Month: February 2015

[8:30pm 22 Feb: See correction below]

As Dan Ryan reported a week ago, the leadership of the Senate Transportation Committee struck a deal for their transportation budget. The proposals were formalized in the form of Senate Bills 5987-5989, and had a public hearing this past Wednesday. SB 5987 is the transportation funding bill, and contains authorization for a vote on a Sound Transit 3 capital and service improvement package. (See video above.)

On Thursday, the committee voted on a series of amendments to SB 5987. (See video below, with the portion on SB 5987 starting at 44:45, and lasting about 50 minutes.) Four minor amendments passed. They then voted the bill out of committee, with a few Democrats including Pramila Jayapal (Seattle) and Cyrus Habib (Kirkland) casting symbolic No votes. (The signature sheet with the vote tally was not available online at the time of publication.) The bill, as amended, moves to the Senate Rules Committee, waiting to be scheduled for a Senate floor vote.

Continue reading “Senate Transportation Budget Advances, Including ST3”

One of the things I’ll appreciate about my bus service, after Prop 1’s purchases have taken effect, is that Reduced Weekday schedules, whereby Metro cancels an arbitrary-seeming selection of express routes, and peak period trips on the other downtown-oriented routes, will no longer exist in Seattle. Frank did a great job of covering the meltdown last Veterans Day, as stranded riders raged at Metro for the delays and overloads caused by those cancelled trips.

With the approval of the initial Prop 1 purchases, the vast majority of Prop 1’s revenue has been committed, but I want to point out a corner of the system, where, like with Reduced Weekday schedules, we are doing things that aren’t particularly rider friendly, and which could be improved by modest or incremental expenditures of Prop 1 money, should that become available.

On days when the University of Washington is not in session, Metro runs a “No UW” schedule, which affects about 15 routes countywide, six of them in Seattle (and eligible for Prop 1 money). Similar to Reduced Weekday, No UW schedules cancel a handful of trips in the peak periods of routes which serve UW. For the purposes of Metro scheduling, the UW is out of session for one large, contiguous block of time in the summer (June 15th-September 15th), a couple of short breaks (Christmas, Spring), and a smattering of minor weekday holidays.

Adjusting schedules over the summer break makes a great deal of sense. The UW is a huge ridership center, and the change in ridership with almost all the students gone for the summer will be significant.  Over three months, the remaining riders have plenty of time to adapt to the reduced schedule, and the savings will add up to something significant. The case for cancelling a few trips via footnotes on schedules on the few other days seems much more tenuous, when weighed against the complexity and irritation those cancellations create for riders.

Here’s how I see the No UW schedule breaking down by route, and here’s what I’d do if I had a little Prop 1 money to spend:

• 31/32, 75: two trips cancelled each. The 31/32 together form a core, frequent crosstown, a service on which we should particularly strive for a good experience. The savings on these cancellations seem hardly worth the effort. Let’s just buy these trips back.
• 48: 12 trips cancelled; 67: five trips cancelled. The 48 is among the highest-ridership routes in the county, and with the opening of University Link next year, the 67 corridor will become one of the utmost importance in NE Seattle. Other similarly-important routes which serve the U District (44, 70, 70-series) don’t observe the No UW reductions. I think it makes sense to buy these trips back: the extra buses will be no means be empty, and the additional frequency will encourage ridership on these key corridors.
• 65, ten trips cancelled; 68, nine trips cancelled. Buying back these trips would be more of a stretch. These routes aren’t rock-star corridors in the way of the 48 or 67; they mostly serve residential areas that feed the UW, while downtown riders end up on expresses.

By my reckoning, there are 40 Prop 1-eligible trips on each No UW day, and about 15 No UW days (other than Summer) each year. This amounts to a fraction of the service Seattle purchased to fix the Reduced Weekday problem, which was 4,600 hours for 458 trips per day, 9 days per year. I estimate it would cost around 600 hours to buy back all the No UW service (other than Summer), or about 300 to buy back everything on the 31, 32, 48, 67 and 75.

While the intent of Reduced Weekday, to squeeze every last drop out of our Metro money, made sense in a context of austerity and cuts, in Seattle’s context of growing service levels and ridership, it had outlived its usefulness, and will not be missed. Likewise, I think it makes sense for Seattle to study the possibility of reducing the reductions of the No UW schedule. While No UW has not (to my knowledge) caused a meltdown a la Reduced Weekday, it adds complexity for minimal savings, which is something we should try to eliminate from our transit network.

This June and September, transit riders in Seattle will see exciting improvements to their bus service, with better frequency and reliability, day and night, on weekdays and weekends. I have created maps that show the frequent transit network (PDF) as of this September. The improvements are sourced from the Prop 1 service contract which David summarized route-by-route last month that was approved on Tuesday. The maps are based on my current frequent transit map that you can use to compare differences with the September maps. What’s new and different with the maps?

Continue reading “Seattle Frequent Network Maps Preview (Sept 2015)”

• Way more effective than an email to council: Haley Woods from Ballard’s Peddler Brewing Company has made a great YouTube video describing the unacceptable hazards of crossing the Ballard Bridge.
• Road diets save lives and don’t really impact traffic, so let’s have more of them. But Seattle still has way too many unstriped, hazardous intersections, as seen in last night’s Pike/Melrose collision.
• The Urbanist dives deep into Shoreline’s rezone plans for Link, with a three-phased approach coming to be favored.
• ICYMI: Seattle Subway’s Westside Transit Tunnel idea is getting a lot of play this week. See our 200+ comment article, the Times’ Coverage ($), and KIRO’s interview with Seattle Subway’s Jonathan Hopkins.
• Ignore the Times’ sensationalist headline about  ‘vanishing street parking’ for bus and bike lanes, and you’ll see a fair-minded article discussing modal tradeoffs, safety, and how the city is merely being responsive to people’s needs. And don’t forget, there is ample off-street parking in Downtown Seattle, and it’s getting cheaper.
• Jobs: Environmental Planner at WSDOT, Program Manager at Commute Seattle, Community Outreach and TOD Analyst at Sound Transit.
• Lots of support rolling in for a statewide transportation package. Washington Bikes calls it “a good start“, The News Tribune is all in, and the Times ($) argues for full roads funding while saying that Sound Transit should just be happy with what it’s offered.
• The completed Tukwila Station was dedicated yesterday.
• Bertha has moved 6′ toward the repair pit, the first movement in over a year.  Meanwhile, 4 workers injured after falling 25′ in a North Portal wall collapse last week appear to be ok.
• Separating bikeshare systems into (mostly) separate nodes – as Pronto has done with Center City and the UDistrict – cuts the utility of such systems in half.
• But perhaps the biggest news this week? City Councilmember Sally Clark will not seek reelection ($), making her the third incumbent to drop out after Licata and Rassmussen.

This is an open thread.

As we mentioned on Twitter last night, both the Seattle City Council and King County Council yesterday approved Seattle’s initial purchase of bus service, utilizing Executive Constantine’s partnership framework and the revenue from November’s passage of Prop 1, a Seattle-only sales tax and $60 car tab fee. The details of Seattle’s purchases have not changed materially since David unpacked the details in this post.

Seattle has smartly chosen to spend its money on core service quality (improving reliability, addressing overcrowding, making schedules more consistent and comprehensible) and major frequency improvements on high-performing routes. In particular, I’m thrilled at the evening frequency improvements that will take effect in June, and I will undoubtedly be riding the bus more as a result of them.

Thanks to everyone who worked on, advocated for, and voted for this measure, which will make our city so much better.

In earlier posts I mentioned attending the TCC organized Transit Talk. Along with transit champions Marko Liias and Jessyn Farrell, WSDOT Public Transit Division’s Stan Suchan rounded out the panel. As previewed at the talk, the transportation bill that made it out the Senate Transportation Committee, while containing some ST3 authorization is not what forward thinking voters would like.

The ball is now in House Dems court. However going off history and considering where the Senate is starting from it looks like Sen. Liias was correct, this is not the transportation bill that will significantly move the state forward. It looks like the best path for systemic change is to focus on getting WSDOT’s Strategic Plan to reflect our values. That way WSDOT is collecting the right data and studying the right tools to make the next transportation package forward thinking.

More from WSDOT’s Stan Suchan:

WSDOT’s strategic plan, Results WSDOT, guides our work within our legal and budgetary boundaries and in alignment with Governor Inslee’s Results Washington. We are currently developing implementation work plans. Now would be great time to hear from people who want to share their ideas about the strategies listed in the strategic plan brochure, found at http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Secretary/ResultsWSDOT.htm, and steps we should take to achieve our goals. Your comments can be sent to strategicplan@wsdot.wa.gov.

You heard it folks. You might not be able to change the vote a Senator from Yakima, but you can help influence the direction of our state’s transportation department.

Senate Bill 5343, the bill to make Sound Transit pay for parking permits for residents in Restricted Parking Zones around Sound Transit infrastructure, got an extreme makeover in the Senate Transportation Committee Monday afternoon. Watch 1:17:30 into the TVW video.

A substitute version of the bill, formally offered by Committee Chair Curtis King (R – Yakima), but written largely by committee member Sen. Pramila Jayapal (D – Seattle), changed the whole tenor of the bill:
Continue reading “Sen. Jayapal Turns SB 5343 into Social Justice Bill”

Sound Transit is pursuing improvements to station facilities at Puyallup and Sumner to accommodate growing Sounder ridership. These include the addition of several hundred parking stalls at each location.

At Sumner, the improvements include a 400+ stall parking garage to complement existing surface parking. At Puyallup, the agency plans a garage with up to 400 stalls, and another 300 surface parking spots to be built or leased at two other locations. The area around both stations will also see pedestrian and bicycle improvements. These include pedestrian bridges over the station railroad tracks. The improvements are to be completed by 2020.

The $94 million price tag was reported on these pages a few weeks ago, and wasn’t universally applauded. Why is a transit agency spending so much on parking? Shouldn’t we be investing in transit service over car storage? Why can’t we charge for parking on city streets to manage spillovers? Aren’t there alternate investments to improve transit ridership without enabling sprawl?

Continue reading “Parking and Suburban Transit”