Month: January 2013

There are probably solid practical reasons to favor a “regional approach,” and I’m inclined to view his campaign with an open mind, but Mayoral candidate Ed Murray’ s statement to PubliCola doesn’t make any sense to me:

Here’s Murray on Mayor McGinn’s push to build light rail from Ballard to West Seattle.

We can’t afford [light rail from Ballard to West Seattle] by ourselves. There are probably things we could do as a city … that would feed in and make the light rail system work.The city is all gridlocked. More light rail is great, but that’s got to be built on the regional level.

As Sen. Murray is no doubt well aware, Sound Transit’s subarea equity mean that in any financing plan — “regional” or otherwise —  funds for any Ballard-to-West Seattle segment come from Seattle, Shoreline, and Lake Forest Park. The contribution of the two suburbs matters (on the order of 10% of the total) but the money all comes from the same place, save for any federal contribution. I doubt that Sen. Murray is making a fine-grained judgment that Shoreline and Lake Forest Park cause the subarea to cross the threshold into affordability.

Seattle may not have adequate current revenue authorization to open the whole line, but then neither does Sound Transit in the first half of this century. The right answer, in my view, is whatever it takes; with the region if they’re willing to come along, as they have been in the past, or seeking its own plans if not.

The Murray campaign did not reply to my request for clarification.

Last year, I took a tour of Portland’s Greenways with Seattle Greenways. I learned a great deal about traffic safety, calming and diversion from the Portland’s traffic engineers, although most of it was more relevant to creating good bike infrastructure, rather than transit. There was, however, one idea which struck me as having immediate applicability to transit at certain places in Seattle, namely an experimental variant of a curb bulb using a concrete pillow, as shown above.

SDOT’s website defines a curb bulb as “a radial extension of a sidewalk at a corner or mid-block location used to shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians, provide access to transit, and expand the landscape/furniture and walkable zone … The restricted street width provides a visual cue to motorists, encouraging them to travel more slowly at intersections or midblock locations with curb extensions. Turning speeds at intersections can be reduced with curb extensions” by forcing cars to make sharper turns.

There are some situations, though, where the standard style of curb bulb won’t work, or the existing curb arrangement is not working, because the intersection’s angle is acute or the approaching roads are narrow, and it is frequented by long-wheel-base vehicles like semi-trucks or transit buses. For those vehicles, it may be difficult or impossible for the driver to consistently arrange to make the turn without swinging into oncoming traffic or riding over the curb.

The photo above shows a traffic-calming measure on a pedestrian- and bike-oriented Greenway street which is also used by semi-trucks to access property to the left of the photo. With a normal bulb, these vehicles would routinely be driving all over the curb. The solution PBOT is experimenting with is to fully extend only the straight part of the curb, then install a concrete “pillow” that’s shaped like a speed bump in the radial part of the curb. While drivers of smaller vehicles receive similar cues to slow down as with a normal curb bulb, drivers of longer vehicles can make the turn with only a small bump under the rear axle.

More after the jump. Continue reading “A Pillow of Cement”

• New bill would place restrictions on eminent domain to spur development.
• Various stakeholders trying to figure out North Sounder mudslides; WSDOT tries to figure out how to spend mitigation money.
• 520 project funds new arboretum trail.
• Two Tacoma Link options stand out from the rest; Chris Karnes suggests a LID to top off the funding.
• Transportation Choices Coalition comes out in support of a low-income fare.
• Advisory board recommends that U-Pass fee not increase in 2013.
• WSDOT checks in on SR520 tolling, finds people switching to transit.
• Freshman rep. Jessyn Farrell proposes a new TOD bill.
• Bellevue hearing on light rail zoning February 11.
• Various Eastside stakeholders want Kirkland to leave the tracks in the old BNSF right-of-way.
• Shoreline Planning Commission meets Feb. 7th to discuss Point Wells and Link Station area planning.
• 250 new units on Capitol Hill now a go.
• Puget Sound Bike Share seeks a vendor.
• Children’s Hospital building a connection to the Burke-Gilman, holding an open house Feb. 2.
• The history of Seattle’s Union Station.
• TriMet considers BRT.
• Auto user fees cover only 51% of the cost of roads.

This is an open thread.

Everybody remember the recently-completed repaving of 85th St, which screwed up the 48 schedule for much of last year? Well, because that was so much fun, we’re gonna do it all again! Starting this spring, using money from the Bridging the Gap initiative, SDOT is going to repave Northgate Way/105th St from Meridian to Greenwood; construction will continue for about a year. As Northgate/105th is the only arterial in this part of the city, no viable alternative route exists, so inbound Route 40 trips will take a substantial and unavoidable hit to reliability that will be felt by riders throughout the route. Riders to or from Northgate or North Seattle Community College will be impacted even more.

There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel for transit.  According to SDOT’s Bill Bryant, all the intersections between Greenwood and Meridian are being considered for Transit Signal Priority, which will (I suspect) likely be of the “hold or advance green” variety. While Northgate/105th isn’t a particularly pedestrian-friendly street — it’s fast and wide without many signals — those same qualities, coupled with the lack of street parking, and the addition of TSP, could make it a very fast and reliable pathway for surface transit.

More after the jump. Continue reading “Northgate/105th: Another Epic Repaving Project”

In just over two weeks, a day will come which many readers and authors of this blog have long awaited: the last, lonely trip of Metro Route 42. Once a major route serving Martin Luther King Way, with the third-highest ridership in Southeast Seattle, it was rendered superflous by the opening of Central Link and extension of Route 8 to Rainier Beach. Metro thus proposed killing this route in its entirety, but in a now-all-too-familiar example of excellent political organizing used to spike a smart idea, one local community organization — the Asian Counseling and Referral Service — scared the King County Council into keeping a gutted version of the route, which happened to be just long enough to connect the ACRS’s two properties.

The 42 limped on as a shadow of its former self, with practically nonexistent ridership. Metro attempted again, last year, to delete the 42 as part of a round of cuts to “worst of the worst” routes, and ACRS used the same tactics to delay the deletion of the route, and force Metro to undertake a program of “intense outreach” to Southeast Seattle. This consumed lots of staff time and produced lots of interesting reports which highlighted some problems with bus facilities, public safety, and customer communication, but failed to uncover anything remotely resembling a good reason to keep the 42 (although it did give me an excuse to write about splitting Route 8 and improving Route 106).

But enough of this history. The bell tolls; the shakeup is at hand. The last trip of the 42 must not be lonely. In death, we shall give Bus 42 what it had not in life: riders; many riders.

The next Seattle Transit Blog meetup begins at 4:43 PM on Friday, the 15th of February, at 3rd Ave S & Main St. We will board the last outbound 42 to Columbia City, disembark at Rainier & Alaska, and repair to the Columbia City Ale House for drinks. (Be a few minutes early, or check OneBusAway, in case the bus is ahead of schedule). The Ale House is 21+ (sorry!), but I’ll also be at Caffe Vita, just a block away, from about 4 PM, for those of you who can get away early and want to chat for a while. If you don’t work downtown or can’t get off work in time, you can join us at your convenience by using one of the many other vastly superior transit services (Link, 7, 8, 9X, 50) which can get you within walking distance of Columbia City.

This is an informal meetup; we don’t plan to have a speaker, but experience suggests that we can all have a great time both with or without one. More meetups with awesome speakers are tentatively in the works for spring. Please RSVP in the comments so we can get a rough headcount, and watch for a reminder post with confirmation of the venue closer to the time.

In the first post in this series, there were some great recommendations on how to change the land footprint graph.  In my original version, I graphed the number of blocks in our region that fall into a given land area per person.  The suggestion was to instead plot the number of people living at a given land area per person.  I’ve taken it a step further and plotted percentage of people living at a given land area per person.  For example, 0.52% of people in our region have a land footprint of around 600sf per person, which corresponds with the Capitol Hill picture below (the bottom left). Graphing using the percentage of total population will allow me to compare regions of different size on the same graph, which will be useful in my next post in this series.

Ever since the 2000 legislature revoked our voter approved car tab revenue, transit funding has been unreliable. Before then, transit agencies across the state relied on a combination of more volatile sales tax and less volatile (and more progressive) Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, or MVET, to operate service. Now, with only sales tax, funding fluctuates wildly with the economy, and our bus service is being gutted.

Imagine if all our highways and large arterials had to be closed a few hours a day, or even one day a week! When transit service is so dramatically cut, the elderly, the poor, the visually impaired, and many others face a similar situation, cut off from jobs, family, services, much of the world.

This year, with such a universal threat, our transit agencies have come together to present a unified demand.

An earlier legislature chose to cut the MVET. This legislature must now step up to solve the problem, and the solution is easily within reach. Our state only provides 2% of our transit agencies’ budgets – compared to a national average of 17%. The state will be relying on Puget Sound voters to pass a transportation package, and we’ve spoken before: We don’t want wider highways. We want more fast, reliable, high capacity transit.

Now, a line in the sand has been drawn. A statewide package must contain $400 million annually in direct transit operations funding, to be apportioned to agencies by an already established formula. That’s the level that will shore up Pierce Transit, keep Metro from having to make huge cuts, and even assist Sound Transit a tiny bit in implementing light rail. As part of a statewide package, direct funding would avoid fighting every local battle individually, and provide a rock for the next economic crisis.

The “Keep Transit Moving” request is worth a read. 31 agencies across the state have one ask. It’s still a little timid – allowing for 25% of a smaller package if the $400 million/year isn’t in the cards. But the Republicans in Olympia would provide less at their peril – major cuts in Pierce and King counties in 2014 would bring angry voters to the polls, leaving them little chance of keeping their tenuous grasp on power.

Olympia must fix the problem their predecessors created by cutting the voter-approved MVET. The resilient, sustainable, efficient transportation system of the future starts with well funded mass transit.

This is an open thread. [Sorry WordPress ate the video all day today.- MHD]