42 Replies to “Sunday Open Thread: World’s Fair Subway Special”
That train station still gets much use. Part of the vision of Robert Moses for a second World’s Fair was leaving behind a park that the city could be proud of. In fact Flushing Meadows Corona Park is the second most visited park in New York City. Besides the stadium, the U.S Open Tennis Center, the state of the art ice skating rink and pool that recently replaced the World’s Fair rink, the Queens Museum of Art, The New York Hall of Science, The Queens Theater in the Park, and the most impressive catering hall on earth there is boating, fishing, baseball and a whole lot of soccer.
When I was a pre-teen my pals and I used to take bike rides through a bicycle corridor that began at Flushing Meadows. This was a few years after the Fair closed, and many buildings were abandoned.
I remember seeing that station, and it was bizarre, because it was obviously designed for throngs of people to emerge from the trains, but there was only us on the empty ramp, some eleven year olds on bicycles.
ive had HO Scale models of the Worlds Fair R36s & R33s for like 25+ years
I would feel much better about it if it didn’t join us to the hip with Metro who, just this week, is debating building up surplus instead of putting more buses on the street.
It was foolish to craft the proposition all around giving money to Metro. LA has a good model where their DOT operates the Dash system (http://www.ladottransit.com/dash/). Operated by Veolia last I checked.
We pay more and get less by aligning with Metro.
I won’t vote for a mostly blank check to Metro.
Does not the proposition specify that the money is used to fund Seattle routes? And I think its a good thing that Metro will finally build back its contingent fund. In the absence of the State Legislature doing the right thing and the reality that citizens in this state WILL NOT tax themselves appropriately to fund government services, this is the best possible outcome.
You have to understand that people need transit service they can depend on, and transit service whose levels rise and fall every month in proportion to the sales tax revenue is not service that can be depended upon. We survived this long without drastic service cuts because Metro had the foresight during the last economic bubble to build a strong reserve fund, which it could draw from to maintain service during the recession. Now, the reserve money has, by and large, been spent, and if we don’t replenish it, we shoot ourselves in the foot come the next recession – enough though replenishing the reserve means fewer buses on the road in the short term.
That said, reserve replenishment and prop 1 have little to do with each other. Prop 1 is specifically about Seattle buying service within Seattle. If it passes, the extra money Metro gets from prop 1 will fund Seattle service, not simply go into the reserve.
It’s too late to change the ballot measure; ballots will be sent in the next week or two. The surplus gives us an opportunity to expand Metro service, which we haven’t been able to do for years. The previous two expansions got partly swallowed by tax cuts and recessions, and that’s exactly the problem now: another recession would swallow the expansion, or of we don’t pass Prop 1, would lead to reinstating the cuts and more. Either way we need a frequent Metro network, which means at minimum relieving the overcrowding and filling in the evening/Sunday frequency on the frequent routes. We need to look beyond controversies like the questionable routes (25, 27) and consolidation-needing routes (2, 4, 12). Those are secondary issues that don’t involve that many service hours or people compared to the entire city.
If it passes, the city council would give Metro either a list of routes and runs, or general principals such as those above or Metro’s service guidelines. Either of the latter two would lead to a good result. The first might, depending on the list of routes.
Leaning towards voting no. Until Metro agrees to commit to a gridded, frequent route network in Seattle, I’m not comfortable increasing their funding.
Kyle, this is a cop-out and a completely lame excuse for a no vote.
Metro can’t wave a magic wand and “commit to a gridded, frequent route network” the day Prop 1 is passed. Achieving such a network will be a political project that will require lots of citizen pressure over a period of years, not because Metro is internally resistant to such a network, but because there is lots of citizen pressure going the other way. (There is still resistance within Metro, but there is far less than there was a decade ago.)
Who were the first three people to speak up at the Prop 1 kickoff?
1) A Leschi community association rep complaining ad nauseam about the 27 cut.
2) A Horizon House representative saying that his organization’s support depended on whether he was assured there would be no restructures if Prop 1 passed.
3) An activist who has been defending the current slow, duplicative, infrequent form of the 2 against even the slightest change for many years.
And now that the Dembowski faction of the Council appears to have the upper hand, it’s not even like you would get any restructures as a result of voting down Prop 1.
Your position is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
David: If the Devil’s Advocate synopsis of our two options is: A) continue to pay the same amount for a guarantee that nothing will ever improve, or B) pay even more for a guarantee that nothing will ever improve — that is basically what you just wrote — would it not be the definition of insanity to endorse the latter?
You are assuming that no improvement short of an overnight reinvention of the network counts as “improvement” worthy of the name. That’s an odd position when you yourself have advocated other kinds of improvement on many, many occasions.
For example, I think it is fairly likely that passage of Prop 1 would result quickly and without any Seattle Process, just as Bruce advocated, in a good deal of improvement in night and weekend frequencies on core routes. I’m also confident it would immedately bring more service in places where buses are currently running above capacity during peak and midday hours, and extend recovery time for routes that are chronically delayed beyond recovery. All of that strikes me as “improvement” more than worthy of the cost even if we have to continue pushing for real change to the network. I would think that Kyle, who has complained in the past about being passed up by numerous Route 40 buses, would agree.
I should also note that Ed Murray and Tom Rasmussen did not give the Horizon House fellow the assurance he was seeking.
What d.p. said. I am loathe to commit my money to legislation specifically written to maintain the status quo!
Kyle, did you give some introspection before you made that post? Because from here I could quite easily make the same argument by inserting not paying taxes unless I get the services I demand first. It’s a reactionary mindset that’s become all to common & will be quite destructive in the long run.
But this is Washington state – one of the few without a state income tax.
Nice argument David. This from the man who is pretty much the definitive authority when it comes to a gridded route. No one has spent more time and effort on the subject than David, and he is saying, in very clear language, to vote yes. You’re a fool if you vote no and think that will help things. It reminds me of the idiots who voted for Nader, because (this part will crack you up) Gore wasn’t enough of an of an environmentalist*. By the way, Nader fans — how did that work out for you?** Eight years of Bush sure lead to Ecotopia didn’t it? Maybe it takes a while.
Jeesh — don’t over think it. This isn’t a mandate on how we think Metro is running things. We aren’t electing the board,*** either. This is simply a question of whether you think Seattle Metro should have more money or not. I like transit, so the answer is yes. If you don’t — if you are one of those low tax, Seattle Times type guys who thinks that “government is the problem, not the solution” and that we should “starve the beast” and maybe spend more money on roads, and less on buses, then by all means vote no. But if you think Metro bus service should be improved, then vote yes (it will be). But don’t vote no thinking it will somehow usher in a new system for Metro — that they will all see the light — ooooooh. Please. Give me a break. If this fails Metro will just keep stumbling along, with less money.
If you don’t like the way Metro is run, petition those in power, and support those who support your position. Run for the council, if you have the guts to do that. ***
* Remember when Nader fans screamed at Gore to “read your book, read your book!”? Yeah, sure you do.
** By the way, this pattern has repeated itself throughout history. For example, Theodore Roosevelt thought he could win, or at least push the Republican party to the left by running on a different party (the Progressive Party). He lost, and the Republicans actually became more of a big business party (a position they never left). Thanks Teddy!
*** By the way, this is exactly the way you change anything. For example, you don’t oppose a levy just because you don’t like the school board’s position on busing. You elect a new board. By the way, in this case (unlike the Al Gore or Teddy Roosevelt case) I personally knew the people involved. I knew for a fact that the board wasn’t going to change their position if the levy failed — they were just going to make cuts (meaning layoff teachers). I knew all this because my mom was on the board. This is the way boards work.
Feel free to mention counter examples, but I know of none. I know of no board, ever, that said “Wow, they reduced our funding — maybe we should do things in a radically different way because people aren’t happy”. Hardly. They simply go back to doing thing things the same way, but with less money.
Sucks — doesn’t it. It’s like we live in a republic, and have to do the hard work of electing representatives and then petition them to do the right thing. Oh my, so much work when I would rather bitch about the world on a blog. Or try to throw another Eyman style monkey wrench into the system.
I find it hilarious that people write things like “I am loathe to…” and then turn right around and complain that improvements aren’t already here. I’m adding this onto my list of questions that no one answers:
1) What should the King County officials have done differently in the face of newer, slightly better tax collection projections versus what they actually did?
New addition, 2) How do you propose to wholesale reform an operating mass transit system in the face of budget cuts or, at best, budget stay-exactly-as-it-is-or-slightly-less, without any additional money going into the system, given the constraint that the system must keep moving people around, must meet various state and federal laws regarding public input and public accessibility, and that not everyone agrees on how the system should be constructed?
A plug for my article American Nations on Page 2, on the origins of different attitudes on transit.
Thanks, Ross.
One other thing I should mention to people who may be thinking like d.p. and Kyle: I’ve now created four separate iterations (three of which have been made public and the fourth of which will be coming before the end of the year), at increasing levels of detail, of a rationalized Seattle bus network. After going through that exercise, there is one thing I can tell you about creating such a network: every single additional service hour makes it easier to make it work. The pre-September level of hours is just barely enough to get us to something demonstrably better than what we have now. Each additional 10,000 hours allows for substantial improvement. A Prop 1-boosted Metro will have much more latitude to improve the network than a cut Metro.
And, eventually, they do. It’s just a glacial process, to date. You would think so too if you had been around to see the spaghetti messes that some of our most effective core routes — including the 358/E Line, the B Line, the 120, the 41, and the ST 550 (created as a Metro route through a reorg) — all replaced.
In addition to Lake City Ridier’s list of “and” clauses:
+ and by state law is only allowed to tax certain items which are approaching their limit of taxability.
David,
I’ll agree that the current network is much better than the mess that it used to be.
I first encountered Metro Transit as a wee lad in 1978. I recall few major changes in the route structure between then and the opening of the DSTT. Even then the busy routes were simply moved to the tunnel with few changes to their outer ends.
Then came the merger between Metro and King County. There was a lot of restructuring in the first few years after the merger, particularly in the suburbs.
At the time one of the things that prevented a lot of complaining about restructures was new routes were added or peak routes were made into all-day routes without removing or cutting back existing routes. The redundant service was eventually removed in later restructures. This gave us the 358 and I think the Metro route that preceded the 550.
Another big round of restructures happened with the inauguration of ST Express service. This gave us the 41.
In general Metro seems much more willing to undertake major restructures when it has spare service hours to play with than as a result of cutbacks.
While I can’t speak to the 120 I’ll agree all of the other routes David mentioned were a complete mess 25 years ago. Service frequency was poor outside of peak.
As someone who has voiced considerable concern about the County Council, so hopefully am not a complete Pollyanna about “Metro” …
If we get a regional reorganization in the context of a significant service cut (and a limited regional reorganization, not a comprehensive one, is all we would likely get), I expect it will be a very blue moon before the next time anyone with any kind of electoral-based power dares even utter the word “reorganization”. “Reorganization” will be associated with “less service” in the popular mind. And that is deadly. There will be some losers in the best “flat service” reorganization (though not too many if done wisely); there will be many more in a service-cut reorganization, and losers make vastly more noise than winners (and take much more vengeance at the polls than winners award kudos).
A wise reorganization in the context of increasing service can hold the count of losers to a very small scattering. I think David, if he were given a modest service increase to work with, could tweak his extraordinarily well-thought-out plan to reduce the number of losers to an almost infinitesimal number. Of course, to make a gridded system work, Metro will likely need to be allowed to make most of the reliability-enhancing changes which have been cited repeatedly on STB.
I don’t see immense resistance on the part of Metro’s professional staff to reorganizing if it can be done in a context where political blowback would not be withering – as I think David can show is the case in the context of a intelligently-designed plan combined with a modest service increase. I’m not so sure of the County Council – though even there I think such a reorganization largely involving Seattle would not be blocked.
David and everyone,
The “rational” case for providing Metro the flexibility inherent in increased service hours is a valid position, and I fault no one for taking it. Unfortunately, it continues to rely on the premise that Metro has been and can be trusted to be worthy stewards of whatever resources are handed it. And that argument has far less merit.
A little bit of a cynic’s review:
– Contrary to a common presumption that it went entirely to post-crash backfill, Metro in fact did add a couple hundred thousand of the promised TransitNow service hours. Didn’t notice? Of course you didn’t. Those hours were peanut-buttered around to shoulder-peak single trips on services of little network value, that nobody noticed any improvement at all.
– Not to mention the hours that, through the magic of “corporate matching”, found themselves adding trips to the 25. The freaking 25!
– Of course, the flagship TransitNow investment, RapidRide, has failed to meet either speed or bi-directional frequency targets, even for the few hours each day that were the feds’ very, very low bar for funding support.
– Meanwhile, Metro has nearly finished replacing the preponderance of its urban fleet, with the “order” button on its trolley-bus fleet still warm. Sticking to the tried-and-failed 2×2 seating and strap-down-the-disabled-like-Hannibal-Lecter format, Metro has elected to guarantee lethargic dwell times and unnecessary pass-ups for a generation.
– Still waiting for cash-fumblers. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting…
So now, we’ve got the ultimate lose/lose proposition on the ballot. A “no” vote no longer forces any efficiencies or sensible reconfigurations, but a “yes” vote makes them even less likely! Those 25s will continue to crawl from nowhere to nowhere else, carrying no one and achieving nothing. The 24 will continue to prove idiocy has no automatic sunset date, and just for kicks, we’ll probably reinstate the 19 so that no one “important” ever has to confront the insanity of the all-day network. “Rapid”Ride will continue to do in 30 minutes what a driver can do in 10.
And it looks like we won’t be growing a rainy-day fund regardless of the outcome — what a change from Metro’s prior legacy of poor long-term planning, and of overpromising and underdelivering!
I fully admit that my revulsion is visceral rather than reasoned. But the fact remains that fares are nearly double what they used to be, that we’ve already pushed to sales tax to the cusp of 10% primarily for transit, and that shit is just as bad as it’s ever been. (When I joined car2go, I never expected it would supplant about 50% of my transit trips, but that has proven to be my sanity-protection equilibrium. Add that to a bus pass, and you’ve got a significant annual transportation expenditure.)
I’m sorry. Creating a vague opportunity for “good enough” is not good enough. This proposition was offensive as another status quo backfill; it may be even worse as a doubling down.
“Those hours were peanut-buttered around to shoulder-peak single trips on services of little network value, that nobody noticed any improvement at all.”
I noticed it on the 8 and 75. I’m glad that they have 15-minute trips in the shoulder hours.
“Not to mention the hours that, through the magic of “corporate matching”, found themselves adding trips to the 25.”
I assume that would be Eastlake businesses or University Village/45th businesses. Probably Eastlake. I went to physical therapy on Eastlake south of Mercer earlier this year, and I noticed that the 25 actually does something useful there. I also noticed that that part of Eastlake has grown a lot of multistory businesses that deserve more than just a half-hourly 66. The 25 is not a very effective solution, and it’s not scheduled halfway between the 66’s, but it’s something.
It was Seattle Children’s, and anyone who would use the 25 to reach Children’s from downtown should probably be intercepted along the way and remanded to a psych ward.
The 25 does nothing useful. That’s why no one is ever on it. That route is a circuitous parade of incinerated money. Incinerated TransitNow regressive-sales-tax money. Incinerated non-imaginary-Metro-user goodwill.
Don’t defend it.
With respect to the 25, some history may be in order here. Children’s was not quite as insane as it seems today for funding more trips on the 25.
At the time, the 65 had not yet been rerouted to Children’s; the 75 did not have the 15-minute peak frequency it does today; the 75 was not through-routed at the U-District because it continued on to Ballard at the Northgate end; the 25 used the 45th Street Viaduct; and the 25 had half-hourly service during fairly long peak hours. At that time the 25 was clearly the best route from Children’s to the U-District for everyone and especially for passengers headed north from the U-District.
Then Metro decided, in this order, 1) to increase frequency on the 75, 2) to reroute the 65 and 3) to turn the 65 and 75 into a common E/W corridor from Children’s to Fremont. Service to Children’s radically improved through these steps, and the 65/75 became the only reasonable corridor to use between Children’s and the U-District despite its travel time disadvantage. And, boom, the matching trips (and several other trips) on the 25 disappeared, and the 25 was rerouted through campus.
In any case, there are worse things than the 25 to be mad about. It’s two buses, weekdays only, 11 hours per day. And, with the September cuts, it and the even lower-impact 22 are the only non-productive services, by any reasonable standard, remaining in the Seattle part of the network. That’s three daytime buses, which is less than 1% of the daytime off-peak Seattle network and less than 0.25% of the entire network.
I heard someone the other day at the Olive Way Starbucks wondering if Metro could resurrect a dieselized 47 and combine it with the 25 for a Downtown-Summit-Belmont-Lakeview-UDistrict milk run, just cutting out the Laurelhurst and Montlake sections. There are way better ways to spend service hours of course, but I think it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Basically you’d gain some efficiencies by combining the routes and you’d trade low-ridership Eastlake for Summit/Bellevue. Hell it may even be free or revenue positive to do so, and I bet you could do it on the same two-bus schedule.
Also, d.p., the cash fumblers will be gone eventually. Kevin Desmond told me once that he sees a cashless system as his personal pet project. Expect action on that front once the smoke clears.
If true, and if by cashless we mean proof of payment and off board payment and not just “ORCA only”, then that’s like early Christmas. I’m so tired of sitting through 3 light cycles waiting for the 49 to board at 4th/Pike. Even with really high ORCA use, it still takes forever.
When I spoke with him (which was a few months ago) he didn’t think widespread off-board payment beyond RapidRide would be feasible in the near future. He saw cashless, with on-board ORCA and possibly ticket payment, as a more attainable goal.
I don’t expect it everywhere, but I don’t see why you couldn’t have off-board payment in the 3rd Avenue, Pike/Pine, Madison/Marion, 2-way Columbia, James, and Jackson corridors.
Because going to proof-of-payment is expensive. If you have one off-board payment stop you have to go proof-of-payment on the entire route past that stop, with the fare enforcement that implies. If you make 3rd, Pike/Pine, Columbia and Jackson off-board payment applicable to all routes you’ve suddenly gone to proof-of-payment on much of the system.
So the idea would be to purchase a ticket to flash to the driver, yes? All boardings still requiring front-door only boarding? We’re already at near universal ORCA use on many routes, especially commuter routes, and boarding is still a huge source of delay.
Zach and Mike, I think downtown TVMs would work fine. I think when I asked Kevin about “off-board payment” and he hedged, he (like me) was probably imagining a RapidRide-style POP system for the entire network. That would be lovely but very, very expensive.
Isn’t Metro planning for ticket machines at all downtown (or at least 3rd Avenue) stops in the next few years? I think that’s what Desmond means. It wouldn’t cause proof of payment; they’d just show the ticket to the driver like a transfer.
I’ll take you word for that, David, but it remains hard to trust an agency that raised the fare four times and weathered two near-meltdowns without so much as an official peep about attempting differential cash fares or eliminating paper transfers.
FWIW, I agree with you that an all-cashless downtown, even without POP and with continued front-door entry, would be a massive improvement over what we have today.
Re: “productivity”, I know that you don’t possess as a low a threshold for that word as you imply above. As long as 12s run empty up and down 19th while buses four blocks away lack spontaneity-enabling frequencies, as long as the 2 continues to suck its way up Spring while you endure long gaps on Madison, as long as the 50 and 60 remain utterly anathema to efficient crosstown trips, and as long as the 24 continues to do whatever the hell this is, Seattle will be afflicted with “unproductive” transit implementations.
I have no inside information about the agency’s plans other than what Kevin said, but should mention that “official peeps” are often counterproductive, particularly on a subject that is such a lightning rod for the most uncompromising and reality-detached type of “advocates.” Ask Brent what those same activists thought about making the low-income fare ORCA-only, which did eventually happen.
Is there all sorts of optimization to be done in the network? Of course. I think you know that I, of all people, feel that way. But there is a world of difference between service such as the 25 that is a self-evident waste of service hours based on ridership numbers alone and service such as the 2/12 or 24 that needs a redesign but attracts a significant number of riders even in gumpy form. After the September cuts I don’t want to hear a single Seattle Times commenter prattle on about “empty buses.”
You’re right. You don’t “peep” about industry-standard advances like differential cash payment and digital-only transfers. You just do them.
I don’t recall being asked for “public comment” when my fare rose 80%, even as my evening service span withered for the extra charges. If an across-the-board rider penalty can be deemed “inevitable” and beyond controversy, there’s absolutely no reason to treat instituting best practices with kid gloves. Even the “Seattle process” excuses are invalid here.
I was four when my family attended the New York worlds fair. The things that were seared into my memory were the trains (besides the Sinclair Oil Dinosaurs). The trains were crowded, noisy, the would go underground and they would sway like they were going to fall off. The cars were lighted with hanging incandescent light bulbs and they would go out as the train moved through a section with no power. You could tell it was about to happen because the cars in front would go dark, then ours, then the cars behind. I remember all this being very upsetting.
Small wonder I like trains these days. They don’t scare me anymore.
Good thing history and politics can’t be any farther [OT] in today’s Open Thread than they are in real life. Especially their Siamese twin connection with transit.
1964 was my first year of college- after returning from a wonderful year in East Africa ruined in November by our President’s murder. For which Africans out to the smallest villages expressed vehement condolences to us.
And early into ’64, watching the next President on TV in the Oakland University student union as, for the most nauseating political reasons, he lied us into the war that launched us on present trajectory of our cities in ruins and our woods and countryside growing methamphetamine.
For me, the most God-awful result was the collapse of the public transit I had planned to serve for the rest of my life. there’ll be a posting on the how we get back the shining optimism, and trackage, that this video personifies.
I hope I live to see a time when Space Needle and the transit line at its foot stop being a tombstone. For these are fine memorials to a time. Even shadowed by the Cold War in 1962 our people saw a future where everything would only bring improvement.
The attack on the Turner Joy (look it up and see if it’s still in Bremerton harbor) marked the onset of fifty years’ view of a transitless land of the ragged living dead. Second? true for Detroit but not its people.
First and for transit? Like the Hungarians said in 1956, “Our soldiers are fighting!”
Mark Dublin
This made me think of making a Commenters of the Seattle Transit Blog Calendar.
Can you people in the above Prop 1 thread get serious for a minute and pick what calendar month you want to pose for?
You’re right, Sam, it’s the important things. I claim September.
September is the primary service change month of the year. It would be a good month for a group picture.
Obviously I will have to be photoshopped in for that one, unless I can figure out how to get up there with some vacation time. The company I work for got involved with some equipment on the Russian railway network just before the Crimea flared up. Time off work has been very limited since.
Always remember that the light you can see at the end of the tunnel is probably just an oncoming train.
I can take January maybe? I’ll probably be bundled head to toe and somewhere in Siberia, so I will probably look something like a South Park character.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/03/23/709543/-Photographs-and-Memories-Going-Back-to-the-1964-65-World-s-Fair#
When I was a pre-teen my pals and I used to take bike rides through a bicycle corridor that began at Flushing Meadows. This was a few years after the Fair closed, and many buildings were abandoned.
I remember seeing that station, and it was bizarre, because it was obviously designed for throngs of people to emerge from the trains, but there was only us on the empty ramp, some eleven year olds on bicycles.
ive had HO Scale models of the Worlds Fair R36s & R33s for like 25+ years
http://www.x-factorproductions.com/8ave/R-33_WorldsFair.jpg
How do folks feel about Seattle Prop 1?
I would feel much better about it if it didn’t join us to the hip with Metro who, just this week, is debating building up surplus instead of putting more buses on the street.
It was foolish to craft the proposition all around giving money to Metro. LA has a good model where their DOT operates the Dash system (http://www.ladottransit.com/dash/). Operated by Veolia last I checked.
We pay more and get less by aligning with Metro.
I won’t vote for a mostly blank check to Metro.
Does not the proposition specify that the money is used to fund Seattle routes? And I think its a good thing that Metro will finally build back its contingent fund. In the absence of the State Legislature doing the right thing and the reality that citizens in this state WILL NOT tax themselves appropriately to fund government services, this is the best possible outcome.
You have to understand that people need transit service they can depend on, and transit service whose levels rise and fall every month in proportion to the sales tax revenue is not service that can be depended upon. We survived this long without drastic service cuts because Metro had the foresight during the last economic bubble to build a strong reserve fund, which it could draw from to maintain service during the recession. Now, the reserve money has, by and large, been spent, and if we don’t replenish it, we shoot ourselves in the foot come the next recession – enough though replenishing the reserve means fewer buses on the road in the short term.
That said, reserve replenishment and prop 1 have little to do with each other. Prop 1 is specifically about Seattle buying service within Seattle. If it passes, the extra money Metro gets from prop 1 will fund Seattle service, not simply go into the reserve.
It’s too late to change the ballot measure; ballots will be sent in the next week or two. The surplus gives us an opportunity to expand Metro service, which we haven’t been able to do for years. The previous two expansions got partly swallowed by tax cuts and recessions, and that’s exactly the problem now: another recession would swallow the expansion, or of we don’t pass Prop 1, would lead to reinstating the cuts and more. Either way we need a frequent Metro network, which means at minimum relieving the overcrowding and filling in the evening/Sunday frequency on the frequent routes. We need to look beyond controversies like the questionable routes (25, 27) and consolidation-needing routes (2, 4, 12). Those are secondary issues that don’t involve that many service hours or people compared to the entire city.
If it passes, the city council would give Metro either a list of routes and runs, or general principals such as those above or Metro’s service guidelines. Either of the latter two would lead to a good result. The first might, depending on the list of routes.
Leaning towards voting no. Until Metro agrees to commit to a gridded, frequent route network in Seattle, I’m not comfortable increasing their funding.
Kyle, this is a cop-out and a completely lame excuse for a no vote.
Metro can’t wave a magic wand and “commit to a gridded, frequent route network” the day Prop 1 is passed. Achieving such a network will be a political project that will require lots of citizen pressure over a period of years, not because Metro is internally resistant to such a network, but because there is lots of citizen pressure going the other way. (There is still resistance within Metro, but there is far less than there was a decade ago.)
Who were the first three people to speak up at the Prop 1 kickoff?
1) A Leschi community association rep complaining ad nauseam about the 27 cut.
2) A Horizon House representative saying that his organization’s support depended on whether he was assured there would be no restructures if Prop 1 passed.
3) An activist who has been defending the current slow, duplicative, infrequent form of the 2 against even the slightest change for many years.
And now that the Dembowski faction of the Council appears to have the upper hand, it’s not even like you would get any restructures as a result of voting down Prop 1.
Your position is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
David: If the Devil’s Advocate synopsis of our two options is: A) continue to pay the same amount for a guarantee that nothing will ever improve, or B) pay even more for a guarantee that nothing will ever improve — that is basically what you just wrote — would it not be the definition of insanity to endorse the latter?
You are assuming that no improvement short of an overnight reinvention of the network counts as “improvement” worthy of the name. That’s an odd position when you yourself have advocated other kinds of improvement on many, many occasions.
For example, I think it is fairly likely that passage of Prop 1 would result quickly and without any Seattle Process, just as Bruce advocated, in a good deal of improvement in night and weekend frequencies on core routes. I’m also confident it would immedately bring more service in places where buses are currently running above capacity during peak and midday hours, and extend recovery time for routes that are chronically delayed beyond recovery. All of that strikes me as “improvement” more than worthy of the cost even if we have to continue pushing for real change to the network. I would think that Kyle, who has complained in the past about being passed up by numerous Route 40 buses, would agree.
I should also note that Ed Murray and Tom Rasmussen did not give the Horizon House fellow the assurance he was seeking.
What d.p. said. I am loathe to commit my money to legislation specifically written to maintain the status quo!
Kyle, did you give some introspection before you made that post? Because from here I could quite easily make the same argument by inserting not paying taxes unless I get the services I demand first. It’s a reactionary mindset that’s become all to common & will be quite destructive in the long run.
But this is Washington state – one of the few without a state income tax.
Nice argument David. This from the man who is pretty much the definitive authority when it comes to a gridded route. No one has spent more time and effort on the subject than David, and he is saying, in very clear language, to vote yes. You’re a fool if you vote no and think that will help things. It reminds me of the idiots who voted for Nader, because (this part will crack you up) Gore wasn’t enough of an of an environmentalist*. By the way, Nader fans — how did that work out for you?** Eight years of Bush sure lead to Ecotopia didn’t it? Maybe it takes a while.
Jeesh — don’t over think it. This isn’t a mandate on how we think Metro is running things. We aren’t electing the board,*** either. This is simply a question of whether you think Seattle Metro should have more money or not. I like transit, so the answer is yes. If you don’t — if you are one of those low tax, Seattle Times type guys who thinks that “government is the problem, not the solution” and that we should “starve the beast” and maybe spend more money on roads, and less on buses, then by all means vote no. But if you think Metro bus service should be improved, then vote yes (it will be). But don’t vote no thinking it will somehow usher in a new system for Metro — that they will all see the light — ooooooh. Please. Give me a break. If this fails Metro will just keep stumbling along, with less money.
If you don’t like the way Metro is run, petition those in power, and support those who support your position. Run for the council, if you have the guts to do that. ***
* Remember when Nader fans screamed at Gore to “read your book, read your book!”? Yeah, sure you do.
** By the way, this pattern has repeated itself throughout history. For example, Theodore Roosevelt thought he could win, or at least push the Republican party to the left by running on a different party (the Progressive Party). He lost, and the Republicans actually became more of a big business party (a position they never left). Thanks Teddy!
*** By the way, this is exactly the way you change anything. For example, you don’t oppose a levy just because you don’t like the school board’s position on busing. You elect a new board. By the way, in this case (unlike the Al Gore or Teddy Roosevelt case) I personally knew the people involved. I knew for a fact that the board wasn’t going to change their position if the levy failed — they were just going to make cuts (meaning layoff teachers). I knew all this because my mom was on the board. This is the way boards work.
Feel free to mention counter examples, but I know of none. I know of no board, ever, that said “Wow, they reduced our funding — maybe we should do things in a radically different way because people aren’t happy”. Hardly. They simply go back to doing thing things the same way, but with less money.
Sucks — doesn’t it. It’s like we live in a republic, and have to do the hard work of electing representatives and then petition them to do the right thing. Oh my, so much work when I would rather bitch about the world on a blog. Or try to throw another Eyman style monkey wrench into the system.
I find it hilarious that people write things like “I am loathe to…” and then turn right around and complain that improvements aren’t already here. I’m adding this onto my list of questions that no one answers:
1) What should the King County officials have done differently in the face of newer, slightly better tax collection projections versus what they actually did?
New addition, 2) How do you propose to wholesale reform an operating mass transit system in the face of budget cuts or, at best, budget stay-exactly-as-it-is-or-slightly-less, without any additional money going into the system, given the constraint that the system must keep moving people around, must meet various state and federal laws regarding public input and public accessibility, and that not everyone agrees on how the system should be constructed?
A plug for my article American Nations on Page 2, on the origins of different attitudes on transit.
Thanks, Ross.
One other thing I should mention to people who may be thinking like d.p. and Kyle: I’ve now created four separate iterations (three of which have been made public and the fourth of which will be coming before the end of the year), at increasing levels of detail, of a rationalized Seattle bus network. After going through that exercise, there is one thing I can tell you about creating such a network: every single additional service hour makes it easier to make it work. The pre-September level of hours is just barely enough to get us to something demonstrably better than what we have now. Each additional 10,000 hours allows for substantial improvement. A Prop 1-boosted Metro will have much more latitude to improve the network than a cut Metro.
And, eventually, they do. It’s just a glacial process, to date. You would think so too if you had been around to see the spaghetti messes that some of our most effective core routes — including the 358/E Line, the B Line, the 120, the 41, and the ST 550 (created as a Metro route through a reorg) — all replaced.
In addition to Lake City Ridier’s list of “and” clauses:
+ and by state law is only allowed to tax certain items which are approaching their limit of taxability.
David,
I’ll agree that the current network is much better than the mess that it used to be.
I first encountered Metro Transit as a wee lad in 1978. I recall few major changes in the route structure between then and the opening of the DSTT. Even then the busy routes were simply moved to the tunnel with few changes to their outer ends.
Then came the merger between Metro and King County. There was a lot of restructuring in the first few years after the merger, particularly in the suburbs.
At the time one of the things that prevented a lot of complaining about restructures was new routes were added or peak routes were made into all-day routes without removing or cutting back existing routes. The redundant service was eventually removed in later restructures. This gave us the 358 and I think the Metro route that preceded the 550.
Another big round of restructures happened with the inauguration of ST Express service. This gave us the 41.
In general Metro seems much more willing to undertake major restructures when it has spare service hours to play with than as a result of cutbacks.
While I can’t speak to the 120 I’ll agree all of the other routes David mentioned were a complete mess 25 years ago. Service frequency was poor outside of peak.
As someone who has voiced considerable concern about the County Council, so hopefully am not a complete Pollyanna about “Metro” …
If we get a regional reorganization in the context of a significant service cut (and a limited regional reorganization, not a comprehensive one, is all we would likely get), I expect it will be a very blue moon before the next time anyone with any kind of electoral-based power dares even utter the word “reorganization”. “Reorganization” will be associated with “less service” in the popular mind. And that is deadly. There will be some losers in the best “flat service” reorganization (though not too many if done wisely); there will be many more in a service-cut reorganization, and losers make vastly more noise than winners (and take much more vengeance at the polls than winners award kudos).
A wise reorganization in the context of increasing service can hold the count of losers to a very small scattering. I think David, if he were given a modest service increase to work with, could tweak his extraordinarily well-thought-out plan to reduce the number of losers to an almost infinitesimal number. Of course, to make a gridded system work, Metro will likely need to be allowed to make most of the reliability-enhancing changes which have been cited repeatedly on STB.
I don’t see immense resistance on the part of Metro’s professional staff to reorganizing if it can be done in a context where political blowback would not be withering – as I think David can show is the case in the context of a intelligently-designed plan combined with a modest service increase. I’m not so sure of the County Council – though even there I think such a reorganization largely involving Seattle would not be blocked.
David and everyone,
The “rational” case for providing Metro the flexibility inherent in increased service hours is a valid position, and I fault no one for taking it. Unfortunately, it continues to rely on the premise that Metro has been and can be trusted to be worthy stewards of whatever resources are handed it. And that argument has far less merit.
A little bit of a cynic’s review:
– Contrary to a common presumption that it went entirely to post-crash backfill, Metro in fact did add a couple hundred thousand of the promised TransitNow service hours. Didn’t notice? Of course you didn’t. Those hours were peanut-buttered around to shoulder-peak single trips on services of little network value, that nobody noticed any improvement at all.
– Not to mention the hours that, through the magic of “corporate matching”, found themselves adding trips to the 25. The freaking 25!
– Of course, the flagship TransitNow investment, RapidRide, has failed to meet either speed or bi-directional frequency targets, even for the few hours each day that were the feds’ very, very low bar for funding support.
– Meanwhile, Metro has nearly finished replacing the preponderance of its urban fleet, with the “order” button on its trolley-bus fleet still warm. Sticking to the tried-and-failed 2×2 seating and strap-down-the-disabled-like-Hannibal-Lecter format, Metro has elected to guarantee lethargic dwell times and unnecessary pass-ups for a generation.
– Still waiting for cash-fumblers. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting…
So now, we’ve got the ultimate lose/lose proposition on the ballot. A “no” vote no longer forces any efficiencies or sensible reconfigurations, but a “yes” vote makes them even less likely! Those 25s will continue to crawl from nowhere to nowhere else, carrying no one and achieving nothing. The 24 will continue to prove idiocy has no automatic sunset date, and just for kicks, we’ll probably reinstate the 19 so that no one “important” ever has to confront the insanity of the all-day network. “Rapid”Ride will continue to do in 30 minutes what a driver can do in 10.
And it looks like we won’t be growing a rainy-day fund regardless of the outcome — what a change from Metro’s prior legacy of poor long-term planning, and of overpromising and underdelivering!
I fully admit that my revulsion is visceral rather than reasoned. But the fact remains that fares are nearly double what they used to be, that we’ve already pushed to sales tax to the cusp of 10% primarily for transit, and that shit is just as bad as it’s ever been. (When I joined car2go, I never expected it would supplant about 50% of my transit trips, but that has proven to be my sanity-protection equilibrium. Add that to a bus pass, and you’ve got a significant annual transportation expenditure.)
I’m sorry. Creating a vague opportunity for “good enough” is not good enough. This proposition was offensive as another status quo backfill; it may be even worse as a doubling down.
“Those hours were peanut-buttered around to shoulder-peak single trips on services of little network value, that nobody noticed any improvement at all.”
I noticed it on the 8 and 75. I’m glad that they have 15-minute trips in the shoulder hours.
“Not to mention the hours that, through the magic of “corporate matching”, found themselves adding trips to the 25.”
I assume that would be Eastlake businesses or University Village/45th businesses. Probably Eastlake. I went to physical therapy on Eastlake south of Mercer earlier this year, and I noticed that the 25 actually does something useful there. I also noticed that that part of Eastlake has grown a lot of multistory businesses that deserve more than just a half-hourly 66. The 25 is not a very effective solution, and it’s not scheduled halfway between the 66’s, but it’s something.
It was Seattle Children’s, and anyone who would use the 25 to reach Children’s from downtown should probably be intercepted along the way and remanded to a psych ward.
The 25 does nothing useful. That’s why no one is ever on it. That route is a circuitous parade of incinerated money. Incinerated TransitNow regressive-sales-tax money. Incinerated non-imaginary-Metro-user goodwill.
Don’t defend it.
With respect to the 25, some history may be in order here. Children’s was not quite as insane as it seems today for funding more trips on the 25.
At the time, the 65 had not yet been rerouted to Children’s; the 75 did not have the 15-minute peak frequency it does today; the 75 was not through-routed at the U-District because it continued on to Ballard at the Northgate end; the 25 used the 45th Street Viaduct; and the 25 had half-hourly service during fairly long peak hours. At that time the 25 was clearly the best route from Children’s to the U-District for everyone and especially for passengers headed north from the U-District.
Then Metro decided, in this order, 1) to increase frequency on the 75, 2) to reroute the 65 and 3) to turn the 65 and 75 into a common E/W corridor from Children’s to Fremont. Service to Children’s radically improved through these steps, and the 65/75 became the only reasonable corridor to use between Children’s and the U-District despite its travel time disadvantage. And, boom, the matching trips (and several other trips) on the 25 disappeared, and the 25 was rerouted through campus.
In any case, there are worse things than the 25 to be mad about. It’s two buses, weekdays only, 11 hours per day. And, with the September cuts, it and the even lower-impact 22 are the only non-productive services, by any reasonable standard, remaining in the Seattle part of the network. That’s three daytime buses, which is less than 1% of the daytime off-peak Seattle network and less than 0.25% of the entire network.
I heard someone the other day at the Olive Way Starbucks wondering if Metro could resurrect a dieselized 47 and combine it with the 25 for a Downtown-Summit-Belmont-Lakeview-UDistrict milk run, just cutting out the Laurelhurst and Montlake sections. There are way better ways to spend service hours of course, but I think it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Basically you’d gain some efficiencies by combining the routes and you’d trade low-ridership Eastlake for Summit/Bellevue. Hell it may even be free or revenue positive to do so, and I bet you could do it on the same two-bus schedule.
Also, d.p., the cash fumblers will be gone eventually. Kevin Desmond told me once that he sees a cashless system as his personal pet project. Expect action on that front once the smoke clears.
If true, and if by cashless we mean proof of payment and off board payment and not just “ORCA only”, then that’s like early Christmas. I’m so tired of sitting through 3 light cycles waiting for the 49 to board at 4th/Pike. Even with really high ORCA use, it still takes forever.
When I spoke with him (which was a few months ago) he didn’t think widespread off-board payment beyond RapidRide would be feasible in the near future. He saw cashless, with on-board ORCA and possibly ticket payment, as a more attainable goal.
I don’t expect it everywhere, but I don’t see why you couldn’t have off-board payment in the 3rd Avenue, Pike/Pine, Madison/Marion, 2-way Columbia, James, and Jackson corridors.
Because going to proof-of-payment is expensive. If you have one off-board payment stop you have to go proof-of-payment on the entire route past that stop, with the fare enforcement that implies. If you make 3rd, Pike/Pine, Columbia and Jackson off-board payment applicable to all routes you’ve suddenly gone to proof-of-payment on much of the system.
So the idea would be to purchase a ticket to flash to the driver, yes? All boardings still requiring front-door only boarding? We’re already at near universal ORCA use on many routes, especially commuter routes, and boarding is still a huge source of delay.
Zach and Mike, I think downtown TVMs would work fine. I think when I asked Kevin about “off-board payment” and he hedged, he (like me) was probably imagining a RapidRide-style POP system for the entire network. That would be lovely but very, very expensive.
Isn’t Metro planning for ticket machines at all downtown (or at least 3rd Avenue) stops in the next few years? I think that’s what Desmond means. It wouldn’t cause proof of payment; they’d just show the ticket to the driver like a transfer.
I’ll take you word for that, David, but it remains hard to trust an agency that raised the fare four times and weathered two near-meltdowns without so much as an official peep about attempting differential cash fares or eliminating paper transfers.
FWIW, I agree with you that an all-cashless downtown, even without POP and with continued front-door entry, would be a massive improvement over what we have today.
Re: “productivity”, I know that you don’t possess as a low a threshold for that word as you imply above. As long as 12s run empty up and down 19th while buses four blocks away lack spontaneity-enabling frequencies, as long as the 2 continues to suck its way up Spring while you endure long gaps on Madison, as long as the 50 and 60 remain utterly anathema to efficient crosstown trips, and as long as the 24 continues to do whatever the hell this is, Seattle will be afflicted with “unproductive” transit implementations.
I have no inside information about the agency’s plans other than what Kevin said, but should mention that “official peeps” are often counterproductive, particularly on a subject that is such a lightning rod for the most uncompromising and reality-detached type of “advocates.” Ask Brent what those same activists thought about making the low-income fare ORCA-only, which did eventually happen.
Is there all sorts of optimization to be done in the network? Of course. I think you know that I, of all people, feel that way. But there is a world of difference between service such as the 25 that is a self-evident waste of service hours based on ridership numbers alone and service such as the 2/12 or 24 that needs a redesign but attracts a significant number of riders even in gumpy form. After the September cuts I don’t want to hear a single Seattle Times commenter prattle on about “empty buses.”
You’re right. You don’t “peep” about industry-standard advances like differential cash payment and digital-only transfers. You just do them.
I don’t recall being asked for “public comment” when my fare rose 80%, even as my evening service span withered for the extra charges. If an across-the-board rider penalty can be deemed “inevitable” and beyond controversy, there’s absolutely no reason to treat instituting best practices with kid gloves. Even the “Seattle process” excuses are invalid here.
I was four when my family attended the New York worlds fair. The things that were seared into my memory were the trains (besides the Sinclair Oil Dinosaurs). The trains were crowded, noisy, the would go underground and they would sway like they were going to fall off. The cars were lighted with hanging incandescent light bulbs and they would go out as the train moved through a section with no power. You could tell it was about to happen because the cars in front would go dark, then ours, then the cars behind. I remember all this being very upsetting.
Small wonder I like trains these days. They don’t scare me anymore.
Good thing history and politics can’t be any farther [OT] in today’s Open Thread than they are in real life. Especially their Siamese twin connection with transit.
1964 was my first year of college- after returning from a wonderful year in East Africa ruined in November by our President’s murder. For which Africans out to the smallest villages expressed vehement condolences to us.
And early into ’64, watching the next President on TV in the Oakland University student union as, for the most nauseating political reasons, he lied us into the war that launched us on present trajectory of our cities in ruins and our woods and countryside growing methamphetamine.
For me, the most God-awful result was the collapse of the public transit I had planned to serve for the rest of my life. there’ll be a posting on the how we get back the shining optimism, and trackage, that this video personifies.
I hope I live to see a time when Space Needle and the transit line at its foot stop being a tombstone. For these are fine memorials to a time. Even shadowed by the Cold War in 1962 our people saw a future where everything would only bring improvement.
The attack on the Turner Joy (look it up and see if it’s still in Bremerton harbor) marked the onset of fifty years’ view of a transitless land of the ragged living dead. Second? true for Detroit but not its people.
First and for transit? Like the Hungarians said in 1956, “Our soldiers are fighting!”
Mark Dublin
This made me think of making a Commenters of the Seattle Transit Blog Calendar.
http://nypost.com/2014/10/03/hail-this-nyc-taxi-drivers-get-their-own-calendar/#1
Can you people in the above Prop 1 thread get serious for a minute and pick what calendar month you want to pose for?
You’re right, Sam, it’s the important things. I claim September.
September is the primary service change month of the year. It would be a good month for a group picture.
Obviously I will have to be photoshopped in for that one, unless I can figure out how to get up there with some vacation time. The company I work for got involved with some equipment on the Russian railway network just before the Crimea flared up. Time off work has been very limited since.
Always remember that the light you can see at the end of the tunnel is probably just an oncoming train.
I can take January maybe? I’ll probably be bundled head to toe and somewhere in Siberia, so I will probably look something like a South Park character.