Month: September 2013

Shortly after my post on the Rainier Station bike cages, Sound Transit got back to me on my question. ST spokesman Geoff Patrick said Beacon Hill is the first facility scheduled to have bike cages. The cages could “come online as soon as next year, but it is too early to confirm the timing, ” and will follow “a reconfiguration of the bike parking there.” Almost simultaneously, the Tukwila Sounder station will incorporate cages when its renovation finishes in late 2014.

More importantly,

Going forward they are going to be our primary strategy for promoting bicyclist access to the system and will be located at most new facilities that are in the pipeline, including not just East Link but the other ST2 extensions.

Patrick added that there are some exceptions:

University of Washington Station, where there is no room for a cage and we’re maxing out the space available for bicycle parking with racks under the bike/ped bridge; and at Capitol Hill Station, where a cage is planned to be added later, either during TOD construction or afterwards.

Where space is at a premium I imagine conventional racks are more efficient, but the bike cage trend is a welcome one.

Last week, the local hotel workers’ union, UNITE HERE Local 8, sent a letter to Seattle DPD recommending that the 1620-room hotel project planned for the Greyhound site (and the rest of the block around it) require a supplemental environmental impact statement for downtown, rather than just an addendum to the existing downtown EIS, because it has a significant unplanned impact on downtown employment and housing affordability.

This project, to me, is fascinating. My first response, upon speaking with UNITE HERE earlier in the year, was frustration – slowing down downtown development drives up prices, impacting affordability and adding pressure for sprawl. But during that initial conversation, I realized my frustration was misplaced. A hotel doesn’t have those kinds of impacts – it’s not a factor in housing supply. Or, at least, not usually.

Right now, aside from the Greyhound station, the site where this hotel will be built also contains the old Bonair Apartments, a residential building that serves as de facto affordable housing. As Jane Jacobs covers for an entire chapter, old buildings tend to become affordable as they age, and the Bonair is an excellent example – most of its 48 units are priced low enough to be considered affordable by those earning 50% of Area Median Income (AMI).

The hotel project also contains affordable housing – 160 units (for 50 years). That housing, however, is only required to be affordable by those earning 80% of AMI – so while that level of affordable housing is also needed, this project isn’t a clear benefit. It will displace some low income people, many likely downtown service workers, and replace them with people making more money. Arguably, that’s still a wash – it’s the other side of the equation where the real impact lies, and why UNITE HERE is involved.

More below the fold. Continue reading “The Impact Of A Hotel”

Sound Transit has released their Q2 Ridership Report.  Another quarter, another ST ridership record set.  This quarter it is the first time weekday boardings have exceeded 100,000 for a full quarter.  Ridership was stable or showed growth on all modes except for Tacoma Link.  The system as whole was up 8%, 7% on weekdays.  ST Express boardings rose 7%, Sounder 6% (increases in Sounder South overcoming decreases on the North Line), and Central Link 10%, 9% on weekdays.  For a more indepth look at the ridership numbers, see the monthly ridership posts.  May and June and July.

Link’s cost per boarding continued pulling away from ST Express as we moved into summer at $5.83 for Central Link compared to $6.50 for ST Express.  $5.83 is a dollar lower than Link’s Q2 2011 cost and a 25 cents lower than the 2013 budget estimate.  This will likely be the low point (or high depending on how you look it) for cost per boarding on Central Link this year as seasonal variation lowers ridership moving forward. There are other metrics not covered in the regular monthly report so the full quarterly report is worth checking out.

Below are some charts I created focusing on Cost per Boarding. Continue reading “Sound Transit 2Q 2013 Ridership Report”

At Seattle Transit Blog, we often play host to arguments for density and affordable housing played against neighbourhood and community groups who fight to keep things in “character” and “scale”. In her book, Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate, Lisa Provost has taken a look at how zoning rules in small towns across New England have often been used to block any housing that is new, moderately priced or moderately sized. Straight away, the book shows the arguments and techniques used to fight housing are nearly identical to what is attempted here, even though the towns in the book are often orders of magnitude smaller than Seattle and thousands of miles away.

Snob Zones is a collection of in-depth case studies of project and zoning clashes in small towns in Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts – the book takes its name from Massachusetts law 40B, the so-called “anti–snob zoning act”. In each case, when developers arrive with plans to build housing, be it $300,000 condos or a moderately-size retirement home, local residents fight the proposals by turning up to review meetings and arguing, organising communication drives to local politicians, and passing strict “character” rules that are nearly impossible to pass.

More below the fold. Continue reading “Book Review: Snob Zones by Lisa Provost”

If you are going to the Huskies football game, the Seahawks, or the State Fair this weekend, Metro and Sound Transit have some extra service lined up for you.

As we previously covered, Sounder will be running an all-day schedule Saturday, with the State Fair being the star attraction. The first South Sounder run leaving Lakewood at 9 a.m. and arriving in downtown Seattle at 10:13 a.m. will also be convenient for those trying to get to the Huskies noon football game. Arriving that early is probably a good idea, given how crowded the buses from downtown to UW are on game days.

For those willing to pay a little more for the convenience of quick service, Metro will be running shuttles from seven park & rides to the Huskies game, and back. These shuttles cost $5, unless you have a UW Athletics Season Pass. No ORCA passes are accepted. But the shuttles depart as soon as they fill up.

Sunday will feature the first Sounder service to a Seahawks game for this season, and the first-ever Sounder trains to a Seahawks game from Lakewood and South Tacoma, departing Lakewood at 9:50 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. Pierce County residents can also use this service if they want to spend the day at the Fair (its final day), and catch the train back after the Seahawks game, with the first of the two returning trains reaching Puyallup Station sometime after 5 p.m. Seahawks fans can also jump on one of those two trains (making sure not to jump on the train that skips Puyallup) to catch the final hours of the Fair, and then catch the 578 back.

Metro will also have special shuttles to the Seahawks from Northgate, South Kirkland P&R, and Eastgate P&R, costing $4 cash each way, with no ORCA passes accepted. If you just want to use your ORCA pass, the 41, 255, and 554 will get you from these locations to very close to the stadium. You can still take the shuttle back for $4 if you don’t want to wait for the regular bus. The shuttle pick-up point is 5th Ave S and S Weller St.

September 28 is service change day, and while it’s nothing as contentious as last year’s overhaul, there is nonetheless a considerable amount of added service on key routes, major construction detours, and significant changes to corridors such as I-90. We’ve written about these previously here, here, and here. Check out the service change pages (Metro, ST) for full details, but a summary is below the jump.

Continue reading “ST and Metro September Service Changes Roundup”

This past Tuesday, Senate Transportation leaders held a public hearing at Stevenson Elementary in Bellevue.  One of many planned across the state, the forum was meant to gauge citizen input on state funding for transportation.  By all the accounts I’ve heard, it sounds like transit supporters dominated the crowd and podium, speaking primarily for preserving Metro service.

If you were in attendance, let us know how the meeting went in the comments.  You can also relive the hearing in real-time on Twitter, where the #moveKCnow hashtag is being used to document what will likely be a massive lobbying effort to prevent Metro cuts.

Legal wonks out there will appreciate this gem: Andrew Villeneuve at the Northwest Progressive Institute has a blistering takedown of Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson’s dissent (PDF) in the Freeman case. Johnson, one of only two to vote against Sound Transit and WSDOT, largely framed his opinion around constitutional protections for drivers and cited the 18th Amendment extensively.

Andrew’s entire post is a treasure trove of transit legalese, so I’ll let it speak for itself. But I do want to pull out probably the single most important distinction in this entire case:

What the Johnsons do not acknowledge in their dissent – and what anti-rail conservatives either don’t get or won’t admit – is that the urban King County portion of Interstate 90 is not simply a highway. It is a multimodal corridor that contains a highway. And this distinction matters.

More below the jump. Continue reading “Rebutting Justice Johnson’s Dissent”

The Rainier Station open house materials are now available, if you found my report incomplete or unclear.

There are the display boards, a comment form for the station name, and a form for design comments.

The comment period closes September 24th.