Month: August 2012

The say the “good part” begins at 32:41.

We’ll be undergoing some site maintenance tomorrow to improve STB’s performance and reliability.  We’ll do our best to minimize the disruption, but we may lose some comments that are posted on Sunday during the downtime window.  Thanks for your patience.

Metro is beginning the RapidRide E Line roleout and is looking for citizens to help guide service change recommendations. While the E Line route and stops have been decided, no other service changes in the area have yet been discussed by Metro. In my experience improved East-West travel will likely be the major issue.

As always we strongly encourage STB readers to apply for these types of boards as it’s always easier to realize change when you’re involved early rather than late. We like to think that our readers are experienced, frequent riders that understand the fundamentals of how to design a more frequent and faster transit system.

Are you a bus rider that regularly rides routes in Shoreline or North Seattle?

King County Metro Transit is forming a community sounding board to give us advice about changes to bus service in these areas. We’re looking for a diverse group of members to help us develop service change recommendations for fall 2013. The sounding board will meet 9 to 12 times, from September 2012 to March 2013. Sounding board meetings mostly will be scheduled on Thursday evenings unless a scheduling conflict occurs.

Interested in applying? Fill out our online application by Monday, Sept. 3.

Why change bus service? Starting fall 2013, the Aurora Avenue N corridor will be served by RapidRide E Line between Aurora Village Transit Center to downtown Seattle. The E Line will provide a backbone of new, frequent transit service that other routes in the area can connect to and complement. Working with the sounding board, we’ll be considering changes to improve:

• connections to the E Line
• bus service in the neighborhoods surrounding Aurora Avenue N
• connections between transit activity centers such as Fremont, Wallingford, Greenwood, Greenlake, Northgate and Shoreline

If you’d like us to mail you a printed application, or have questions about the sounding board, please contact: Ashley DeForest, Community Relations Planner at ashley.deforest@kingcounty.gov or via phone at  206-684-1154.

Two major, long-running Seattle road construction projects will wrap up next week: the Spokane Street Viaduct widening project, and the widening and conversion to two-way operation of Mercer Street as part of the Mercer Corridor Project. Each of these has consequences for transit riders.

Mercer Two-Way Conversion

On Monday, Mercer St will reopen to two-way traffic (east of 1st Ave N) for the first time since 1968; read this Times article for details, and the (scary) 1968 Times article discussing the elevated Bay Freeway as a “solution” to the problem. Upon completion of that work, SDOT’s contractors will pivot to the reconstruction of Fairview Ave N. The work on Fairview will entail severe traffic restrictions, so all transit service which typically uses Fairview will instead operate on Eastlake, as shown on the map above.

Metro’s Eastlake/Fairview reroute began last night at 11 PM, and per SDOT’s timeline, continues through “early 2013”. While Eastlake’s coverage of South Lake Union isn’t as good as Fairview, I doubt this detour will be much slower, and it might be faster than Fairview’s current configuration, once you’ve hiked up there. In addition, this weekend’s final work for the two-way conversion will require the shutdown of the South Lake Union streetcar until Monday morning.

Metro’s Fairview routes are 70, 71, 72, 73, 83 (night owl) and 309, but note that only the local 71, 72, and 73, which operate in the evening and on Sundays, run on Fairvew; the Monday-Saturday daytime U-District expresses are not affected, nor the 25, 66 or (after this weekend) South Lake Union Streetcar. As far as I can tell from the SDOT site, 9th Ave should reopen on Monday, and Metro’s map shows the 17 returning to its normal alignment southbound on 9th, but Metro’s Alerts Center suggests the current reroute on Westlake continues until late September, so I guess we’ll find out which is right on Monday.

More after the jump. Continue reading “Eastlake/Fairview and Spokane Viaduct Routing Changes”

Transportation for America has recently published the most comprehensive document on transit project funding I’ve ever read (warning, large PDF file). It’s extremely wonky, with explanations for a myriad of different financial instruments and federal grants, information on the pros and cons of different local revenue sources (sales taxes, user fees, property taxes, etc.), and data for how ballot measures pass with each combination. There’s also a few really interesting examples from projects whose funding has been secured over the past few years.

I won’t try to sum up an 80 page report like this in a short blog post, but I would like to point to a few things that really jumped out at me. For one, the funding sources that are least popular with voters are car license fees and sales taxes, which happen to be precisely the funding sources that have been available to transit projects around the Puget Sound area. On the other, the most popular mechanisms – fuel taxes and income taxes – are completely disallowed here. Also, Denver is paying for a remodel to their Union Station partially with tax-increment financing and the DC area is paying for part of its Dulles Metro line with roads tolls and a special tax district, so creative financing really is possible: you don’t have to build a whole bus and rail system on sales tax alone.

With the federal government in an austerity mood, it’s going to be ever more important for local agencies to come up with creative ways to fund transit projects. It’s an interesting report, and this is good background for those eventual conversations.

The Seattle City Council recently passed regulatory reforms to ease restrictions on land use to create jobs. I was an enthusiastic supporter, erroneously credited with being “in charge of the secret negotiations to bring forth the proposals.” I’m thankful to all the people who actually did work to get it passed. But, unfortunately, the measures to relax requirements under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) are almost canceled out by State mandated growth targets and new requirements for parking in areas exempted from SEPA.

The intention of SEPA when it was passed in 1971 was to disclose and mitigate environmental impacts from new development. The State stepped in because local governments were allowing projects to go forward without enough review. The new legislation was intended to be stronger than local laws. However, over the years, local ordinances passed by local governments afforded equal or better protection than SEPA. In many cases all that was left was a redundant and time-consuming SEPA process. The regulatory reform package was intended to eliminate that redundancy, saving time, money, and creating jobs.

That was the plan. But a closer look reveals that the package may have been two steps forward, a press conference, and then a step and a half backward. The plan was always touted as being a rather modest relaxation of rules and regulations, but it may be even more modest than previously thought.

More below the jump. Continue reading “The Seattle Problem: Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back”

• Mitt Romney promises to end Amtrak funding, singling out passenger rail as uniquely unworthy of subsidy.
• Zach’s a TV star.
• Bike ownership and usage in Seattle.
• Yesler Terrace redevelopment moves along.
• Port approves Eastside rail corridor sale.
• Seattle is starting to plan the Rainier Station area, a space I wrote about a few months ago.
• Pierce Transit and ATU reach agreement; no raises for three years.
• New 40-story tower downtown.
• The history of Union Station.
• Rob McKenna calls light rail a “regional issue” that he won’t be involved with. Of course, any additional taxing authority for ST3 would have to cross his desk.
• Reprehensible movement equates transit fares with Jim Crow segregation.

This is an open thread.

By 2015, transit riders will be benefiting from real time information for Link, improved rider alerts and station signage, expanded fare payment options, and an improved multimodal Trip Planner, among other new technology improvements. The Sound Transit Board last month approved Phase 1 of the ST2 Research and Technology program with a budget of $9 million.

Plans for Phase 1 are described in the Strategic Plan for Transit Rider Technology. I was overwhelmed with excitement when I first read though the plan, thinking it was new news but actually, this has been part of Sound Transit 2 all along.

An important feature of the plan is embracement of user-centered design principles at an institutional level. Hopefully, that will result in services and products that are easy to understand and use.

Other than the list of projects, summarized after the jump, the plan includes a “Transit Rider Technology Needs Assessment”, a compilation of what key people at Sound Transit and King County Metro think transit riders (and the agencies) need in terms of technology. I am glad that many of them agree that there is plenty of room for improvement and have suggested ideas similar to those presented on this blog.

Continue reading “Link Real Time Info and Other Rider Tools in the Works”

[UPDATE: As commenter bellevueguru points out, this subject is on the agenda at Thursday’s board meeting. If you’re living a life of leisure, it’d be a good idea to show up and comment in person.]

Sound Transit is trying to do the right thing and have dense uses put up right above the University District Station. Naturally, some vocal people want “open space” instead:

The U District Station site — south of the Neptune Theatre on Brooklyn Avenue Northeast between about Northeast 43rd and 45th streets — is uniquely located for a public square, says Philip Thiel, a UW professor emeritus of architecture.

His model shows a brick piazza three-quarters of a block long, with a new east-west pedestrian walkway connecting the station stop to University Way Northeast…

Former Seattle City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck is assisting Thiel. They say the transit-friendly high-rises ought to go on other lots nearby.

“With density you need open space, green space, you need vitality and life, surface activity,” Steinbrueck said.

The 46th District Democrats passed a resolution asking Sound Transit to give Thiel’s plaza a fair hearing…

I imagine that both Peter Steinbruck and I both self-identify as advocates for sustainability, transit, and perhaps even urbanism. But I continue to be amazed at how deeply I disagree with his instincts about what cities are.

I agree that parks and open space are an important part of urban living, particularly when activated with year-round activity generators like small-scale commerce and playgrounds. What I haven’t seen is any statement of how much is enough. A city can certainly have too many parks and public squares, when they start to dramatically affect the number of people and businesses that can locate near transit, and increase the distances between the necessities of life. And nowhere is it more costly – in the broadest sense – to put a park or square then directly on top of one of a handful of subway stations this region is building.

Moreover, I feel deep skepticism about a public square in this particular location. Red Square is mere blocks away and as often used as a public space, albeit with some constraints potentially placed by the University. Moreover, the key determinant of a public square’s success is not its size, but what surrounds it. The U District is better at putting retail and cafes on the sidewalk than most places, but Seattle’s track record on activating open space is not good.

Lastly, I have no idea what’s in the heart of the people quoted in the article, or anyone else, but my sense is that a call for a park is often just an astute way of objecting to density. After all, parks seem green, and by replacing a potential apartment building with a park, neighbors remove the traffic, parking, criminal element, or whatever other hassles they fear the density might bring. Of course, that perspective also ignores the potential benefits to local small businesses and their customers, the sunk cost of high-capacity infrastructure, broad impacts on sprawl and affordability, and the interests of residents who would have lived in the new building. But that’s just another day in Seattle politics.

Anyhow, it always pays to let whichever Sound Transit Board members count you as a constituent know what you think about this issue.