Judy Clibborn suggests a transportation package could eliminate I-90 tolls. All the more reason to go with Plan B and cheer on Republicans that are killing the legislative roads package dead.
This Sunday, when the Seahawks host the San Fransisco 49ers in the NFC title game, Metro and Sound Transit will both be providing the same Seahawks game-day service they have been providing for all regular-season games and Saturday’s divisional match.
Sounder will once again be running pre-game trips to Century Link Field and post-game trips back to all Sounder stations. The schedule is a bit different due to the 3:30 start time.
For those flying in from out of town, Link Light Rail gets you from the airport to Century Link Field. You can get an all-day ticket on Link at any ORCA vending machine, including the ones at Seatac/Airport Station, for $5.50. Set Seatac/Airport Station and Westlake Station as the termini of your trips so that you can travel anywhere Link goes all day. The best station for getting to the stadium is International District / Chinatown Station. Stadium Station is designed for the best connection to Safeco Field (where the Mariners play), but is also a decent option if you will be in the south end zone.
If you plan to be staying multiple days and want a free transfer to the bus system, consider getting a $5 ORCA smart card at any ORCA vending machine, and loading it up with several dollars of “e-purse”. There are no day passes, but you get 2 hours of transfer credit from each ride.
$2/hour parking is available in a section of the airport parking garage closest to the station. (I confirmed by phone that the deal extends through the 2014 playoff games, and, oh yeah, the Link ticket price listed on their page is three years out-of-date.) However, you may be lucky and find an open free parking spot at Tukwila International Boulevard Station if you arrive early enough.
If you happen to be riding Amtrak into town, look southeast after you ascend from King Street Station, and that is Century Link Field. You have arrived!
Thanks are due to the Metro and Sound Transit staff who have pulled this service together and re-arranged their schedules to provide this service, as well as overflow runs on all the regular routes and Link.
If you happen to be a 49ers fan, any smack talk about the Seahawks will be considered off-topic for purposes of this post. If you happen to be a Seahawks fan, smack talk about the 49ers will not be considered off-topic, but keep it PG.
This Thursday the Seattle Chapter of Young Professionals in Transportation will be hosting a special panel of communication specialists in the public, private, and news industries. Join us for a conversation covering the details of sharing transportation project information, how agencies provide information to media outlets, and the impact on the traveling public. We’ll meet at EnviroIssues (101 Stewart Street, Suite 1200) for networking at 5:30 p.m. and introduce the panel around 6:00 p.m.
The panel will include Travis Phelps of WSDOT, Charla Skaggs of EnviroIssues and Mike Lindblom of Seattle Times. Full details here.
On Monday, the King County Council approved Executive Constantine’s nominees for the Sound Transit Board. By an 8-0 vote (Ms. Lambert was absent), the Council confirmed County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, and Seattle Councilmember Mike O’Brien to replace outgoing officeholders Julia Patterson, Mike McGinn, and Richard Conlin, respectively, all of whom had the same position as their successors. The Council also confirmed Mr. Constantine, County Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer, Mayor Fred Butler of Issaquah, and Mayor Claudia Balducci of Bellevue to return to the Board.
I heard speculation that the second “North King” seat would go not to the Seattle Council, but instead to Shoreline. Although Shoreline Councilmember Will Hall would have been an excellent choice, Constantine opted to nominate one of the most progressive transportation voices possible in Mr. O’Brien.
Whereas most legislative positions are largely a question of appropriations when it comes to transportation, the ST Board is unique in that it tends to defer on planning and design issues to members from the relevant jurisdiction. Furthermore, with ST2 station planning and ST3 package design both likely to begin soon, a board with the correct priorities with respect to transit quality, land use, and parking is especially valuable. In the one appointment where he had wide discretion, Mr. Constantine nominated one of the top two Seattle Councilmembers (along with Burgess) on urbanist issues.
This afternoon, King County Executive Dow Constantine, backed by a majority of of the King County Council, formally proposed an ordinance which would ask King County voters for a 0.1% increase in sales tax, and a $60 annual vehicle license fee. The tax increase would be accompanied by a new non-cash low-income fare of $1.50 (for people with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty level), and a 25 cent increase in the adult fare.
The $130 million total expected revenue is broken down 60/40 between Metro and County Roads, effectively giving Metro $80 million per year* — just over the $75 million per year the agency has previously stated it will need to avoid the “bloodbath” 17% cut scenario. The tax would last up to ten years, unless renewed by voters; the package is expected to go before voters at the April 22nd election.
* Although by my calculations, 60% of $130 million is $78 million, which is a small but significant difference.
This morning, KUOW has a piece on Broadway construction, but with bad data and huge omissions, it reads like a hit piece against transit. The opening sets the tone:
For most of us, years of light rail construction on Broadway has been a traffic headache.
There’s nothing provided to support this assertion but the basic point that there are now fewer lanes where there were previously more. In most rechannelizations, traffic flow is improved. The article goes on to imply that there’s some question about whether the Capitol Hill station will be a “people magnet”:
Once finished, the idea is for the light rail station to be a people magnet for businesses along Broadway.
This is ridiculous on its face; the station will have several thousand daily users, who will walk by the surrounding businesses on their way to the station. Of course, it’s in question whether those thousands of people will drive business, but it’s assumed that a handful of parking places are more valuable:
But the waves of construction – the station, a streetcar and a bike lane – will have disrupted parking on the street for about three years.
Yes, because a few parking places is worth more than a streetcar, a bike lane, and a subway. Combined. The rest of the article is a list of complaints from businesses, including one that could have used some fact-checking:
“No need to drive when the station is open, but it’s still three years from now? I have to find out the way to survive that long.”
First, University Link opens in two years, not three. Second, the streetcar, which will bring thousands of people per day, opens in a matter of months. Not mentioning either of these things is lazy reporting. KUOW can, and usually does, do better.
Edit: I noted U-Link would open in two years, but construction on Broadway for U-Link will probably be done in 12-18 months, as a lot of the last year is systems testing. The title of the KUOW piece, claiming “three more years” of construction, is completely false.
A new mayor taking office is an opportunity to reevaluate what’s been going on over the past term. Mayor Murray certainly doesn’t need me to tell him that Seattle is in dire need of more buses and more trains; nor does he particularly need to take advice from me. However, if he asked me what non-obvious transit issues a Mayor can make a big difference on, here’s what I would tell him:
1. Density and Zoning.. This is familiar to anyone who reads STB regularly, but it’s worth mentioning the connection between lots of work and housing units within walking distance of transit stops and that transit being cost-effective. Likewise, parking minimums that require everyone to subsidize car use make it more likely that someone will choose to utilize the money they’ve been forced to sink into a parking space rather than take transit. The Mayor’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD) creates the opening bid for upzones around station areas; a good first bid is important, as it’ll be watered down by the Council and by “neighborhood activists” that never saw an upzone they would like.
2. Station Placement . The Sound Transit board has a strong inclination to defer to local jurisdictions as to the precise placement of its stations. That’s especially true when the jurisdiction has a representative on the Board, which will describe Mayor Murray*. The traditional way that the process works is that ST tentatively puts the station very close to an important regional attraction or urban center, because that it is in the best interests of future riders and residents. Then, the location is either value engineered away, or local business owners fear the disruption that construction will cause and lobby to have the station moved somewhere less useful. Holding the line on station location is a great opportunity to be a statesman focused on the future rather at
than a politician obsessed with transitory interests.
3. Transit speed and reliability improvements. With Metro in perpetual crisis, all of the attention is understandably focused on filling the service hour hole. That’s a shame, because priority treatment for buses and streetcars boost ridership and permanently reduce operating costs. Moreover, they are traditionally a city-level responsibility and are therefore a focus of the existing master plan. In general, these projects are of trivial expense in the scope of a major city’s budget. In many cases, it’s a question of policy not budget: for example, taking a handful of parking spaces on First Avenue makes a streetcar there cheaper, faster, and better in every respect.
* We don’t know if Seattle will retain Richard Conlin’s old seat, or if it’ll go to someone from Shoreline. [UPDATE: Mike O’Brien will also represent Seattle on the Council. Full story to follow tomorrow.]
Bruce recently wrote about the “cheaper, brighter future of American passenger rail” thanks largely to the relaxation of rules that will allow lighter rolling stock on conventional tracks. While the rule change doesn’t come close to solving all of the problems of U.S. passenger rail, allowing lighter trains does go a long way to reducing costs and improving service on legacy tracks. Last Thursday, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation released an exciting 5-year capital plan that would invest $252 million in Diesel Multiple Unit service.
The MBTA commuter rail’s 12 lines serve a ridership of roughly 140,000 each weekday. Even though there is already mid-day service on all lines, they are not nearly as useful as they could be. With the exception of a few stations such as Porter Square, the commuter rail interfaces awkwardly with the MBTA’s rapid transit lines, and the system has very few useful infill stations. Crosstown connectivity is notoriously terrible citywide, and many inner neighborhoods are neglected, including Allston-Brighton, Dorchester, Chelsea, and Lynn.
Enter Boston’s 2024 vision: in addition to implementing DMUs on upgrades already underway – such as the Fairmount Line in Dorchester, a shuttle train from Back Bay to the Convention Center, and the new Boston Landing station planned for New Balance’s headquarters in Brighton – the plan calls for creating Boston’s version of the London Overground: DMU service to Chelsea and Lynn on the Newburyport/Rockport line, and to Medford, Winchester, and Woburn on the Lowell line.
Even more ambitious are proposed new interfaces with subway lines, with a branch from Auburndale to the D-Line at Riverside, and a new line between North Station and Boston University via MIT (though this would require expensive upgrades through Cambridge to be useful). Meanwhile, traditional heavy commuter rail would continue at the outer stations but would run express through the new DMU lines.
This would create a really sensible service pattern, where the outer stations get what they need most (reduced travel times) and the inner stations get what they need most (higher frequency). And all this at what seems to be a really reasonable price tag: $252 million.
Stay tuned for a post from Bruce on applying DMUs in our local context.
This was supposed to fall over this way. Photo courtesy WSDOT
Correction January 13th: Originally this said the coffer in the photo about was not supposed to fall-over that way. It was supposed to fall over that way. Apologies for the mistake.
Our state’s transportation agency, WSDOT, is having some serious problems on two of its three “mega-projects*” in the Seattle area. I think the problems highlight a number of problems in the way we plan, price and green-light these large highway projects, and really continues a long track record of weakness in the agency itself.
First, the 520 bridge replacement project, having already eaten its through its $250 million contingency, needs $170 million dollars more added to its budget. From the Seattle Times:
Cost increases on the new Highway 520 bridge not only will drain the megaproject’s entire contingency fund, but could require money to be shifted from other road work, Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson told lawmakers Wednesday.
These costs are apparently related to cracks in the pontoons and the delays these cracks have caused. This is merely the first cost overrun of what I am completely confident will be many for the project whose completion date has already slipped from 2014 to 2016.
This pipe is costing you millions of dollars. Photo Courtesy WSDOT.
What makes pipe incident so frustrating is that WSDOT itself put the pipe there. And not for some other project, but for research testing the soil and groundwater conditions for this very tunnelling project. This really raises a lot of questions about WSDOT’s culture and efficacy dealing with contractors. The Seattle Times again (different article):
The 2002 well site was listed in reference materials provided to construction bidders, as part of the contract specifications.
“I don’t want people to say WSDOT didn’t know where its own pipe was, because it did,” said state spokesman Lars Erickson.
However, Chris Dixon, STP’s project director, said the builders presumed it had been removed.
Who’s reviewing these plans? Isn’t some one there to ensure the plan has taken into account all the information? Who’s there to look at the tunnel plan, check against the soil map they presumably used to plan the tunnelling and say “hm, better make sure this pipe has been removed”. No big deal? We’re only spending billions of dollars here. And why is WSDOT leaving 119-foot steel pipes in the ground anyway? By my very rough calculation, the pipe itself is $15,000 worth of scrap steel** (I’m sure WSDOT spent much more). Now we’re wasting millions getting out of the ground.
WSDOT has a poor record building large projects going back decades. Galloping Gertie famously collapsed in 1940. The Hood Canal Bridge sank in 1979. The I-90 floating bridge sank in 1990. The 520 replacement already has cracked pontoons years before it’s scheduled to open, and the Tunnel Highway is blocked by one of WSDOT’s own pipes. Unlike Sound Transit, who seems to be getting better at building train lines, WSDOT doesn’t seem to be capable of learning from its mistakes.
* The other is the 405 widening.
** You could say something about being “green” and recycling if you wanted to.
