80 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: Best Value Parking”
Then broadside and broadside and at it they went
For fully two hours or three,
Till Henry Martin gave to her the deathshot,
the deathshot, the deathshot,
And straight to the bottom went she.
-Joan Baez “Henry Martin
Bill has essential funded a working “Energy PC” where your home wastewater is turned into hydrogen for fuel cells!
Bill Gates Foundation toilet competition – winner makes hydrogen
His proposal was to build a toilet which uses the sun to power an electrochemical reactor. The reactor breaks down water and human waste into fertilizer and hydrogen, which can be stored in hydrogen fuel cells as energy. The treated water can then be reused to flush the toilet or for irrigation.
So the trend towards the “soft grid” continues…where the home can be a production unit…not just a receptacle for consumer goods. Powering transit at the garage.
Hyundai Poised To Launch Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicle This Year
Equipped with a 100-kw fuel cell stack and two hydrogen storage tanks, the ix35 FCEV can travel a total of 325 miles on a single refueling and reach a maximum speed of 100 mph.
Plans are to commercialize this vehicle by the end of 2012 with an initial production run of 1,000 fuel cell vehicles. Hyundai will supply fuel cell vehicles to government and private fleets leading up to mass production, scheduled for 2015.
So, not much at all (0.25%–on the high side–of the American oil appetite). Then multiply the infrastructure costs out over all the inefficient McMansions scattered hither and yon… plus all the coin Chinawards to manufacture it… yeah, this will totally bedpan out.
Now, in a dense environment, and in lieu of expensive trucking or piping of the waste 10s to 100s of miles, and to run a few lights so some percentage can be shaved off the utility bill, that’s probably sensible.
I think the point here is that the Hydronet can allow for all sorts of inputs and outputs. Hydrogen is to energy what tcp/ip is to the Internet.
The other point you raise has little to do with this discussion, however, and has been addressed on a number of previous threads. (Oh, if only people understood the glory of Usenet and nntp…)
Not really, John. *Electromagnetism* is to energy as TCP/IP is to the Internet.
Remember that. *Electromagnetism*.
For once Bailo and I agree. Hydrogen fuel cells for transportation will end in the same historical dustbin as Usenet.
I’m generally impressed by home waste “digesters” and other things of that sort.
I kind of wonder how this type of stuff could be integrated into a municipal sewage treatment system.
I keep wondering if Brightwater could install such a system or if they already have plans to do so.
Someone asked me if I would buy one of these.
It’s getting closer!
Hawaii Energy Confab: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Scooters Are Here
They’re quiet, have zero emissions and have three times the range of an electric-battery powered scooter.
Hydrogen fuel-cell scooters are expected to be on Honolulu roads early next year, thanks to a partnership between H2 Technologies, a Big Island company, and Taiwan-based, Asia Pacific Fuel Cell Technologies.
Hydrogen is, so far, a fossil fuel. Or generated from electricity.
The can also be charged by solar panels, which would eliminate the need for hydrogen fueling stations.
No it wouldn’t and you have to choose between acres of solar panels or wait days to charge your scooter… in which time you could have just walked. Mmmm, if only there was a way to dole out billions in government subsidies to the walking industry???
I love how the “pirate ship” magically gained two passengers when it stopped moving.
I don’t know what SDOT paid for that ad, but it was too much.
It’s time to talk about merging King County Metro with Sound Transit.
Up until now I have always shrugged off discussions of transit agency mergers as a distraction that could end with a worse result. However, merging these two specific agencies will have enough benefit to be worth pursuing.
The How
Most transit agencies in the state, including Community Transit and Pierce Transit, are organized as Public Transportation Benefit Areas (PTBAs). King County Metro is unique in that it is directly managed as a part of county government. I propose a Public Transportation Conference for King County and the cities within, for the formation of a King County PTBA. The PTBA would have a 9-member board, three members appointed by the county and the remainder elected by the constituent cities. These nine members selected by local governing bodies would happen to be nine of the Sound Transit Board members currently representing King County. These nine politicians would do double duty as ST and King County PTBA board members. King County would sell/give its public transportation assets to the new PTBA. The PTBA would develop an interlocal agreement with Sound Transit to share staff, facilities and assets. Each would remain a separate legal entity, and would retain their own revenue sources. Kevin Desmond could remain as the head of the new ST Local Bus division. But to the public, they would be one agency, probably called Sound Transit.
The Why
As light rail expands over the next decade, conflict between Metro’s and ST’s sets of responsibilities will increase. King County Metro has no institutional incentive to coordinate with light rail; ST will be “poaching” riders from Metro’s most productive routes, such as to the U District, Northgate, First Hill. Unified agencies don’t think like this. In our peer regions of Portland and Vancouver, a single agency provides rail and local bus service within the central city and nearby suburbs, and is incentivized for efficient integration. A combination of Metro and ST would provide an equivalent scope of service around Seattle.
ST is not an operating agency; Metro operates most of Sound Transit’s service within King County including Link Light Rail. Combining the agencies’ staff and assets would allow the services to be provided directly by the agency that has political accountability for the service, i.e. the answer as to why service cannot be tweaked wouldn’t be “it’s not in our contract.”
And finally, PTBA board members, like ST board members, would seek appointment because they are interested in the agency’s success. County council members seek office for many reasons, but improving the transit system is not always one of them. With the PTBA structure, board members are structurally in favor of the agency’s efficiency and success.
For starters, merging Metro and ST would run into the state law that limits a transit agency’s sales tax revenue to a maximum of 0.9%. As separate agencies, Metro and ST can and do collect a total of 1.8%. Combined, they can only collect 0.9%, which means our funding for transit would suddenly be cut in half.
Clearly we need a third agency, if we’re ever going to get Metro out of the red. I propose Seattle’s own transit agency for another 0.9%.
PTBAs have the same 0.9% sales tax authority as King County metro. My proposal leaves Metro and ST as legally seperate entities, so each can continue with their current revenue streams.
Ben S. is proposing to re-activate the “City transporation agency” (created for the Monorail Authority), which State Law makes available additional revenue sources, such as an MVET.
Something like this needs to happen. I’ve seen very obvious cases where Metro and SoundTransit are working at cross purposes.
What is complicated is that SoundTransit is an agency charged with providing services to a region rather than just King County. Any combined operation would have to reassure the agency’s other constituents that they would not be short changed.
Now as I understand it, the Chicago area has something called the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) which is an umbrella agency that controls finances for 3 entities underneath it. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) that operates rail and transit in the city and some neighboring cities such as Evanston & Skokie, PACE Transit which operates bus service in suburban cities and 2 heavy rail systems (METRA & NICTD) that provide region wide commuter services including to 2 border states.
While the CTA operates a comprehensive network with a daily ridership of nearly 2 million, PACE offers connector services to train and CTA routes. It has to cover a very large geographic area and its ridership is about 90 thousand daily riders. METRA rail has about 260,000 daily riders. METRA is focused on commuters between downtown Chicago and the suburbs and not on commute patterns between major suburban cities.
I’ve gone into this detail because the RTA might provide an example on how we could model a future SoundTransit. But I also feel there are significant pitfalls to the RTA’s model. In this model, the city of Chicago has excellent transit coverage, but suburban cities, including some that are comparable in size to our Bellevue and Everett have meager bus service compared to what Metro and other transit systems provide us, and there is practically no service between suburban cities unless they lie on a path towards Chicago. Consequently, the 7+ million people who live outside of Chicago are living a car dependent life including taking the car to large car parks to take their train rides to downtown Chicago.
What we have here with Metro and Pierce and CT and Everett transit are services that provide good coverage of urban areas compared to greater ChicagoLand. I wouldn’t want any combined agency to short change those services and actually create more car dependent sprawl.
Combining organizations who don’t play nice together into the same organization rarely solves the underlying issues that cause them not to play well together. Just look at the MTA in New York. The subway, bus system, and commuter rail agencies (Metro North and LIRR) are at constant war with each other. For example Metro North wouldn’t let the LIRR use underutilized platforms in Grand Central Station forcing LIRR to build an expensive new underground station for the Eastside Access project.
In Chicago the agencies under the RTA blanket all pretty much hate each other due to constantly battling for the same limited funding. Metra, Pace, and the CTA have shockingly poor integration. I don’t think that’s all a matter of agency structure, but I’d think twice before considering theirs a good model.
In fact, the only successful transit agency mergers I’ve seen have been outright takeovers where the institutional culture of one is utterly destroyed in favor of the institutional culture of the other.
Both NY’s MTA and Chicagoland’s RTA are essentially failures; the MTA still operates as three separate agencies, and the RTA’s three separate agencies fight constantly.
In LA, Metrolink works, but there’s a very well-defined division of responsibility and money between the individiual munipicalities and the organization.
“Metro has no institutional incentive to coordinate with light rail; ST will be “poaching” riders from Metro’s most productive routes,”
Are you sure that’s not in your imagination? Metro knew all along it would be turning more and more trunk routes over to ST. The reason Metro’s record of turning itself into a feeder service is less than stellar is opposition by neighborhood activists and the council. But if Metro had no interest cooperating with Link, it wouldn’t have made the 8 the route from MLK to Capitol Hill, in spite of the chorus of protests that it doesn’t go to downtown, Little Saigon or even 23rd.
I don’t doubt that Metro transit planners know how to optimize the system. But Metro’s leadership structure doesn’t allow those plans to come to complete fruition. City Council members have other priorities than efficient and productive transit.
I’ve seen very obvious system behavior of non-cooperation including continuing to plan one seat rides, non-optimal siting of bus stops and transit centers by train stations, lack of frequency on those east/west routes that do cross Link’s path (such as my 39 bus) to make any viable connector service untenable. e.g. rather than provide 15 minute service to connect to link, you’ll get hourly or 40+ minute headways midday making it more efficient (time wise) to take that or north south bus downtown than to connect to the train.
Another annoyance is at Othello, the official stop is on the west side of MLK but most people want to go North so would prefer to be let out on the east side of MLK. But “officially”, drivers aren’t supposed to let you out there and you end up spending about 4-6 minutes of time to get back across MLK to your train platform. In that time, a train has likely come and gone and you end up waiting an additional 8 minutes for the next train. Just another way that time wise, it’s in Metro’s favor for you to take a one seat ride.
The westbound 39 at MLK issue is a safety problem, not an interagency turf problem. Westbound Othello at MLK is a very dangerous location for a nearside stop because of the extremely high volume of traffic turning right from westbound Othello onto northbound MLK.
The best solution would be to move the stop at farside 42nd to farside 43rd (the opposite end of the block we’re discussing). There wouldn’t be much if any downside, because almost no one is using that 42nd stop today.
And where I say 42nd, I mean 44th. Move the stop on westbound Othello farside 44th to farside 43rd.
David L, how is this a “safety” issue? if a bus is stopped on Othello at MLK, there are no right turns happening until the bus clears the intersection. There maybe cars that want to turn right that will have to wait until the bus moves but boo hoo. If you mean that people will cross the street “illegally” then that is not Metro’s issue. Once the passenger has safely left the bus, where they go after that is their responsibility. How is this any different than the bus zone for the #8 bus that is on the very same corner?
The problem at nearside stops is that cars, assuming the bus is stopped whether or not it actually is, suddenly turn right in front of the bus from the left lane. To make matters worse, when they execute that maneuver, they can’t see crossing pedestrians (of which there are many at that intersection, because of Link). That is why all but a few of the stops in the Metro system are farside; farside stops have a far lower accident rate.
The 8 zone is a farside zone so it’s not affected by that problem.
Actually, now that I think about it, an even better solution would be to have the 39 turn right onto MLK and just stop at the same stop as the northbound 8. It could then use the same turnback as it does now, but in the opposite direction. There is space for a layover southbound along 38th Ave S.
Charles:
– One-seat rides. All of these are legacy; there are no new one-seat rides that compete with Link. Metro is going slow reorganizing these because it’s gotten its hand slapped so many times. Yes, more forward-thinking Metro management would help.
– Non-optimal siting of bus stops. The only case of this I know of is the Mt Baker Transit Center. Blame for this resides in several quarters, and there is a movement stirring to move the TC.
– Infrequent buses for transfers. This is due to Metro’s extremely tight budget; there’s no money to provide the frequency Metro knows is needed. Eliminating all one-seat rides would fill only part of the gap, and it’s not politically possible to do it anyway. Let the public get used to the September changes, and gradually warm up to more significant restructuring. There’s a Queen Anne battle coming up next year.
I can’t imagine a car trying to go around a bus at that intersection. I would clearly be illegal. Further, the pedestrians would only likely be crossing the road on a walk sign in which right turning cars would still have to yield.
But I like your solution about having the 39 (soon to be 50) turn right onto MLK.
If you can’t imagine that, you haven’t spent a lot of time driving a bus.
It’s a chronic, major problem. People’s natural reaction to a stopped bus is to go around it, legal or not. I would say it happened to me about every other time I used a nearside stop. Usually you could see it coming, but sometimes they do it suddenly without a signal, and you just have to hope you can react in time to stop without hitting the turning car and without knocking over any passengers.
And, yes, in theory the illegally turning cars have to yield to peds. But they can’t see them around the bus until the last second, and the sort of driver who doesn’t anticipate a bus moving also doesn’t anticipate unexpected peds very well.
Nearside stops are a disaster, unless they’re nearside a one-way street going to the left from the perspective of the approaching traffic.
I’m amazed that people would make a right turn from the left hand lane; clearly illegal and stupid… but, I see people passing on double yellow lines all the time. My beef with far side stops in on 148th in Overlake. Most of the stops southbound have no right turn unless maybe it’s a driveway to an apartment complex. It never fails during rush hour that a bus stops and waits at a light to proceed 100′ and stop on the far side of the intersection blocking all traffic behind. This does create a hazard as frustrated drivers dive for non-existent gaps in traffic to avoid having to wait through an additional light cycle.
Bernie, that behavior behind the bus is six of one, half-dozen of the other. At a nearside stop, if the light is green, then drivers will also be diving around the bus that’s stopped at a green light… and the light is likely to turn red while the bus is stopped, further delaying both the bus and the drivers behind it.
On the other hand, farside stops make a huge difference in keeping things safer in front of the bus.
At a nearside stop, if the light is green, then drivers will also be diving around the bus that’s stopped at a green light… and the light is likely to turn red while the bus is stopped,
If you stop near side there is a chance that you completely eliminate the time taken for a loading cycle. If the light turns red while the bus is parked at a far side stop it has no benefit to the bus schedule but has essentially caused a double red cycle for all drivers behind. As for safety in front of the bus I’d think a crosswalk with cars only turning left would be safer than the race to dive for the “open lane” created by the bus running interference. Also if there is a driveway a driver coming out of a parking lot might try to “beat the bus” knowing that otherwise they’re going to have to try and nose out into rush hour traffic. Although I’m don’t see why anyone would be in front of the bus except to load a bike where again the safest place to be would be the crosswalk. Another factor is it’s much easier for drivers to merge left and get around the bus toward the end of a light cycle as they have more time to react, traffic is generally not as tightly packed and speeds are more equal.
The most dangerous place to be a ped/cyclist in front of a bus is at an intersection (as with a nearside stop), because of the people trying to make sharp right turns in front of a bus. Lines on the road (crosswalk) don’t matter one bit for those drivers.
When the front of the bus is not at an intersection (farside stop), people merge in front of the stopped bus to continue straight, not to make a sharp right turn. That merge leaves more than enough space to protect a cyclist loading or unloading in front of a bus. And as you point out, at a farside stop, peds are much less likely to walk in front of the bus. Since they can’t see around the bus, that’s an unmitigated good thing.
An example… back in the day, I had a chronic problem with passengers running in front without looking at all at the northbound nearside stop at 10th and Galer on what is now the 49, to try to secure a spot at the St. Mark’s women’s shelter. I witnessed so many near accidents that I took to stopping farside on certain trips despite the marked location of the bus stop. That caused a lot of grousing, but dramatically improved safety; the same passengers would then run behind the bus where they could see oncoming cars before dashing across.
As for delays… again, six of one, half-dozen of the other. If the light is green more often, the bus does better at a farside stop on average. If it’s red more often, it does better at a nearside stop. Cars behind the bus may be delayed slightly more by farside stops, but, frankly, that’s far less important than safety, and farside stops are much, much safer.
But in the case of 148th southbound through Overlake there is no right turn from Old Redmond Road all the way up to NE 40th. Yet they are still all far side stops; you can only turn east toward 520. Driving in the big city is different but even at intersections that have right turns I don’t see crappy Bellevue drivers pulling right turns from the left hand lane. Lots of stupid things they will do but that’s not one of them.
If there are no right turns, that partly ameliorates the nearside stops, but only partly — there is still the problem of deboarding passengers dashing in front of the bus, which doesn’t happen nearly as much at farside stops.
But, again, drive a bus (or even watch carefully as you’re riding whenever there’s a nearside stop) and you’ll quickly see the problem.
People don’t turn right out of the left lane randomly, but they do–extremely often–when there’s a bus at a nearside stop. In their minds, they’re just passing the bus and then turning right. They don’t even realize how unpredictable they are or what a safety problem they create for the bus driver.
Nearside stops are perfectly safe on roads with one traffic lane each direction and bus bulbs (so that drivers can’t try to pass in the parking lane).
Car drivers are not crazy enough to pull into the wrong-direction lane to pass the bus.
OF course, you’ve got all those unnecessarily wide multi-lane streets in Seattle, so never mind.
That’s what you’d think… until you’ve driven the 71/72/73 and stopped at the nearside stops both directions on University Way and 43rd Street.
Granted, it happens a lot less often, but it’s still frequent enough to be very surprising.
And it has nothing to do with the other big problem of nearside stops — the tendency of passengers to dash out in front of the bus. People don’t pass and go right that often on two-lane streets, but they pass and go straight ALL THE TIME. The double line might as well not be there.
” King County Metro has no institutional incentive to coordinate with light rail … ”
I think this is a good thing. It’s like having two companies competing in the free market. Metro shouldn’t be mandated to make choices like this…the choices should be make because of ST doing good design so that the correct choice is obvious.
umm, free market? In this case, it’s a waste of duplicative service that doesn’t serve the public as well.
Two taxpayer-funded entities “competing”? That’s not a waste of tax dollars? Taxpayer-funded entities should be coordinating with each other, not duplicating each other over the most lucrative routes and leaving less-travelled areas with hourly or no transit.
Competition is wasteful and sometimes disastrous in transportation. Look at the mess it made out of the British railway network, a mess which has never been satisfactorally cleaned up.
Transportation has natural monopolies. There’s a reason there are only two freight railroads west of the Mississippi — and there would be only one except for government anti-trust regulators being embarassed to allow there to be NO competition.
Just for all you photographers out there – do any of you postprocess your transit pictures in Photoshop, Lightroom, Nik, etc. – or is it just me?
Several weeks ago the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a positive study of U.S. based Bus-Rapid-Transit (BRT) systems. Thirteen of the 15 projects that provided study data reported increases in ridership over the most recent service year. When BRT replaced another transit service, it decreased travel time between 10-35 percent. While total ridership varied, the M15 BRT line in New York City carried more than 55,000 daily riders. Its ridership was greater than many light-rail lines as well as that of several light-rail systems.
Often metro areas must choose between light-rail service and BRT. This GAO report confirms that BRT has many advantages. One of the advantages is that BRT is much cheaper to build and operate. For the cost of constructing 2 or 3 light rail lines, a city could build an entire BRT network. With the exception of places such as New York City, Washington D.C., or Chicago there are few corridors where rail is a better choice than BRT.
New rail lines provide sexier ribbon cutting opportunities than new bus lines. These photo opportunities are very beneficial to politicians. Transportation engineers, planners and policy makers need to encourage politicians to focus on solving transportation problems and not photo opportunities and ribbon cutting ceremonies.
GAO has released several studies critical of rail. When a former skeptic such as GAO offers such a glowing report, it shows the success of BRT. Far more metro areas should invest in this cost-effective and efficient technology.
We all know that BRT, when done right, is a great improvement over local bus service. If you were to offer building an entire BRT network of completely off board-payment, 100% dedicated ROW + grade separation in the busiest areas, level-boarding BRT for 1/3rd the cost of an equivalent light rail network, I’m sure the vast majority of people would take you up on that offer. However, the simple fact of the matter is that with those features you CAN’T build significantly cheaper than light rail.
It is the very things that cause a system to be efficient that also cost money. You can’t have it both ways… either you sacrifice performance (maybe this neighborhood doesn’t want to remove on street parking so there will be no ROW here… we still want to accept cash so we don’t require off board payments etc… etc…) , or your pay a lot of money for fast service. There is no “magic bullet”.
Exactly. If you make BRT good enough to get the ridership of rail… it’s MORE EXPENSIVE than rail.
Now, better buses are a good thing. The stop-every-block, get-caught-in-traffic local buses need to be replaced by something more like LA’s Metro Rapid, but with bus lanes.
But they are no substitute for rail. They are a substitute for poky local buses.
The fallacy is that light rail has the ridership to justify it’s construction. The truth is buses can in most markets easily meet the actual demand for far less money. The light rail answer is to build uber expensive parking garages and give away that commodity to drivers for free and keep it off the books of light rail operating costs. Of course capital costs are “free” since it’s a hundred year system. Except those pesky parking garages that are being built when peak oil will spell the extinction of cars in just a few more years… go figure.
A few bits from the report:
“However, few BRT project sponsors reported the use of dedicated or semi-dedicated running ways for at least 30 percent of the route”
“Los Angeles city officials explained that only 80 percent of the Wilshire Metro Rapid route within the city limits will have bus-only lanes during weekday peak hours because some neighborhoods resisted bus-only lanes and were unwilling to give up a travel lane on such a congested street.”
“Officials in Eugene told us that the Franklin Avenue EmX was originally intended to run on a dedicated running way for 90 percent of its route. However, in part due to the public input process, which raised concerns over loss of parking and business access, the agency reduced the dedicated portion of the route to 50 percent.”
This is the problem with “BRT”. Converting general purpose lanes or street parking to a transit-only lane is politically difficult. If the “BRT” doesn’t at least get it’s own right-of-way in congested areas, it’s just a slightly fancier bus.
Incidentally, for the same reason, I’m wary of the implementation of the “Rapid Streetcar” concept that the city seems so enamored with in the Transit Master Plan.
The definition of “rapid streetcar” used by the TMP is vague enough that it’s easy to imagine them laying some rail in the street, giving the streetcar signal preemption and its own lane in less busy areas, while leaving it stuck in mixed traffic in congested areas b/c someone complained about loss of street parking or general purpose lanes, and still excitedly showcasing it as the city’s shiny new “rapid” streetcar system.
BRT is often touted for its flexibility and scalability. The flip site of those is dilutability.
PhillipG, let me offer some defense of the Rapid Streetcar idea.
But first of all let me say that in a lot of these corridors (Ballard-DT, Ballard-UW, DT-West Seattle, etc) Rapid Streetcar simply is the wrong choice. Those areas have enough demand (especially the two Ballard ones) and physical cconstraints that either going over or under is the only real solution.
That said, I think what the ‘Rapid Streetcar’ is is a way for the city to study, ah… let’s call it ‘Traditional American Light Rail.’ Some exclusive ROW, some shared, only one or two cars, not real frequent, etc. But b/c the State says only Sound Transit can build High Capacity Transit, and b/c at the moment Sound Transit still calls Link ‘Light Rail’ (even though it has more in common with a Subway than any other American Light Rail system), the city was bared from doing so. So they basically just created their own name to fit what they were going for.
The SMP scopes out a potential rapid-streetcar for downtown-Westlake-Ballard, downtown-Eastlake-UDistrict and rapid-trolley for Madison. It does not go to that level for downtown-Interbay-Ballard or dowtown-West Seattle; it merely says “some high-capacity transit is desired”. That leaves room for ST to implement those corridors with a subway before Seattle makes an incompatible decision on them. It’s more likely that Seattle will spend the next five-ish years pursuing the corridors it has chosen (Westlake, Eastlake, Madison, CC1 or CC2) before going on to the other corridors. By that time there will be more clarity whether ST will pursue them, and the SMP will be due for an update anyway.
@Matt Johnson
I think there’s a place for “Rapid Steetcar” and/or BRT in Seattle, for corridors that need more than standard bus service, but are unlikely to need or get a subway line in the ST3 timeframe. Done right, “Rapid Steetcar” could be fantastic for the city. As Mike Orr points out, the Seattle Transit Master Plan designates the Roosevelt-U District-SLU-Downtown and Loyal Heights-Ballard-Fremont-SLU-Downtown corridors for future “rapid streetcar” planning. The accompanying diagrams for both corridors say that for significant segments “rail could oper-
ate in mixed traffic or a dedicated lane”. For some segments, like the University and Fremont bridges, it explicitly says the streetcar will operate in mixed traffic.
My concern is that in too many instances, when anyone complains about losing street parking or a general purpose lane, “rail could operate in mixed traffic or a dedicated lane” will turn into “rail will operate in mixed traffic” and we’ll be left with a streetcar that’s nicer than a bus, but not that much faster, and not as much of a draw for new choice riders as it would be with more right-of-way.
I think it’s politically possible to create “Rapid Streetcar” in Seattle with maximal right-of-way for much of the corridors, but it’ll require pressing future mayor & councilmembers to commit their political capital to it while standing up to the “War on Cars” meme.
It’s obvious that BRT can provide a service of similar quality to light rail (although with somewhat lower maximum capacity) and that BRT can provide a service that is cheaper than light rail. It is not at all clear whether BRT can provide an equivalent quality service at lower cost.
As Jarrett Walker says, one should decide what quality of service is necessary first, before choosing a technology.
What gives BRT a bad name among transit advocates, beyond “bus stigma,” is the fair-weather BRT advocates who abruptly appear anytime a new rail proposal comes up. The same people who, perhaps six months earlier argued and voted against upgrading our existing bus system with BRT features will proclaim that we shouldn’t invest in rail because BRT is cheaper.
When North Link is completed, Sound Transit is promising 8 minute rides from Downtown to UW, and 13 minute rides from Downtown to Northgate. That quality of service is impossible without a tunnel under Capitol Hill. Whether that tunnel will carry buses or trains is a small part of the equation.
In short, I want 13 minute rides from Northgate to Downtown, and I’m not too picky about which type of vehicle takes me there. I would love to see more BRT in the Seattle area, and I would especially like to see more BRT proposals in between subway/light rail projects. I would also like to see upgrades to our existing/planned BRT system. Is that fair?
The poor quality of our roads make bus service of any type inherently inferior to rail.
That was part of my point: if you’re actually investing in high quality service, you need dedicated ROW.
The decision to buy/construct dedicated ROW is much more important (and costly) than the decision between buses and trains.
It’s also the lack of space for surface ROW. There’s no way N 45th or 40th will ever be widened; it would displace the bulk of businesses and get into hillside complications. Likewise, the Ship Canal bridges can’t be widened without replacing the bridges. So there’s no place to build ROW except underground or with new bridges. Either of these would cost a pretty penny for either BRT or rail. If we’re going to the expense of building ROW, we might as well make it rail.
“It’s obvious that BRT can provide a service of similar quality to light rail (although with somewhat lower maximum capacity) and that BRT can provide a service that is cheaper than light rail. It is not at all clear whether BRT can provide an equivalent quality service at lower cost.”
It’s actually quite clear that it can’t. There are examples from all over the world — whenever it’s tried, you either get lower quality service or a more expensive service.
“The decision to buy/construct dedicated ROW is much more important (and costly) than the decision between buses and trains.”
Yes.
And if you’re building dedicated ROW, it’s more cost-effective to use trains. Because they stay on tracks, the necessary ROW is narrower. Because they stay on tracks, they can carry more people per vehicle and run more vehicles per hour. Because they stay on tracks, they are more energy efficient. Because they stay on tracks, they have lower maintenance costs. Because they have many axles per vehicle, the tracks have lower maintenance costs than the asphalt/concrete roadway would. Because they stay on tracks, they have a more comfortable ride and attract more passengers. Because they stay on tracks, they can accelerate faster, decelerate faster, and go at higher top speeds.
…et cetera.
Because they stay on tracks,
Reminds me of Tootle.
None of this nonsense has any “laws of physics” to back it up. Build rail “just because”… it’s more expensive? has greater panache, Obama thinks it’s cool?
“The poor quality of our roads make bus service of any type inherently inferior to rail.”
Those bad roads are why I am taking delivery on an 5,900-pound pickup truck next week. I’m sick of my smaller vehicle being beaten up on the streets here. If Seattle won’t maintain the pavement, then I’m getting a heavy-duty vehicle. Bicyclists? Watch out for the potholes. They’ll kill you before I do.
Is there any possibility of the STB comment system being improved? I know there was some discussion of this a while ago, and IIRC, STB (very briefly) switched to discus.
Right now I’d say there are 2 main problems, and one lesser one. These aren’t big issues in posts with only a small number of comments, but especially when posts approach 100 or more comments, a few things make reading/replying a pain:
* Comments can’t nest very deeply. It’s annoying to follow/reply within threads that flatten out past the maximum depth
* Comments can’t be edited. There’s no way to fix grammar/spelling/missed tags, or add in something you forgot w/o creating a new comment
* Coming back to a discussion, there’s no easy what to find more recently posted comments, other than by scanning down through each subthread.
Generally, I like comment systems with these features:
* Allow arbitrarily nested comments (or at least several levels deeper than now)
* Allow editing posted comments
* Allow sorting comments by time posted
* Have upvotes and downvotes, and allow sorting by score
* Have a default, and per-user configurable comment score threshold, below which sufficiently downvoted comments are hidden
* Allow pseudonyms- don’t require tying the STB user account to google/facebook/twitter/whatever (but possibly allow linking, or allow people to include personal URL/blog/social media info)
* To the small extent possible with pseudonyms, weed out sock-puppeting
FWIW, I think Reddit has the best comment system of any site I regularly use, although it’s obviously used differently than STB. I believe all their site code is open source, but I don’t know how easy it is to reuse. I can’t recall ever seeing another site that claimed to be based on the Reddit code. I’m not sure how well voting on comments would work with STB’s commenting patterns (my impression is that a relatively small number of people account for a disproportionately large percentage of the comments, a somewhat larger number of people comment moderately to occasionally, and there’s probably a larger number of lurkers/occasional readers). I’d hope that comment voting would make it easier to find smart, substantive comments in large threads, and reduce/discourage trolling and ad hominem comments, but it might not be much of an improvement for STB in practice.
It might be useful to put the STB code/configuration on GitHub (or wherever, but very, very preferably using git), so that anyone could contribute patches. I’ve never setup/used WordPress, and haven’t done much web development myself, so I couldn’t guarantee that I would anytime soon, but it’s my impression that there’s at least a few software developers around here, so opening up the code could be worthwhile.
“* Coming back to a discussion, there’s no easy what to find more recently posted comments, other than by scanning down through each subthread.”
And to show that we’re all different… I hate nested commenting systems with the fire of ten-thousand suns. (I have a long history on Citadel message boards and MetaFilter, both of which are flat — and I find it far more enjoyable to read.)
However, I think Ravelry (a knitting community) handles it best of all — it’s essentially a flat discussion, but you can still reply directly to a specific post. And when you come across the reply later, you can just click to see what message it was a reply to and the message appears. Very nicely done.
However, making that work on a WordPress site is a challenge, I imagine.
Your bullet point “Coming back to a discussion, there’s no easy what to find more recently posted comments, other than by scanning down through each subthread” is something I do agree with. But what makes it so difficult is that the conversation is nested. Remove the nesting, and you can easily just scroll down to where you left off.
The lack of editing doesn’t bother me. I’m used to systems that don’t have it.
Thanks for your reply. I’ve been thinking about online comment systems lately, so it’s useful to get a different perspective.
A few conjectures about nesting/flat comments:
1) It’s partly a matter of taste
2) Flat vs nested probably “shapes” online conversations. I took a quick look at metafilter, and it seemed like for each post, the threads were “shallower”. i.e., you had a lot of comments commenting on/replying directly to the post, a smaller number of comments replying to the replies, and a small number replying to the replies to replies. In a post with a little over 100 comments, I didn’t see any threads that went more than 3 levels deep. I took a look at a similarly sized Reddit post, and there were several subthreads that went 4,5,or 6 levels deep. I’m not sure that “shallower” or “deeper” conversations are always and everywhere objectively better. They may just be different, or one “shape” may work better for some topics, and the other “shape” is better for other topics.
Interestingly, the typical length of the Metafilter comments seemed to increase the further the thread went on, whereas the comment length vs time distribution on the Reddit post seemed less obvious (admittedly this is just a sample size of 1)
3) I don’t think flat scales to large numbers of comments as well as nested does. I might be willing to scan or read through 2 or 3 dozen comments to find ones that are interesting, but I don’t want to scan or read through 2 or 3 hundred comments. When the subthreads are visually nested on the screen, it provides an obvious marker for where each conversation or topic begins and ends, so I can say “this is boring/annoying, I’m going to skip down to the next subthread” or “this is interesting, I’m going to keep reading this subthread”.
I will grant that a flat structure does make it easy to find the newest posts.
Out of curiosity, when you’re reading a flat forum, do you usually start reading the oldest comments first, or the newest comments first?
I always read the oldest comments first.
I have a strong preference for nested comment threads. This probably stems from heavy use of USENET and internet mailing lists in my younger days.
I have to agree that threaded comment systems scale to large numbers of comments better than flat systems.
I’ve seen a few systems that try to offer the best of both worlds and let the user choose which view they wish to see, though those using the flat view often mess things up for the threaders by replying to the parent post and not the specific comment the content of their reply is referring to.
More parking in Seattle stats for anyone interested..
Current Global Averages:
Average Cost per Hour: $0.24
Total Cost for Parking: $38.67
Average Distance from Destination: 1.13 block(s)
Average Time spent Searching for Parking: 0.95 minute(s)
Total number of hours parked: 163.15 hours
Total number of recorded parkings: 109
Any article that quotes Pat Murakami in a social services context is not serious.
“Murakami says the city’s template for economic development in distressed neighborhoods such as Rainier Valley is based on “a ridiculous model” of poorly-constructed and poorly-maintained affordable housing, with ground floor retail but scant customer parking, compounded by too little emphasis on broader job creation”
OMGZ! Scant customer parking!
Someone forgot to mention to the people who built The Station (where I live) that they are supposed to have “scant customer parking” in this brave new model. The entire first floor of the garage is barred to tenants and open to customers (who currently have only one business other than the Station itself to patronize, although it’s a great business).
The only difference is that the parking is behind the business instead of in front of it. I don’t know why that causes people such conniptions, but it always does. It’s like if they can’t see a big ugly parking lot sitting in front of a store, there must not be any way to park for it, anywhere.
Then broadside and broadside and at it they went
For fully two hours or three,
Till Henry Martin gave to her the deathshot,
the deathshot, the deathshot,
And straight to the bottom went she.
-Joan Baez “Henry Martin
Bill has essential funded a working “Energy PC” where your home wastewater is turned into hydrogen for fuel cells!
Bill Gates Foundation toilet competition – winner makes hydrogen
http://www.h2journal.com/displaynews.php?NewsID=710
So the trend towards the “soft grid” continues…where the home can be a production unit…not just a receptacle for consumer goods. Powering transit at the garage.
Hyundai Poised To Launch Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicle This Year
http://www.hybridcars.com/news/hyundai-poised-launch-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicle-year-50083.html
What sort of “transit” will the leavings of a few medium mammals actually offer?
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/garbage-in-garbage-out/
So, not much at all (0.25%–on the high side–of the American oil appetite). Then multiply the infrastructure costs out over all the inefficient McMansions scattered hither and yon… plus all the coin Chinawards to manufacture it… yeah, this will totally bedpan out.
Now, in a dense environment, and in lieu of expensive trucking or piping of the waste 10s to 100s of miles, and to run a few lights so some percentage can be shaved off the utility bill, that’s probably sensible.
I think the point here is that the Hydronet can allow for all sorts of inputs and outputs. Hydrogen is to energy what tcp/ip is to the Internet.
The other point you raise has little to do with this discussion, however, and has been addressed on a number of previous threads. (Oh, if only people understood the glory of Usenet and nntp…)
Not really, John. *Electromagnetism* is to energy as TCP/IP is to the Internet.
Remember that. *Electromagnetism*.
For once Bailo and I agree. Hydrogen fuel cells for transportation will end in the same historical dustbin as Usenet.
I’m generally impressed by home waste “digesters” and other things of that sort.
I kind of wonder how this type of stuff could be integrated into a municipal sewage treatment system.
I keep wondering if Brightwater could install such a system or if they already have plans to do so.
Someone asked me if I would buy one of these.
It’s getting closer!
Hawaii Energy Confab: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Scooters Are Here
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/08/14/16860-hawaii-energy-confab-hydrogen-fuel-cell-scooters-are-here/
Hydrogen is, so far, a fossil fuel. Or generated from electricity.
No it wouldn’t and you have to choose between acres of solar panels or wait days to charge your scooter… in which time you could have just walked. Mmmm, if only there was a way to dole out billions in government subsidies to the walking industry???
I love how the “pirate ship” magically gained two passengers when it stopped moving.
I don’t know what SDOT paid for that ad, but it was too much.
It’s time to talk about merging King County Metro with Sound Transit.
Up until now I have always shrugged off discussions of transit agency mergers as a distraction that could end with a worse result. However, merging these two specific agencies will have enough benefit to be worth pursuing.
The How
Most transit agencies in the state, including Community Transit and Pierce Transit, are organized as Public Transportation Benefit Areas (PTBAs). King County Metro is unique in that it is directly managed as a part of county government. I propose a Public Transportation Conference for King County and the cities within, for the formation of a King County PTBA. The PTBA would have a 9-member board, three members appointed by the county and the remainder elected by the constituent cities. These nine members selected by local governing bodies would happen to be nine of the Sound Transit Board members currently representing King County. These nine politicians would do double duty as ST and King County PTBA board members. King County would sell/give its public transportation assets to the new PTBA. The PTBA would develop an interlocal agreement with Sound Transit to share staff, facilities and assets. Each would remain a separate legal entity, and would retain their own revenue sources. Kevin Desmond could remain as the head of the new ST Local Bus division. But to the public, they would be one agency, probably called Sound Transit.
The Why
As light rail expands over the next decade, conflict between Metro’s and ST’s sets of responsibilities will increase. King County Metro has no institutional incentive to coordinate with light rail; ST will be “poaching” riders from Metro’s most productive routes, such as to the U District, Northgate, First Hill. Unified agencies don’t think like this. In our peer regions of Portland and Vancouver, a single agency provides rail and local bus service within the central city and nearby suburbs, and is incentivized for efficient integration. A combination of Metro and ST would provide an equivalent scope of service around Seattle.
ST is not an operating agency; Metro operates most of Sound Transit’s service within King County including Link Light Rail. Combining the agencies’ staff and assets would allow the services to be provided directly by the agency that has political accountability for the service, i.e. the answer as to why service cannot be tweaked wouldn’t be “it’s not in our contract.”
And finally, PTBA board members, like ST board members, would seek appointment because they are interested in the agency’s success. County council members seek office for many reasons, but improving the transit system is not always one of them. With the PTBA structure, board members are structurally in favor of the agency’s efficiency and success.
For starters, merging Metro and ST would run into the state law that limits a transit agency’s sales tax revenue to a maximum of 0.9%. As separate agencies, Metro and ST can and do collect a total of 1.8%. Combined, they can only collect 0.9%, which means our funding for transit would suddenly be cut in half.
Clearly we need a third agency, if we’re ever going to get Metro out of the red. I propose Seattle’s own transit agency for another 0.9%.
PTBAs have the same 0.9% sales tax authority as King County metro. My proposal leaves Metro and ST as legally seperate entities, so each can continue with their current revenue streams.
Ben S. is proposing to re-activate the “City transporation agency” (created for the Monorail Authority), which State Law makes available additional revenue sources, such as an MVET.
Something like this needs to happen. I’ve seen very obvious cases where Metro and SoundTransit are working at cross purposes.
What is complicated is that SoundTransit is an agency charged with providing services to a region rather than just King County. Any combined operation would have to reassure the agency’s other constituents that they would not be short changed.
Now as I understand it, the Chicago area has something called the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) which is an umbrella agency that controls finances for 3 entities underneath it. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) that operates rail and transit in the city and some neighboring cities such as Evanston & Skokie, PACE Transit which operates bus service in suburban cities and 2 heavy rail systems (METRA & NICTD) that provide region wide commuter services including to 2 border states.
While the CTA operates a comprehensive network with a daily ridership of nearly 2 million, PACE offers connector services to train and CTA routes. It has to cover a very large geographic area and its ridership is about 90 thousand daily riders. METRA rail has about 260,000 daily riders. METRA is focused on commuters between downtown Chicago and the suburbs and not on commute patterns between major suburban cities.
I’ve gone into this detail because the RTA might provide an example on how we could model a future SoundTransit. But I also feel there are significant pitfalls to the RTA’s model. In this model, the city of Chicago has excellent transit coverage, but suburban cities, including some that are comparable in size to our Bellevue and Everett have meager bus service compared to what Metro and other transit systems provide us, and there is practically no service between suburban cities unless they lie on a path towards Chicago. Consequently, the 7+ million people who live outside of Chicago are living a car dependent life including taking the car to large car parks to take their train rides to downtown Chicago.
What we have here with Metro and Pierce and CT and Everett transit are services that provide good coverage of urban areas compared to greater ChicagoLand. I wouldn’t want any combined agency to short change those services and actually create more car dependent sprawl.
Combining organizations who don’t play nice together into the same organization rarely solves the underlying issues that cause them not to play well together. Just look at the MTA in New York. The subway, bus system, and commuter rail agencies (Metro North and LIRR) are at constant war with each other. For example Metro North wouldn’t let the LIRR use underutilized platforms in Grand Central Station forcing LIRR to build an expensive new underground station for the Eastside Access project.
In Chicago the agencies under the RTA blanket all pretty much hate each other due to constantly battling for the same limited funding. Metra, Pace, and the CTA have shockingly poor integration. I don’t think that’s all a matter of agency structure, but I’d think twice before considering theirs a good model.
In fact, the only successful transit agency mergers I’ve seen have been outright takeovers where the institutional culture of one is utterly destroyed in favor of the institutional culture of the other.
Both NY’s MTA and Chicagoland’s RTA are essentially failures; the MTA still operates as three separate agencies, and the RTA’s three separate agencies fight constantly.
In LA, Metrolink works, but there’s a very well-defined division of responsibility and money between the individiual munipicalities and the organization.
“Metro has no institutional incentive to coordinate with light rail; ST will be “poaching” riders from Metro’s most productive routes,”
Are you sure that’s not in your imagination? Metro knew all along it would be turning more and more trunk routes over to ST. The reason Metro’s record of turning itself into a feeder service is less than stellar is opposition by neighborhood activists and the council. But if Metro had no interest cooperating with Link, it wouldn’t have made the 8 the route from MLK to Capitol Hill, in spite of the chorus of protests that it doesn’t go to downtown, Little Saigon or even 23rd.
I don’t doubt that Metro transit planners know how to optimize the system. But Metro’s leadership structure doesn’t allow those plans to come to complete fruition. City Council members have other priorities than efficient and productive transit.
I’ve seen very obvious system behavior of non-cooperation including continuing to plan one seat rides, non-optimal siting of bus stops and transit centers by train stations, lack of frequency on those east/west routes that do cross Link’s path (such as my 39 bus) to make any viable connector service untenable. e.g. rather than provide 15 minute service to connect to link, you’ll get hourly or 40+ minute headways midday making it more efficient (time wise) to take that or north south bus downtown than to connect to the train.
Another annoyance is at Othello, the official stop is on the west side of MLK but most people want to go North so would prefer to be let out on the east side of MLK. But “officially”, drivers aren’t supposed to let you out there and you end up spending about 4-6 minutes of time to get back across MLK to your train platform. In that time, a train has likely come and gone and you end up waiting an additional 8 minutes for the next train. Just another way that time wise, it’s in Metro’s favor for you to take a one seat ride.
The westbound 39 at MLK issue is a safety problem, not an interagency turf problem. Westbound Othello at MLK is a very dangerous location for a nearside stop because of the extremely high volume of traffic turning right from westbound Othello onto northbound MLK.
The best solution would be to move the stop at farside 42nd to farside 43rd (the opposite end of the block we’re discussing). There wouldn’t be much if any downside, because almost no one is using that 42nd stop today.
And where I say 42nd, I mean 44th. Move the stop on westbound Othello farside 44th to farside 43rd.
David L, how is this a “safety” issue? if a bus is stopped on Othello at MLK, there are no right turns happening until the bus clears the intersection. There maybe cars that want to turn right that will have to wait until the bus moves but boo hoo. If you mean that people will cross the street “illegally” then that is not Metro’s issue. Once the passenger has safely left the bus, where they go after that is their responsibility. How is this any different than the bus zone for the #8 bus that is on the very same corner?
The problem at nearside stops is that cars, assuming the bus is stopped whether or not it actually is, suddenly turn right in front of the bus from the left lane. To make matters worse, when they execute that maneuver, they can’t see crossing pedestrians (of which there are many at that intersection, because of Link). That is why all but a few of the stops in the Metro system are farside; farside stops have a far lower accident rate.
The 8 zone is a farside zone so it’s not affected by that problem.
Actually, now that I think about it, an even better solution would be to have the 39 turn right onto MLK and just stop at the same stop as the northbound 8. It could then use the same turnback as it does now, but in the opposite direction. There is space for a layover southbound along 38th Ave S.
Charles:
– One-seat rides. All of these are legacy; there are no new one-seat rides that compete with Link. Metro is going slow reorganizing these because it’s gotten its hand slapped so many times. Yes, more forward-thinking Metro management would help.
– Non-optimal siting of bus stops. The only case of this I know of is the Mt Baker Transit Center. Blame for this resides in several quarters, and there is a movement stirring to move the TC.
– Infrequent buses for transfers. This is due to Metro’s extremely tight budget; there’s no money to provide the frequency Metro knows is needed. Eliminating all one-seat rides would fill only part of the gap, and it’s not politically possible to do it anyway. Let the public get used to the September changes, and gradually warm up to more significant restructuring. There’s a Queen Anne battle coming up next year.
I can’t imagine a car trying to go around a bus at that intersection. I would clearly be illegal. Further, the pedestrians would only likely be crossing the road on a walk sign in which right turning cars would still have to yield.
But I like your solution about having the 39 (soon to be 50) turn right onto MLK.
If you can’t imagine that, you haven’t spent a lot of time driving a bus.
It’s a chronic, major problem. People’s natural reaction to a stopped bus is to go around it, legal or not. I would say it happened to me about every other time I used a nearside stop. Usually you could see it coming, but sometimes they do it suddenly without a signal, and you just have to hope you can react in time to stop without hitting the turning car and without knocking over any passengers.
And, yes, in theory the illegally turning cars have to yield to peds. But they can’t see them around the bus until the last second, and the sort of driver who doesn’t anticipate a bus moving also doesn’t anticipate unexpected peds very well.
Nearside stops are a disaster, unless they’re nearside a one-way street going to the left from the perspective of the approaching traffic.
I’m amazed that people would make a right turn from the left hand lane; clearly illegal and stupid… but, I see people passing on double yellow lines all the time. My beef with far side stops in on 148th in Overlake. Most of the stops southbound have no right turn unless maybe it’s a driveway to an apartment complex. It never fails during rush hour that a bus stops and waits at a light to proceed 100′ and stop on the far side of the intersection blocking all traffic behind. This does create a hazard as frustrated drivers dive for non-existent gaps in traffic to avoid having to wait through an additional light cycle.
Bernie, that behavior behind the bus is six of one, half-dozen of the other. At a nearside stop, if the light is green, then drivers will also be diving around the bus that’s stopped at a green light… and the light is likely to turn red while the bus is stopped, further delaying both the bus and the drivers behind it.
On the other hand, farside stops make a huge difference in keeping things safer in front of the bus.
If you stop near side there is a chance that you completely eliminate the time taken for a loading cycle. If the light turns red while the bus is parked at a far side stop it has no benefit to the bus schedule but has essentially caused a double red cycle for all drivers behind. As for safety in front of the bus I’d think a crosswalk with cars only turning left would be safer than the race to dive for the “open lane” created by the bus running interference. Also if there is a driveway a driver coming out of a parking lot might try to “beat the bus” knowing that otherwise they’re going to have to try and nose out into rush hour traffic. Although I’m don’t see why anyone would be in front of the bus except to load a bike where again the safest place to be would be the crosswalk. Another factor is it’s much easier for drivers to merge left and get around the bus toward the end of a light cycle as they have more time to react, traffic is generally not as tightly packed and speeds are more equal.
The most dangerous place to be a ped/cyclist in front of a bus is at an intersection (as with a nearside stop), because of the people trying to make sharp right turns in front of a bus. Lines on the road (crosswalk) don’t matter one bit for those drivers.
When the front of the bus is not at an intersection (farside stop), people merge in front of the stopped bus to continue straight, not to make a sharp right turn. That merge leaves more than enough space to protect a cyclist loading or unloading in front of a bus. And as you point out, at a farside stop, peds are much less likely to walk in front of the bus. Since they can’t see around the bus, that’s an unmitigated good thing.
An example… back in the day, I had a chronic problem with passengers running in front without looking at all at the northbound nearside stop at 10th and Galer on what is now the 49, to try to secure a spot at the St. Mark’s women’s shelter. I witnessed so many near accidents that I took to stopping farside on certain trips despite the marked location of the bus stop. That caused a lot of grousing, but dramatically improved safety; the same passengers would then run behind the bus where they could see oncoming cars before dashing across.
As for delays… again, six of one, half-dozen of the other. If the light is green more often, the bus does better at a farside stop on average. If it’s red more often, it does better at a nearside stop. Cars behind the bus may be delayed slightly more by farside stops, but, frankly, that’s far less important than safety, and farside stops are much, much safer.
But in the case of 148th southbound through Overlake there is no right turn from Old Redmond Road all the way up to NE 40th. Yet they are still all far side stops; you can only turn east toward 520. Driving in the big city is different but even at intersections that have right turns I don’t see crappy Bellevue drivers pulling right turns from the left hand lane. Lots of stupid things they will do but that’s not one of them.
If there are no right turns, that partly ameliorates the nearside stops, but only partly — there is still the problem of deboarding passengers dashing in front of the bus, which doesn’t happen nearly as much at farside stops.
But, again, drive a bus (or even watch carefully as you’re riding whenever there’s a nearside stop) and you’ll quickly see the problem.
People don’t turn right out of the left lane randomly, but they do–extremely often–when there’s a bus at a nearside stop. In their minds, they’re just passing the bus and then turning right. They don’t even realize how unpredictable they are or what a safety problem they create for the bus driver.
Nearside stops are perfectly safe on roads with one traffic lane each direction and bus bulbs (so that drivers can’t try to pass in the parking lane).
Car drivers are not crazy enough to pull into the wrong-direction lane to pass the bus.
OF course, you’ve got all those unnecessarily wide multi-lane streets in Seattle, so never mind.
That’s what you’d think… until you’ve driven the 71/72/73 and stopped at the nearside stops both directions on University Way and 43rd Street.
Granted, it happens a lot less often, but it’s still frequent enough to be very surprising.
And it has nothing to do with the other big problem of nearside stops — the tendency of passengers to dash out in front of the bus. People don’t pass and go right that often on two-lane streets, but they pass and go straight ALL THE TIME. The double line might as well not be there.
” King County Metro has no institutional incentive to coordinate with light rail … ”
I think this is a good thing. It’s like having two companies competing in the free market. Metro shouldn’t be mandated to make choices like this…the choices should be make because of ST doing good design so that the correct choice is obvious.
umm, free market? In this case, it’s a waste of duplicative service that doesn’t serve the public as well.
Two taxpayer-funded entities “competing”? That’s not a waste of tax dollars? Taxpayer-funded entities should be coordinating with each other, not duplicating each other over the most lucrative routes and leaving less-travelled areas with hourly or no transit.
Competition is wasteful and sometimes disastrous in transportation. Look at the mess it made out of the British railway network, a mess which has never been satisfactorally cleaned up.
Transportation has natural monopolies. There’s a reason there are only two freight railroads west of the Mississippi — and there would be only one except for government anti-trust regulators being embarassed to allow there to be NO competition.
Just for all you photographers out there – do any of you postprocess your transit pictures in Photoshop, Lightroom, Nik, etc. – or is it just me?
Examples: http://www.flickr.com/groups/2033468@N21/pool/
I just figure marketing transit should mean marketing transit.
Very minimally. Most of the time not at all.
I wonder why… really like what you come up with though.
In any event, plz keep the pictures coming.
I’m lazy.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/gao-praises-brt
Several weeks ago the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a positive study of U.S. based Bus-Rapid-Transit (BRT) systems. Thirteen of the 15 projects that provided study data reported increases in ridership over the most recent service year. When BRT replaced another transit service, it decreased travel time between 10-35 percent. While total ridership varied, the M15 BRT line in New York City carried more than 55,000 daily riders. Its ridership was greater than many light-rail lines as well as that of several light-rail systems.
Often metro areas must choose between light-rail service and BRT. This GAO report confirms that BRT has many advantages. One of the advantages is that BRT is much cheaper to build and operate. For the cost of constructing 2 or 3 light rail lines, a city could build an entire BRT network. With the exception of places such as New York City, Washington D.C., or Chicago there are few corridors where rail is a better choice than BRT.
New rail lines provide sexier ribbon cutting opportunities than new bus lines. These photo opportunities are very beneficial to politicians. Transportation engineers, planners and policy makers need to encourage politicians to focus on solving transportation problems and not photo opportunities and ribbon cutting ceremonies.
GAO has released several studies critical of rail. When a former skeptic such as GAO offers such a glowing report, it shows the success of BRT. Far more metro areas should invest in this cost-effective and efficient technology.
We all know that BRT, when done right, is a great improvement over local bus service. If you were to offer building an entire BRT network of completely off board-payment, 100% dedicated ROW + grade separation in the busiest areas, level-boarding BRT for 1/3rd the cost of an equivalent light rail network, I’m sure the vast majority of people would take you up on that offer. However, the simple fact of the matter is that with those features you CAN’T build significantly cheaper than light rail.
It is the very things that cause a system to be efficient that also cost money. You can’t have it both ways… either you sacrifice performance (maybe this neighborhood doesn’t want to remove on street parking so there will be no ROW here… we still want to accept cash so we don’t require off board payments etc… etc…) , or your pay a lot of money for fast service. There is no “magic bullet”.
Exactly. If you make BRT good enough to get the ridership of rail… it’s MORE EXPENSIVE than rail.
Now, better buses are a good thing. The stop-every-block, get-caught-in-traffic local buses need to be replaced by something more like LA’s Metro Rapid, but with bus lanes.
But they are no substitute for rail. They are a substitute for poky local buses.
The fallacy is that light rail has the ridership to justify it’s construction. The truth is buses can in most markets easily meet the actual demand for far less money. The light rail answer is to build uber expensive parking garages and give away that commodity to drivers for free and keep it off the books of light rail operating costs. Of course capital costs are “free” since it’s a hundred year system. Except those pesky parking garages that are being built when peak oil will spell the extinction of cars in just a few more years… go figure.
A few bits from the report:
“However, few BRT project sponsors reported the use of dedicated or semi-dedicated running ways for at least 30 percent of the route”
“Los Angeles city officials explained that only 80 percent of the Wilshire Metro Rapid route within the city limits will have bus-only lanes during weekday peak hours because some neighborhoods resisted bus-only lanes and were unwilling to give up a travel lane on such a congested street.”
“Officials in Eugene told us that the Franklin Avenue EmX was originally intended to run on a dedicated running way for 90 percent of its route. However, in part due to the public input process, which raised concerns over loss of parking and business access, the agency reduced the dedicated portion of the route to 50 percent.”
This is the problem with “BRT”. Converting general purpose lanes or street parking to a transit-only lane is politically difficult. If the “BRT” doesn’t at least get it’s own right-of-way in congested areas, it’s just a slightly fancier bus.
Incidentally, for the same reason, I’m wary of the implementation of the “Rapid Streetcar” concept that the city seems so enamored with in the Transit Master Plan.
The definition of “rapid streetcar” used by the TMP is vague enough that it’s easy to imagine them laying some rail in the street, giving the streetcar signal preemption and its own lane in less busy areas, while leaving it stuck in mixed traffic in congested areas b/c someone complained about loss of street parking or general purpose lanes, and still excitedly showcasing it as the city’s shiny new “rapid” streetcar system.
BRT is often touted for its flexibility and scalability. The flip site of those is dilutability.
PhillipG, let me offer some defense of the Rapid Streetcar idea.
But first of all let me say that in a lot of these corridors (Ballard-DT, Ballard-UW, DT-West Seattle, etc) Rapid Streetcar simply is the wrong choice. Those areas have enough demand (especially the two Ballard ones) and physical cconstraints that either going over or under is the only real solution.
That said, I think what the ‘Rapid Streetcar’ is is a way for the city to study, ah… let’s call it ‘Traditional American Light Rail.’ Some exclusive ROW, some shared, only one or two cars, not real frequent, etc. But b/c the State says only Sound Transit can build High Capacity Transit, and b/c at the moment Sound Transit still calls Link ‘Light Rail’ (even though it has more in common with a Subway than any other American Light Rail system), the city was bared from doing so. So they basically just created their own name to fit what they were going for.
The SMP scopes out a potential rapid-streetcar for downtown-Westlake-Ballard, downtown-Eastlake-UDistrict and rapid-trolley for Madison. It does not go to that level for downtown-Interbay-Ballard or dowtown-West Seattle; it merely says “some high-capacity transit is desired”. That leaves room for ST to implement those corridors with a subway before Seattle makes an incompatible decision on them. It’s more likely that Seattle will spend the next five-ish years pursuing the corridors it has chosen (Westlake, Eastlake, Madison, CC1 or CC2) before going on to the other corridors. By that time there will be more clarity whether ST will pursue them, and the SMP will be due for an update anyway.
@Matt Johnson
I think there’s a place for “Rapid Steetcar” and/or BRT in Seattle, for corridors that need more than standard bus service, but are unlikely to need or get a subway line in the ST3 timeframe. Done right, “Rapid Steetcar” could be fantastic for the city. As Mike Orr points out, the Seattle Transit Master Plan designates the Roosevelt-U District-SLU-Downtown and Loyal Heights-Ballard-Fremont-SLU-Downtown corridors for future “rapid streetcar” planning. The accompanying diagrams for both corridors say that for significant segments “rail could oper-
ate in mixed traffic or a dedicated lane”. For some segments, like the University and Fremont bridges, it explicitly says the streetcar will operate in mixed traffic.
My concern is that in too many instances, when anyone complains about losing street parking or a general purpose lane, “rail could operate in mixed traffic or a dedicated lane” will turn into “rail will operate in mixed traffic” and we’ll be left with a streetcar that’s nicer than a bus, but not that much faster, and not as much of a draw for new choice riders as it would be with more right-of-way.
I think it’s politically possible to create “Rapid Streetcar” in Seattle with maximal right-of-way for much of the corridors, but it’ll require pressing future mayor & councilmembers to commit their political capital to it while standing up to the “War on Cars” meme.
It’s obvious that BRT can provide a service of similar quality to light rail (although with somewhat lower maximum capacity) and that BRT can provide a service that is cheaper than light rail. It is not at all clear whether BRT can provide an equivalent quality service at lower cost.
As Jarrett Walker says, one should decide what quality of service is necessary first, before choosing a technology.
What gives BRT a bad name among transit advocates, beyond “bus stigma,” is the fair-weather BRT advocates who abruptly appear anytime a new rail proposal comes up. The same people who, perhaps six months earlier argued and voted against upgrading our existing bus system with BRT features will proclaim that we shouldn’t invest in rail because BRT is cheaper.
When North Link is completed, Sound Transit is promising 8 minute rides from Downtown to UW, and 13 minute rides from Downtown to Northgate. That quality of service is impossible without a tunnel under Capitol Hill. Whether that tunnel will carry buses or trains is a small part of the equation.
In short, I want 13 minute rides from Northgate to Downtown, and I’m not too picky about which type of vehicle takes me there. I would love to see more BRT in the Seattle area, and I would especially like to see more BRT proposals in between subway/light rail projects. I would also like to see upgrades to our existing/planned BRT system. Is that fair?
The poor quality of our roads make bus service of any type inherently inferior to rail.
That was part of my point: if you’re actually investing in high quality service, you need dedicated ROW.
The decision to buy/construct dedicated ROW is much more important (and costly) than the decision between buses and trains.
It’s also the lack of space for surface ROW. There’s no way N 45th or 40th will ever be widened; it would displace the bulk of businesses and get into hillside complications. Likewise, the Ship Canal bridges can’t be widened without replacing the bridges. So there’s no place to build ROW except underground or with new bridges. Either of these would cost a pretty penny for either BRT or rail. If we’re going to the expense of building ROW, we might as well make it rail.
“It’s obvious that BRT can provide a service of similar quality to light rail (although with somewhat lower maximum capacity) and that BRT can provide a service that is cheaper than light rail. It is not at all clear whether BRT can provide an equivalent quality service at lower cost.”
It’s actually quite clear that it can’t. There are examples from all over the world — whenever it’s tried, you either get lower quality service or a more expensive service.
“The decision to buy/construct dedicated ROW is much more important (and costly) than the decision between buses and trains.”
Yes.
And if you’re building dedicated ROW, it’s more cost-effective to use trains. Because they stay on tracks, the necessary ROW is narrower. Because they stay on tracks, they can carry more people per vehicle and run more vehicles per hour. Because they stay on tracks, they are more energy efficient. Because they stay on tracks, they have lower maintenance costs. Because they have many axles per vehicle, the tracks have lower maintenance costs than the asphalt/concrete roadway would. Because they stay on tracks, they have a more comfortable ride and attract more passengers. Because they stay on tracks, they can accelerate faster, decelerate faster, and go at higher top speeds.
…et cetera.
Reminds me of Tootle.
None of this nonsense has any “laws of physics” to back it up. Build rail “just because”… it’s more expensive? has greater panache, Obama thinks it’s cool?
“The poor quality of our roads make bus service of any type inherently inferior to rail.”
Those bad roads are why I am taking delivery on an 5,900-pound pickup truck next week. I’m sick of my smaller vehicle being beaten up on the streets here. If Seattle won’t maintain the pavement, then I’m getting a heavy-duty vehicle. Bicyclists? Watch out for the potholes. They’ll kill you before I do.
Is there any possibility of the STB comment system being improved? I know there was some discussion of this a while ago, and IIRC, STB (very briefly) switched to discus.
Right now I’d say there are 2 main problems, and one lesser one. These aren’t big issues in posts with only a small number of comments, but especially when posts approach 100 or more comments, a few things make reading/replying a pain:
* Comments can’t nest very deeply. It’s annoying to follow/reply within threads that flatten out past the maximum depth
* Comments can’t be edited. There’s no way to fix grammar/spelling/missed tags, or add in something you forgot w/o creating a new comment
* Coming back to a discussion, there’s no easy what to find more recently posted comments, other than by scanning down through each subthread.
Generally, I like comment systems with these features:
* Allow arbitrarily nested comments (or at least several levels deeper than now)
* Allow editing posted comments
* Allow sorting comments by time posted
* Have upvotes and downvotes, and allow sorting by score
* Have a default, and per-user configurable comment score threshold, below which sufficiently downvoted comments are hidden
* Allow pseudonyms- don’t require tying the STB user account to google/facebook/twitter/whatever (but possibly allow linking, or allow people to include personal URL/blog/social media info)
* To the small extent possible with pseudonyms, weed out sock-puppeting
FWIW, I think Reddit has the best comment system of any site I regularly use, although it’s obviously used differently than STB. I believe all their site code is open source, but I don’t know how easy it is to reuse. I can’t recall ever seeing another site that claimed to be based on the Reddit code. I’m not sure how well voting on comments would work with STB’s commenting patterns (my impression is that a relatively small number of people account for a disproportionately large percentage of the comments, a somewhat larger number of people comment moderately to occasionally, and there’s probably a larger number of lurkers/occasional readers). I’d hope that comment voting would make it easier to find smart, substantive comments in large threads, and reduce/discourage trolling and ad hominem comments, but it might not be much of an improvement for STB in practice.
It might be useful to put the STB code/configuration on GitHub (or wherever, but very, very preferably using git), so that anyone could contribute patches. I’ve never setup/used WordPress, and haven’t done much web development myself, so I couldn’t guarantee that I would anytime soon, but it’s my impression that there’s at least a few software developers around here, so opening up the code could be worthwhile.
“* Coming back to a discussion, there’s no easy what to find more recently posted comments, other than by scanning down through each subthread.”
There’s no direct link to it, but this RSS feed works: https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/comments/feed/
Good point. Thanks!
And to show that we’re all different… I hate nested commenting systems with the fire of ten-thousand suns. (I have a long history on Citadel message boards and MetaFilter, both of which are flat — and I find it far more enjoyable to read.)
However, I think Ravelry (a knitting community) handles it best of all — it’s essentially a flat discussion, but you can still reply directly to a specific post. And when you come across the reply later, you can just click to see what message it was a reply to and the message appears. Very nicely done.
However, making that work on a WordPress site is a challenge, I imagine.
Your bullet point “Coming back to a discussion, there’s no easy what to find more recently posted comments, other than by scanning down through each subthread” is something I do agree with. But what makes it so difficult is that the conversation is nested. Remove the nesting, and you can easily just scroll down to where you left off.
The lack of editing doesn’t bother me. I’m used to systems that don’t have it.
Thanks for your reply. I’ve been thinking about online comment systems lately, so it’s useful to get a different perspective.
A few conjectures about nesting/flat comments:
1) It’s partly a matter of taste
2) Flat vs nested probably “shapes” online conversations. I took a quick look at metafilter, and it seemed like for each post, the threads were “shallower”. i.e., you had a lot of comments commenting on/replying directly to the post, a smaller number of comments replying to the replies, and a small number replying to the replies to replies. In a post with a little over 100 comments, I didn’t see any threads that went more than 3 levels deep. I took a look at a similarly sized Reddit post, and there were several subthreads that went 4,5,or 6 levels deep. I’m not sure that “shallower” or “deeper” conversations are always and everywhere objectively better. They may just be different, or one “shape” may work better for some topics, and the other “shape” is better for other topics.
Interestingly, the typical length of the Metafilter comments seemed to increase the further the thread went on, whereas the comment length vs time distribution on the Reddit post seemed less obvious (admittedly this is just a sample size of 1)
3) I don’t think flat scales to large numbers of comments as well as nested does. I might be willing to scan or read through 2 or 3 dozen comments to find ones that are interesting, but I don’t want to scan or read through 2 or 3 hundred comments. When the subthreads are visually nested on the screen, it provides an obvious marker for where each conversation or topic begins and ends, so I can say “this is boring/annoying, I’m going to skip down to the next subthread” or “this is interesting, I’m going to keep reading this subthread”.
I will grant that a flat structure does make it easy to find the newest posts.
Out of curiosity, when you’re reading a flat forum, do you usually start reading the oldest comments first, or the newest comments first?
I always read the oldest comments first.
I have a strong preference for nested comment threads. This probably stems from heavy use of USENET and internet mailing lists in my younger days.
I have to agree that threaded comment systems scale to large numbers of comments better than flat systems.
I’ve seen a few systems that try to offer the best of both worlds and let the user choose which view they wish to see, though those using the flat view often mess things up for the threaders by replying to the parent post and not the specific comment the content of their reply is referring to.
More parking in Seattle stats for anyone interested..
Current Global Averages:
Average Cost per Hour: $0.24
Total Cost for Parking: $38.67
Average Distance from Destination: 1.13 block(s)
Average Time spent Searching for Parking: 0.95 minute(s)
Total number of hours parked: 163.15 hours
Total number of recorded parkings: 109
Interesting article on potential fraud at SEED and the failure of the Claremont TOD project.
http://socialcapitalreview.org/city-of-seattle-funded-501c3-seed-under-microscope/
Any article that quotes Pat Murakami in a social services context is not serious.
“Murakami says the city’s template for economic development in distressed neighborhoods such as Rainier Valley is based on “a ridiculous model” of poorly-constructed and poorly-maintained affordable housing, with ground floor retail but scant customer parking, compounded by too little emphasis on broader job creation”
OMGZ! Scant customer parking!
Someone forgot to mention to the people who built The Station (where I live) that they are supposed to have “scant customer parking” in this brave new model. The entire first floor of the garage is barred to tenants and open to customers (who currently have only one business other than the Station itself to patronize, although it’s a great business).
The only difference is that the parking is behind the business instead of in front of it. I don’t know why that causes people such conniptions, but it always does. It’s like if they can’t see a big ugly parking lot sitting in front of a store, there must not be any way to park for it, anywhere.
CTA BRT “experiment” is said to not be so rapid:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/ct-met-getting-around-0820-20120820,0,2799509.column
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