Via.
Reminder: Steam Plant Transit Tour Tomorrow
Tomorrow, meeting at Pike St & 4th Ave at 1:25 PM, is the Georgetown Steam Plant Transit Tour that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago on the blog — see that post for all the details. I’ll be joining the trip later on from Little Saigon. I hope to see you on the bus!
Super Simple Stuff
Check out these Queensland Rail public service announcements. I think they are brilliant. The parodies are good as well. Here are the Queensland Rail “train etiquette 15 behaviours” below the fold.
News Roundup: The Typical Issues
- Flamboyant diatribe ignores the fundamentals of supply and demand, is factually incorrect and unnecessarily perpetuates stereotypes of people from Bellevue.
- Build a SPACE Center at Mt. Baker Station. Idea has some merit, but acronym makes it hard to take serious.
- VMT based transportation funding getting national attention. VMT has been dropping too though.
- Capitol Hill apartment “glut” starting to come online. Comment: “These high priced condos will only increase rents throughout the area.”
- Wallace properties actually does love Link.
- Bauhaus to be saved by developer. Another developer trying to take a different, less fraught approach (H/T Kathy).
- SDOT getting bicycle master plan updated input. Tell them where you want bicycle facilities with an new mapping tool.
- Seattle places 7th according to Walk Score new “Transit Score”. Jarrett Walker has problems with it.
- Metro looking for feedback on alternative service delivery methods, sets record for longest blog post title.
- Thomas St overpass opening in July.
- 10,000 Londoners cycle for safety.
This is an open thread.
We Love Our Neighborhood So Much We Bought It!
After reading my post, the organizers of the City Builder Happy Hour asked me to present my idea for a Neighborhood Real Estate Investment Trust. The following is more or less what I presented on Tuesday night at the happy hour. This market-based approach to “saving” neighborhood buildings was delivered on May Day, not far from the riotous mob of anarchists trashing downtown.
We hear it all the time: “What? That great building with the cool coffee shop just got sold! Damn developers!”
But the truth is that when property changes hands the new owner is making an investment, and an investment is about creating a financial return. Developers aren’t necessarily setting out to destroy existing buildings, but in order to build more housing and make a profit, sometimes they do.
What if all of us pooled our resources to buy real estate and develop it ourselves? Imagine 1200 people in Seattle each contributing $1200 (about the same as buying 1 espresso drink a day for a year) to a Neighborhood Real Estate Investment Trust. That would generate more than a million dollars ($1,440,000) that could be applied to the purchase of that great building with the coffee shop. And if the property is managed well, the funds from operation and increases in equity over time would mean than initial $1000 investment would gradually produce a return, money that could be put back into buying more iconic properties.
In the United States, a Real Estate Investment Trust, or REIT, is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. To be a REIT, a company must distribute at least 90 percent of its taxable income to shareholders annually in the form of dividends.
What distinguishes REITs is that they have transferable shares. An investor can by a sliver of a project in the form of a share, get a return from dividends paid from increases in equity or profitable operations, and sell the share later at a profit to another investor.
The beauty of a Neighborhood REIT is that it is market-based preservation that would get neighborhoods into the development game. As property owners, average Seattle residents could decide not to build out the site, but keep the building just like it is. But they’d still have to manage it, collecting rents, making repairs, and taking care of overall maintenance. They could choose not to maximize profits, but focus on maintaining use and the existing structure.
There is an example of this in Great Britain called the Ethical Property Company; they buy properties, sell shares, and keep older buildings in use renting them to non-profits and community based groups.
A Neighborhood REIT could allow everyone to invest in dense, walkable, livable, transit oriented communities so we could get all those benefits plus some of the financial ones as well.
Long Distance Buses in Turkey
As BoltBus starts up 4x a day bus service between Seattle and Portland, building on QuickCoach‘s 7x a day service between Seattle and Vancouver BC, it might be a good time to look at a country with inter-city bus travel that really works. I’ve already looked at Istanbul’s wide array of travel options, now let’s consider the best way to get between cities in Turkey.
Which Routes Should the DSTT Serve?
Perhaps the most pressing concern about the September elimination of the Ride Free Area (RFA) is the likelihood of severely degraded peak-hour travel times within the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Without significant mitigation, the already precarious mixed bus-rail operations of the DSTT are certain to get much worse. Of particular concern are northbound trips in the PM peak, as each crush-loaded departure (particularly to Northgate and the UDistrict) will require at least an additional minute of platform time to accommodate fare payment, in addition to the mandatory and time-consuming inspection that each Link train makes before proceeding from Westlake to the Pine Street Stub.
The DSTT currently operates approximately 1,500 trips per day, 750 in each direction. Median overall headway is every 3 minutes in the morning and evening, every 30-60 seconds in the peak, and every 2 minutes mid-day. This offers impressive capacity but – like closely stacked dominoes – precious little room for error. Bus and train breakdowns, cash fares, overly discursive drivers and passengers, overly restrictive train/bus separation requirements, and wheelchair/bike accommodation, can and do cause cascading delays whose magnitude is far greater than the sum of the individual behaviors.
In the absence of instituting proof-of-payment (POP) in the DSTT, it is clear to me that the transition to Pay-as-You-Enter will require reducing overall tunnel bus frequencies in order to avoid a total breakdown of service reliability. Thankfully our agencies are able to “tunnel” or “surface” routes with far less public process than is normally required when a service change is being considered. As someone who commutes from Convention Place to Tukwila every day – in which my mornings are a reliable 30-minute breeze and my afternoons a variable 50-minute headache – I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking in big-picture terms about the proper role of the DSTT in our regional transit system. Below are 5 principles – roughly in order of importance –that I offer as one model for determining which routes to keep underground.
Principle 1: Common corridors should be served by common stops.
Principle 2: Keep routes slated for future LINK conversion.
Principle 3: Remove local routes.
Principle 4: Until the DSTT is rail-only, keep all-day express routes to regional transit hubs.
Principle 5: Except where it conflicts with Principles 1 and 2, remove peak-only routes.
What would the DSTT look like under these principles? And would it solve the capacity problems that will be brought on by the elimination of the RFA?
More after the jump…
Free Transit for Cyclists May 14-18
Metro just announced that during Bike to Work Week (May 14-18), any cyclist loading their bike on a Metro bus will ride free. All Metro-operated Sound Transit routes (540, 542, 545, 550, 554, 555, 556, and 560) are also included.
More information and a link to the promotion will be added when it becomes available.
East Link Cost Savings Open House
Last Wednesday Sound Transit and the City of Bellevue held an open house to share some of the preliminary ideas they have come up with to reduce East Link construction costs through the city. Now that ST and the City are partners, both have a financial stake in the project, and thus more buy in as well as more critical attention about the cost of mitigation that the City previous pushed for.
The biggest cost saving ideas unsurprisingly had to do with the Downtown Bellevue station and tunnel. Four alternatives designs were presented at the open house. Continue reading “East Link Cost Savings Open House”
Metro’s Plans for Increasing Access to ORCA
Metro released a report on strategies to increase access to ORCA cards. The report looks at the current state of ORCA market penetration, who’s using ORCA, who’s not and why, what the agency has done so far to increase use, and what more can be done. Short term plans and opportunities for the next year include: more retail outlets, more outreach, simplified procedures for conducting promotions, more TVMs, considering day passes and disposable cards. Long-term strategies include: fare incentives and new technologies like payment with contactless credit cards and mobile phones. All of these are discussed in the report. Some highlights are presented below.
Key message from customer feedback and Metro’s Rider/Non-Rider Survey: “youths, seniors, and people who have disabilities, limited English proficiency, low incomes, or no bank accounts often find it difficult to get and add value to ORCA cards. The $5 card fee is often cited as a barrier to ORCA use.”
The report gives the reason why we haven’t seen a day pass considered until now: “Before the ORCA system was launched, the ORCA Joint Board … agreed not to introduce new fare products until ORCA was well-established.” Three years since launch, the agencies are reviewing regional day pass options (pricing and validity) with a goal for implementation towards the end of 2012. The report also explains how the day pass would work. No automatic pass/daily fare capping mechanism (patented) was mentioned.
Limited use (disposable) ORCA cards are being considered as a lower cost alternative for infrequent riders and visitors, not people with low incomes. The fee for issuing a limited-use ORCA card would be $2 compared to $5 for a standard card. That includes $1 for the card itself and another $1 in processing costs. The standard card itself costs $2.50.
Fare incentives include discounted e-purse fare and elimination of paper transfers. The e-purse “discount” would be achieved by raising cash fares. Metro notes that such changes would require it to perform an analysis of impacts on and mitigation for low-income or minority riders, as mandated by federal regulations.