Month: February 2013

In the last week or so, Metro’s newest Orion coaches, with low floors, wide doors, slimmer seats, bigger windows, air conditioning, and much quieter drivetrains, have finally started percolating onto my neighborhood bus routes. While I’m fond of the old Gilligs they are replacing, the Orions are in every way a vastly superior vehicle for the passenger and neighbor. The one thing I wish they had was a better seating layout like that of 40′ coaches Vancouver or Phoenix, where, similar to what Metro has done with RapidRide, seating in the low section of the bus has been reduced to make more floor space available for passenger circulation.

The photo above (for whose terrible quality I beg forgiveness) shows why this matters. Extremely busy inner-city bus routes invariably seem to have a number of people who want bring large wheeled shopping baskets or unfolded strollers onto the bus. I have no idea if, or to what extent, this is against Metro policy, but in practice, drivers rarely seem to bother even trying to enforce it. The smart thing to do is just accommodate these people officially, and this is vastly easier if there are just fewer seats down in that section, otherwise they are end up blocking the aisle or doorway, like you can see here. (On this busy trip, the disabled seating area was occupied).

Well-informed people at Metro and the city tell me that, while no decision has officially been made, there’s a consensus on high that having a RapidRide-like seating and three-door arrangement makes sense for the 60′ trolleybuses Metro will soon be purchasing, the benefits of this layout having been proven in practice. This is great news; but apparently the expectation is that 40′ trolleybuses will be laid out like the current Orions. Given that trolleybus routes — especially those which use 40′ equipment — primarily serve short trips with very high passenger loads, and will never see service on long-haul commuter routes where more seating makes sense, this would be a real missed opportunity to make transit in Seattle work better for less money, using a strategy that’s proven both here and elsewhere.

I’m humbled to announce that, as Bruce alluded to yesterday, the Municipal League of King County gave STB its 2013 award for “Government News Reporting of the Year.” It was a complete surprise to be included in the tradition of admirable journalists who have won it in the past, like Robert Mak, Erica C. Barnett, David Postman, and West Seattle Blog.

STB is of course a labor of love by thirteen people with real day jobs. Although there are a lot of opinion pieces and short bursts we do try to break stories and provide in-depth analysis that is fair (if not always balanced), and it’s gratifying to hear that people find it to be interesting and thought-provoking. We’ll use this as motivation to keep improving, and as a vehicle to thank our readers and commenters, without whom we’d be shouting into the darkness.

The awards banquet is April 11th in downtown Seattle.

Over the weekend, Bellevue rolled out new changes (.pdf) to its land use code amendments in response to the NIMBYs that swarmed the City’s public hearing last week. From what we’ve heard, the changes are a last ditch-effort that could end up delaying East Link by months, maybe even years. Sound Transit is so concerned with the new amendments that they even sent East Link’s project director to testify against them at the council’s meeting Tuesday night.

Among the changes are three technical code revisions, any combination of which could end up having some negative impact to East Link:

• Height restrictions that could be determined by a lengthy regulatory process
• A 30-foot setback from the edge of the alignment to residential property lines
• A 60-foot setback from the edge of the alignment to residential building structures

Continue reading “New Bellevue Land Use Code Changes Could Delay East Link”

The upstairs of Hale’s Ales was packed on Wednesday, as well over a hundred people crowded in to hear Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl and Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn discuss the upcoming Ballard High Capacity Transit study. The room was a mix of STB regulars, agency staff, political insiders, neighborhood activists and interested members of the public. A show of hands before the speeches indicated the audience was overwhelmingly enthusiastic at the prospect of building better transit to Ballard.

After Martin’s words of welcome, Chuck Sloane from the Municipal League of King County announced that Seattle Transit Blog is this year’s recipient of the Best Government News Reporting award, which we’re thrilled to receive; Martin will have a separate post on that soon.

Our first speaker, Joni Earl, introduced the study by way of explaining ST’s previous and ongoing work in building out Link; the ideas of sub-area equity and the agency’s regional mandate, which have thus far operated to focus construction outward from Seattle to the surrounding region; and the crucial fact that any major new project by ST would require new taxing authority from the legislature, and in all likelihood, a public referendum.

Mayor McGinn spoke in more detail about the study. The only thing formally decided is the study area itself; essentially everything else — type of vehicle, alignment (Uptown versus Fremont) etc. — is on the table. The area is shown on this map, and includes Ballard, Fremont, Interbay, Queen Anne, and downtown Seattle. One of the primary purposes of the study will be to generate a set of alternatives, with estimates of construction and operating cost, ridership and other pros and cons for each. The first open house (in the more traditional format with presentations and posterboards etc.) will be held sometime in March; you can be sure we’ll announce it when we find out specifics.

The speeches were intentionally brief to provide maximum time for audience questions. As at many such public events, a majority of the questions were only vaguely related to the subject at hand (parking and traffic in Ballard, Sounder to Olympia, Ballard Sounder station, buses to Golden Gardens, Fremont-Queen Anne bus connections, labor disputes involving an ST contractor etc.), and to most others (What would the streetcars look like?, What about building another downtown bus tunnel?, How much is revenue is it plausible to ask of from the legislature?), the answers are simply not known yet.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten all the best questions and answers, so please chime in below with all the things you learned that I missed. Thanks to all of you who brought your questions and your enthusiasm; but particularly to our special guests, Joni Earl and Mike McGinn, and their respective agencies, who put this together; to our gracious hosts at Hale’s Ales; and to the donors who helped STB cover the cost of the venue.

• Sound Transit has openings on its Citizen Oversight Panel. It’s a good spot for constructive criticism of the agency.
• Pierce Transit may borrow from future budgets, defer construction, and run buses beyond their useful life to maintain a little weekend service.
• ST will pick its preferred Tacoma Link route from the six candidates in April.
• Safe streets bill, HB 1045, is cruising through the legislature this time. It would give cities the option to lower speed limits.
• House mulls $10 billion transportation package with heavy emphasis on new highways, a little bit of direct funding for transit, and some local funding options for transit. And this is before the quasi-Republican Senate gets a look. STB will have a more detailed look in a few days.
• Tukwila seeking to raise height limits to accommodate a new project.
• ST’s 2013 Service Implementation Plan is now final; previously covered here, here, and here.
• Mayor McGinn looking for money to study transit bridge in Fremont.
• Knowledgeable critic says Crosscut’s “improved” Link strip map actually makes it worse.
• Fights over ripping out track in the Eastside rail corridor.
• Don’t eat on a Pierce Transit bus.
• Pike Place Market to get more parking, more low income housing, and a better pedestrian connection to the waterfront.
• Ridership picking up on the free downtown circulator.
• Puyallup woman hit by Sounder Train, dies.
• BRT supporters in Clark County haven’t given up.
• Oregon legislative committee overwhelmingly approves CRC.
• Rainier Beach may get a beach.
• RIP Aubrey Davis.

This is an open thread.

After four years of extensive work by volunteers, the community, the City and Sound Transit to develop a shared vision and development agreements for the Capitol Hill Link Station, a NIMBY group is slinging outright lies at the work in an attempt to kill it. The NIMBY group is trying to discredit the comprehensive and open process spearheaded by the Capitol Hill TOD Champion group that last September led to a development agreement between the City and Sound Transit, a first of a kind in the region and a model of what needs to happen in the future.  At Thursday’s Capitol Hill Community Council meeting John Akamatsu and Lisa Kothari are up for appointment as the CHCC’s representatives to the Champion’s group, and NIMBY groups want to block their appointment in an attempt to stall progress on TOD.

If you support TOD at the Capitol Hill Station come join me at the Cal Anderson shelterhouse on Thursday, February 21st at 6:30pm to show your support these two appointees.

Agenda details are here. To vote on the CHCC you must live within the boundaries of Capitol Hill; own property or own or operate a business or nonprofit organization within the boundaries of Capitol Hill; be employed within the boundaries of Capitol Hill; or volunteer for an agency which serves Capitol Hill.

CHS Blog has more backstory here.

Mike Lindblom wrote a pretty decent story on the idea of gondolas in Seattle. Unfortunately the headline touts the gondola as a solution to a “traffic mess,” which plays into the narrative of transit as a means to improve the flow of car traffic. Most of us view transit as a way out of auto dependence, not a way of making our car commute faster. Nevertheless, the article gave fair play to what might seem like an outlandish mode of travel for Seattleites.

But there’s another big issue for innovative transit solutions like gondolas: supply and demand. In order to create the demand that would support lots of transit innovation, we need to aggregate that demand geographically. That means dense, compact development patterns.

I’ve pointed out before that when we disperse demand, we end up increasing the costs to operate transit, a cost soaked up by government subsidy. When we have lots of people in one place, it’s more efficient and cost effective to get them where they need to go and back again.

I love the gondola idea. But if we’re going to create more transit supply (which can be expensive to build), we need to work on the demand side too. Seattle and the surrounding region has a tendency to forget that while modes are important (BRT, light rail, monorails, gondolas etc), there must be adequate, dense demand to make them competitive with driving.

With housing, we fuss about price while at the same time, restricting supply – we need to do the opposite. With transit, we’d also have better outcomes for affordability if we allowed more density. In the case of housing, increased supply has a salutary effect on price, while in the case of transit, an increase in demand has a similar salutary effect.

Density solves the demand problem for transit, concentrating it in fewer places, creating efficiencies and even competition between modes and innovative solutions (think about all the car sharing going on for profit!)

Gondolas in Seattle? Absolutely! But don’t forget the density.

Sound Transit’s December 2012 ridership report is out, and once again shows healthy year-on-year gains for most services. As a bonus, December closes out the yearly stats. ST Express’s year-on-year numbers aren’t directly comparable because the end of the ride free area means that intra-downtown trips are now counted.

December’s Central Link Weekday/Saturday/Sunday boardings were 25,084/17,356/15,984, increases of 3.8%, 23.4%, and 42.6% respectively over December 2011. Sounder’s weekday boardings were up 4.7% (despite historic mudslides on the North Line) but Tacoma Link was down 7.7%.

For the year as whole, every service except Paratransit saw gains over 2011. All but Tacoma Link gained more than 10% over 2011.

In a move that shows a strong commitment to walkable, bikeable communities, transit, and sustainability in general, Governor Inslee has appointed Lynn Peterson to succeed Paula Hammond as Secretary of Transportation.

Peterson has been Sustainable Communities and Transportation Advisor to Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber since March 2011.  She began her career as an engineer for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in 1988, and has worked in the greater Portland area since 1994: as a Travel Forecaster for Metro Regional Government, as a Transportation Advocate for 1000 Friends of Oregon, a Strategic Planner for Trimet, 4 years with her own consulting firm, and as Chair of the Clackamas County Commission.

Peterson is very unlikely to support highway expansion over transit. She’s been a supporter of rail over road expansion in the past. This is great news for us, for our transit agencies, and for our climate.

2:15pm update: Looking a little deeper, there’s a lot to like here. In Peterson’s 2010 letter to the Columbia River Crossing Review Board as chair of the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners, she was carefully critical of the Columbia River Crossing project, with really solid comments that show clear support for light rail and pedestrian connections, and little support for highway growth. This is the approach I want to see to every highway project:

“Removing a bottleneck on the I-5 bridge and moving it to I-5 in the Central City is not a viable solution, and the region is forced to make additional difficult and unrealistic choices.”

Tolling I-205 (a parallel crossing to I-5 in the project) is a major theme here, and the strong support in the letter shows she’ll be committed to tolling I-90 as well. She also wrote that “evolving environmental expectations” mean that “mega-projects do not reflect the priorities of the communities we are elected to serve,” and disapproves of prioritizing the CRC project over all other regional concerns. That’s exactly the kind of approach Washington needs.

I’m a huge fan of pub trivia (or “Quizzo” as we called it back in Philly). I’m also a fan of pub crawls. And I’m learning to love RapidRide. So I have to give a special shout out to Seattle Trivia Crawls new RapidRide edition:

A first in Trivia Crawl history. Instead of walking amongst pub stops, we’ll use the Rapid Ride buses.

We’ll be crawling along/using the “D” line. You either need an Orca card or cash to pay the $2.25 fare.

3 pm start time at Thirsty Fish in Crown Heights
End location is Lower Queen Anne (so plan accordingly).
This crawl will go longer than the typical 3.5 hour length due to the uncertainty of bus arrival times.

An email with all pertinent details will be sent a few days prior to the Crawl to those who have registered.

Heh: “the uncertainty of bus arrival times.” It’s like you don’t even need a schedule!

Register here.