Month: August 2014

Ooh, I like Nova Buses. See also how double-decker buses are made.

Another week, another congestion debacle during this Thursday’s rushhour:

With both gameday crowds (5:30 kickoff) and those coming for the free Pharrell Williams and Soundgarden concert (3:10-4:45), expect large crowds downtown…

Regular Riders: If possible, try to flex your schedule to avoid traveling during the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 4.

When cities go through the long process of watering down their own BRT investments, there’s always a process of measuring “typical” congestion and weighing the time savings against parking and SOV interests.

However, this framework breaks down during bursts of “atypical” construction and event congestion. Agencies have to play a peculiar confidence game: if people heed their warnings and defer trips or switch to transit, then congestion won’t be as bad as advertised; if this experience causes people to ignore warnings, than the jam will be epic.

This makes it all the more shameful that the only alternative to making traffic worse or staying at home is transit — and except for Link, Sounder, and a few busways, that transit fares even worse than the cars that create the problem.

With only a few exceptions among regional trips, all levels of government have placed such a high priority on fast car access that transit is almost always slower. As a result, transit ridership is a mix of people unable to drive, the price-sensitive, and people for whom time spent on transit is more valuable than a shorter time behind the wheel. To increase ridership, as government must do to avoid gridlock during foreseeable congestion events, policy must reduce the time penalty of transit.

This argument isn’t about the general case for dedicated transit right-of-way; although that case is correct, it’s obvious that the leadership values the interests of other stakeholders more than transit riders. In the specific case of construction and special events, the only way to give citizens any alternative to total gridlock is dedicated transit lanes.  If that means closing off certain streets except for local access and transit and posting some cops, so be it; the great thing about cars is that they’re not limited to scheduled routes or reroutes, and can adjust to change quite easily. And it seems like the new SDOT director is at least open to the idea:
Continue reading “Carmageddon, Again”

In June SDOT launched the City’s first freight master plan. Even a strong advocate of moving travelers to transit like me recognizes that short-haul cargo isn’t going to ride transit, and the free flow of freight is to Seattle’s long term advantage.

However, freight is often an excuse for too many general-purpose highway lane-miles. The Port of Seattle injected itself into the Deep Bore Tunnel project for the ostensible benefits to freight. Whenever state leaders advocate for their giant transportation package of new highways, the economic impact of businesses moving their goods is a main justification.

Anyone familiar with induced demand knows that this is a fool’s game. Cars will fill up any new capacity and leave freight just as stuck as before. Tolling or dedicated freight lanes might actually allow lucrative time savings for freight, but there is little momentum for that.

Fortunately, although we are in the early going Seattle’s FMP is not looking at new general-purpose capacity to help freight. According to Kevin O’Neill of SDOT,  “We’re not, as a city, generally talking about widening arterials or expanding curb lines because that goes against a lot of other city objectives.”

Continue reading “Freight Master Plan Launches”

• Two great ideas for improving the Metro experience, and one that’s probably unrealistic.
• Broadway Streetcar, if funded, will extend as far as Roy St, not Prospect St.
• The Stranger interviews new SDOT director Scott Kubly.
• Faces of the Spokane Transit Authority Plaza.
• New Edmonds development to include more Sounder parking.
• Pioneer Square parking will be restricted on Sundays.
• Weyerhauser moving to Pioneer Square ($), citing recruiting and transit accessibility.
• Some Deep Bore Tunnel opponents not giving up.
• Metro buys two battery-electric buses for testing, option for 200 more.
• Metro’s hybrid buses to get lithium-ion batteries.
• Monorail founder Dick Falkenbury doesn’t like November’s initiative.
• Clallam Transit renews contract with General Manager Wendy Clark-Getzin.
• Transportation Choices Coalition shares their comments on Sound Transit’s Long Range Plan.
• If Tysons Corner will be a new kind of city that will have important implications for much of King County.
• A backpack for a transit commuter.

This is an open thread.

Sightline’s Jerrell Whitehead has a thorough and well-researched post up about Sound Transit’s pilot program to maximize parking spots at park-and-rides via user fees, real-time space information, and ride-sharing.  If you’re at all interested in the subject you should read the whole thing, as they say.

There’s an undeniable economist’s appeal to using price as a way to rationalize demand for a scarce resource like parking, and charging money for spots is absolutely the right thing to do.  Until there’s a culture of paid parking in the suburbs, however, Sound Transit’s going to face an uphill political fight with one of its core constituencies.

That said, the way this pilot was done seems to strike the right balance: charge for some spots, but not all, and give preferential treatment to carpoolers.  Oh, and if ST really wants to boost ridership, it should find ways to develop more housing and offices near existing park-and-ride facilities.

As we noted in the news roundup, Councilmember Mike O’Brien wants to update the rules around detached accessory dwelling units, a.k.a. backyard cottages, a.k.a. DADUs. Erica Barnett at PubliCola notes that O’Brien is looking at streamlined permitting and prefab designs that would reduce some hurdles to installing a backyard cottage. Some of the designs actually look pretty cool.

What I like about O’Brien’s thinking here is that he’s looking to reduce up-front capital costs. While there are all sorts of regulatory hurdles to DADUs (and excessive parking requirements), the main impediment, it seems to me, is that most homeowners don’t have tens of thousands of dollars sitting around to build a DADU, and banks aren’t giving out HELOCs like they used to. Prefab designs could help reduce costs.

Another step the Council and DPD could take would be to remove the owner-occupancy requirement for DADUs and ADUs (mother-in-laws), which I’ve written about previously. Requiring the property owner to live in one of the units makes banks less likely to lend and prevents investors from building more DADUs and ADUs in the first place. I hope the Council and DPD consider it.

Recently the Daily Journal of Commerce wrote about a new project proposed near Link’s Othello Station at 7301 and 7343 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S.:

The largest of the three buildings would be at the corner of Othello and MLK Way. The six-story structure would contain 210 apartments, a 17,000-square-foot public market, 10,000 square feet of retail and underground parking for 165 vehicles.

To its east on Othello would be a 225-unit building with 7,800 square feet of retail, and parking for 330 vehicles above and below grade. Nine of the units would be live-work.

The third building, on MLK Way, would have 65 apartments, five live-work units and 28 surface parking stalls.

All units in the complex would be market-rate, with a mix of studios, and one- and two-bedrooms.

Yes, that is 523 parking spaces for 505 units. New market units next to Link are great, but it is ridiculous to have a greater than 1:1 parking ratio, and obscene to build new surface parking literally across the street from a Link station. Also across the street is the Station at Othello, which was built with 320 spaces for 351 units and 17,591 square feet of retail. Parking utilization is so low that the developer is only providing 60% of the parking in their new Station at Othello North project. The Myrtle Apartments project being built north of Othello link station will have 50 parking spots for 108 units and 8,000 square feet of retail and community space.

The Seattle City Council wisely limited park and rides near Rainier Valley Link stations in order to encourage dense walkable development near the stations that would bring, steady, long term, all day demand. These efforts are paying dividends. It would be a shame if  private entities built a large number of spots, driving up costs when history shows they are not wanted or needed by the tenants.

If you are interested in learning more, there will be a Southeast Design Review Board meeting at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center tomorrow (Tuesday, August 26) evening from 6:30 p.m. to 8.

(h/t @transit509)

This past Monday morning, Transportation Choices hosted a community briefing on the upcoming Yes for Seattle Transit campaign, which will campaign for a Yes vote in this November’s election on the Seattle-only transit funding measure we’ve previously called “Plan D.”  I attended the briefing along with about 100 community activists, politicians, transit professionals, and other journalists.  Little new information was presented at the briefing, which served mostly as a kickoff event for the campaign, but it’s a good opportunity to remind our Seattle-resident readers what the ballot measure and campaign are about.

The ballot measure, primarily championed by Mayor Ed Murray and City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, would include a $60 vehicle license fee and a 0.1% sales tax, imposed only within the city, to benefit the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD).  These are the same funding sources that would have been imposed countywide under Proposition 1, defeated in April’s special election.  Most of the funds raised would be devoted to saving bus service on routes that exclusively or primarily (at least 80% of stops within Seattle) serve Seattle.  A small portion of the funds would be set aside to fund core routes between Seattle and other jurisdictions, in partnership with those jurisdictions.  The mayor and Councilmember Rasmussen expect that the measure would raise roughly enough money to forestall all of the currently planned or expected Metro cuts in Seattle except those scheduled for this coming September, which are expected to go through as planned and not be restored.  Metro has indicated that it is ready to work with Seattle (or any other jurisdiction that’s interested) to restore service using local funding.

Mayor Murray has made clear, and reiterated at the briefing, that he sees this funding as a stopgap, to be used only until there is a permanent, countywide source of funding that restores Metro service to current levels.

Given that the defeated Proposition 1 enjoyed 66% support within the City of Seattle, and the November general election is expected to have a more pro-transit electorate, the players involved expect the measure to pass.  The principal source of controversy with respect to the measure, to the extent there is any, is a sentence in the resolution authorizing the measure that reads:

The first priority for the funding is to preserve existing routes and prevent King County Metro’s proposed February 2015 service cuts and restructures.

Some activists who spoke during the briefing’s Q&A session made it clear that they see this sentence as preventing any restructure of Metro service for the entire length of time Seattle is funding Metro through the STBD.  Both Mayor Murray and Councilmember Rasmussen disagreed with this interpretation, but neither wanted to discuss specific service decisions at this event, and neither would address the merits of restructuring.  In any case, since the City Council voted to put the measure on the ballot, King County punted on its originally proposed February 2015 restructures, which would have brought major change to the Seattle bus network.  The County Council voted instead to cut service for February 2015, but to decide the specifics of the cuts at a later date.