Month: January 2015

EMC Research conducted a poll in December on Sound Transit and the region’s appetite for more mass transit. The results are overwhelmingly positive for transit supporters. Some highlights:

• Overall optimism in Puget Sound is higher than it’s been in years
• Sound Transit has a 66% approval rating, higher than the legislature or [glossary]WSDOT[/glossary]
• Traffic and mass transit are the #1 and #2 concerns on voters’ minds, displacing the economy (the environment jumped from 2% to 9%) as the employment picture improves
• 82% support expanding light rail
• 68% want new taxing authority and that number goes up to 70% when voters hear the $15B price tag and the cost to them

Put another way:

Hopefully these numbers will boost efforts to secure funding authority this transportation session.  PubliCola has more coverage from the ST board meeting.

• City Council races reshuffling: Licata will retire this year, freeing O’Brien to run in District 6; Sawant gets two challengers in District 3 (1, 2); the total tally of declared candidates is now 24; only Bagshaw remains unopposed.
• On the heels of the City Council’s expansion of free-floating carsharing, BMW DriveNow announces its entry into the market ($).
• Lots of great things are on Sound Transit Board’s agenda today: ST3 polling data, an East Link update, Sounder North Service Protocols, System Planning principles (how Long Range Plan projects will be selected for an ST3 measure), approving March ’17 for completion of the Point Defiance Bypass, and more.
• Are Vulcan’s plans to develop an 8th Avenue North woonerf a good opportunity for placemaking or an attempt to cede public ROW for a ‘corporate office park’?
• KUOW takes a look at Bellevue’s Spring District and the history of suburban/interurban rail in the Seattle area.
• If you live in North Seattle or Shoreline, or especially adjacent neighborhoods such as Jackson Park, please attend tonight’s 145th Link Station Area Open House.
• There is “No Plan B”  if Vancouver BC rejects the spring transit referendum that would authorize $7.5B worth of new transit projects.
• Do lower gas prices depress transit ridership? Not necessarily, says the LA Times.
• Early reviews for the Atlanta Streetcar are about as you’d expect for a line that takes 35 minutes to go 2.5 miles.
• If you’re an aspiring reality TV star, take note: going for ‘action shots’ near trains will get you killed.

This is an open thread.

Friday, Jan 9th, TCC hosted a brown bag preview of the 2015 legislation session as it relates to transit. While the session has already kicked off, the main points of the discussion are relevant going forward.

Most importantly, the two legislative champions on the panel, Marko Liias and Jessyn Farrell, were pretty upbeat about transportation package passage. Senator Liias said he was much more optimistic now than he was even a few months ago. Ironically, Governors Inslee’s strong support for a VMT/carbon tax has forced Republican’s to come out strongly in support for a “large” gas tax increase instead, something they have not done historically.

Senator Liias spent a lot of time explaining what it meant being in the minority. He went so far as to say that the initial bill he will likely vote out of the Senate will only be 70% acceptable. It will be up to the House to get it to something palatable. He made this point a couple times a couple different ways. This actually makes me pretty optimistic as I picked up a definite ‘Please don’t crucify me for my vote’  vibe, which he wouldn’t be worried about if he didn’t think a vote would happen.

On the House side, Representative Farrell assured the crowd that no package will make it out that doesn’t get the Puget Sound what it needs (more transit). She said she would not vote for a package that doesn’t help her district, where pedestrian safety in particular is a high-priority issue. Representative Farrell also stressed that she would like WSDOT to continue to evolve its practices, including a reexamination of traffic forecasting. She also believe that the State has a clear interest in transit, including capital and operating funds, especially along corridors like I-5 where transit improvements improve the efficiency of state facilities.

Overall, the sentiment seemed to be that a package will get done, it will have funding authority for Sound Transit and Community Transit, but it will not be the package that changes the trajectory of the state’s transportation spending.

The Seattle Times reports ($) that the people who have tried to stop rail to the Eastside at all costs have found yet another pretext to sue:

Indeed, the petition that Bidwell, [Kemper] Freeman’s company, former Bellevue Mayor Don Davidson and the Building a Better Bellevue organization filed last month with the Shorelines Hearings Board to vacate the permits could tie the permits up until at least May. After the board issues a decision, the case could be appealed in court.

But to Bidwell, the petition isn’t about attacking light rail. It’s about preventing environmental damage to the Mercer Slough Nature Park, which he’s fought to protect for at least 30 years. Bidwell also co-founded the committee that fought to establish the park in the 1980s.

I can’t speak to the legal merits of this case, although I presume the long list of (failed) previous legal actions the article enumerates were more promising. And I certainly won’t guess what a judge will decide. However, I also presume the relevant environmental laws were intended to protect the environment. And in the big picture any environmental law that discourages alternatives to driving is perverse.

Moreover, for the specific welfare of Mercer Slough it’s clear that the thousands of cars passing by on the freeway and arterial every day, pouring the gunk and litter into the water there, are vastly more impactful than trains. Any serious attempt to protect the Slough would close the I-90 highway spans, not obstruct light rail. But of course environmental concerns are only used to obstruct environmentally sound projects, not to mess with anything important like the right to drive anywhere, alone, for free, at high speed.

I was happy to be included with some fine company in the Seattle Times’ profile of “newcomers” changing the face of the city. After 15 years here, I’d quibble with the term “newcomer,” but hey. Speaking of quibbles, I’d like to revise and extend my remarks here:

And he keeps spinning visions for an even better future Seattle. “I can see a day coming when we can ban car ownership in the city, make everybody hail a driverless car to get around. They did a study on this in Singapore . . . they could have a 250,000-car fleet and the maximum wait for anyone would be 30 minutes.”

For the record I’m pretty sure I didn’t say that I want to ban cars in the city. If memory serves, I was riffing on this study from MIT, which had just come out at the time and got a lot of attention. I do think there’s a good chance that services like it will eventually have a place in lower-density areas. For major urban areas, of course, simple geometry will necessitate some kind of high-capacity transit service that doesn’t require encasing each commuter in 2,000 pounds of glass and aluminum every morning.

Anyway, the article itself was written by the delightful Fred Moody. If you haven’t read Seattle and the Demons of Ambition, do yourself a favor and get it. It’s a great way to understand this city’s psyche.

Capitol Hill Seattle:

It may be time to add the First Hill Streetcar to the list of Seattle transit projects facing serious setbacks. After the Seattle Department of Transportation pushed back the launch date from fall 2014 to “early” 2015, CHS has learned that the SDOT now expects the Capitol Hill-to-Pioneer Square streetcar won’t be in service until at least August.

Inekon is apparently paying $25K $1K for every day of delay. At this rate, if the streetcar is delayed another 10 years or so, they’ll be picking up the tab for the whole line. Much more at the CHS link.

Wow. Almost eight years since our first post. A lot has changed since then. Seattle’s gone from a sleepy backwoods village to the fastest growing ‘big city’ in the nation. From a bus only system to adding Swift, Rapid Ride, and Link; a system with BRT and true mass transit.

Just as the region and transportation system has grown, so has this blog. Since those early days we’ve not only grown into the platform for transit activism in the state, but we are probably the first organization out there to be recognized as Government News Reporting of the Year by mainstream civic organization the Municipal League and Blog of the Year by the alternative press Seattle Weekly.

As we move forward, we’ed like to know what you want from Seattle Transit Blog. In order to do that we’re conducting our second (semi)annual reader survey.  We want to know what you want and how you want to receive it and interact with it.

The survey takes just a minute to complete – it’s only 10 questions! So if you wouldn’t mind, click the link and fill it out? Thanks!

Southbound Rainier Avenue between Jackson and Dearborn can be quite a little bottleneck, and hurt reliability for buses headed into the Rainier Valley. Additionally, the pedestrian crossing headed to and from Goodwill is not nearly as safe as it could be.

SDOT is reworking the intersection this spring in an effort to improve the situation for pedestrians and riders. We’ll see new curb ramps and a wider sidewalk, among other pedestrian improvements. For buses, SDOT is planning a unique 24/7 bus-only lane in the center of the roadway. The bus stop itself will move north towards King street to make this possible. Left turns onto Dearborn will be banned, which doesn’t really matter since Dearborn isn’t an arterial East of Rainier and SDOT doesn’t want through traffic going that way anyway.

Expect northbound lane closures on Rainier Avenue between Charles Street and King Street. Construction begins in March.

Footage courtesy of DemocracyNow.Org

Tomorrow, the Seahawks will be playing for their second consecutive conference championship, in their final home game of the season, against the Green Bay Packers. Kickoff is set for 12:05 at Century Link Field.

For fans flying in, your ride from the airport is Link Light Rail, which comes every 10 minutes or better, all day. Be sure to buy a train ticket at the station. The best deal is to buy a day pass between Seatac Airport Station and Westlake Station — the full length of the line — for $5.50.

The game will also be served by Sounder trains. Two Sounder trains will take off from Lakewood Station at 8:50 and 9:30, arriving at Century Link Field at 9:57 and 10:43. A third train will take off from Sumner Station at 9:37, arriving at the CLink at 10:19. North Sounder Service, weather permitting, will take off from Everett Station at 9:15 and 9:30, arriving at 10:14 and 10:29. The full schedule is available here. In a departure from past practice, the final return train each direction will depart 75 minutes after the game is over, to allow the crowd to linger for the potential post-game awards ceremony and celebration.

As usual, there will be $4 cash-only shuttle buses from Northgate Transit Center, Eastgate Park & Ride, and South Kirkland Park & Ride.

This is in addition to the usual plethora of weekend bus and ferry service.