Month: May 2014

Seriously, I am about to run out of superlatives to describe Link’s growth. I realize it’s probably gotten a bit boring for most of you, but please try and keep in mind that what has been happening the last three years is simply unheard of. No line has ever been about to go into its fifth year still recording double digit growth.

Even odder, the growth is increasing.

• March 2011 to 2012: 1959 additional boardings
• March 2012 to 2013: 3106 additional boardings
• March 2013 to 2014: 3434 additional boardings

Last month I told you that Link had already met its daily monthly ridership goal for 2014. Now it looks like Link will reach its 2015 goal by the fall of this year.

March’s Central Link Weekday/Saturday/Sunday boardings were 29,919/22,365/16,917, growth of 13.0%, 7.7%, and 15.8% respectively over March 2013. Sounder’s weekday boardings were up 4.8% with ridership increasing on the South line while 61 mud slide related cancellations drug down North numbers. Total Tacoma Link weekday ridership declined 10.2%. Weekday ST Express ridership was up 8.7%, with most growth occurring on East King and Pierce County routes. Complete March Ridership Summary here>

As I’ve been saying all year, go look at the actual report. Lots of great stuff in this new format and much more information than in my post.  My charts below the fold. Continue reading “March 14 ST Ridership Report – Need a Thesaurus”

Former Eleven 01 and Terry by Atomic Taco

• The Department of Planning and Development is presenting three U-District land use scenarios for environmental impact study.
• Neither Lynnwood nor Bellevue are happy about the siting of a potential Link O&M facilities near them.
• Tacoma’s Business Improvement Association has offered to pay to keep Tacoma Link free.
• King County Executive Dow Constantine steps into the ride-share debate; his simple approach is in stark contrast to the Seattle City Council.
• The Seattle Council passes restrictions on small-lot single-family houses that will limit building height to 18 ft, or the average height of houses on the block, whichever is higher. As of late, it’s been interesting to watch  Tim Burgess emerge as a pragmatic and nuanced policy maker.
• Apartment-to-house construction ratio reaching record highs.
• Land-use restrictions limit opportunity, but Reihan Salam points out one way to get current residents to buy in. I believe that this idea would, of course, be illegal in Washington, as most constructive and innovative policies are.
• Greyhound has officially moved to S Royal Brougham Way and 4th Ave.
• A great long-form story on the development of Google’s self-driving car.
• Google maps route planning for bikes now has shows you elevation change!
• The Fremont Bridge smashes its previous bike count record, topping out at over 6,000 bikes a day.
• If you support bike helmet laws, you should also support them for motorists and pedestrians.

This is an open thread.

Sound Transit has released new station level boarding data that, unlike past releases, covers entire years instead of periods between service changes. Here is the raw data. In all cases the figures below refer to daily weekday boardings.

Total weekday boardings are still highest at the terminus stations, with the Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill making up 27%.

Continue reading “Rainier Valley is Fueling Link Ridership Growth”

I was interviewed for KUOW’s The Record recently to discuss Seattle 2035, the next comprehensive plan.  Overall I think it went fine, though there are a few things I’d word slightly differently if I had to do it over again.  One thing I didn’t mention, but should have, is the dearth of affordable 2- and 3-bedroom units accessible by transit.  I’ve harped on this over and over again on the blog, so I’m not sure how it slipped my mind, but it’s definitely something that a comp plan is uniquely suited to think about.

Tomorrow, 5:30 to 8:00 PM at Fremont Studios, the city will be holding an open house for the single most important bike project currently underway in Seattle, the Westlake Cycletrack. If you care about safe, flat, stress-free bike connectivity between Ballard, Fremont, Greenwood, Wallingford and South Lake Union, you need to be there to make your views known. Seattle Bike Blog explains the options the city is considering, which have been whittled to two protected bike lane options on either side of the Westlake parking lot. Construction for this long-overdue project has been funded by PSRC, so if you’re tired of looking at maps of ambitious but unfunded plans, this is your chance to show up and support something that you’ll be able to ride by Spring 2016.

As the City Council prepares to consider Mayor Murray’s plan to avoid most bus service cuts in Seattle, Councilmembers Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant seek to replace the sales tax component. The $60 Vehicle License fee would join an employer “head tax” and higher commercial parking taxes:

We expect the amount of revenue generated from these two taxes to equal what would have been collected by the increased sales tax… the head tax could be easier to administer by eliminating the array of exemptions that were previously applied when it was enforce [sic] from 2006 to 2009. As a result, the rate could be significantly reduced. The commercial parking tax would be increased from 12.5% to 17.5%.

Perhaps the best thing about these revenue sources are that they can pass with Council action, allowing immediate action, reducing uncertainty, and avoiding the effort and cost of a campaign. The parking tax has much more scope to reduce driving than a vehicle license fee, as paid parking usually exists where transit alternatives are robust. Licata also suggests that his proposal is “more progressive” than sales tax.

In spite of the earlier potential start, the September 2014 cuts would still occur.

In Saturday’s story on the Property Tax Limit, I said Ben Noble was on Council Central Staff. In fact, this year he became the City Budget Director, reporting to the Mayor. I’ve corrected the original post.

I also neglected to note that there is no current formal reserve policy. In Mr. Noble’s words, “until the ‘great recession’ (and the experience of rapid decline in assessed value) and recent pressures to expand services funded by voter-approved levies, the City had not been so tight against the cap.”

If for some reason the Council rejected or watered down the 12% reserve recommendation from the Mayor’s office, some or all of those 42 cents (equivalent to $55m in annual revenue in 2014) would be available for various priorities.

The Seattle Council is considering two amendments to the land use code today. The first will be before the full council at its 2pm meeting, and concerns small-lot housing. Public comment is allowed, and important details are still in play. The second is a meeting intended for public comment, before the Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee, at 5:30pm. Both meetings are in Council Chambers in City Hall.

Small Lots. This is about clarifiying rules construction of new single-family homes in small lots in those neighborhoods, to end an existing moratorium. Mike O’Brien wrote a  good summary; as always, ex-STB writer Roger Valdez provides the perspective of someone trying to maximize the number of people that get to live in Seattle. Apparently Councilmember Tim Burgess is looking to amend the committee’s product in a way that would reduce housing supply, on the grounds that growth should occur (entirely?) in our urban villages ($). Construction on small lots seems like a fiscally positive way to create economical family housing by not forcing larger families to purchase a full-size lot. It is odd to worry that multifamily construction isn’t producing enough multi-bedroom units and then shut off an approach more likely to produce these. Moreover, people concerned with a wide range of socially positive outcomes should focus more on the net number of units a project creates and less on, well, everything else. Mr. Valdez’s post covers the details well. It appears that his group, Smart Growth Seattle, is content with the baseline legislation although it is by no means perfect.

Microhousing. Well-understood to be among the best examples of the market providing affordable housing without requiring any government spending or regulation, microhousing comes under fire for allowing relatively poor people to disturb the “character” of “established” neighborhoods, and because residents refuse to believe that people will choose to not own cars. The legislation would ban microhousing from single-family neighborhoods, impose costly design review on these projects, and introduce vehicle parking requirements. Once again, Roger Valdez says it all best, but this bill certainly indicates the Seattle City Council isn’t serious about creating affordable housing.

If only we could focus the energy, currently wasted on smiting Amazon employees and blocking Microsoft buses, to the points where the Seattle Council is actually strangling affordable housing by limiting it to the drip feed of publicly funded projects, we might be able to solve this problem.

Since the opening of Central Link in 2009, the process of restructuring the Rainier Valley’s bus service to feed the rail spine has advanced in fits and starts. With money from the 2006 passage of Transit Now, Metro extended Route 36 from Beacon Ave to Othello Station, connecting south Beacon Hill, and likewise Route 14 was extended to Mount Baker Station, connecting the Mount Baker neighborhood. Subsequent restructures eliminated the downtown-oriented Routes 34X and 39 in favor of a faster two-seat ride on the (unfortunately still-too-infrequent) Route 50. The notorious Route 42 finally croaked last February.

Despite this progress, one crucial loose end has remained: Route 7, the Rainier Valley’s core bus route, retains its pre-Link terminal loop in Rainier Beach, along with a complex turnback schedule whereby every third outbound bus continues on to the Prentice Street loop before returning to the layover on Henderson. This service pattern means the 7 can do nothing for riders heading south on Link, and the almost-useless Prentice St service pattern unsurprisingly attracts little use. A couple of years ago, I wrote (to mixed reviews) about one possibility to restructure this area, namely splitting the 7 and and connecting the two parts at Othello.

The recent failure of Prop 1 has brought about the next wave of changes in the Rainier Valley, which are a mixed bag. Several core routes are suffering frequency cuts in the midday and evenings, and loss of late-night service, all of which is very, very bad news. The redundant and underperforming Route 7X is being axed; that should have happened in 2009. One major, positive change is splitting Route 8 and combining the section south of Yesler with Route 106; this is very, very good for Renton, Skyway, and the Rainier Valley, although bad for a smaller number of riders in the Central District. The 7’s Prentice St loop will be cut back to a few trips in the peak, which is also bad.

More after the jump. Continue reading “Connecting Rainier Beach to its Station”

From the world’s busiest train station, with 3.6 million riders per day.

Adam Magyar, Stainless – Shinjuku from Adam Magyar on Vimeo.