Month: February 2013

Tomorrow from 12-1pm, in their downtown offices in Rm 121 of the Chinook Building,  Transportation Choices Coalition will host a discussion of the financial cliff King County Metro will drive straight over in 2014, absent action from the state legislature to give the agency more taxing authority:

Your bus could be on the chopping block! Faced with declining sales tax revenue, King County Metro may have to resort to drastic service cuts. The temporary congestion reduction charge staved off these cuts but it expires in 2014. To make matters worse, state funds which pay for transit service during the Alaskan Way Viaduct construction run out next year too – two years before the construction ends!

Join King County Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond for a discussion on what the future holds for King County Metro as they grapple with the challenge of keeping service in the face of an unprecedented loss of revenue. Hear about Metro’s plans for potential cuts and how they hope to keep buses running in 2014 and beyond.

Some numbers for context: Metro needs about $60 million annually to permanently fill the hole the Great Recession blew in the budget; this is currently filled by the two-year $20 Congestion Reduction Charge. On top of this is $15 million per year, to sell bonds to buy new buses (the current biennial budget is only balanced by assuming the cuts will take effect and those buses will not be replaced); and the almost-exhausted Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project construction mitigation funding, which pays for schedule padding and additional peak trips on West Seattle routes, trips that are now full.

Estimates from Metro suggest that a county-wide MVET of about 1% would be the minimum to meet these needs, considerably above the token 0.7% MVET included in the awful highway-expansion package announced last week. And of course, these numbers doesn’t allow for significant expansion or investment in the many corridors, mostly in Seattle, which are under-served at the current frequency levels, or which have shovel-ready projects available to reduce fuel consumption and improve travel times and reliability.

With big plans in the works for its downtown, Bellevue is recruiting intensely into the public realm for those interested in having a say on the City’s Downtown Livability Initiative.  First, a few words about the project.  With the exception of the downtown subarea plan, Bellevue has never really had a concerted downtown planning effort on this scale.  That’s why this project is significant– it would run the gamut of all downtown planning issues, from rezoning to street food.

Here’s where people like you come in.  To solicit input, the City is hosting seven different focus groups (see .pdf), each one targeted at a specific stakeholder group (see below).  Don’t panic if you don’t fit into any of the categories– if you’re truly passionate about the future of downtown Bellevue, then you probably belong in the “visionaries” category:

The meetings will include a brief presentation on the Downtown Livability Initiative, followed by small group, facilitated discussion. Discussion topics will include design, amenities and transportation issues. Feedback from these focus groups will help shape potential changes to the Land Use Code for downtown Bellevue.

Participants are encouraged to attend the meeting that best fits their stakeholder group, but are welcome to attend any meeting that is convenient. Meetings will be in room 1E-108.

·  Architects and planners, Tuesday, March 5, 2-4 p.m.
·  Property owners and developers, Wednesday, March 6, 8:30-10:30 a.m.
·  Brokers, Wednesday, March 6, 4-6 p.m.
·  Large companies and retailers, Thursday, March 7, 2-4 p.m.
·  Former Downtown Plan Advisory Body members, Friday, March 8, 8:30-10:30 a.m.
·  Institutions and visionaries, Monday, March 11, 8:30-10:30 a.m.
·  Residents, Tuesday, March 12, 6:30-8:30 p.m.

To make an RSVP, shoot an email to DowntownLivability@bellevuewa.gov.  If you’re unable to attend but still want to pitch in two cents, thoughts can still be emailed in.  The City will also report on its progress at an open house later this year.  More on the project, including existing plans, maps, and data, can be found here.

• New King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski is your new Regional Transit Committee chair.
• Bike cage going in at Beacon Hill Station. 
• Tacoma Link expansion down to three options. B1, C1, and E1 are the finalists. See map here. Meeting attendees show the love for B1.
• Metro tweaks its stroller policy.
• Study suggests City could get more developer-paid benefits without discouraging construction.
• Capitol Hill picks pro-density neighborhood reps to Sound Transit.
• Washington State Ferries ridership is stable from 2011 to 2012 with 22.2m boardings. For comparison, Sound Transit had 28m boardings in 2012.
• Bellevue Transit Master Plan project has an informative new product out, entitled “Existing and Future Conditions Report.”
• Erica Barnett pushes back against calls for a massively regressive toll exemption for Mercer Island residents.
• Happy quotes all around about the Bellevue zoning compromise.
• Los Angeles transit history in one chart.

This is an open thread.

As discussions about a new statewide transportation package continue in Olympia, transit advocates need to make one point clear to lawmakers: transit supporters are the key swing voters when it comes to defending a statewide transportation package. Just because a package passes in Olympia doesn’t mean it would survive a public vote.

While transit supporters are the most likely to support new taxes for transportation investments, they are also the most likely to swing against a highway-heavy package. History has shown that when transit supporters are not happy with a transportation package, an odd coalition of environmentalists and fiscal conservatives (i.e. Tim Eyman) emerges to soundly reject it. This is as true now as it has ever been.

History bears this out. In 2002 Referendum 51 drew criticism from parts of the environmental community, failing in an incredibly lopsided (38%-62%) statewide vote. Three years later, Tim Eyman’s Initiative 912 — which would have repealed the  2005 Transportation Partnership Program which on a whole made necessarily investments in safety, maintenance and replacement  — was rejected by voters. While the initiative had much more support statewide than R-51, King County was the decisive factor in its defeat, rejecting it by over 161,000 votes.

The 2007 Roads and Transit package and 2008 Sound Transit 2 measures also clearly illustrate this trend. Full of controversial projects (such as the Cross Base Highway) and with strong institutional and financial backing, Roads and Transit was nevertheless rejected by 56% of the voters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. In contrast, Sound Transit 2 passed just a year later with 57% approval despite a shoestring campaign budget and the looming economic crisis (see map above).

As currently proposed, the House transportation package looks to repeat the history of R-51 and Road and Transit, with transit supporters opposed to the package despite the dire funding needs of transit agencies. What transit supports want is important, but what they don’t want is equally important, and their ‘yes’ vote cannot be assured simply by including their needs in an otherwise unacceptable package.

Key fixes to the current proposal to make it palatable to transit supporters include:

• Ensuring transit agencies have a sustainable funding sources in addition to revenue sources for future growth, especially for Sound Transit;
• Increased state funding for safety projects, especially Complete Streets and Safe Routes to School;
• Robust local funds for counties and cities to maintain their deteriorating roads;
• Fully funding existing projects like SR-520 and SR-99 over new projects and;
• A true emphasis on the Moving Washington goals, particularly safety and maintenance.

Econ 101 tells us that underpriced goods will be over-consumed. Hence, if all parking is free in a busy neighborhood, then free spaces will be scarce.  Conversely, if all parking is very expensive, then spaces will be plentiful but people will be overspending on parking. So you have to hit the sweet spot, which is one reason why the city has decided to adjust rates in the International District.

As Erica Barnett notes, the city is constantly adjusting rates in every neighborhood.  No doubt they will do it again in the future.  Despite the Times’ effort to portray this as a McGinn “blink”, this is a good thing. Matt G did a post back in March with plenty of graphs on parking utilization in the ID and other neighborhoods if you want to deep-dive on this subject.

Here’s local restauranteur Tom Douglas, as quoted in the Times:

“It costs more to park in front of Wild Ginger than the Dahlia Lounge and more to park in front of the Dahlia Lounge than Tai Tung (in the International District). It’s nonsense and it’s self-defeating,” Douglas said.

We don’t know if there’s more to that quote that clarifies why Mr. Douglas thinks setting prices according to demand is “nonsense.” Nevertheless, parking outside Dahlia Lounge costs $2.50 per hour.  The Mixed baby lettuces with lemon, parmesan, goat cheese crostini on the dinner menu will set you back $9.  Just to keep things in perspective.

In one of its rare 7-0 votes, the Bellevue city council unanimously adopted a light rail overlay into its land use code last night.  If you’re confused about what was actually adopted versus what was proposed, you’re not alone.  The land use code amendments went through multiple iterations in the past week, some of which occurred the night before the council meeting.  The bottom line, however, is good news: the overlay, as adopted, would no longer add significant delay to East Link.

If we rewind to last week’s council meeting, you might recall that those batch of amendments could have stuck 12-24 months of delay on the schedule, simply because of restrictions on Sound Transit’s ability to apply for permits.  The restrictions were worrying enough for ST to prompt both parties to go back to the drawing board– negotiations in the ensuing days churned out so many revisions that City staff had to color-code the amendment alternatives for Monday’s meeting.

The end result is a kind of give-and-take agreement.  Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl gave the council her commitment, in person, to ask for board authorization of property acquisition no more than 60 days after adoption of the final alignment.  The City, on the other hand, agreed to an amendment which would allow ST to apply for permits after initiating the property appraisals process (Alternative 1 on slide 5 – .pdf), whereas last week’s draft would have required waiting until after initiating condemnation.  Ultimately, the net outcome keeps East Link on schedule.

The adoption of the overlay is one step in fulfilling the Memorandum of Understanding (.pdf) that was signed between Bellevue and Sound Transit in 2011.  ST is expected to wrap up environmental work on the cost-savings work next month, paving the way for a hopeful April date in approving the final alignment.

Price Tags has posted a video of a great lecture given at Simon Fraser University by Jeff Tumlin, a principal at Nelson\Nygaard. If you’re interested in making our cities and transportation systems more sustainable, able to accommodate more people, and just nicer places to be, you’ll want to take the time to watch this lecture in its entirely; Tumlin is an excellent speaker, wonky yet engaging.

I couldn’t agree more strongly with his main points: focus on pedestrians, make walking delightful; make bicycling safe and enjoyable for everyone; fix (or replace) the broken metrics the civil engineering field uses to evaluate and plan streets; active, mixed-use density is good for us, individually and collectively; and that the critical density to make cars optional does not have to be high-rise towers (although that’s great if we can make it happen, especially around rapid transit), it can be a continuous fabric of low- to mid-rise mixed-use density.

I only wish he had not taken some of the detours into pop-psychology; they are distracting, somewhat speculative, and seem unnecessary to motivate or explain his real message. That many people are willing to pay a considerable premium to live in walkable, car-optional neighborhoods with an active street life is reason enough to fix the broken regulatory systems that prevent us from building more of them.

Now that House Transportation chair Judy Clibborn has proposed a statewide transportation package, much of the local reporting has been focused on the fact that it includes a tax on bicycle sales. And yes, a bicycle tax is a stupid idea. It would create a disincentive to use a transportation mode that does almost no damage to streets or our climate, and improves public health, for a measly million dollars in revenue in a ten billion dollar package.

It’s also a genius move – put something so incredibly stupid in a package that we talk about that instead of the real reason the package is insane.

At a time when the state needs money for maintenance across the state, we’re trying to address climate change, and we desperately need money for transit, this package spends $3.9 billion to start – and not finish – shiny new highway projects. It widens 405, 5, 167, and 90. It doesn’t solve the 520 or 99 funding problems the state has already started. And it puts hundreds of millions into the Columbia River Crossing project – throwing money into a boondoggle that our new transportation secretary has opposed for years.

There is a little bit for transit – but it wouldn’t come close to solving Metro’s shortfall, and it does nothing to build toward Sound Transit 3.

This would be a terrible place to start a debate. Urban legislators would be left fighting a bicycle tax, trying to fund I-5 preservation through downtown, and finishing 520 and 99, instead of asking for transit. While I can’t speak to Clibborn’s motivations, it would make sense for this to be intentional, to keep the debate focused on highway projects. Transit advocates would be left fighting it entirely or trying to get what they can (which wouldn’t be much).

In the short term, we don’t have much to worry about. House leadership isn’t interested in the bill. It was yanked from getting a hearing in today’s meeting, and I’ve heard from sources in Olympia that the House doesn’t want to deal with transportation at all until education is solved.

Unfortunately, this is what we’re going to have to look forward to. Without strong leadership from our representatives, we’ll end up starting the transportation debate with a package that would drive sprawl, accelerate climate change, and screw transit users all over Puget Sound. Remember – the legislature created our transit mess.

If we start with a package like this, we’d do best to kill it at the ballot box, and force the legislature to actually fund transit if they want our votes.

I’m not sure exactly what to make of this map (via Sullivan), but fills me with an odd sort of pride that Washington is one of the few states (along with Oregon and the obviously transit-oriented Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and D.C.) where transit use is commonplace enough to lead in this statistic.

This is an open thread.