2014 Bright Spots

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

Untitled

It was an up and down year for Seattle-area transit. Ultimately this may be remembered as the year the City of Seattle got back in the transit game in a big way. As the year winds down, I thought it might be good to recap the good stuff that happened in the last 12 months.  Thanks to STB staff for helping me remember all this.

  • As employment improved, so did transit ridership. Metro hit a record 121M rides, and Link came achingly close to (the largely symbolic) 40,000 daily riders in August.
  • Actually, if you count the Seahawks victory parade in February, Link and every other form of public transit in the city shattered one-day ridership records, while showing it is possible to run 4-car trains to Stadium Station and negotiate with BN&SF to run Sounder extra times for special occasions.
  • Prop 1 failed… then passed. Seattle got more money for buses and SDOT is now in the transit planning game. The 6-year odyssey of Metro’s volatile revenue seems to be at an end… for now.
  • Center City Connector will likely have exclusive lanes on 1st Avenue.
  • RapidRide E & F launched, completing the (current) RapidRide network.
  • In the spirit of Transit acting as One, Metro waives limit on number of 550s in DSTT during peak-of-peak, now running up to 12 550s an hour in the peak direction, and all are packed to the brim.  This bodes well for East Link ridership.
  • The Monorail may start accepting ORCA.
  • Our friends at Seattle Subway pushed for – and won – inclusion of Sand Point-Kirkland for study in the Sound Transit long-range plan.
  • Life got a bit better for Downtown-Queen Anne buses and will get even better next year.
  • The South Park Bridge re-opened, un-sucking Route 60.
  • The city went on a queue jump and bus lane spree, installing some time-saving bus priority at 9th & Roy and 15th & Dravus.
  • The worst of the recession cuts appear to be behind us, as Community Transit proposed restoring Sunday service, Snohomish & Puyallup added service, and Metro announced its cuts would be less severe than anticipated.
  • Pierce county ended paper transfers.
  • Snazzy new cycle tracks went in on 2nd Avenue and Broadway.
  • King County Exec Dow Constantine began much needed work on bus-rail integration between Sound Transit and Metro.
  • Metro proposed a low-income fare and installed a ticket machine at 3rd and Pine. ST will follow suit with a low-income fare for Link.
  • The Bellevue City Council adopted a new Transit Master Plan, of which our own David Lawson said, ” If fully implemented, it could give Bellevue the most effective bus transit of any city in the Pacific Northwest.”
  • Even though it was announced at the end of 2013 I’ll cheat and say that U-Link got pushed up to a January Q1 2016 opening date.
  • Speaking of 2016, this was the year that all our local leaders coalesced around the idea of bringing ST3 to the ballot in 2016.  Authority from the legislature is still forthcoming.

Many of these improvements listed above happened because the readers of this blog made their voices known. Thanks for reading, and keep it up in 2015!

Decongestion Tolling for Downtown Seattle

Posted on by Chad Newton
“027 ERP gantry” by Original uploader was VK35 at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia; Transfer was stated to be made by User:Kelly.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

An afternoon peak toll on certain streets leading to Interstate 5 entrances (Mercer, Yale, Olive and James) would reduce chronic congestion at key chokepoints and allow the street grid to work better for all users. Luckily, this approach is both legally and technically feasible for the City of Seattle.

Seattle was the fastest growing large city in the US in 2013, and South Lake Union has rapidly transformed from a low-rise warehouse district to a serious job center rivaling downtown.  Transportation capacity has not kept up.  Mercer Street has been a mess for decades, but now the Dexter disaster, the Westlake wrangle and the Amazon crush also snarl peak hour traffic and delay bus trips for dozens of minutes.  And construction in SLU isn’t finished yet: more buildings, workers and parking spots (!) are on the way.

Transportation planning usually focuses on the capacity of a single road, but the auto transport system is actually a complex network of linked components:

  • Parking capacity
  • Local street and intersection capacity
  • Freeway onramp capacity
  • Freeway capacity

Seattle Toll Points2The conventional American traffic engineering solution is to increase the capacity of the limiting component.  In downtown Seattle and SLU, freeway capacity and particularly freeway onramp capacity are the bottlenecks in the network.  Downtown streets become gridlocked, not due to massive traffic volumes, but due to cars queuing to enter I-5.  The gridlock delays all road users in the area, including transit riders on routes unrelated to I-5, such as Metro Transit routes 26, 28, 40, 70, 8, 3 and 4 and the SLU streetcar.  But there will be no new I-5 onramps or traffic lanes on downtown streets: there is physically no room.  So is this congestion solvable?  Yes, but only through a different mindset.

A constrained traffic planning approach is to reduce the number of cars accessing I-5 from downtown, to match the capacity of the onramps and feeder streets.  Marginally reducing the number of cars queuing for I-5 access via a toll, at the right price, would allow the street network to work for everyone.

Technically Feasible

Continue reading “Decongestion Tolling for Downtown Seattle”

Sound Transit Responds to Seattle Subway, Transit Advocates

Posted on by Seattle Subway

Seattle Subway LogoStill wondering if transit advocacy can have an actual impact on public policy? Last Thursday, when the Sound Transit board voted to adopt the new Long Range Plan the answer was made crystal clear: transit advocacy works.

Proof that our voices were heard came in the form of Sound Transit Long Range Plan Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement Final (SEIS) which individually responded to the hundreds of stakeholder, organization, and reader comments to the SEIS, and included a section with summary responses, the majority of which are directed at issues that were brought up by both Seattle Subway and, via our guest posts, readers of Seattle Transit Blog.

The biggest news for us in these responses to our comments is an about-face on policies related to driverless trains, a pillar of what Seattle Subway advocates for since our inception three years ago. We support driverless trains because they can lead to a self-sustaining operating system (as in Vancouver), which frees up money for even more transit. Until this response, Sound Transit solidly refused to study the technology, publicly declaring they would not consider driverless trains. However, their latest response says that driverless trains can be considered as long as it does not interline with the spine section or have at-grade sections. We continue to remain confident in the value of driverless trains (we’re getting close to the era of driverless cars, after all!) and believe that by the time an interlining opportunity comes up, Sound Transit’s perception will likely change.

Many of you echoed our championing of building out West Seattle and the Ballard Spur. The Sound Transit responses to West Seattle and Ballard were similar: they will not make routing decisions until the next phase (system planning) which is resource-constrained. Our contention is that the data given to the Sound Transit Board during system planning must contain ideal options in order to be considered, which is exactly why we began to give detailed feedback at this stage. We will continue to monitor the situation and will give feedback as opportunities arise during the system planning phase.

The response to our Better Eastside Rail article was similar to West Seattle and the Ballard Spur: specific routing decisions will be made as part of the system planning process. However, we break the Eastside out separate from West Seattle and Ballard because we think Eastside options need further development. Due to the scale of the rework needed to bring good study options to the table, we have concerns about timing. Any options presented to the Board should be worth voting for in the ST3 package. Remember, the Eastside voted for ST2, but heavily against King County Proposition 1.

A surprising number of you (60) echoed our thoughts about the PSRC population numbers. Initially our stance didn’t seen to be well received, but people in a position to fix the problem read it and the point was well taken. Sound Transit’s response consisted of a mostly technical explanation of the model that objectively doesn’t work and concludes with discussion of making changes to the model used for ST3. However, since we wrote this article, we have met with PSRC staff and had some very productive discussions. Matthew Johnson will publish a more in-depth PSRC article soon, but the bottom-line issue appears to be related to the way population models treat designated regional growth centers (Ballard isn’t one). Despite the appearance of doubletalk, we do think ST and the PSRC are aware of the issue and are dedicated to making sure they get the best numbers possible in the version of these estimates that really matter—the ones that determine funding priorities and the service plan for ST3.

Continue reading “Sound Transit Responds to Seattle Subway, Transit Advocates”

Transit: Up All Night

Posted on by Wes Mills
Photo by Oran
Photo by Oran

Most people think of Seattle as a world class, major city. Major cities have 24-hour transit service, as should Seattle. There is limited overnight service, with the Owl routes (82, 83, 84) being understandably derided because they are the most confusing. With the new hours from Proposition 1—approximately 230,000 annual service hours are left after the June improvements are implemented—we have a chance to accomplish this for the people who keep odd hours. My bias for evening and night trips is showing because I’m one of those people; this post is actually being submitted at around 4am.

Why do this?

As Mike Orr points out, transit use increases when it can cover more trips and more types of trips. Right now, our transit system is pretty good at covering regular commuting hours and trips taken while the sun is usually up. Service drops dramatically in most corridors after 7pm and especially late night. This is also the first type of service to take a hit when cuts are proposed since the “bang for the buck” in the reclaimed service hours is quite high when shifted to daytime service.

However, if we are to have “the best bus service we’ve ever had in Seattle,” ($) night service should be one of the first things to come back and be enhanced. Lots of workers are employed during these odd hours and we can accomplish a lot of trip diversions by giving them the tools to get to and from work. Other trips for activities in the evening and night periods can be made attractive to do via transit and without having to rely on an overpriced taxi or a potentially-surcharged rideshare company.

What to do?

In considering which routes to extend to 24-hour service, I looked at routes that meet these criteria:

  • Their span of service ends, at a minimum, around midnight. This is to avoid having to extend service beyond a few trips and because the routes with later service already tend to serve denser areas.
  • The route can simply have more trips added without having to divert in the middle of the night. By doing this, the confusing mess that are the existing Owls is avoided. (There are two exceptions below.)
  • Cover as much of the city as possible, with special emphasis on getting more service north of 85th Street, which is where the current Owls (except D line) end, and cross-town routes to avoid everybody having to go downtown.
  • Look solely at routes that can be paid for by Prop 1. This means no overnight service on routes like 255, 545, or 550 is discussed here.

Half-hourly service would be much better, but given that service hours are difficult to calculate, this proposal is cautious. If we have the hours, half-hourly trips would be much more convenient.

What routes?

Continue reading “Transit: Up All Night”

Low-Income Fares Coming to Streetcars and Foot Ferries

Posted on by Brent White

March 1, 2015In addition to the low-income fare program that has been in place in Kitsap Transit since 1985, the new low-income fare program for King County Metro Transit that will take effect March 1, 2015, and the low-income fare that will take effect on Central Link Light Rail on March 1, Seattle Streetcar and King County Ferries are jumping on the low-income fare bandwagon. Per Rochelle Ogershok, King County Department of Transportation spokeswoman:

As of March 1, a low income fare of $1.50 will take effect on both the South Lake Union Street Car and Link Light Rail. These low-income fares will be the same as Metro’s, as will be the reduced fares for Youth and Senior/Disabled riders. The King County Water Taxi will also implement a low income fare as of 3/1/15. The low-income fare will be $3.00 for W. Seattle and $3.75 for Vashon.

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News Roundup: Earth, Wind, and Fire

Posted on by Zach Shaner

The Sounder

This is an open thread.

Gov. Inslee Unveils His Transportation Plan

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
wikimedia

Yesterday Governor Inslee released the transportation plan that he will ask the legislature to pass next session.

The twelve-year program would spend a total of $12.1 billion on the following:

  • $2.6 billion for “Maintenance, Operations, and Preservation,” most notably bringing all bridges and highways to “95% fair or better” condition. Almost half goes to the ferry system or the State Patrol.
  • $2.2 billion for “Clean Transportation and Multimodal,” including about $802m in various transit grants, $150m in bike and pedestrian grants, and lots of money for electric vehicle incentives and various water quality initiatives like culverts.
  • $5.9 billion in “New Construction,” over 99% of which will go to new highway capacity in places like SR520, I-405, SR509, SR167, and US 395 in Spokane.
  • $1.4 billion is miscellaneous “local distributions” and, mostly, debt service.

But that isn’t the interesting part. There is no gas tax in this proposal, replacing it instead with a “carbon pollution fee” among myriad smaller revenue sources. Avoiding gas taxes also avoids the putative constitutional restrictions on gas taxes, opening the door for more direct state spending on transit.

Unfortunately, the budget passes up that opportunity by proposing transit funding levels not out of line with historical levels. Despite the lack of funding, there is significant new revenue authorization for transit. Most importantly, the Inslee plan fulfills the Sound Transit Board’s request for more authority, clearing the path for Sound Transit 3 via some combination of property tax, sales tax, and MVET. There is also a renewal of Metro’s expired “Congestion Reduction Charge” ($20 license fee) authority, but only through 2018. Community Transit would get much-needed additional permanent sales tax authority, and the license fee that Transportation Benefit Districts can implement without a public vote would increase from $20 to $40.

How an environmental and transit advocate feels about this program probably depends on their relative assessment of the damage of new highway capacity vs. the merits of the transit authority and the directly pollution-attacking revenue source. Personally, I think this is miles ahead of the totally unacceptable House Democratic package from last year, which didn’t have ST3 and spent much more on new highways without fully funding maintenance.

My immediate reaction is that this would be a decent compromise to come out of the sausage machine next session. Unfortunately, it may be the opening bid, positioned as the “left wing” proposal with negligible state funding of transit, a persistent emphasis on more highways, and no permanent solution for Metro. The document seems to recognize this, labeling itself as a “good-faith compromise to spark action.” We can only hope that a majority of legislators view it in the same light.

“Seat Hog” Ad Campaign Coming

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

One of the advantages of actual rail transit over actual bus transit* (in this region) is that minor anti-social rider behaviors tend to be merely annoying, rather than actually impairing operations. So on the list of behaviors to fix, David Lawson’s opus on how to ride a bus remains the must-read, and some more emphasis on avoiding the front door at busy stops would help a lot.

On the other hand, I’m spending a lot more time on Link than on buses these days, so I’m all for this new ad campaign. The space under the seat is criminally underutilized on crowded Link trains.

* as opposed to theoretical bus transit, which is always awesome and never has to make compromises.

City Council Steps Toward Monorail ORCA Integration, White Center Annexation

Posted on by Brent White

The Seattle City Council voted Monday to take the first steps toward integrating the monorail into the ORCA pod, and annexing the unincorporated North Highline area, including parts of White Center and Boulevard Park.

Unincorporated North Highline
Unincorporated North Highline

The City of Seattle had previously deferred to the City of Burien on annexing the North Highline area, but residents voted down Burien annexation in 2012. The Seattle City Council was enticed to action by a state sales tax incentive program worth $5 million for 10 years, that would expire if the City didn’t take an initial action of intent by the end of the year. Councilmember Tom Rasmussen described the resolution as a “placeholder”, in case the City decided to move forward with annexation. The council passed the resolution 8-0. Annexation doesn’t quite solve the Route 120 problem but it gets us closer. The earliest White Center could vote on being annexed by Seattle would be 2016. White Center Now has more in-depth coverage.

Thom Ditty, General Manager, Seattle Monorail Services
Thom Ditty,
General Manager,
Seattle Monorail Services
The council also passed the bill containing the substitute version of the monorail concession contract, which was made available Friday, between the City and Seattle Monorail Services, 8-0. Thom Ditty, General Manager of Seattle Monorail Services, proclaimed that the new contract “puts the City in the driver’s seat on the ORCA pass.” Councilmember O’Brien asked the resolution sponsor, Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, whether it was his intent to include transfers and passes in the ORCA integration. Rasmussen repeated his previous refrain that he wanted the fare system to be “as convenient as possible, in all possible ways”.

Rasmussen explained why the study called for in the resolution wouldn’t be due until the end of the second quarter in 2015: The monorail needs a sponsor among the seven member agencies of the ORCA Joint Board, and the support of the rest, in order to participate as an affiliate.

The section added Friday in the contract contains a fallback plan in case the study shows fare integration to be a money loser for Seattle Monorail Services: The City and SMS can negotiate mitigation, and if negotiations fail that terminates the contract.

In a final charm offensive, the SMS team had in tow Kelly Pearson, Chief Development Officer of Wellspring Family Services, who lauded SMS for being Wellspring’s charitable partner for the past two years, increasing Give Big Campaign donations by 45%.

Regarding the last-minute effort to get ORCA into the contract, Ditty said, “I’m glad it happened. I expect both ridership and revenue will increase.”