Month: June 2013

RTD Metro Blue Line sure rolls right off the tongue.

With a temporary Skagit Bridge now in place, WSDOT discontinued the extra Cascades round trip to VancouverBellingham. The last trip was June 19th.

“Amtrak, Sound Transit and BNSF stepped up in the hours after the bridge collapse to help WSDOT quickly offer another mobility option for the traveling public,” said Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson. “I am grateful for these efforts, and that this partnership came together at a critical moment to find solutions for Washingtonians.”

Gus Melonas, BNSF Railway regional director of public affairs said, “BNSF was pleased to help provide assistance for travelers during this crisis situation.”

WSDOT spokesperson Laura Kingman told me the highest ridership of the round trip on any day was 55. She added that if the volume had been above 500, they could have run the trains longer.

I asked Ms. Kingman to reflect on lessons learned from the experience:

What we already know is that it takes time to build ridership because it takes humans time (and motivation) to change their habits. We like our routines. Our WSDOT highway engineers did a great job tailoring the detours to meet demand and people may also have chosen to delay non-urgent travel which kept volumes and delays down. Without significant delays, people were not motivated to use alternative transportation.

Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development has published recommendations regarding how micro-housing should be regulated.  The changes include:

• Double required parking from 1 space per 8 micros (up to 8 micros per “unit”) to 1 parking space per 4 micros.
• New requirement for bike parking: 1 space per 4 micros.
• Potentially adding design review by setting design review levels based on square footage rather than number of units.
• Prohibits new construction and major renovation of single family homes that include micro dwelling units with bathrooms

This fourth point is particularly strange.  Single family homes presumably will still be able to rent out up to 8 rooms, as currently allowed by code.  Therefore it appears to only outlaw adding bathrooms to single family homes.  The trouble of course is deciding what is a micro and what is just a bedroom with a bathroom.  They do add a requirement that “micro dwelling units are to be indicated and noted on plans and permits”, which seems to leave it up to the developer whether you’re building a micro-unit or just a bedroom with a bathroom.

I understand DPD’s desire to keep control over this new building style, but the best way to make micro-housing affordable is to keep regulations light.  Adding parking and design review will add cost to these projects, which will result in fewer units being built.

Three months ago I shared Tom Fucoloro’s lament that “right now, the nervous pack of challengers is playing it “safe” and letting McGinn run away with the label as the most progressive and inspiring candidate on transportation issues.” Unfortunately, since I wrote that piece the situation has only gotten worse.

Tim Burgess, who is generally a friend of the kind of transit system and infrastructure improvements this blog supports, has dropped out.

Although Peter Steinbrueck told Martin he supported Link and ST3, when in front of his lesser Seattle base he stated his opposition to spending city money on studying Downtown to Ballard Light Rail.

And then when Bruce Harrell finally broke his silence on transit issues, it was to call for more parking at Rainier Valley Link stations.

Right now it appears the only McGinn challenger who isn’t openly hostile to the ideals of this blog and our readership is Senator Murray – although his constant framing of two highway expansion bills and the 99 tunnel as his greatest transportation achievements is worrying.

As a transit/livable city supporter first and a McGinn supporter second, it is disconcerting that my main issues are only being championed by one candidate.

NOTE:  I am not on the STB editorial board.  The opinions expressed above are solely my own.

Tonight will be our first chance to comment on alternatives (PDF) from Downtown to Ballard. The first thing I want to say is that none of the eight options are perfect – and that’s okay. While the handout at tonight’s meeting (PDF) will ask people to “pick an option”, SDOT and Sound Transit pointed out yesterday that these are “mix and match”. For any given part of the corridor, there are many options, and they were arranged into eight examples that represent different levels of service and cost. They offer a range of outcomes in the evaluation matrix, which I highly recommend perusing, as it also shows how each option serves the various urban villages and centers. Four of the options go through Interbay, and four through Fremont. The handout link above has a great page with all eight together. I’d say open that up and have a look. I know a lot of people looked at these last night – thanks everyone for the great twitter conversation!

And there’s something here finally in writing:

Planned light rail extensions to Lynnwood and the East Side will increase train traffic in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT), leaving no room in the tunnel for a Ballard rail line to safely operate. If the Ballard rail line used a separate parallel tunnel to enter or exit Downtown Seattle, underground walkways could connect passengers to the DSTT.

So, let’s have a quick look at each option. Open your maps! :) Continue reading “Alternatives For Ballard”

[UPDATE by Martin, 3:08pm: they flipped a vote and passed the Transportation Bill ($) 51-41 today. Now it’s off to the considerably more hostile Senate.]

House Bill 1954, the $10B transportation package that Martin detailed previously, failed to garner the 50 votes required for passage. This bill would have provided the necessary “local option” authority, allowing King County Metro to ask voters for the necessary funds to return the agency to long-term fiscal health. It would have also funded a lot of new highway expansion, raised the gas tax, and, most controversially, continued to fund the Columbia River Crossing.  From the AP:

The package, which had already faced likely resistance in the Senate, included $3.2 billion for several state road projects, including state Route 167, Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass and a replacement bridge over the Columbia River into Oregon. It also included more than $1 billion for maintenance of highways and bridges.

I understand the need for political coalitions and all, but the alliance between pro-transit and pro-highway legislators has always struck me as particularly problematic. It’s like saying to an alcoholic, “sure, you can get a new liver, but only if you agree to continue drinking.” Surely there has to be a better coalition with which to partner, but I haven’t yet figured out what it would be.

Highline Times: Ground broken on permanent Tukwila commuter train station

Puget Sound Business Journal: Work starts Monday on permanent Tukwila Sounder Station

Seattle Times:  A new $46m train stop being built at Tukwila

Tukwila Reporter: Work is under way to build new Sounder rail station in Tukwila

Most of these point out permanence, use the strong word “station”, and don’t showcase cost.

One of them is not like the others. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.

Terse cynical version of story:

Breaking: Study finds that buses are cheaper to run on the waterfront than streetcars. Metro not asked whether bus route 99 was a hit, or whether electric buses would be quickly value engineered into regular diesels.

Slightly longer and less biased version:

Waterfront Seattle, Parametrix, and LTK Engineering Services have produced a set of documents that provide a detailed analysis of what it would take to reinstate the Benson Waterfront Trolley as well as a complete comparison of two classic trolley options, a modern streetcar option, and two bus options.

Continue reading “Draft Waterfront Streetcar Study Released”

• SDOT narrowing Aloha extension options.
• Metro average weekday boardings up to 408,000, most since 2008; RapidRide A up by 53% in three years.
• Sound Transit 1Q 2013 weekday boardings up 11% over 2012 at 95,589; overall boardings up 9%. Sounder and Central Link lead the way in the latter at 12%.
• Rep. Judy Clibborn has a revised transportation proposal. I believe rough numbers going to new highways and new transit taxing authority are about the same.
• Bruce Harrell says good things about apodments, growth on Capitol Hill, and light rail. He says he favors “more parking around stations.” I do too, as long as the lots are private.
• Tukwila Station breaks ground.
• Hallelujah: SDOT will change rules to encourage activity in public rights-of-way.
• Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue ranks sixth of twenty-five largest Metro areas by Human Development Index. Full report is here.
• Gig Harbor running “trolleys” — actually a diesel bus circulator — around downtown this summer.
• Amtrak trying to expand bike-friendliness.

This is an open thread.

After a great phone call yesterday afternoon, I realized that this is a good time to write a little more about park and rides.

In general, free parking is bad. Don Shoup’s paper (linked) is excellent and hasn’t been successfully challenged. His work has influenced parking policies in many cities, leading to improved traffic and improved economic activity with reduced emissions – basically, great stuff.

However, for transit stations outside Seattle, there seems to be a disconnect. While cities are implementing priced parking and increasingly re-purposing street parking for bicycle, transit and pedestrian infrastructure, transit agencies are still catching up. In 2008, Sound Transit had many parking garage and surface lot expansions in the Sound Transit 2 measure. Today, they’re looking at other station access options, but it’s still taken as a given by many transit supporters that park and rides are good. I used to be one of these, but now I’m not, and I want to explain why.

We often view ridership as an end goal of a transit system – it’s the metric we measure in the short term, and it’s a good indicator we’re on the right track, but getting riders on a train isn’t why we build transit. We build it for its positive impact on our economy, and because it increases quality of life, mostly as a direct result of more people walking to their destinations and fewer people driving. Sound Transit was created because the Puget Sound Regional Council – then the Puget Sound Council of Governments – adopted a policy for linking growth to transportation. Their 1990 Vision 2020, which said we needed a regional transportation body, and now their Vision 2040, are about managing growth – we’re building transit to create compact development, not to its own end.

So are we meeting those goals with park and rides? Continue reading “We Shouldn’t Build More Park and Rides”