This weekend, I read an interesting guest post at Human Transit, discussing a project to reform the pricing and regulation of street parking in Auckland’s city center, and as articles about what’s going on in the rest of the world often do, it gave me a familiar feeling: that of watching other cities do smarter things than Seattle. Briefly, the outcome of Auckland’s reform is as follows: all street parking time limits are abolished; all parking is charged in one of three simple (color coded) price brackets, based on demand; all parking is free for the first 15 minutes.
Contrast this with Seattle’s city center (say from Denny to Jackson, waterfront to Boren), where in addition to five different meter rates, there are time limits from two to ten hours, and differing policies on evening parking; but, most of this doesn’t apply on Sunday, when parking is free everywhere and has no time limits (except on the waterfront). This is before we get into the different types of loading zone (30 minute commercial/non-commercial, 15 minute charter/shuttle bus, three minute passenger load, one minute (!) passenger load to name a few) or any of the myriad other ways the city tries to slice up the curb.
More after the jump.
I’ve lived in the city center since moving to Seattle, and the reality, in my observation, is that virtually no-one cares about these fine gradations of what is or is not permitted, and instead operates under a de facto Auckland-style regime wherein any active loading or quick dash into an adjacent business is hoped to be permitted (and free) in any place where stopping is not completely forbidden by menacing red signs or paint, and stays beyond the posted length are dealt with by periodically feeding the meter. People seldom care about the meter rate, as the prospect of trying to find another spot outweighs the desire to (perhaps) save a few bucks.
I think there’s a more general idea here for transit and parking reformers, namely that most people shun (or ignore) complexity and will pay (or risk paying) a lot to avoid dealing with it. It’s worth making your system a little less efficient if you can make it simple to understand.
Here’s an example from Metro’s network of how that applies to transit. Consider well designed routes like the 120 and 358: while they may have many flaws, they each go to one place, they do it the same way every time, all day, every day, and if you want to go somewhere near Delridge or Aurora, they will get you there as best Metro can do the job. But Metro still has entirely too much well-intentioned rubbish like this, for Route 49:
As most STB readers will know, and virtually nobody else will know or care, the Broadway segment is an in-service deadhead to or from base (signed “INTL DIST via BROADWAY”). Somewhat similarly, the stops on Jackson and 3rd are served only in the evenings and Sundays when the 7 is through-routed with the 49. The stop on 1st is served only when the 7 is not through-routed with the 49.
Whatever minimal benefits serving the Broadway and 1st stops may provide to a small number of riders, and the money the Broadway service saves Metro (versus keeping the bus in service on its normal alignment) is outweighed by forcing all potential riders to process an intimidating amount of almost-useless and seemingly-capricious complexity. (The part-time 7-49 through-route is a more challenging dilemma, as that through-route saves Metro a significant amount of money).
In the case of street parking, the price of excess complexity is mostly just frustration and occasional parking tickets; drivers can “opt out” by paying to park in private lots. In the case of transit, the agency suffers the far more corrosive effect of creating in new or occasional riders the impression that its services are complex to use, and that buses will sometimes do odd things like keep going on Broadway and start heading towards the I.D. rather than turning to go downtown; these riders, too, might just opt out — of using transit.
I agree…most people don’t care about paying a parking fee, if they assume they are going to “The City”.
What they do care about more is getting a ticket or getting towed!
All of these problems can be addressed with smart phone applications and near field readers.
You don’t need meters all you need is a QR code painted on the space (alternatively a near field).
Take a picture or wave your phone and have your app auto pay if you go over the 15 minutes or for however long you are there.
Second, integrate both private and public spaces in a search app that tell you the nearest open parking space. If you’re a tightwad, check a box for find lowest cost space within five minutes, ten minutes, etc…
What if I don’t have a cell phone?
Since less than half of US adults own and use “smart” phones (and a smaller % as you ask older folks) this is a point well taken. Just get the damn meters to take ORCA!
This would certainly be an incentive to own one.
And in Seattle I imagine the pentration of smartphones would be much higher.
(Though I do often seem to be the only one reading a Kindle in the places I frequent!)
ORCA-equipped parking meters would seem to go a long way to integrating various transit options. It’s nice to hear there’s potential work to be done with Seattle parking, though — gives me a potential research topic for school!
” Just get the damn meters to take ORCA!”
No. Get our transit system and parking meters to accept a universal NFC payment system like PayPass.
I’m surprised they haven’t started putting RFID chips in the license plates (or even the registration stickers).
Basically — your car should be your “pay card”.
All you do is set up your checking account in WADOT. Then when you park in a space it reads the license plate and starts charging you money…or alerts the authority if you exceed the maximum parking time.
The map you show is not on the official schedule. I’d say it’s OneBusAway that has the problem here, not Metro.
So buses do something that’s not reflected on a map. That’s not an improvement.
OBA’s GTFS feed is generated directly from Metro’s internal database, so if it shows up on our feed, Metro has it as part of the route, even if it’s not on the Map.
In my experience, busses heading to base from the 49 are signed “INTL DIST via BROADWAY”, without the route number. There are two problems with this:
1. Everywhere else* in Metro’s network, a bus at the end of it’s route heading to base is signed as “Atlantic Base” (or whatever base that coach calles home). Having one or two routes that don’t do this is inconsistant. Admittedly, that may be because the 49 route ends downtown, not on Broadway, mean that some trips are terminating ‘early’ – this is also inconsistant, and a greater sin, in my opinion. The fact that there’s no route number shown at this point only adds to the confusion.
2. The data could be a bug, but I doubt it, since only 49 coaches do this. As such, the trip shows up in OBA as belonging to the 49. Removing that from the GTFS spec would break OBA, meaning there’s no way to ‘squelch’ this rather confusing “ghost-spur.”
So, the solution would be for Metro to run all trips downtown to the 49s official termination point, then sign the coaches as Atlantic Base and go home. I assume the wire would allow for this – if not, that should be a priority fix.
*As far as my knowledge of Metro routes goes – which is hardly as good as many other’s here.
Back when I was commuting to and from the U-District, I would see southbound 49s signed as “INTL DIST via BROADWAY” without route number as far north as the Harvard segment. I imagine that would cause its own confusion.
“Flexibility” is often touted as an advantage of buses over rail, but I’ve begun to think of it of less a blessing than a curse.
+1
Just last week a friend called for advice on taking the bus (she’s given up trying to figure these things out herself) from near the ferry to Capitol Hill. “Stand at the bus stop labeled #12, but take either a #12 or a #10 – they’re the same bus, but the drivers usually change the sign early.”
And that’s an easy example – try figuring out if the 2 local will continue through downtown or head east. Taking the bus should not require a phone call to a transit nerd.
If someone is catching a bus by the ferry going up Madison (for the next few days), the only reason it would say 10 is if the driver forgot to change the sign. If she is catching a bus to Pine, then both the stop and the bus would say 10 (unless the driver forgot to change the signs). Sign changes on through-routes are supposed to happen immediately before the driver enters the CBD.
You’re right. I just checked and the sign does say #10. It’s google’s map (again, based on Metro data) that tells me it’s a #12.
This happened constantly years ago when I’d ride the 15 or 18 at 1st and Marion (before they were moved to 3rd), which were often some other numbers. I probably missed dozens of buses before I realized that these were the same bus, and it depended on when the drivers changed their sign.
Hey look. Metro’s map says it’s a 12 too. Of course the map for the 10 claims those stops as well.
Fortunately (or unfortunately if you happen to ride between Westlake and the Swedish area), all of this confusion is going away in a week. Starting on Saturday the 10 and 12 will be split. Both routes will be live-looped in downtown: the 10 from Pine to Pike, and the 12 from Madison to Marion. All layovers will be at the Capitol Hill ends.
In general, within the CBD, you can’t count on an inbound bus having the same route number it had inbound. If you’re looking at just one timetable, that may cause some confusion, but if you’re looking at signs, system maps, or the trip planner, you’ll get the correct outbound route number. Of course, until all coaches are OBS equipped, the driver has to sign up correctly for anything to be clear.
Metro takes the approach that basic customer information just needs to get the rider into, or out of, the CBD. Through-routes are a feature that requires more careful timetable reading. That is a good decision for flexibility, but possibly a bad one for customer understanding. But then again… with all of the varying frequencies on core routes (especially trolley routes), there’s no easy way to make routing perfectly consistent.
Even if the 10/12 will be solved, it’s a problem for most any route that runs downtown. This could be solved with consistant maps and data.
For the most part our signs are changing automatically now although they do require close monitoring due to OBS flakiness. There are occasionally issues with signs changing unexpectedly or not changing when you expect them to. What you end up with is a compounding of inconsistencies introduced by drivers (and I’m just as guilty as anyone in the system, possibly more so since I frequently drive substitute work) and the current flakiness of OBS. Eventually OBS will improve consistency as the bugs are worked out but for now, it’s making things worse.
Absolutely. Making buses more like trains in this respect should be Metro’s goal for all routes, especially high-performing frequent routes.
Heresy I say, pure Heresy.
We need more route mutations out there, not fewer. And more turnbacks too, just to keep folks guessing.
Couplets? Yes
Route number changes on through routes – of course.
and many more routes with single letters (so far the best cloaking device).
I’ll be damned if I spent the better part of my life learning routes, just to have some simpletons make it intelligible for the serfs.
It’s a great goal, but in this city it would be very hard to achieve as long as buses share lanes with cars, while the trains generally don’t.
We’d have to build out quite a bit of bus dedicated lane infrastructure to get similar performance, but as built up as the city is, it would be hard to do.
It would be easier to go over or under the car traffic, but that would make trains the best bet wouldn’t it?
How will Auckland enforce the 15-minute free limit?
It seems to me that to enforce that limit rigorously you would have to have someone checking every single spot about every 10 minutes. That’s expensive, and it’s way more often than spots are checked in most cities, including Seattle. If you don’t check every spot that often, then everyone will learn that the “free” parking is good for way more than 15 minutes with only minimal risk of a ticket, and both revenue and availability will fall through the floor.
I like the rest of the system, though. If someone wants to fill city coffers by spending $40 to park at a meter for eight hours, let ’em.
I suspect the answer is that they expect their people to act honestly, which may be a New Zealand thing or it may just be that they figure the cost of letting people generally get away with stuff with random enforcement and a big fine is lower than the cost of monitoring every parking space in downtown Auckland. Sort of the opposite of our post-RFA attitude.
Seattle has automated scanning equipment that would make this a snap. It could also be accomplished by creating routes for PEOs that let them chalk wheels and loop back in 15 minutes to “harvest” violators.
Bruce, the First Hill deadheads (which also occur on the 2, 3/4, 10, 12, and 43) save about 10-12 minutes per trip compared with going through downtown. In all likelihood, most of those would represent 10-12 minutes of overtime each day if you sent them downtown, as they tend to happen at night at the end of relief runs.
On the 43 and 49, Metro assumes that riders going all the way downtown will board a 71/72/73 instead. Perhaps this is not a valid assumption, because the 49 is only a few minutes slower late at night than a 7x local; but it’s Metro’s assumption. On those routes, The Book directs you (or at least did when I was driving) to change your sign to “Atlantic Base” once you reach Capitol Hill, so people looking to ride from Capitol Hill to downtown will not think you are running the normal route.
On the routes not starting in the U-District, you are signed “Atlantic Base” from the beginning of the trip.
I regularly drove two different late-night trips on what was then the 7N that deadheaded back to base via First Hill. I actually had very few confused people — maybe one or two a shakeup. The much worse confusion issue was on the outbound 2:15 Owl trip that terminated at Aloha Street, which always caught up several passengers trying to get to the U-District, and which I also drove regularly. Metro fixed that one (probably partly as a result of my regular bleating), extending it to the U-District when it separated the 49 from the 7.
…and, I just had a look at the current 49 schedule, and I see that there are none of those trips at all left on weekdays, and only three each on Saturdays and Sundays, all after midnight.
I should be clear that I don’t object to deadheads on Broadway (or anywhere else) versus making all trips terminate downtown, but they should be “pure” deadheads which don’t show up in OBA or a trip planner.
The service should look consistent on a map, just like most rail services do. Central Link gets this right, with virtually all services running the full length of a line, except for a handful of “last trips” late at night which terminate at Beacon Hill (and provide a timed transfer to the 36).
The issue then is that if you make those trips pure deadheads you’re effectively reducing late-night frequency on a part of the route which is useful to a fair number of people. When I drove the 12:30ish a.m. trip, I’d usually get 10-15 people headed up Capitol Hill. If the trip weren’t in the schedule, those people would have to wait another half hour.
Very early mornings and late nights, in particular, are times when I’m okay with adding a few additional wrinkles to provide the most options out of limited dollars, especially if actual experience shows that resulting confusion is minimal, as is true for those 49 trips. The frequency you can realistically provide is limited, yet long waits suck much more at night than they do during the day.
That doesn’t change the fact that OBA shouldn’t be displaying anything on the map except the canonical route (starting at 4th/Pike outbound, and going downtown and ending at 3rd/Pine inbound).
This could easily be accomplished by having a completely consistent map and schedule for all regular service. Metro could then produce a separate deadhead only information about deadheads and “To Terminal” routing. That would clean up all of the complexity and put in one location. This information could include 520 deadheads for bikes, Evergreen point to UW campus terminal express routes, EP to Northgate express routes, P&R reverse commutes to Rainier Ave expresses, etc.
I think there’s a significant population of people travelling from Capitol Hill to downtown via the 49. There are other options, sure, but just keep in mind that there are a lot of people on the 43 and 49 routes that are going “all the way downtown” but not from the u-district. I think the 49 largely effectively connects downtown to capitol hill and capitol hill to the u-district, and truncating at broadway and pine kind of cuts off half the route. It’d be nice to know well in advance that it’s not going to be the whole route–I’ve gotten on the 49 on north capitol hill thinking it would go all the way downtown. If it had already been signed as “INTL DIST” I would have waited for the next one.
If you’re catching those on 10th E, they should be signed “49 Broadway” (no “Downtown”). If you’re catching them on Broadway, they should be signed “Atlantic Base.”
The other issue is there used to be a route 9 from the U-district to lower Broadway (and Rainier Beach) which no longer exists. The deadhead 43 and 49 provide a partial replacement for that, at least in the afternoon and evening. The alternative is transferring to the 60 or 9-express, which is a disproporionate wait if you’re going to lower Broadway.
Bruce:
Simplicity isn’t coming to parking rates in Washington state anytime soon.
You’re overlooking the administrative fee versus tax problem in Washington state. Legislation authorizes the administration of a commercial parking tax, but not a tax on the use of the public ROW for parking. Therefore, Seattle and other cities in the state have to satisfy the conditions that make paid parking a fee as opposed to a tax.
The Covell tests, as they are called, speak to – among other things – “burden offset charges” or the fees that go toward activities that use public resources and burden those resources. Whereas a tax can be imposed anywhere and used for anything, so long as the imposition is “fair”, a fee has to offset the cost of services or burdens. (Seattle uses parking revenue to manage the parking program and for street maintenance.)
To be defensible, the City has to be able to document a nexus between the activity and the fee. Seattle uses parking scarcity (using a rate that leaves open 1-2 spaces per block face) to test the market’s valuing of the resource, which is then used to set the fee. This market demand varies based on the desirability of destinations in different parts of the city.
Assessing a fee that does not have a strong or defensible nexus would put the program in jeopardy. In the 2003 Okeson v Seattle decision the court found that streetlight charges were taxes, not fees based on personal use, benefit or burden, and the utility had neither constitutional nor statutory authority to impose a tax.
And that’s why simplicity can’t come to parking rates any time soon.
Wouldn’t it be just as defensible to set these 3-color rates according to location and time of day to aim for the same 1-2 spot avalibility?
I also don’t see why any of this would prevent removing time limits.
My favorite (read: least favorite) example continues to be the 5. I believe that’s the only bus which still has two completely separate branches with the same number. (Luckily, this will soon be fixed.)
I never understood why the Northgate branch was never given a separate number. Metro had 6 available but might have been gun-shy about using it because it represented Aurora service for so long (or out of the bad memories from Mark’s murder, even though he was actually driving the 359). Or a 6x number might have made sense.
Yeah, good riddance to the 5 Northgate. But we still have the vile 3 First Hill turnbacks.
Eh, I can’t get mad about turnbacks. Since the 3 terminal at Madrona only has space for two 40′ coaches at most, the alternative is to waste a whole lot of hours sending a whole bunch of empty buses through the Judkins Park maze to the 4 terminal at Center Park. Or to get rid of the 4 altogether and sign all turnback buses as 4s… but that’ll be a fun political task.
While the 4 is still there, I think you could clarify things by signing the turnback buses “3 FIRST HILL ONLY.”
The 4 should go. There is barely 1000 feet between 23rd and MLK with service on the 48 and 8, but the 4 continues to operate on a 24th/26th couplet because that’s where streetcars turned around a century ago. And then it continues on but dies in Center Park, blocks short of Mt Baker TC and Link station. It’s a pointless, redundant route.
I’d be cool with giving the 4 number to the turnback trips.
Metro was going to delete the 4-S this month but a few people from a blind organization near the terminus objected. There were also several other controversies with 2, 3, and 4 changes so Metro withdrew them all in bulk, pending a rethink with RapidRide E next year. So it wasn’t mainly about old streetcar routes this time but disability accommodation. One hopes Metro will come up with a plan to transition the blind users to nearby routes, as it’s doing for non-English speakers on the slowly-dying 42.
The Lighthouse operates roughly during business hours and, generally speaking, almost all Center Park traffic occurs during the day. I wonder if you could add an extra bus to the 7 and turn a few trips back at the Center Park loop, only on weekdays roughly 8-6 (with a different number, of course)? That would solve nearly all of the access issues with killing the 4.
I’m sympathetic to the difficulty — the 23rd/Rainier/Hill/Walker area is a jumble even for fully abled and sighted people, and must be very difficult to navigate for those with disabilities or impaired eyesight.
Doesn’t Metro run a custom bus solely to serve Center Park? How much doorstep service must we all pay for?
Bruce, wouldn’t you take elimination of the 4 tail (saving 2-3 buses at all times and making the Harborview shuffle considerably more reliable) in exchange for one bus 8-6 on weekdays making short-turn 7 trips? Unlike the 42, it would even serve people who can’t effectively use other service.
The Center Park special bus has almost no regular seats; it’s really for the residents with the most severe disabilities. Other residents are accustomed to using normal service, which is almost certainly cheaper to provide, if done right, than additional special service. There is also the Lighthouse to consider.
Another way to approach the problem would be to somehow find the money and the SDOT will to redesign the 23rd/Rainier/Walker intersections to be more friendly for those with disabilities.
Great, even *more* turnbacks? How did this thread start again?
Rainier/23rd is a mess, but there is a stop pair for the 7 and 48 at Rainier & Bayview, a signalized intersection with marked crosswalks 1500 feet from Lighthouse for the Blind. MLK & Walker with stops for the 8 is even closer.
If additional traffic calming features at these intersections is the cost of getting rid of this ridiculous route, then let’s do it. But we’re never going to get a more efficient system by giving any business the impression they’re entitled to front-door service, even it if it a social service agency. Public transportation is supposed to serve everyone, and resisting good network design in the name of social justice is misguided.
The problem with the current 7 and 8 is crossing MLK (no signals, no marked crosswalks, high speeds) or Rainier (confusing intersection design, sporadic signals in the wrong places, high speeds).
The area has the highest concentration of people with disabilities in the county. It’s not just another social service agency, and serving it well is a real concern. But the 4 is a spectacularly inefficient way to do it. So I see two solutions: 1) remake the Rainier streetscape at Walker and 23rd to make it easy for those with disabilities to navigate; or 2) run a bus into the Plum/Walker loop that’s more efficient than the 4.
If the bus is the cheaper option, then it seems obvious that the most efficient option is something that looks exactly like a short-turn 7 but has a different number.
My understanding is it is NOT the Lighthouse For The Blind that objected to the 4’s removal (LHFtB’s 4 stop is on a turn-around loop, but 1 stop before the layover on Walker, meaning anyone boarding at LHFtB will have a long wait while the bus is parked and the operator gets their break). When the 4 revision was being considered I went down timed the walk to the nearest 8/48 stops and observed pedestrian traffic in the area – the majority of LHFtB riders opt to make the 5 minute walk to the big 48/7 stop on Rainier/23rd.
It’s the SHA residents at Center Park that raised the strongest objection iirc. Their front-door 4 stop IS the layover space on Walker, but there’s an 8 stop just around the corner.
No one reads the destination. Turnback 12 trips are signed ’12 First Hill’, and on every trip I’ve ever been on, at least one person asks,
“Does this bus go to Thomas St?” or some variation.
I would prefer not to have variations in the first place, but if we have to have them, at least we should give each one its own number/identifier. (Even something like 3A/3B would be preferable.)
Speaking of the 49, what’s it doing post-2016?
The Seattle Transit Master Plan suggests hanging some wire on 12th Ave next to Seattle University and turning the 49 and 36 into a high-frequency crosstown with connections to downtown via Link at Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill, which I think is a very good idea.
Nice idea, don’t know why we’d bother detouring it down 12th.
Because we wouldn’t want it to duplicate the First Hill Streetcar, now would we? You know, the service we could have provided by rerouting the 49 with $0 in capital costs?
Before I saw the proposal in the TMP, my idea was to hang wire on 12th to Madison and on 15th/Boston St to connect the 10 terminal to the 49’s wire. Then kill the 10 and recycle its hours into building a Madison BRT route out to 23rd.
It would also help by eliminating this. I mean, holy shit.
If the 49 is turned into a north-south route, the 10 will become more important as the main Capitol Hill – downtown route, especially if the 43 is deleted or rerouted to Madison. There will still be a need to get from central Capitol Hill (15th) to Link and downtown. A north-south 10 would not do it.
There can be smaller changes to the 10, like moving the Pine segment to Olive/John which would put it right in front of Capitol Hill station. That could become a popular transfer point, to avoid the southwest Capitol Hill traffic. It would put it further from SCCC and the Madison Market area though.
I have also suggested extending the 10 to 19th and going south to a Madison terminus, to replace the 12’s 19th segment.
“Speaking of the 49, what’s it doing post-2016?”
Metro’s keeping mum right now, and it’s likely they haven’t even studied it yet. We’ll find out probably in late 2014 or mid 2015, depending on how extensive the changes are. Metro’s usual process from first proposal to implementation is 12 months, but the Sept 2012 changes were so wide-reaching Metro gave them 24 months.
It’s likely (though not certain) that the 2016 changes will affect only the Capitol Hill routes and not the 71/72/73X (except perhaps for a decrease in frequency). That could indicate just a small number of changes (2,8,10,11,43,47,49,60). If the 71/72/73 were restructured, that would throw open all northeast Seattle. But (this is just my opinion) Metro will probably say that even if half the 71/72/73X riders switch to Link, there’s still sufficient demand for an express route to 45th until U-District station opens, because the 10-block gap through congested Pacific Street is not an adequate alternative.
If buses were truncated at the UW station, would it be possible to use the half-empty E-1 parking lot as layover space?
I think that’s a very good idea. There will be some pushback from folks in the ID and in far north Capitol Hill.
36 ridership is extremely high from the ID to Beacon Hill, and most of the riders speak no or limited English. You will have to convince them all to walk on one end or the other — either from their ID destinations to 12th, or from Beacon Hill Station to their homes, which are mostly north and west of the station.
The howls from 10th Ave. E. 49 riders (too far to walk to Link) losing their one-seat ride are already audible, if you listen carefully…
I don’t see Link ever replacing the 49, as the 49 is still needed to serve the north part of capitol hill. However, the section between capitol hill and downtown might not be necessary anymore since there are plenty of other buses doing that.
What I see more likely is Link eventually replacing the 43, as placing both the 43 and 48 on Montlake after most of the 43 riders switch to Link would drastically overserve Montlake. However, given how difficult it was to finally kill off the 42 (assuming Metro doesn’t decide every 6 months to keep extending its life another 6 months), I wouldn’t bet on it.
The 49 will still be there; it just might not go downtown. The howls are from people losing their one-seat ride, not losing their bus altogether.
If only the 8 were split (and the 8S still served CHS), the 43 would become entirely superfluous except for the small section serving Olive and Bellevue. Perhaps that segment could be handled by increasing service on the 47 to two buses off-peak and three buses peak.
A route needs to go down 12th. Whether it should be the 60 or 9 or a 36-10-49 is less clear. The least disruptive to existing routes would be to just move the 60 to 12th and extend it to the U-district. I assume the 9-express will go away when Capitol Hill station opens. Two disadvantages of moving the 60 is it would piss off the people on 9th who got it routed there in the first place, and the southern half of the route (from Beacon Hill station on) is not a good candidate for electrification.
Cut the 60 in two at Beacon Hill Station, turn the southern half into a crosstown that might not reach BHS, maybe extend the 60 to Othello and synchronize it with the 36 (if the new route justifies the same frequency).