Month: October 2012

A Times article describes the Bellevue Council’s unhappiness with potential sites for Link operations and maintenance base in their city:

“It doesn’t make sense” to put a rail yard in what will be an upscale area, Bellevue Mayor Conrad Lee said last week. City Council members have asked the staff to draft a letter to Sound Transit expressing the city’s concerns.

As background, ST2 is predicted to require 180 rail cars in total, and the Sodo facility can only accommodate 104. For various operational reasons, expansion of the current facility is not an option. By the end of 2020, ST will have taken delivery of enough vehicles to need the second facility open for storage.

Because a South King location is just too far from the North and East endpoints, ST is looking at four sites on the Eastside and one near Lynnwood. In the longer run, trains will span from Everett to Tacoma and Redmond with 3-minute headways in the core, and a third facility will be necessary.* The five sites under consideration are west of the Lynnwood Transit Center, between 120th Ave NE and the BNSF tracks, between 130th and 136th Avenues below SR 520, west of 148th Ave NE and north of NE 20th St, and between Northup Way and the Link line.

I have mixed feelings about this dispute.

Continue reading “Bellevue’s Maintenance Base”

The last thread is getting out of control, so here’s another. Will Green probably wins the prize for most comprehensive report, so it’s reproduced below the jump.

With luck, day 2 should be better than day 1.

Continue reading “Service Change Open Thread (II)”

When you look at a building built downtown in the past half century and compare it to an old building, the largest change you’ll notice other than the materials used is how they fill up space.  Older buildings often are built from the sidewalk to the alley, from one property line to the other.  Yet newer buildings generally take up a small amount of land and are surrounded by plazas.  The reason for this was the introduction of Floor Area Ratios (FAR) in our building and land use codes.

FAR is simply the ratio of floor area to the area of the property.  A 2-story building built out the property lines would have a FAR of 2, as would a 4-story building built on half of the property or an 8-story building built on a quarter of the property.  The theory behind limiting FARs is that a city can keep a large amount of open space (limiting height, width, and/or depth of a building) while allowing an architect some freedom to design their building as they’d like.  The reason that open space is valued is to let in sunlight, and to give developers an incentive to give future employees room to enjoy this sunlight on their lunch breaks. Continue reading “We Could Use a FAR-free Zone”

BY MATTHEW JOHNSON AND ZACH SHANER

Washington’s annual statewide commuter incentive campaign, Wheel Options, kicks off today.  The prizes this year are particularly generous, with many $100 gift cards, several hotel packages, and a grand prize trip to the lush, linguistically unique, and (to put it mildly) independently-minded Basque region of Spain.  All participants who log at least 6 non-driving trips in October will qualify for all prizes and will automatically receive a coupon for a free companion fare on Amtrak Cascades.

As its name suggests, RideshareOnline (RSO) has traditionally focused on matching commuters whose needs aren’t met by fixed-route transit, including carpoolers, vanpoolers, etc.  Those who are already dedicated transit commuters — likely most of our readership — may have had little use for RSO in the past.  But it has been expanding its reach and is now the primary tool through which incentive campaigns are implemented in our region.  Given the easy qualifying threshold for Wheel Options and the growing number of other incentive campaigns (such as Metro’s Rideshare Rewards), it is well worth your time to familiarize yourself with both Wheel Options and RideshareOnline.

If you already have an RSO account, you will use the same login and password for Wheel Options.  Registering as a new user through Wheel Options will also cross-register you in RSO, and for future campaigns you will be able to use the same login credentials.

UPDATE: According to Wheel Options’ Facebook page, high site traffic has temporarily disabled their calendaring features.  Stay tuned. 

UPDATE 2: Wheel Options’ calendar is up and running again. While they do not anticipate any further issues, technical support is available at wheeloptions@wsro.net.

Disclaimer:  The authors are involved with Wheel Options as part of their employment.

This is the first weekday after Metro’s massive service change, said to be the largest one since the agency’s inception. On top of all that, there’s the added buzz of the RapidRide lines and potential chaos in the old Ride Free Area.

It’s presumably this afternoon that we really find out what short-term disorder, if any, will arise from the end of the RFA.

Share your experiences here.