Month: October 2014

Yesterday the Sound Transit (ST) Board met to review the Long Range Plan (LRP) update, including discussion of the existing LRP text and corridors. As a reminder, the LRP represents the fiscally unconstrained vision of the Sound Transit system, selections from which will be used to develop a Sound Transit 3 (ST3) ballot measure. This workshop (materials available here) was a check-in on the LRP process that began nearly a year and a half ago when the board decided to accelerate ST3 planning for a potential 2016 ballot measure. Over the next two months, the ST Board will finalize the updated LRP, which will then be used to develop ST3 investment scenarios which would emphasize investment priorities such as completing the “spine” or maximizing system integration.

Staff began the meeting by presenting a “Chair’s Mark-ups” of the 2005 LRP text. Staff updated the text to begin the discussion and reflect some of the changes that have occurred since the plan was adopted in 2005. These changes included adding recent board policy decisions concerning station access and transit-oriented development. It also included updated definitions of bus rapid transit (BRT), including grade-separated busways and bus-only lanes. Staff also attempted to “tighten” the goal language to reduce repetition.  Finally, staff presented a high-level overview of the light rail, high capacity transit, bus rapid transit, express bus and commuter rail projects identified by the public as part of the plan update.

Councilmember Roberts asked that text around system integration be added to reflect the integration work currently underway between Sound Transit and Metro. Secretary Peterson said that WSDOT should play a larger role, that there need to be better integration of long-term land use planning with LRP corridors and that Sound Transit’s projects need to support local land use decisions. Another member wanted to add citizens’ health to the goals, but was unsure how to measure it.

Corridor Changes

The workshop maps show the new rail and HCT corridors that came out of the public process. There aren’t many of them because the existing LRP is already extensive. The biggest addition is West Seattle-Downtown light rail, formerly a monorail corridor. The map below shows the existing long-range corridors in gray, and the new corridors in bright colors and numbers. In some cases rail and BRT corridors overlap; e.g., Renton-Kent-Puyallup has both an LRT corridor (#7) and a BRT corridor (#33). Only one would be built, but the plan has both options. The BRT corridor continues to downtown Seattle, basically a variation of the 578. But BRT implies more than ST Express: it means frequent service and transit lanes.

Continue reading “Sound Transit Updates Long Range Plan”

• Vox wonders about the precipitous decline of carpooling. In short, carpooling culture seems only to have worked for the inner-ring suburb era when cars were more expensive.
• Tuesday morning’s commute was one of the worst in recent memory, with up to 140 minutes between Everett and Seattle.
• But widening roads just makes things worse. The latest proof? Los Angeles, where I-405 is wider and slower than ever.
• South King County commercial rents are half the price of Seattle, and still aren’t renting.
• Bertha hits a new snag, this time archeological. Though Crosscut reports the material appears not to be of Native American origin.
• The Stranger staff race from Capitol Hill to UW. Unsurprisingly, bikes win.
• Join Mayor Murray in Columbia City on Saturday in a vigil walk for the 7-year old Zeytuna Edo critically injured in a hit and run last month.
• Commercial towers creeping into Belltown. This time, a 36-story office building with 140 apartments above is coming to 3rd and Lenora. Just across the street, antiquated zoning wouldn’t have permitted more than 65′.
• Seattle Public Schools debating whether it can afford to renovate 2nd & Marion for an elementary school, even if the land and building are gifted for free.
• Seattle #8 for job growth nationally, Washington #9 among states. Though since these just measure growth rates, nominal job market strength is lost in rankings like these.
• How to screw up parklets, San Francisco edition.
• Get ready for the WA Legislature to fight about climate change this upcoming session. “It appears (Inslee’s) scientific calculations were scribbled in crayon,” says State Senator Mark Schoesler (R-Ritzville).
• KUOW delves into Prop 1, with familiar stories of passups and bus crowding. In the piece, SDOT goes on record proposing to use Prop 1 to split the C/D lines, make the 71/72/73 full-time expresses, and more.
• You know Protected Bike Lanes are now de rigueur when private business associations aren’t waiting for cities, but are crowdfunding them on their own (Denver).
• “Four Lane Death Roads should be illegal.” When it comes to dangerous roads, perhaps nothing is worse than narrow and fast.  Thankfully, Seattle is bringing some sanity to 23rd Avenue and (eventually) Madison Street, but many more still need work.
• The biggest losers from millenials’ urban preferences? Not the suburbs, but small towns.
• More controversy at reeling Island Transit, as its former director gets a $106,000 payout.
• MyNorthwest wonders why the JBLM corridor is so congested, comes to the obvious conclusion (too many cars at I-5 narrowest point between Olympia and Everett). No mention of how transit is sorely lacking on the corridor.
• Only in Tacoma could a massive freeway interchange (Nalley Valley viaduct) be described as “a sleek, dynamic beauty with undulating curves.“
• Signs of institutional change? WSDOT is hiring 8 new people for its Public Transportation Division.

This is an open thread.

Buried in the text of the Monorail petition is this explanation of the proposed governance structure:

(a) Nominating Entities – Allocation of Nominating Sources and Nominated Candidates for Board Positions. The first and successive board members for the Board shall be selected only from the ranks of each of the following Seattle-based organizations or institutions of the successors thereto: for Board Position 1 – one individual from the Sierra Club Cascade Chapter, for Board Positions 2 and 3 – two individuals only from the Seattle Neighborhood Coalition, for Board Position 4 – one individual from the Downtown Seattle Association, for Board Position 5 – one individual from the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, for Board Positions 6, 7, and 8 – one individual each from each of the following University of Washington departments, a tenured faculty member or professor emeritus from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs, a tenured faculty member or professor emeritus from the University of Washington’s Economics Department, and a tenured faculty member or professor emeritus from the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments, for Board Positions 9 and 10 – two individuals who regularly participate in the affairs of or belong to any of the City of Seattle’s District Councils, and for Board Position 11 – one individual from the Manufacturing Industrial Council of Seattle.

These nominees would be confirmed by the City Council. The board would then pick its last two members, without Council approval, from a self-nominated pool of applicants. Public officials are explicitly prohibited from board membership.

By the standards of most Puget Sound rhetoric, the proposed entity is “unaccountable” because the members aren’t directly elected. But I’m on record that directly elected boards are terrible, in fact only accountable to single-issue hacks like us and people with a vested interest.

That said, the problem with this proposal is that the nominating entities are themselves unaccountable, although Council oversight partially mitigates that. Furthermore, several of the anointed organizations have a history of status quo bias and overwrought concern about “impacts” than bode ill for good transit planning.

The ideal form of accountability would be the Mayor appointing the Board with Council confirmation, and holding them accountable for the general conditions in Seattle of which transportation, including the monorail authority, is a part.

There are many good reasons to vote against the monorail petition, but the desire for a directly elected board is not one of them. What do you think of the proposed structure?

Clark Williams-Derry, Sightline:

For far too long, “build now, pay later” has been the transportation budgeter’s mantra. In the 2000s, for example, Washington committed itself to massive road projects that it didn’t have the money to build. So the state floated bonds, assuming that revenue from gas taxes would show up to pay them off.

That hasn’t worked out so well. Traffic didn’t grow as expected, and gasoline and tolling revenue has gone AWOL as a result. Gradually, planners have come to realize that debt service will swallow up most of the state’s gas tax receipts, crowding out everything else. As the chart below shows, WSDOT predicts that within a few years three-quarters of the state’s gas tax receipts will pay for old projects.

There are plenty of sound reasons — from Marchetti’s Constant to congestion to gas price volatility to increasing environmental concerns — to assume that gas tax revenues might decline over time as people either drive less or more fuel efficiently.  Nonetheless, WSDOT has consistently projected gas tax revenue reaching for infinity.  For a few years now, Williams-Derry and Sightline have been hammering away at those overly-rosy WSDOT projections (and this one on USDOT projections is a classic).  Glad to see the agency take the note.

What’s interesting to me here is that it’s not the planners, but the bean counters who have finally seen the light.  The Office of Financial Management is stepping up and calling B.S.  It’s a refreshing acknowledgement that we simply won’t have the money to pay for all these road projects with current gas tax revenues.  In a sane world, that would mean fewer highway mega-projects.  After all, if people are driving less, you don’t need all those mega-projects anyway.  In an insane world, that might mean individual counties looking to get creative with new highway revenue sources while Olympia dithers.  I wouldn’t be surprised if, sadly, talk of a new RTID pops up sooner rather than later in an effort to squeeze more highway money out of a system that’s running out of it.

Here are STB’s endorsements for the November election. We’ve already written about our support for Seattle Transportation Proposition 1 (more bus service) and rejection of Seattle Citizen Petition 1 (monorail planning).

As always, our endorsements are entirely the product of a candidate’s positions and record on transit and land use. We endorse only in races where one candidate has exceptional strengths or exceptional weaknesses relative to their opponent.

The editorial board currently consists of Martin H. Duke, Frank Chiachiere, Matthew Johnson, and Brent White.

State Senate

21st District: Sen. Marko Liias has long been an ardent transit advocate, as Vice Chair of the House Transportation Committee, and now on the Senate Transportation Committee. He was the lone voice of firm opposition on the committee when Sen. Bob Hasegawa sponsored his ridiculous bill to force Sound Transit to subsidize car ownership around train stations. If retained, Liias would be in an excellent position to replace retiring Sen. Tracey Eide as the top Democrat on the Senate Transportation Committee.

37th District: In Seattle races, almost everyone is for transit funding and the real discriminator is land use. Pramila Jayapal, running for the seat of the retiring Adam Kline, had the right answer on the crucially important North Rainier rezone. Her opponent didn’t.

45th District: Matt Isenhower told us he supports expanded ST3 authority for Sound Transit.  He also wants to increase the share of the state transportation budget spent on public transit, since our state is  near worst in the nation on state transit funding. His opponent has ignored multiple opportunities to tell us his position on transportation issues. As one of the few possible Democratic pickups this year, this race could determine if ST3 is on the ballot in 2016.

48th District: Rep. Cyrus Habib was one of the rare state legislators who endorsed King County Proposition 1 last spring. In fact, he campaigned pretty hard for it. Now, he is running for the state senate seat being vacated by Sen. Rodney Tom. For Habib, transit isn’t just an issue. It’s an essential part of daily living. There is nothing like having a bus rider in the senate to put transit front and center, and Mr. Habib can make the case in business terms that many senators understand.

State House

27th, Pos. 2: Rep. Jake Fey was a positive voice on both the Pierce Transit and Sound Transit Boards while in other elected positions. He is too enthusiastic about extending Highway 167, but that is understandable for a Tacoma Representative. Most importantly, we expect him to be the most effective advocate for ST3 from Pierce County.

34th, Pos. 2: Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon wrote a piece on transit following the defeat of King County Proposition 1 this past spring. He led the fight on Governor Inslee’s climate change task force to include transportation in any carbon pricing scheme. He has worked hard to make sure Washington’s regional mobility grants go to the projects that rank highest according to objective criteria, rather than spread around to well-connected rural districts where neither need for transit nor acceptance of taxes is as great.

46th, Pos. 2: Rep. Jessyn Farrell is a Transportation Choices Coalition veteran who remains engaged on local transportation issues, such as the selection of new SDOT director Scott Kubly. She is a reliable vote to support alternatives to the car. More importantly, she is one of three vice chairs of the House Transportation Committee.

48th, Pos. 1: Rep. Ross Hunter has a reputation as a numbers guy, and that aptitude leads him to understand the geometry that demands both more density and more transit investment. His opponent is running to “expose” the “debacle” of light rail.

48th, Pos. 2: Joan McBride mentions funding transit and fighting climate change as priorities in her voters’ guide statement. Her opponent mentions neither, but running as a libertarian is a poor indicator on both issues. She is well-connected to the Eastside leaders that will be telling her that ST3 is a high priority for Eastside communities.

If you aren’t registered to vote in the State of Washington, you can still register in person this Monday, October 27, at the King County Voter Registration Annex, Room 440 in the King County Administration Building (4th & James, downtown), 8:30 am – 1 pm, and 2 pm – 4:30 pm.

Want to do some campaigning to add more buses on our full bus routes? Check out the latest opportunities at the Yes for Seattle Transportation Propositon 1 website.

About two months ago, I visited Spokane, to research a post about the controversy then churning around Spokane’s central transit station, the STA Plaza, and while there, I met Karl Otterstrom, head planner of the Spokane Transit Authority. Subsequently, I have felt rather sad that the only piece on STB about transit in Spokane should be one focused on a negative, and arguably manufactured problem, when there is a remarkably positive and durable story to be told; and today, I’m going to fix that.

The story is about a transit agency, serving a mid-size city in a politically moderate region, which has remade itself along with the network it operates: from the caretaker of an expensive, atrophying, ex-streetcar system, to the operator of a relevant, growing, rider-oriented grid of bus routes, built around frequent service and timed connections. In thus reforming itself, the agency has won the trust of local voters, and positioned itself, and the region it serves, for a future of continued improvement and growth.

I sat down (electronically) with Karl, to have him first introduce himself, and then tell this story.

Bruce: First, can you tell me a little about your professional background?

Karl: I have a Masters in urban planning from the University of Washington, and a BA in urban and regional planning, from Eastern Washington University. I have been a land use planner, working on a variety of land use actions, from conditional use permits for rock pits in Idaho to comprehensive plan amendments in the Rainier Valley. In graduate school I emphasized in transportation planning and interned for the Federal Transit Administration, before landing a job with King County Metro in the service planning group. There, I primarily worked on longer-range service planning and policy issues, including RapidRide and Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement planning. I left Metro in 2009 to become the Planning Director for Spokane Transit. I also interned at STA in 2002 and involved myself in transportation planning issues, as a citizen and professional, since about 2000.

How long have you been interested in transit, what got you started?

Continue reading ““The guy who was going to bring the SkyTrain to Spokane””

One of the route reorganization proposals that has been featured in several Sound Transit Service Improvement Plans has been replacement of ST Express route 586 (Tacoma to the University of Washington) with a new route dropping off these passengers at Westlake Station, to catch Link Light Rail to University of Washington Station. The 2015 Draft SIP gives this proposal a number, route 591.

I am not sure how popular this idea is among UW students living in Tacoma, who might want to simply reverse the direction of the campus loop, and have it serve the U-District on the way to UW Station in the morning, and then have it serve the U-District last before heading down to Tacoma in the evening.

But, really, former 586 riders will not be the primary riders of route 591. With the rise of Amazon’s South Lake Union campus, among other multi-story employers in South Lake Union, there is plenty of demand for a route that not only makes use of the popular Seneca St. exit and drops off at Westlake Station, but also then heads into the South Lake Union business district. That demand exists right now.

Meanwhile, ridership on route 590 has ballooned from 2,139 daily weekday trips in 2012 to 3,011 daily weekday trips in 2013. (See page 77 of the 2015 Draft SIP.)

Let’s take an inventory of how many public bus routes from south of downtown Seattle are doing the SODO crawl, and how many are using the Seneca St. exit from I-5.

Exit from I-5 via Spokane St. viaduct:
King County Metro 101, 102, 150, 177, 178, 190
ST Express 590, 594, 595

Exit from I-5 via Seneca St.:
Metro 143, 157, 158, 159, 179, 192
ST Express 577, 578, 592

For Tacoma-to-Seattle commuters, there is no need to argue over whether the current route 590 or proposed route 591 path is better. There is already plenty of frequency in the peak direction to allow the trips to be split into 590s and 591s, plus the possibility of picking up a lot more riders with direct service to South Lake Union.

I realize I have totally avoided the topic of how route 591 would get to I-5 from South Lake Union and/or Westlake Station. Feel free to get creative in the comments.