Month: February 2013

SDOT held the first open house for the Central City Connector Corridor Study on Wednesday night at City Hall. Three more open houses will be held as planning progresses over the past year.  Mayor McGinn was first to take the stage, followed by Richard Conlin and finally project manager Tony Mazzella. McGinn spoke about the process of updating the Transit Master Plan and the need for many different revenue sources, including potentially ST3. Conlin billed himself as a streetcar “skeptic” who was converted by having seen the Portland Streetcar and then the Seattle line in operation.

Here’s the proposed purpose, according to SDOT:

To serve the growing demand for Center City circulation trips with a mode and street alignment that is:
• Highly legible and easy to use for a variety of trip purposes
• Provides continuity of travel between the downtown commercial core and adjacent Center City neighborhoods that are or will be served by the South Lake Union Streetcar and the First Hill Streetcar

When the TMP was first announced in 2011, Martin did a thorough analysis of  the CC1 (1st Avenue) and CC2 (4th/5th Avenues).  STB commenter and occasional contributor Mike Orr was at last night’s meeting and wrote in with the following comments:

The feedback on the group-brainstorm sheets showed about half the people prefer 1st Avenue to Seattle Center. The rest were about even on 4th/5th or 1st-to-Westlake. A few people preferred bus or trolleybus over rail to save money. A few said to put all resources into a 3rd Avenue transit mall. And a few said to revive the vintage waterfront streetcar.

The question of alignment is obviously going to be an important one, but before we get there I think it’s important to step back and make sure we’ve got the right goals in mind. One potential outcome of the connector, if built, would be to knit together downtown with its adjacent residential neighborhoods, and make the area bounded roughly by Mercer Ave, Broadway, and Jackson St. feel like a single neighborhood – in which one can bounce around freely and frequently.

Alternatively, if this is to be the first leg of an eventual line to Ballard, that’s a different project with very different needs than a downtown circulator.  The relative importance of measures like frequency, reliability and travel time benefits depends in large part on what happens to the streetcar system outside of downtown. We’ll look forward to seeing more clarity in this regard with the release of the purpose and needs statement in the next few weeks, and over the year as the plan evolves.

Mike Orr contributed to this report

• Tacoma Tomorrow proposes ways to delay draconian cuts.
• King County forms advisory panel about low-income fare.
• NPR interviews ST CEO Joni Earl.
• Seattle “thinking about” bringing back the waterfront streetcar.
• Continued debate about the safety of train travel between Seattle and Everett.
• This article on the Mercer Island tolling pitchfork brigade is not very well matched with the photo.
• Seattle Council may punt on controversial parts of the SLU rezone.
• A psychology experiment about mode choice.
• Seattle will sell the Pacific Place garage.
• Erica Barnett reviews Car2Go.
• Larry Ehl has a roundup of the Governor, Senate President Pro Tempore, and the Governor’s Policy Director talking transportation in different contexts.
• Federal Way holding workshops about transit connections and development.
• Whatcom gets hybrid buses.

This is an open thread.

Last minute notice, I know, but tonight at 6:30 at City Hall, as part of developing a new Climate Action Plan, the City of Seattle is hosting a forum on what we can do to reduce the climate impact of our transportation and land use. With panelists Rob Johnson of TCC, David Cutler of the Seattle Planning Commission, and Maggie Wykowski of Puget Sound Sage, the discussion should be in line with the things we write about.

There’s an opportunity for public input tonight, but not just in person. Online, you can read about the city’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, development of the new Climate Action Plan, and you can comment! Even saying “more electric transit” or “more density” helps, as there will inevitably be comments to the contrary.

Definitely comment below if you’re already planning to go – I know a few of our regular readers will be there.

I was going to write a big post with all the numbers, but PubliCola has a perfectly serviceable rundown, so just read that.

Erica’s report is largely based on Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond’s presentation to the Seattle City Council, the slides for which you can find on Metro’s website.

If you’re too lazy to click, the summary is that WSDOT’s mitigation money for viaduct construction runs out before the construction does, at the same time that the temporary $20 license fee authority stops.  Metro will be short $75m annually to maintain current service levels.

After a round of public feedback, Metro has dialed back some of the changes originally proposed for Renton with the introduction of RapidRide F. You can read a thorough summary of the modifications and public feedback over at the Metro Future Blog, but here’s the brief version:

• The deletion of Route 110, a Sounder shuttle which mostly duplicates RapidRide F, will go ahead.
• The conversion of Route 155 to DART, and a minor change to DART 909, will proceed as planned.
• The proposed deletion of underperforming DART 908, and the rearrangement of the tail of Route 105, won’t proceed. This was due public concerns and considerations which “point to a need for [Metro] to maintain bus service in a community with a higher level of transit dependency.”

I don’t have strong opinions about these modifications, as I don’t know the area particularly well, but if you do, you can take this survey or email Metro at HaveASay@kingcounty.gov. The deadline for comments February 15th.

23rd Avenue in Capitol Hill and the Central District is currently a disaster for pedestrians and bus riders.  The right-of-way is far too narrow to support four traffic lanes and pedestrians comfortably, to say nothing of bicycles.  The pavement has been torn up by heavy bus use, and needs replacing.  So it’s great news that the city has cobbled together $14M for a full redesign of 23rd Ave from John St. all the way to Rainier Ave. Central District News reports on the project here, which could start as soon as 2014.  Community outreach is still ongoing, and final designs and lane configurations have not been set.

According to Bill Bryant at SDOT, the redesign will consist mainly of transit signal priority, fiber optic upgrades, and passenger facility improvements.  Electrifying the corridor, which could benefit many transit riders well beyond the CD, would cost an additional $12M or so, funding for which has not yet been secured.

Between this and the recent developments planned for 23rd and Union and 23rd and Jackson, change is afoot in the neighborhood.  Now more than ever we need that Madrona/Queen Anne restructure.

Update: great point by Zach in the comments. The past 40 years of road infrastructure in the CD (such as the widening of Cherry St. in the 1950s) have been about speeding up through traffic: getting people (in cars) through the neighborhood instead of to the neighborhood.  Hopefully we’re seeing a the beginnings of a reversal to that trend.

Two meetings about potential changes to bus service in Snoqualmie Valley are coming up in the next couple of weeks:

Thursday, February 7
6 -7:30 p.m.
Cherry Valley Elementary School,
26701 Cherry Valley Road, Duvall

Monday, February 11
6 – 7:30 p.m.
Fall City Elementary School
33314 SE 42^nd Street, Fall City

Our commenters batted around some ideas from possible changes to Snoqualmie Valley service in a previous post.

From the Metro Future Blog post:

During the meetings, Metro will outline proposed adjustments that reflect the community’s desire to see improved connections between Duvall and Redmond and a more reliable and better connected valley transit network. All day service to Snoqualmie Ridge — a growing residential and employment center in the valley — was another priority shared by stakeholders.

In addition to these service adjustments, the plan points to the role vanpools and vanshares can play in providing additional transit opportunities. The effort also looks at longer-term ideas that can be explored in future years to provide more integrated transit service to valley residents.

The proposal will be available beginning Feb. 7 on Metro’s Have-a-Say website, where you will also be able to share your feedback via an online survey.

Since September’s major restructure to West Seattle and Ballard (which, by the publicly available results, has proved a smashing success in West Seattle), Metro’s service change proposals have ranged from insipid (I-90) to nonexistent (RapidRide E), so I’m not particularly hopeful here, but I suppose Metro could pleasantly surprise me.

The residents of Mercer Island have a pretty sweet deal.  They live in an emerald castle of sorts, surrounded by a moat, which keeps the riffraff out and property values high.  They have a relatively short commute to Seattle OR Bellevue.  They have a bridge across said moat paid for by federal and state taxpayers in both directions.  Finally, they have free access to the HOV lane for their single-occupancy vehicles!  All in all, it’s a helluva place to settle and raise a family if you happen to earn three times the U.S. median household income.

But alas, all is not well on the emerald isle. Tolls are coming. What?! That’s not what’s supposed to happen!  In fact, it’s precisely backwards: the bridge is supposed to keep people out, not keep the islanders locked in! They took the beautiful Castle on a Cloud and turned it into… Alcatraz!

Alas, the moat giveth, the moat taketh away. But I, for one, am at least somewhat sympathetic to the plight of our island-bound friends (soul mates, as they are, in our 206 area code). These folks bought houses under the (perhaps naïve) assumption that they’d have permanent, subsidized access to the mainland in perpetuity and now the rules are being changed.  What, if anything, should we do about it?

Continue reading “Mercer Island, I-90 Tolls for Thee”

I am not sure this is real, but supposedly this is snow failing inside a subway car in the Kiev Metro. I’ll never complain about my wintery commute again. Unless this video is fake, of course.