Month: November 2012

With corridor studies for rail from Downtown Seattle to Ballard and extension of Link south to Federal Way both moving forward next year, it looks likely that the Sound Transit board will move to accelerate planning work necessary for development of a Sound Transit 3 (or ST3) package. Yesterday, much of the board met at a workshop to answer three main questions:

1. How aggressively should ST push forward planning work such as corridor studies and the Long Range Plan update?
2. Should ST continue to focus on the light rail “spine” as their primary goal?
3. Should ST engage state level transportation funding and authorization issues?

You can see all of the meeting documents here. For those interested in background, I would suggest reading this.

On the first question, there was a general desire among the board members in attendance for a more aggressive schedule than what ST is currently pursuing. Three planning processes were presented to the board:

• Status Quo – would continue the status quo and take 8-12 years
• Corridor Study – would initiate accelerated corridor planning followed by the Long Range Plan update taking a total of 6-10 years
• Jump Start – would incorporate corridor studies in the Long Range Plan cutting the total planning timeline to 4 years

Many board members felt that the more aggressive planning schedule, the Jump Start, was preferable – including WSDOT chair Paula Hammond, who said she’d like to see ST3 as soon as possible so it can be integrated with WSDOT’s planning. Some board members had reservations about shooting for a 2016 ST3 package and felt that a 2020 package was more realistic. Not only would 2016 be a very tight planning window, but it would also mean that voters in the region would be asked to vote ST3 before Lynnwood Link and East Link construction were clearly visible. The tight planning window could also complicate the process of getting additional funding authority from the state (more on that later). Continue reading “Sound Transit Board Wants To Accelerate ST3 Planning”

Shortly after Seattle and Metro finally got together to make bus-rail transfers adequate at Mt. Baker, the City of Lynnwood has now relented to make transfers at their Transit Center a little less arduous:

Route 196 began serving two new stops on 196th Street at 48th Avenue in Lynnwood [Tuesday]. The stops are near the Fred Meyer complex and provide the closest connection between this route and Lynnwood Transit Center…

The city has allowed these new stops on a temporary basis and will be monitoring their use and traffic impacts. As part of the agreement with Lynnwood, the bus stop on westbound 196th at 50th Avenue has been removed.

Up until now, the City had refused Community Transit’s requests for Route 196 to have a stop at its nearest point to the Lynnwood Transit Center, due to traffic volumes at that location. But it’s better for riders, at least for now.

With two down, there are two other stop placements we’ve written about at major transfer points:  5th & Jackson and 4th & Lander.

The cost per rider statistics of North Sounder that Bruce cited a month ago are indeed quite damning, and have sparked additional reporting at the Times, PubliCola, and The Sun Break. I support reforming transit service to maximize long-term ridership for the amount spent, and Sounder seems to fail that test. Nevertheless, I hesitate when I hear calls to wind the service down.

Defenders have some valid points.

I’m unable to be as furious about the line as others seem to be. North Sounder is not deserted like the 42. Each train is carrying around 150 people; it’s just that it’s so expensive to provide the service that exists.

If it stands for anything, STB stands for high-quality service on selected corridors. North Sounder has elements of high-quality service (off-board payment, traffic-independence) but also is lacking important ones (frequency, span, freedom from mudslides).

Continue reading “North Sounder: Cities Should Step Up”

Matt Yglesias had a great short post on why passenger-miles-travelled is a poor metric for measuring the greenness of a mass transit system:

The whole idea of trying to talk about which city’s mass transit system is greenest in terms of emissions per passenger-mile is terribly flawed.

Just think of it in terms of cars. Driving 5 miles in a 20 mpg car takes a quarter of a gallon of gasoline. Driving 25 miles in a 45 mpg car takes over half a gallon. Being the guy with the 5 mile commute and the 20 mpg car is considerably greener than being the guy driving much further in his Prius. The point of intra-urban transportation networks—whether you’re talking about the mass transit element or the private cars or bicycles or whatever—isn’t to transport people arbitrary distances, it’s to get people where they’re going. Having trips that aren’t very long isn’t cheating, it’s a great way to achieve efficiency.

Of course, greenness isn’t the only useful measure of a transportation system. I’ll just add two points on top of what Matt has said.
Continue reading “On Passenger Miles and Greenness”

• Mike Lindblom’s story on RapidRide is spectacular.
• ST doing what it can to move Link to Federal Way forward.
• TCC previews the 2013 legislative session on Dec. 7.
• Lakewood Sounder extension making people happy — except for the safety noises.
• More housing planned on the waterfront.
• As STB hoped, Sen. Tracey Eide is your new Senate Transportation Chair.
• West Seattle gets its first bike box.
• C-Tran revenue surging, thanks to voters.
• BART thinking big for its long-range plan.
• Not even New York City can summon the political will for true BRT.
• A party train to Las Vegas in 2013?

This is an open thread.

Tomorrow evening from 6pm to 8pm, Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development is hosting an open house on the Rainier Beach Neighborhood Plan Update:

When:
Wednesday, November 28, 6:00 to 8:00pm

Where:
South Shore K-8 School, 4800 S. Henderson Street, Seattle

The final plan has a bunch of strategies for making the area more inviting. Transit and zoning are not the emphasis, but beginning on Page 32 it discusses the station area and how it can become more active, to include transit master plan improvements and development.

This meeting is not about the plan, which is complete, but its implementation. Rainier Beach is not a neighborhood where private development interests are rushing in, so it’s important to have an affirmative strategy to get things started.

(Via)

by CHRIS KARNES and KATE WHITING

Today the Pierce County Auditor is slated to certify the failure of Pierce Transit Proposition 1 by a thin margin of 704 votes, out of more than 200,000 votes cast (49.83% Approved to 50.17% Rejected).

There is really no way to sugar coat the potential impacts of the failure of Prop 1. This will mean an uncertain future for many riders in Pierce County, restricting access to jobs for low-income individuals, health care for people with disabilities, and schools for college and high school students. With the failure of Proposition 1, Pierce County is on course for drastic service reductions in 2014 in the realm of a 50% cut of current service levels. That is on top of a 43% cut in service since Pierce Transit’s 2007 peak of roughly 625,000 fixed route service hours.

Weekend and weekly midday service are slated to disappear and no buses would run after 7pm on any day. Paratransit service for seniors, disabled veterans, and other people with disabilities will vanish along with the fixed route.

For comparison, bus service would be lower than when Pierce Transit first began operating back in 1980. If nothing is done, it would mean less service than cities smaller than Tacoma such as Olympia and Bellingham. It would render the local transit system incapable of providing even a minimal level of mobility.

By the Numbers

Continue reading “What’s Next for Pierce Transit?”

I’ve updated yesterday’s post to include Rod Dembowski, who got me his full responses last night. He of course had a chance to see everyone else’s answers, for whatever that’s worth.

Tomorrow, from 5 to 7 PM, at Greenwood Public Library, SDOT is hosting an open house to discuss a program of bus stop improvement and consolidation on Greenwood between 87th St and 105th St. Similar to the recent Ballard stop consolidation and improvements, this program arises from SDOT’s Bridging the Gap funding for small transit projects: the money will pay for bus bulbs or bus islands, and the stop consolidation is necessary to reap the gains in speed and reliability from those stop improvements.

For this section of Greenwood, there’s a twist: the road mostly lacks sidewalks. In these areas of north Seattle where sidewalks were not built before annexation by the city, they are generally only built when an adjacent property is redeveloped, or SDOT receives a grant to do so. The improved stops may therefore not connect to a continuous sidewalk, however SDOT expects to design most or all of them so they directly connect to a corner with curb ramps for wheelchair access.

SDOT’s packages of small-capital improvements to transit corridors in outlying urban villages make incremental but real improvements in service quality and rider experience, and I’m pleased to see this continue in Greenwood. My only regret is that it doesn’t go far enough: the stops south of 85th St are in just as dire need of this treatment, and the payoff would be even greater (because there are more riders on the bus closer to downtown).

If you live the area and would like bus service that sucks less, I urge you to attend the open house and give feedback on the proposed improvements, and in support of the stop consolidation.

Whatever one might think of the Seattle Times editorial board, there is one story that the paper is running this week that confirms that their reporters are at least in touch with reality. The headline—Apartment boom in Ballard comes with risk of overbuilding—is a little bit odd and displays some of the basic prejudices held by many about density, housing, and affordability. Reading the headline one would think “overbuilding” was a crisis for Seattle. But the story simply confirms what many of us have been arguing for a while now: if you want lower housing prices, allow the construction of more housing. The only people hurt by too much supply are developers.

The article by Eric Pryne reads like a primer in the economics of housing supply and demand.

Developers are building [apartments] because demand has risen, led by a demographic surge of young adults who prefer in-city living, at a time when there’s little new supply.

Few projects were built during the recession. The last new complex in Ballard opened more than two years ago.

Because of the economy—it is harder to buy a single-family house these days—and the appeal of living in the city younger people are opting for living in Seattle rather than other places. This is exactly what transit advocates, sustainability  and smart growth proponents all want to see happen. But all these people need a place to live, and the market is responding by building more housing.

What does that do to the price of housing in the Seattle market?

Owners of new rental projects, with loans to pay off, will do whatever it takes to fill units, Gardner says, and that will put pressure on other landlords to cut rents or offer concessions to keep up.

“By the end of 2013,” he says, “it’s going to get ugly.”

Ugly for whom?

Continue reading “Seattle Times: More Housing Means Lower Prices”