Month: December 2013

After test runs over Thanksgiving weekend, Oregon’s new Talgo trains have entered regular service. They are running between Seattle and Portland this weekend, and will run between Seattle and Vancouver BC later next week (see scheduled runs here, bottom of the page).

Given the new flexibility afforded by the two new sets – each set must overnight in Seattle at least once per week, limiting the schedule somewhat – ODOT has announced a new schedule for Portland-Eugene service beginning on January 6, 2014.

A new early morning departure is being added at 6:00am from Portland to Eugene, and a 4:00pm departure from Eugene to Portland. In addition, on weekends and holidays the morning train from Portland to Eugene will depart 2.5 hours later, at 8:30am.

Currently, northbound departures all leave Eugene before 1:00p and the first train doesn’t arrive in Eugene until after 5:00pm, making day trips to anywhere south of Portland impossible and even one-night stays impractical. This will considerably improve the options for Portlanders visiting the University of Oregon, anyone with state business in Salem (including reverse commuters from Portland), and others.

ODOT has published the new schedule for Oregon service here, but the full corridor schedule has not yet been released (we have an email in to WSDOT). However, given that WSDOT is not changing service levels at this time, we can reasonably infer the following:

• Trains 11, 14, 500, 501,  506, 507, 510, 513, 516 , and 517 will remain unchanged.
• Train 508 will now begin in Eugene at 4:00pm and continue to Seattle, arriving at 10:05pm.
• Train 504 is cancelled.
• Train 503/(505 on weekends) is the new morning service from Portland to Eugene

If so, the new schedule is as follows:

While our fleet will be badly underutilized until the Point Defiance Bypass is complete – 7 trainsets for 11 daily trains! – the added flexibility is greatly appreciated and the redundancy should at least prevent some of the maintenance problems such as locomotive failures that have occurred too frequently in the past couple of years. Though we’re still many years away from a fully usable schedule in which you can arrive in Portland or Seattle in the morning, this new schedule does represent progress.

Zach’s summary and analysis of the Tier 2 alternatives arising from Sound Transit and Seattle’s Ballard HCT study is excellent, and if you’ve not read it yet, you should do so. There are some good ideas and some less-good ideas among the options, and I’m sure by now, our regulars will have thoroughly digested them, but in this post I’d like to point out one option that I was hoping would have made it into the final analysis but didn’t, a variant of Corridor C.

First, I’d like to explain my criteria for a sensible downtown Seattle rail line, beyond the obvious ones of being frequent, direct, reliable and focused on areas of high ridership potential:

1. It needs to be no worse than an existing express bus trip, including transfer time. Ballard’s express services are massively popular, but express service is expensive to operate, both in terms of operations (lots of deadheading) and capital (lots of buses that sit at the base twenty hours a day). Riders will revolt if we try to cut their service without offering them something at least as good. If we can cut the 15X, 17X, 18X and maybe the 28X in favor of better connecting services, that’s a shedload of buses we can reallocate to better all-day service at minimal cost.
2. It needs to be grade-separated south of Denny. Lots of people worry about the top speed of transit service, but it’s not very important for in-city services (say, typical trips of less than ten miles, stops about every half-mile), because even a fully grade-separated train spends much of its time accelerating or decelerating for stations; frequency and reliability matter most. Assuming any of these lines will be both very frequent and reasonably reliable, the most important factor to minimize trip time is to avoid extended periods of very low speeds, e.g. slogging at-grade through the city center.

To the first point. The current scheduled time from 15th/Market to 3rd/Pine on the 15X is 19-21 minutes inbound in the AM peak. Supposing train headways of 10 minutes (i.e. a five-minute transfer penalty) and a couple of minutes of added walking, we need Market to Pine travel times below 15 minutes if we’re going to build a rail line worth getting out of bed for. Option C currently fails that test — but I think it could be fixed through much smarter design, at a plausible cost.

More after the jump. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Ballard Option C”

After nearly 1,800 public comments and 6 more months of technical study, Sound Transit held its final open house Wednesday to present refined options (‘Tier 2’) for rail transit between Downtown and Ballard.  After this round of public comment, the results of the full study will go before the Seattle City Council and the Sound Transit Board early next year.

When we last left this project, Sound Transit and SDOT had presented eight corridors more as conceptual thought exercises than actual proposals, helping to focus reactions and reveal the underlying qualities that matter to people.

In a testament to a high demand for fast, reliable transit – and no doubt in some part due to the work of Seattle Subway – Sound Transit said:

“We heard that efficient and reliable service that is ideally grade-separated is a major priority. We included many corridors with high levels of exclusive right-of-way, including a full tunnel option.”

Unfortunately, in response to public feedback ST also eliminated high fixed bridges from consideration, raising the stakes somewhat and leaving us with only drawbridge and tunneled options for crossing the Ship Canal.

The initial 8 concept corridors were refined down to 5 and then analyzed for ridership, reliability, speed, environmental impact, and impact to other modes. Full descriptions after the jump…

Continue reading “Sound Transit Refines Ballard Options”

• WashPIRG finds driving decreasing, transit trips increasing.
• The U-District debates how to accommodate change ($).
• Puget Sound Bike Share short of startup money.
• Monorail petitioners are active again. I see no reason to change the assessment that people shouldn’t support them.
• Design review for “Othello North” is underway: 347 units, 234 parking spaces.
• Microsoft agrees to fund a pedestrian bridge over SR 520 to Overlake Station. More on this later.
• It’s amusing that the federal government is in the business of delaying cars and transit ($) to ensure pleasure boats can easily get through.
• TriMet tries out “eco-track.”

This is an open thread.

This Thursday, December 5th, “Sound Transit and the City of Seattle are hosting the third and final open house to present updated concepts for new rail transit between Ballard and downtown.” Link.

Staff and decision makers from Sound Transit and the City of Seattle want to hear your comments and answer your questions. By attending and commenting, you can help to make sure that all options are as fast and as reliable as possible and to facilitate future expansion to other neighborhoods.

Event Details:
Ballard High School Commons
1418 NW 65th Street, Seattle, WA 98117
5:30 pm – 7:30 pm, Thursday, December 5th
Opening remarks begin at 6:30 p.m.
Transit Routes: RapidRide D, 15 Express (Peak Time/Direction Only)

More from the Press Release:

“Five conceptual routes are currently under review as part of the Ballard to downtown High Capacity Transit study, which will help inform updates to the City of Seattle’s Transit Master Plan and Sound Transit’s Long Range Plan. The plans identify priorities for potential future transit expansions.

Sound Transit and the city hosted open houses in March and June and used online tools to gather feedback on potential rail routes connecting Ballard and downtown. The technical team refined the alternatives down from eight to five potential routes for either light rail or streetcars. The project team will have detailed maps and information at the meeting.”

“Construction of any future transit extensions would be subject to Sound Transit and City policy decisions and identification of funding sources. Voter approval is required for potential Sound Transit investments.”

After the meeting, some members of Seattle Subway and possibly some writers from Seattle Transit Blog will be meeting up for drinks at the Essex (1421 NW 70th St) .  This is not any kind of planned/organized/official meetup, there will be no guests or even event space, just some people you might know grabbing a drink or two before taking their bus home.

by BEN BROESAMLE

Planning professionals, private sector developers, and the media often operate with different definitions of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). Many confuse TOD with mixed-use development and claim that new, mixed-use development with 100 residential units and 100 parking spaces next to a nice bus stop with buses arriving every 15-30 minutes is TOD.

In short, no.

Mixed-use development is typically development with retail on the ground level and with other uses above, without other distinguishing features. Despite sharing common features with mixed-use development, TOD differs from mixed-use development. The focus of TOD is the dramatic reduction of privately owned, single occupancy vehicle use. A development parked at 1 space per dwelling unit, or 1 space per 1,000 gross square feet is not TOD under any circumstances because TOD first and foremost seeks to reduce the space required for and provided to private automobiles.

TOD & TRANSIT, TWO PARTS OF A WHOLE:

If readers failed to read further than the title of a recent article in The Atlantic, “’Transit’ Might Not Be Essential to Transit-Oriented Development,” then readers might think that transit is only a marginal factor in TOD. However, the study that the article cites concludes: “The focus on rail is particularly problematic in cases where developments near rail stations are simply transit adjacent, with high amounts of parking, low density, and large units being offered for sale [as opposed to smaller rental units].” The quote is precisely correct. That development pattern is problematic, with or without rail. Development considered TOD that is actually merely transit-adjacent, retaining priority given to private, single occupancy vehicles directly detracts from the goals of TOD.

TOD and transit must always be seen as two halves of a whole. Transit provides mobility. Development without parking near transit provides increased densities and walkability, making high-capacity rapid rail transit the most effective and reliable method to move people between neighborhoods. Additionally, the compact, mixed-use, pedestrian-prioritized nature of TOD provides accessibility, a convenient lifestyle for those seeking to live without the hassle of owning a car.

WHAT TOD IS:

In short: TOD is unparked, mixed-use, walkable development near high quality transit investments. It provides essential retail services, at least some employment, and access to high-capacity, rapid, reliable transit all within a convenient, 5-minute walk. TOD actively reduces the availability of on- and off-street parking as much as possible and therefore uses space that might be otherwise filled with idle cars. In practice this means development near high quality transit and without private parking. Always.

This definition should be stated at the beginning of any media outlet piece or investor call about TOD.

Ben Broesamle is an aspiring real estate development and investment leader specializing in human- and transit-oriented development. He presently works as an analyst in commercial real estate finance and is on the board of Seattle Subway. He holds a BA in geography from UCLA where he concentrated in urban and regional development studies and minored in environmental studies. He moved from Los Angeles to Magnolia in 2010 where he now commutes via the 33 or 24.

Wednesday’s Seattle Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee meeting agenda contained one appointment to the design commission and an initial briefing on two zoning issues, one apparently minor and the other controversial. The North Rainier Rezone dominated the other items during public comment. Chair Conlin and members Burgess and O’Brien were there; Clark was not.

For those of you not familiar with the area, the crossroads in the shadow of Mt. Baker station is officially known as “North Rainier.” The actual Mt. Baker neighborhood, heavily represented at this meeting, is an affluent single family area immediately east of North Rainier. This upzone, in progress since 2008, concerns North Rainier. The public comments came first, a lively mix of proponents and opponents of the upzone.

The pro comments, which included most of the institutional representation, focused on arguments for density well-known to readers here. Beyond the general case, North Rainier is one of the major public transportation hubs in the region, with not only Link but three frequent bus lines (7, 8, 48) and three minor ones (7X, 9X, 14).

The negative comments, which I’ll try to state in as value-neutral a way as I can, were as follows:

• there has been insufficient notification and opportunity for public comment, so the process should slow down;
• growth will make it much harder for residents to park their cars; and
• an influx of renters and low-income housing would harm the close-knit, publicly involved character of the adjacent single-family Mt. Baker neighborhood.

I’m unmoved by the process argument. Officials should comply with the law in public processes, but no one ever complains that something they like is moving too fast. I’m more interested to hear what actual concerns are driving them to complain about process. For a response to those substantive concerns, see Councilmember Burgess’s exceptional opening statement just after public comment. His monologue begins at the 49:15 mark:

[UPDATE: The meeting has been delayed until 2014, location to be determined.] The next opportunity to comment on the North Rainier rezone will be Friday, December 20th, at 9:30am in the Council Chambers. If you care about the fate of this neighborhood, and more people and jobs there, I advise you to make the time to show up.

Continue reading “North Rainier Zoning Meeting Report”