Month: February 2015

Author’s Note: Some links have been added since publication, as websites have been updated.

At long last, the ORCA LIFT program goes into effect Sunday, March 1. Those who obtained a low-income ORCA card, also known as the LIFT card, will start to enjoy $1.50 trips on King County Metro buses regardless of time of day or crossing zone lines, $1.50 trips on the South Lake Union Streetcar, and $1.50 trips on Link Light Rail regardless of distance traveled. Getting that rate requires using the ORCA LIFT card, but comes with a 2-hour transfer on the value of the trip. Or, LIFT holders can get a monthly pass for $54 for unlimited rides on these three services.

The King County Water Taxi is also implementing a low-income fare of $3 on the West Seattle route and $3.75 on the Vashon route. (The webpage needs to be updated.)

Kitsap Transit‘s low-income fare remains $1 on both buses and ferries. The Kitsap and King County low-income ORCA are interchangeable for purposes of all the low-income fares.

ORCA LIFT cards will be charged the regular adult fare on all other services.

Thank you to King County Metro Transit, the Seattle Department of Transportation, Sound Transit, Kitsap Transit, and Public Health – King County for helping to get the farebox out of the way of low-income riders and out of the way of the buses.

Here is a full list of fares for all categories of payers for the various public transit services that accept ORCA as of March 1.

We aren’t planning on having a group ride, since those are traditionally for new services, but we hope to have a meet-up very soon.

Please post your experiences with the new LIFT card, and help us work out any bugs.

Next year, in March, several bus routes may be restructured to serve UW Station and Capitol Hill Station, with more frequent all-day service. It is nice to know that there will be another bus for your route coming every 15 minutes. But for riders transferring from Link trains arriving every 10 minutes off-peak, 15-minute frequency may create problems.

With such a service pattern, every other bus may be crowded, and every other bus relatively empty. On long routes (like route 372), the emptier bus may slowly but surely catch up with the full bus, leading to a pattern where two buses pull up back-to-back, every half hour, at the other terminus. This commonplace phenomenon is known as “bus bunching“.

It may make more sense for minimizing wait time at stations, stabilizing headway, and enabling operators to get their scheduled rest breaks, to keep these routes on either 10-minute-headway or 20-minute-headway, depending on ridership demand for that time of day.

Practical reliability may trump theoretical legibility.

by JANINE BLAELOCH (Coordinator, Lake City Greenways and Vice-Chair, Lake City Neighborhood Alliance), SANDY MOTZER (Chair, Lake City Neighborhood Alliance and Chair, Lake City Emergency Communication Hub) with support from STB EDITORIAL BOARD

Sound Transit is expected to make a decision in April 2015 regarding light rail station locations in the Northgate to Lynnwood extension, and a NE 130th Street/I-5 station remains under consideration. As Lake City residents working to make our community healthier and more accessible for people traveling in all modes, we are urging Sound Transit to include a NE 130th Street station among the stations that will open in 2023.

The Lake City Hub Urban Village is the third densest urban village in Seattle.  It has one of the lowest median household incomes and home ownership rates in Seattle while also having one of the largest increases in percentage of persons of color in the city.*

The proposed NE 130th Street station would be a critical link to light rail for the Lake City community, which consists of many residential neighborhoods and a fast-densifying Hub Urban Village. In the near future, Lake City will be growing and changing dramatically, as the Pierre family car lots undergo redevelopment. And let us not forget our neighbors to the west in Bitter Lake, who are underserved by public transportation–they, too, would benefit from a station at NE 130th.

The 130th/125th corridor has far more room for additional capacity than Northgate Way or NE 145th Street and offers faster travel between the heart of Lake City and the station.  A new bus route could easily and efficiently serve the community with quick access to light rail without the delays and congestion on NE 145th and Northgate Way.

A NE 130th station:

• Would bring fast and dependable light rail access to two of the densest and most underserved communities in North Seattle: Lake City and Bitter Lake.
• Would promote more walking and biking to light rail.  Many commuters in the walkshed of a NE 130th station would easily be able to walk to light rail at NE 130th when they would otherwise need to drive or take a bus to the Northgate or NE 145th stations.
• Would reduce pressure on demand for building expensive parking garages at both the Northgate and NE 145th stations.
• Would increase ridership on LINK light rail. At least 3,200 riders daily are projected to board at a 130th Street station from the nearby neighborhoods by foot, bike or transit.
• Would be relatively inexpensive compared with other stations.

While we still have time to make these decisions, we should plan wisely and maximize the benefits light rail will bring to all of our communities. A NE 130th station makes great sense, and deserves to be part of the light rail plan.

*For all of these facts, see pages 51 and 52 of this DPD document.

• Ravenna Blog covered last night’s Roosevelt Station 90% Design Open House.
• The first of 30 weekend closures of portions of I-90 begin this weekend ($). Eastbound traffic will use the express lanes, and the Rainier on-ramps will be closed. The work is for I-90 2-way HOV, which is necessary for East Link construction to begin. In addition, an 8-week closure of the I-90 HOV ramp to I-405 began yesterday.
• Pronto Cycleshare has released more ridership data. Capitol Hill and Downtown are performing decently well for winter, while the UDistrict continues to struggle, with its best station performing 36th out of 50.
• 8th Avenue North will get a one-block woonerf treatment after the City Council approved Vulcan’s request in a 7-2 vote (O’Brien and Sawant opposed)
• Bus vs. person motorcycling in the UDistrict, with life-threatening injuries.
• Save Our Suburbs gains steam ($) on Mercer Island, hoping to win a development moratorium in the Town Center and stop a four-story project from being built.
• Allegations of worker misconduct on the SR 99 tunnel project, including drinking on the job and trading booze for preferential hours.
• The Stranger asks SDOT to better maintain the Broadway Bikeway.
• The Urbanist writes up the Mayor’s UDistrict “Find It Fix It” walk, and wishes the event had been more participatory and less scripted.
• There are 56 new residential buildings in greater Downtown Seattle.

This is an open thread.

This morning at the State of Downtown Economic Forum, the Downtown Seattle Association and Commute Seattle released an updated study of Downtown* commuting trends, with exciting results for transit advocates (our previous coverage here). Just 31% of Downtown Seattle workers now drive alone to work, a new historic low. These results continue the positive trends from prior surveys, down from an estimated 50% in 2000, 35% in 2010, and 34% in 2012.

Of course, these are proportions rather than volumes, so in a growth context a lower drive-alone rate does not necessarily mean less traffic, just as eating a proportionally smaller slice of a larger pie doesn’t mean you consumed fewer calories.  Our region’s traffic woes are real and in need of attention, but nonetheless these results show that Downtown is at least keeping up with what’s needed for job growth to continue without being choked off by gridlock and unreliable transit. The results are also a ringing endorsement of the benefits of transit and density, with 45% of Downtown commuters now choosing transit, and 15% opting for non-motorized trips (walking, bicycling, or teleworking).

Within the high-level data there are also some interesting trends. The traditional Downtown core, with  rivers of peak-hour transit service and the most expensive parking, has a truly impressive drive-alone rate of just 22%, whereas faster-growing neighborhoods such as South Lake Union are more than double that (46%). Clearly, transit service has not kept up with job growth in Downtown’s periphery, and this is an issue that should be urgently addressed.

Company size also appears to be a major factor, which is no surprise considering the prevalence of employer paid ORCA cards in the Seattle area. Yet interestingly, medium sized companies (20-99 employees) showed the greatest positive growth, nearly matching the achievements of the largest companies despite being exempt from regulatory requirements such as the Commute Trip Reduction law. Yet the smallest companies (1-20 employees) are still largely left out, with a relatively high drive-alone rate of 41%.

The report comes at a time when downtowns across the country are adding jobs faster than their suburbs.

* For the purposes of the DSA and Commute Seattle, “Downtown” includes everything from Elliott Bay to Broadway, and Galer to Royal Brougham. The survey didn’t include Sodo.)

Commute Seattle’s media release is below the jump:

Continue reading “Just 31% of Downtown Workers Drive Alone”

Here’s Senate Transportation Chair Curtis King (R-Yakima) explaining how he came up with $11 billion in new tax authorization for Sound Transit (over 15 years) instead of the $15 billion ST asked for (at 18:20 if the Youtube link doesn’t work correctly).

Well the theory was they asked for 15. From my limited knowledge, people usually ask for more than they want. In various discussions we heard some lower numbers from time to time. I would say that what we put forth exceeded some of the lower numbers we heard. We thought it was a balance between the 15 that they wanted and some of these lower numbers.

I found this interesting for several reasons. One is that it’s a solid illustration of the Overton Window, and can only encourage future requests to ascend to the stratosphere.

If one accepts the principle that Olympia must parsimoniously mete out local taxing authority, which I don’t, his reply makes a lot of sense given a lot of Sound Transit’s messaging. ST officials have frequently suggested the mix of taxes allowed “flexibility,” rather that indicating the actual level of need. Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s not, but that’s impossible to really know since ST hasn’t released any sort of official analysis that would show what is achievable with any level of authority. In any case it’s clear that Sen. King cares not for Sound Transit’s taxing flexibility.

That doesn’t make $11 billion any less arbitrary, nor does it do anything for the potential riders whose projects won’t get built at a lower level of funding. But if Republicans that actually represent the ST district don’t care enough to raise a stink about it, then I’m not surprised that Sen. King doesn’t either.

H/T to Avgeek Joe.

Because I have a one-track mind, my immediate reaction to the Vision Zero list was fear that lower speed limits on MLK would slow down the Link trains there, where traffic signals currently enforce the 35mph limit.

Luckily, that’s not the case. Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray says “We have no plans to change our operating speeds along MLK,” and SDOT representative Rick Sheridan says “We do not anticipate any changes to the operating speed for light rail.”

I think this is the right call. Our regional transit spine needs to be fast. Professional drivers operating in an intricately designed signaling system need not have the same safeguards as ordinary people with uneven levels of distraction. Most importantly, fast transit gets people out of cars, and that will save more lives than slowing down trains.

Last week, House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan (D-Covington) told the Times that transportation was on the back burner ($) until the legislature handled the education funding shortfall. In a session where even Republicans are on board with a large new Sound Transit tax authorization, and with deadlines for non-budget bills to escape committee fast approaching, I found this quite worrisome. Additional transit projects are too important to lose because of brinksmanship over an unrelated issue.

With HB 1180 – the pure ST authorization bill – still in the Finance Committee and this Friday a deadline for non-budget bills to leave committee, I asked Finance Chair Reuven Carlyle (D-Ballard) what was going to happen. And rest assured that he has our back:

We expect that SHB 1180 is exempt from the fiscal committee cutoff and we will have confirmation on Monday [today] of that ruling.  If it is ruled otherwise by counsel, I assure you that I will move a version of the bill out of Finance prior to the deadline on Friday.  The Majority Leader’s statement was more about timing and the focus on McCleary and transportation than the mechanics of committee deadlines.  We will not allow, in any way, the bill to fail based on committee deadlines. I am working closely with Reps. Fey, Farrell, Walkinshaw, Clibborn and others to maintain the progress.

He really couldn’t have made that reply any clearer.

Speaker Chopp’s office has not yet replied to my email.

Last week, Mayor Murray launched the City of Seattle Vision Zero Plan, adding Seattle to a fast-growing list of US cities that have committed to reducing preventable road fatalities to zero. The plan, which was covered here, here and here outlines a variety of near-term actions the City will take to eliminate road deaths and serious injuries by 2030.

The City’s plan, which builds upon Washington State’s Target Zero program, was modeled after Sweden’s Vision Zero programs which began in the 1990s. While Washington State’s road fatality rates are roughly twice those of Sweden, the state has made good progress, with fatality rates dropping by 40% since 2000.

Seattle’s Vision Zero Plan is an excellent starting point. It identifies high-value, near-term actions the City can take now to improve road safety, especially for pedestrians and cyclists, who are the most vulnerable road users. Unfortunately, the level of detail identified by the plan for road improvements didn’t carry over into strategies and actions for reducing impaired driving.

This is important because in 2012, the most recent year that city data was available, impaired driving was identified as a contributing factor in 4 fatal collisions, 16 serious injury collisions and 178 possible or evident injury collisions on Seattle streets. To put these numbers in perspective, speed (speeding and exceeding safe speed) was associated with 8 fatal collisions, 21 serious injury collisions and 219 possible or evident injury collisions during the same time period.  Continue reading “Vision Zero: Transit is Part of the Solution”