Yesterday Ben gave KUOW listeners a pretty good primer about the issues involved in connecting downtown to Fremont and Ballard. He summarized the key points well, and if you’re not following this story very closely it will get you up to speed.
by ROBERT CRUICKSHANK
Rising rents across Seattle have generated a robust discussion about the best way to solve the affordability problem. The last thing we would want to do is make that problem worse by scaling back the opportunity to build new housing. But a new proposal being considered by the Seattle City Council would do exactly that. Incredibly, the City Council is going to consider reducing height limits in certain neighborhoods. This change could cause rents to rise further and help put Seattle on the path to becoming as unaffordable as San Francisco.
The Department of Planning and Development is billing this as a “code correction.” It’s difficult to understand what exactly needs to be corrected. Councilmember Sally Clark initiated this review with an October 2013 letter claiming that “I never envisioned developers would be able to achieve five stories in LR3 zones. I think five stories is too big a change in height and scale for the LR3 zone.”
Councilmember Clark may not have intended that to happen. But it is happening, and the results are good for Seattle. With each additional floor of height, more people are able to rent a unit in a building, helping more developments pencil out and get built. Every unit built in a new development helps protect those tenants currently renting an older building, reducing the competition for existing housing stock. More units also help ease upward pressure on rent by providing more options and more vacancies.
This is an open thread.
Given the parallels between our two cities, I’ve been watching San Francisco’s battle with gentrification and private bus systems with interest. Here’s an interesting quote from Rebecca Solnit, a Bay Area activist and writer, discussing the private buses that some Bay Area tech companies use to shuttle employees to the office:
The buses represent, first of all, accommodating people living in San Francisco even though they don’t work anywhere near here. So it’s really about making San Francisco Silicon Valley’s bedroom community.
Second of all, it’s privatizing public transit. In another era, the captains of industry would have said, “OK, our workers live here, our factory is there; let’s encourage, enforce, and subsidize the improvement of public transit.” Caltrain does run down there. We could have beefed up that system and had a tremendously efficient train system, with trains leaving every 15 minutes or so for the peninsula—and it would be so much more environmental, too. Instead we have these luxury coaches picking people up at public bus stops in such a way that they’re displacing the city buses.
I’m not going to dissect the entire piece. You can find a great takedown here. I want to ask a narrower question: was there ever really a golden era in the past where “captains of industry” subsidized public transit? I’m sure you can find a few examples, but you’ll probably find more examples of private industry ripping out public transit, advocating for freeways, or building and profiting on transit (in the case of Seattle’s original streetcars, New York’s subways).
In trying to understand San Francisco’s troubles, It helps to remember just how big the Bay Area is. It’s 45 miles from downtown San Francisco to Cupertino. That’s more like Seattle to Snoqualmie Pass than Seattle to Redmond. In that distance you have many different counties and transit jurisdictions, compounded by the fact that inter-county transit planning in California is notoriously terrible.
On top of that, public and private companies work on completely different time scales. Even if, say, Facebook, found a willing transit agency to partner with on a public transit investment, I would imagine the conversation went something like this:
Facebook: We like to move fast and break things. We’d like to fund some buses between Palo Alto and the Mission District starting next month.
Bay Area Transit Agency: Great! We’ll conduct an environmental impact study and get back to you in 2019.
Facebook: OK, thanks for the chat. We’re going to go ahead and order some private buses now.
Not to say that these kind of public-private partnerships are impossible. Here in Seattle, we have a few good examples, such as the extra buses funded by the First Hill hospitals, Microsoft’s investments around Overlake, and Amazon’s investment in the Streetcar in South Lake Union. And while Microsoft does run its own shuttles, at least they try to run distinct routes from Metro. Did Apple, Google, or Facebook even make an effort to coordinate with an agency before going their own way? I’d love to know. As of Monday, at least, the buses will be charged a nominal fee by the city of San Francisco, though the fees are limited by state law to “covering the costs of overseeing the program.
Honestly, the solutions to the Bay Area’s woes (and I use that term loosely — most cities in America would give their right arm for these “woes”) are straightforward and boring: (1) build denser, more walkable communities everywhere, from The Mission to Palo Alto to Fremont, (2) abandon office parks for more transit-oriented employment centers, and (3) improve mobility by making better use of existing transportation infrastructure and building new infrastructure where warranted.
Easy to say, hard to do, of course. But there are some bright spots to point to. Google is leasing more property in San Francisco. Yahoo’s moving downtown as well. That’l probably drive rents up even higher in the short term, but it’s the right move.
by BEN BROESAMLE
Sustainable Urbanism: development and transportation practices based on a long-term economic model that accounts for the costs of their ecological effects. Future urban sustainability requires a holistic consideration of our ideas about the relationship between the built environment and mobility. Ultimately, that means we must reconsider parking.
Consider Seattle’s urban future in light of the following estimates:
1. Population Growth. There are no official Seattle-only population forecasts, but we can extrapolate from recent history. According to Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI), the City of Seattle gained 17,355 people between 2010 and 2012. A Census Bureau estimate puts the gain at 25,875. Assuming that ESRI’s nominal figure is the constant biannual growth rate, that’s 156,195 new residents by 2030. If this estimate is accurate, Seattle faces a projected growth pressure of nearly twenty-five percent over eighteen years. How will we move these people? Where will we house them? How will we make Seattle an increasingly walkable, enjoyable, activity rich, sustainable, economically successful and economically diverse place to live? Our answers to these questions will determine whether Seattle is a sustainable city going forward.
2. Mobility Spatial Efficiency. According to the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), typical on-street auto parking requires 200 square feet of space per vehicle, exclusive of right-of-way for maneuvering; a parked car in a garage takes up 300-450 square feet depending on the specifics of maneuvering aisles and structural design. On the other hand, a seated human using public transit or a bicycle consumes about twelve square feet. This comparison demonstrates how private cars steal precious space from the urban fabric of a sustainable and growing city. A study shows that cars are parked ninety-five percent of the time. Do we really wish to incur the costs of allocating at least two-hundred square feet of our city’s built environment for each usually-parked private car when only twelve square feet are needed for each resident to be comfortable and highly mobile?
Let’s imagine that half of these 156,195 additional residents by 2030 brought a car with them: 78,097 cars. According to ITE standards, we would need to allocate approximately 200 square feet to park each one in on-street parking spaces. To park them would require 358 acres of parking spaces—imagine a square lot composed entirely of parking the length of thirteen football fields on each side. If we leveled downtown Seattle and paved everything from James Street to Olive Way, from First Avenue to Summit Avenue, that entire area could be covered with the added cars. Scarce space in our built environment has more valuable purposes than storing seldom-used assets, especially in places where we concentrate sustainable mobility investments. Seattle, like many other cities, faces a stark choice: park more cars or have active, walkable, aesthetically pleasing, sustainable urban environments.
Metro will once again be providing $4 (each way) cash-only shuttles from Northgate Transit Center, Eastgate Park&Ride, and South Kirkland Park & Ride, leaving each lot from 11:25 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., and then picking up at 5th Ave S & S Weller St (on the east side of International District / Chinatown Station) after the game.
Sounder will once again be running pre-game trips to Century Link Field and post-game trips back to all Sounder stations. The schedule may look familiar because it is identical to the regular season game-day schedule. The only difference is this game is on a Saturday.
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 Saints 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 Saints will not be considered off-topic, but keep it PG.
We squandered a fair amount of good analysis and journalism during the two weeks you weren’t paying attention. Presented in rough order of significance:
On both sides of the urbanism argument, it is fashionable to worry about the details of how density is implemented. The right worries how “impacts” will be “mitigated,” as if density is an infection to be contained; the urbanist left is very interested in street interface, shadows, store widths, accompanying parking, and so on. After all, no one wants to have a simplistic view of a complicated issue, everyone wants to prove their Seattle bona fides with a complaint about what developers are doing, and the art of good design is much more interesting to write about than the science of stacking units on top of each other.
While all that stuff is important, I’m here to speak up for the utterly simplistic, spreadsheet-gazing practice of just considering how many net units a development is going to bring to the city.
Consider the overwhelming benefits of more housing in the City of Seattle:
Moreover, there is the fundamental moral issue of turning away as few potential Seattle residents as possible. While it’s a tragedy every time a low-income person can no longer afford to live in Seattle, it’s also a shame when the failure to build housing forces a newcomer out of the city.
Now obviously this logic can be taken to absurd extremes. I’m on the urbanist left and sympathetic to the aesthetic and parking concerns, even if they’re overemphasized relative to raw population counts. It’s clearly not a good thing when a 60 unit low-income building with no parking and narrow storefronts is replaced with a slightly larger building with 62 luxury units, lots of parking, and blank walls at sidewalk level. For one thing, the low-income residents will have much more trouble coping with displacement. For another, injecting all those cars into the system will create many negative externalities.
But that is a rare and extreme case. When a project eliminates old housing stock at all, it typically replaces the units at a very high ratio. Pushing for sensible accompaniments to density is worthwhile, but not to the extent of severely curtailing the number of units built.
A couple of months ago, Frank wrote a blurb about the Obama administration’s commitment to legalize European passenger train designs, which today are effectively prohibited by Federal Railroad Aministration regulations, by 2015. He chose an illustrating photograph which represents, I’m sure, exactly the kind of thing most Americans think when they hear “European train”, namely a picture of Spain’s AVE high-speed train between Barcelona and Madrid.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that photograph, or that thought: Europe’s high-speed rail services (AVE, TGV, Eurostar, etc.) are indeed wonderful! The FRA modifying its rules to legalize European train designs in the US could make American high-speed services faster, much cheaper to build, and more environmentally friendly, because American trains will no longer have to be built to a completely unique crashworthiness standard, girded with battleship-like quantities of steel. That’s a wonderful and long-overdue advance in itself, but I’m going to argue that cheaper high-speed trains are not the most exciting technology this rule change could unlock.
Europe’s high-speed trains are the icing on a tall cake of public transport, which begins, at a local level, with generally-excellent local bus service, rapid transit in medium to large cities, and extensive high-capacity subway and Metro systems in the biggest cities. At a larger scale, cities and large towns are connected by regional passenger rail lines that run all day and late into the evening, with coach services extending to smaller towns. Most of those regional lines will never carry enough people to justify the massive expense of high-speed rail, but they’re well used, and taken together, carry far more trips than the high speed lines.
The success of the high-speed lines could not happen without the connectivity provided by regional and local services, not to mention the higher-density, less-car-focused land uses they have facilitated for more than a century. These regional services make extensive use of a technology that, thanks to the FRA’s over-zealous regulation, had hitherto occupied only a niche role in American passenger railroading: the Diesel Multiple Unit train.
DMUs are diesel-powered versions of their cousins, Electric Multiple Units, of which American light rail vehicles are an example. Each carriage has its own propulsion system, and trains can be made up of as many or as few as are needed to meet demand. DMUs are typically slightly larger than a light rail car, and seat 100-200 people; the photo above is an example European DMU, a Stadler 2/6, on Austin’s Capital Metrorail Red Line. That design was previously only usable on track not shared with freight trains or other traditionally-constructed mainline passenger trains, but after 2015, it will be legal to operate it on shared track. This is a very big deal, because much of the existing urban and suburban rail trackage in the US has at least some freight or mainline traffic.
This rule change makes passenger rail financially viable and environmentally justifiable in markets where it would never be possible to fill up a full-size locomotive-hauled train; it allows trains to scale down. A local example of a market DMUs could serve post-2015 would be Sounder North, a commuter rail service that has struggled with low ridership, currently attracting (pp. 19 & 20) less than 125 riders per trip in the mornings, and 150 per trip in the evenings Sound Transit currently runs the shortest trains allowable under federal rules, a locomotive and two bi-level carriages, providing just under 300 seats, half of which go empty. A pair of Stadler 2/6s, with about 100 seats each, or a Stadler 2/8, a slightly larger DMU which seats about 170, could comfortably carry that load.
To get a sense of the economic and environmental cost of America’s overbuilt trains, let’s look at a simple number, the weight of the trains, taking Sounder North as an example. To a first order approximation, the environmental and economic cost of building and operating a vehicle (of a certain type of fuel) is proportional to the amount of metal that goes into it. A three-car Sounder North train weighs about 240 metric tons (50 t carriages, 120 t locomotive), while the Stadler 2/8 weighs 79 metric tons. So, roughly speaking, we could comfortably move Sounder North’s passenger load with a third of the fuel and materials we use today. This would do much to bring down Sounder North’s painfully high cost per boarding; to boot, a DMU train would almost certainly accelerate faster, ride more smoothly, and be quieter to the neighbors. DMUs on this line could be a huge win.
I should be clear that I’m not advocating that we build a nationwide passenger rail network of the kind found in Europe. In much of the interior of the country, the population is far too sparse to pull in significant intercity transit ridership, population centers are two far apart to allow trains to easily compete with flying, and half a century of freeway building has created a network much more direct than the railroads of the 1900s. What I am arguing is that in those places where regional density exists, DMUs could allow services to exist that otherwise wouldn’t, and that is potentially revolutionary. Later this month, I’ll have a detailed post on how we could apply this idea locally, but I’m sure readers will chime in with their ideas of where DMUs could be useful.
