tells me that during the viaduct closure last year there was a temporary stop at Lander and 3rd, but could not confirm that any such stop is in Metro’s permanent plans.

Getting from West Seattle to the Rainier Valley is hardly the biggest deal in the system, but a new bus stop is a trivial accommodation. Although there are other reasons for the 50 to come that far north, a better connection would strengthen the case for keeping the 50 on Spokane St, creating a more direct connection between two sectors of the city.

Today, Senator Tracey Eide and Sound Transit Boardmember Pete Von Reichbauer (along with other boardmembers and CEO Joni Earl) proposed that Sound Transit commit $25 million to do design, engineering and environmental review for light rail not just to S. 272nd St. (the endpoint planned for 2023 in Sound Transit 2), but to Federal Way Transit Center.

This way, if future funding became available through another Sound Transit ballot measure, a state funding package, or federal match, Federal Way would be ready to go immediately. This still has to get through committee and a full Sound Transit board vote, but with four boardmembers present, that sounds likely.

Senator Eide also confirmed that negotiating this began before the legislative session – before Federal Way mayor Priest’s legislative temper tantrum. It was pointed out early in the meeting that Federal Way was invited to the table when revenue projections first put light rail in jeopardy – and didn’t show up. Even despite the adversarial relationship Priest has continued to pursue, Sound Transit and the state have worked together to ensure that Federal Way is served as well as possible.

The big question I asked was whether there was state funding in the works to help get Federal Way on track. Senator Eide, a vice chair of Senate Transportation in Olympia, replied – “That’s why I’m here.” Perhaps with her leadership, Sound Transit could see increased legislative support in years to come. I look forward to it!

Sound Transit is conducting a survey to help them improve their website. They say it takes only three minutes (it’s very short). So take it if you think the website can be improved.

I like the new website but there’s one feature about it that can be improved: the content of the image gallery on the home page. Consisting entirely of images of Sound Transit riders enjoying their trip and a caption, the image gallery is the most prominent feature on the home page, yet it provides zero information on current events and no links to additional information. This was evident during the snow days last month which severely impacted service. Compare the homepages for Community Transit, King County Metro, and Sound Transit on January 19 and you’ll see what I mean.

The screenshots speak for themselves. I’m not against promotional images but they’re less useful without links. You got the user interested with the image. Now make it easy for them to learn more by adding a link. Don’t make them look around the page more than they have to. If they want to use it as a promotional space, why not add the pretty photos from the RIDE newsletter and link to stories from real riders? Why not promote events accessible by transit? I’d love to see, for example, an image of happy Sounder FC fans using ST to get to the game, with a link to game day travel options.

Spiffy new infographic shows where transit routes could go if they followed where tweets were coming from.

(H/T: Chetan Chandrashekhar)

This is an open thread.

Metro has published systemwide maps for the Fall 2012 restructure revision. As before, they’re broken up in to North Seatlle (all-day and peak) and South Seattle/Burien (all-day and peak). In addition to making the way the whole network fits together more clear, there are a couple of things that stand out to me:

• Westwood Village. As you can see on the map above, the east side of Westwood Village is now a transfer point on a par with 1st & Mercer and Alaska Junction, turning it into a transit crossroads.
• Interim Routing for the D Line terminus (not on map above). I’m assuming this is due to delays in the required reconstruction of the 7th Ave NW roadway that will be used to turn around the coaches, but I’ll check with Metro’s staff.

I suspect the alignment of the 31 in Magnolia is erroneous, as I believe Metro reverted  away from its revised alignment on Dravus in favor of maintaining service on Emerson.

Please head on over to my last post on the subject to continue the debate.

Throughout Metro’s network, there are a number of common-stop corridors along which multiple routes will run, usually combining for frequent service.  Some of these corridors are scheduled to optimize the distribution of service frequency and eliminate bus bunching, others not so much.  Along the corridors with no schedule coordination, you’re likely to see several buses come at once within the span of a few minutes, then no buses at all for the next several minutes.

A lot of this is the result of other scheduling “hotspots” in the network, or timepoints and pulses, mostly at park-and-rides, transit centers, and other major hubs were infrequent and frequent services come together at one destination.  Scheduling to incorporate both timed connections at these hubs and frequency coordination along common corridors is no simple task– that’s why Metro splits up its scheduling responsibilities by each bus base.

Unfortunately, this brings up another challenge: common corridors are sometimes made up of routes based out of different bases, hence different schedulers.  At Eastgate, for example, routes like the 212 and 218 combine for frequent service to downtown Seattle in the peak*.  However, because both of these routes each come out of two different bases, uncoordinated scheduling often leads to bunching at the freeway stop, limiting the usefulness of passenger capacity the bus at the rear end of a bunch brings.

While an easy administrative solution is to simply apportion the routes along common corridors to one scheduler, I recognize that the network is much more complex, routes need to move around, and common corridors tend to straddle the edges of geographic boundaries.  That said, Metro should develop a standard for developing coordination among separate schedulers for common corridors.

I’m not aware of any other corridors in Metro’s network where this is an issue with all-day frequent service, but assuming the free interchange of routes between bases can happen at any service change in the future, it’ll be a good practice to ensure stable and reliable service along our most heavily-traveled corridors.

*I chose this selfishly to illustrate my personal commute, at the same time recognizing that it’s not a very good example, given the limited peak-only span.  If anyone has a clearer or better example, particularly with all-day service, I’d like to hear it!