Seems pretty obvious that Bellevue has a significant lack of land for multi family housing if developers are passing off a building with 8 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms as a single family house.
Maybe the Expedia building should be turned onto a residential tower?
Seriously – this is what Bellevue polls find important ?
I think it is more like “people in their 20’s, 0”
In the modern economy, if you aren’t a computer scientist and don’t want to live with your parents, you spend your twenties living with friends. If you want people to get higher education, especially, people will live with their friends (grad students avoid the undergraduate slums right next to most college campuses and so live in shared houses in neighborhoods).
And having recently been in my twenties, I can assure you, almost nobody shares food expenses (formula for roommate conflict).
Sorry: all higher education means people sharing housing, but with undergrads that’s more likely to be dorms and apartments (and more people per square foot), whereas grad students are often a bus ride away in a quieter neighborhood. Not that it matters: the point is that higher education requires spending lots of money while making none, while simultaneously not being a part of a family: shared housing is the solution. Having five people in a house, or two, who aren’t sharing expenses, is very reasonable.
Dorms are only open to students at certain times though. If you have a campus job you wind up having to find something other than the dorms for housing during Christmas, summer, etc when the dorms are closed. The place I went to school owned perhaps 100 neighborhood houses for student housing needs that could not be met by their dorms.
You people keep saying you’re not against single-family-only neighborhoods, but then scream and yell whenever SF-only neighborhoods try to maintain that zoning. Boarding houses are a business. Put them in multi-family zones.
If there’re enough multi-family zones, sure. But which multi-family zones?
Maybe the Bellevue planning office should be thinking about rezoning in areas near Bellevue College. There are areas near downtown Bellevue that transitioned from SF zoning to commercial. There were lots of businesses being run from former homes.
First of all, the “its a business” argument is really stupid, Sam, and you should know that. Most of the people who live in neighborhoods with houses have mortgage. That is a business, too (and a very big one — big enough to sink the world’s economy when it failed). Furthermore, it usually perfectly legal to rent to a single family. That is very much like this, only with more restrictive rules.
I think most people on this site who say they have nothing against houses are simply saying they have nothing against houses. If you want to live in a house, go for it. There are a lot of people (myself included) who believe that we should help preserve these houses. I see nothing wrong with such policies (applied appropriately). Unfortunately, rules such as those proposed by Bellevue do just the opposite. For example, here is a very nice neighborhood: http://goo.gl/maps/6lcu5. Just your cup of tea, right Sam? Now, here is a different neighborhood: http://goo.gl/maps/GIwlC. These look very similar. Walking down the street, you would think they are pretty much the same (nice house, nice landscaping, etc.). But the density difference between the two is striking. The first manages to squeeze in plenty of people while maintaining everything preservationists claim they want (the look and feel of the neighborhood). They do so by easing the restrictions on density (allowing more residents) while keeping restrictions on development (no six story buildings).
Seattle, on the other focuses growth into a very small area. The result is economic pressure on all those buildings. This means that buildings that are obviously valuable in their current state are replaced, because that is the only place where new housing is allowed and new housing is in such high demand. The result is this: http://tinyurl.com/kspyu6x
How is that good? How is that better than the first neighborhood I showed you? It isn’t, but that is the end result when you try and squeeze development into a very small area. If not for the ridiculous restrictions, most of the people who are going to move into the new apartment would move into a backyard cottage or a basement apartment, or a converted house. That particular house could be converted, of course, but in today’s market, there is little incentive. You see, converting makes sense because it is cheap, which is why it would happen throughout the city right now if it was allowed in more areas. This would put downward pressure on the market, and houses like that would be converted (or just kept as a single family house). But with today’s hyper-restricted market, you might as well throw away the house and add more units.
So, Sam, that is my point. If you want houses preserved, work for easing the rules based on density (http://daily.sightline.org/blog_series/legalizing-inexpensive-housing/). Of course, there is another alternative, which is to be more restrictive, but that would lead to even higher rents and sky high housing prices. That is basically a “let them eat cake” policy, which I doubt most people subscribe to.
@ Sam
Rental properties of any sort are a business – should we exclude rental homes from nice neighborhoods? It seems like this is just, “eewwww, poor people in my neighborhood”
Also, a boarding house, with it’s Steinbeck connotations, is a very different thing than some friends getting together to share a house.
It’s rare (and a house you want to avoid) to find a place where the landlord puts people together – typically, it’s a landlord who doesn’t discriminate against people just because they aren’t married, and the organization is done by the people living there, who make no money. I see no unusual business there.
I don’t see how it changes the single family nature of a neighborhood if there are adults sharing a house, who don’t happen to be a family. The reason having SF only zoning is ok is that it specifies building type – it’s fine if you want your neighborhood to be full of detached buildings and no apartments (independent of density arguments, here). However, it is a very different thing to make a law targeting the type of people who live in your neighborhood. Redlining, I think we can all agree, is an ugly, ugly part of our history. The young are not a persecuted group like many racial minorities, but trying to keep anybody out of a neighborhood because they are seen as undesirable is ugly and immoral, on a vastly larger scale than any of the density and infrastructure stuff we talk about here.
All I’m saying is, if Bellevue wants to say “no houses of so many bedrooms, so many baths, under so many square feet” than we’re having an argument about density, which is fine and what this forum is about. But a law in the form of “people living like this aren’t welcome here” is discrimination, and a way, way bigger issue.
Who’s building what and where in Seattle on a day by day basis. https://www.seattleinprogress.com/
Thanks Danny for the great article this morning and links to an even greater map with pin for each development. Click on the pin for all the details.
I watch all the pins on the map, and whirlygigs in the air near CPS and SLU wondering how mass transit can ignore the obvious.
I noticed only one small development near Rainier Beach Station. But multiple developments near the other RV stations.
Rented for a while down there and was glad to move. Might not be pc, but living in rainier valley is worst of all worlds. Urban ills without urban amenities is not enjoyable.
Naw, its called coming to grips with reality…
Love this video!
Agree! Overseas transit operations seem to have far more creative advertising than North America.
Map of downtown Bellevue projects. Map not as newfangled as Seattle map. Drawings and stuff stuff of each development below map.
Supply in SLU, Ballard, etc., is booming. What are rents like in those places?
Also, one of the tenets of this blog is, with the building of a regional transit system, it doesn’t matter where people live. Just because offices are popping up in Bellevue, doesn’t mean Bellevue has to build housing for them. One of the bloggers here even suggested as much, when I pointed out Kemper Freeman admirably lives one block away from his office and walks to work, whereas other people may live in a big house beyond Puyallup and take Sounder into work. He said he didn’t care where people lived. Also, the other day I asked why the guy who lives on the eastside and drives just a couple of miles into work is demonized, but a guy who … lives on Bainbridge, bikes to the ferry, take the ferry to Seattle, then takes Link to the Seatac area isn’t? The latter is almost considered a hero. (He isn’t. He’s a f pig and a horrible human being for living so far away from work. Tens of billions of dollars of transit infrastructure has to be built to sustain his selfish and wasteful lifestyle).
So, 1) Increasing supply won’t drive down housing prices. 2) With regional transit, it doesn’t matter where anyone lives anymore. In fact, the person who super-commutes in on a half a dozen different public transit modes is someone to be looked up to, whereas great Bellevue patriots, such as Kemper Freeman and myself, who …. actually, I forgot what my point was. ttyl
Yes, yes. Poor oppressed and demonized bellevueite. You and one more of them make one person who cares.
SLU and Ballard aren’t Bellevue. Sure transit can help, but living close to stuff can be preferable if the housing price is right.
My mortgage is only $700 a month. Some people in my area do actually commute to Bellvue at only 3 hours per direction. Maybe instead of developing affordable housing in Bellvue they should just make everyone below a certain income level live 3 hours away.
Wow, slow down Sam, so many silly arguments all packed in one post. OK, I’ll bite:
1) Which is worse for the environment, to drive a short distance or take transit a long distance?
It depends. The are various ways to measure your impact on the environment, but they get pretty complicated. Generally speaking, though, encouraging walking (by building areas where folks don’t ride vehicles that often) is good. For example, lots of people in New York spend their day walking (not riding the subway). But at the same time, the subway is great because it allows those who do want to travel a long distance (several miles) a more energy efficient way to get there. This is why cities tend to consume a lot less resources, when measured per capita (and per dollar).
2) With the building of a regional transit system, it doesn’t matter where people live.
Ridiculous. Of course it matters. A regional transit system can only do so much. It still takes a while to get from point A to point B. Furthermore, people don’t want to have to hop on a bus or train all the time (see my answer to point #1).
3) Increasing supply won’t drive down housing prices.
Also ridiculous. We simply have more demand and not enough supply. With all the new construction, it seems like the supply would be sufficient to meet demand, but demand is sky rocketing. It is a bit like when they made the first set of iPhones. They made a huge amount (more than any other phone ever made) but prices were still sky high (because demand was higher than supply). Of course with housing, it gets a bit more complicated. Some housing (like a high rise) is expensive to build per unit, while other housing (like a backyard cottage, a basement apartment or even a low rise building) is not. Thus the cost is not only the result of the high demand (and unmet supply) but the fact that the demand can only be met (legally) by high rise buildings. More details here: http://daily.sightline.org/blog_series/legalizing-inexpensive-housing/. Then there is the fact that people want to live in some areas, not others. For example, the demand for housing in Rainier Valley has not reached the point where building expensive (six story) buildings makes economic sense. It has probably reached the point (a long time ago) where adding backyard cottages and basement apartments and converted houses make a lot of sense (it probably did a long time ago), but those aren’t allowed. So, basically, the supply probably won’t catch up with demand because the supply is artificially restrained to certain areas and requires expensive processes. Because of this, if builders’ forecasts are correct, we won’t see cheap rent. In other words, no one will build a unit expecting $500 a month rent if it costs $1,000 a month to build it. So unless we change the laws (and legalize cheap housing) or there is a bubble (where builders mis-forecast the market) high rent prices are here to stay.
What is Bellevue’s vacancy rate? I think Bellevue’s rent reflects average affluence rather than a relative lack of supply. The thing to watch for is how rents are changing. We must keep construction up to ensure rents don’t reach $2000 or we’ll veer into San Francisco territory and it’ll be very hard to bring them back down again. But if they start increasing more slowly while jobs keep growing like mushrooms, then at least we’re not losing ground at a suffocating rate. My rent, in the center of the Capitol Hill boom, just went up 7%, compared to 7% last year, so at least it’s below the 10% of a few years ago.
@Mike — I doubt affluence has much to do with it. It is possible that rich folks in Bellevue are buying up luxury apartments, the way that people in Malibu buy up adjacent houses and combine them, but I doubt it. There is a lack of supply relative to the cost of construction (obviously) otherwise the rent wouldn’t be so high. There are a lot of things that contribute to the cost of construction; zoning restrictions among them. Since zoning generally allows for wealthy purchases, and limits middle class ones, my guess is that is what it driving it. Same on both sides of the lake. Even without zoning restrictions there is a limit to how low rent can go (because of the cost of construction and the value of the land) but we are nowhere near that (in Seattle or Bellevue).
Most of housing’s cost is in the land and its location, not in the building. Identical buildings can go up in Seattle and Tukwila, but with significantly cheaper rent in Tukwila. That doesn’t mean the developer isn’t getting a profit; the difference is in the land costs. Land is so worthless in Tukwila that freestanding big-box stores with huge surface parking lots are economical for developers. We should focus on that more; it’s an indictment on suburban sprawl. In Bellevue you have a concentration of affluent tech workers who want to live close to Microsoft and downtown Bellevue. They bid up housing prices because there’s only a limited amount of land close to those centers. And close to Bellevue’s upscale shopping and freeway access. And the schools, although all of the Eastside has good schools. It’s not just McMansions but middle-class people buying up regular single-family houses and condos. Apartments go to the highest bidder (whatever the market will bear), so the lowest-income are shut out. As I said, I don’t know that Bellevue has the lowest vacancy rate in the county, but it has a large percentage of higher-income people able to bid up the prices of most house and apartment locations.
NSA is really getting out of hand here, but this evil subterranean surveillance program goes back at least to 1983, and has been responsible for horrendous damage to transportation.
For example, on the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, the world’s top engineers were misled into thinking that more than one large existing thing wasn’t there. Especially an air-pipe that caused the toilets to explode in the King County Courthouse when a machine pulled it out of the ground.
Though maybe, in the County’s prolonged battle with Metro for the both the transit system and also sanitary waste, county-sponsored terrorists flushhed cherry bombs where DSTT could be blamed.
Though it’s equall possible that DSTP’s chief engineer, Vladimir Khazak, ordered the NSA to crop every single image of anything paleolithic or archaeological that would cause a single day’s delay in digging. Or longer.
Actual orders to foremen: “You don’t find one bone!”
The Subterranean Invisibility weapon also led to the project’s missing an underground river under century square, but naturally failed to show how our engineers fixed the problem without losing a day’s work.
But no one can blame The War on Transit for this one. Somebody went to huge effort to make sure that not only did the crew on Bertha not know the pipe was there, but CIA operatives had the workers who had put it there locked in a Black Site in Poland on a kielbasa diet ’til the damage was done.
The real pity, though, is that, given British history, this video misses the thousands of dismembered skeletons of a thousand years of the English governing class. Like our spies didn’t know that Richard III was buried under a parking lot!
Fortunately, workers from the whole British Isles are so used to ghosts that they can steer boring machines using rattling chains and moaning as surveying markers. So I really would like to see the video before London’s real underground got deleted. Any chance, Oran?
Mark Dublin
When a person goes from his home to his car, he expects it to be within say 25 ft so that any packages or bags can easily be put in the trunk or back seat.
But when a person travels somewhere, like a mall or work, or an event downtown, or especially a large structure like a stadium or airport, he assumes and is willing to walk hundreds or even thousands of feet from a parking lot, maybe 1/2 a mile or more sometimes, to and from his car. And he is willing to carry bags, or push a cart with bags that far.
So has anyone been on a tunnel bus lately?
Metro has changed the next stop signs to the point where they are nearly incomprehensible.
“3/UNIV/UNIVSEN ST” is the new designation for University Street station.
“3AV/JAMES/YESL WY” is the new designation for Pioneer Square station.
“S JACKSON ST/5 AV” is the new designation for International District/Chinatown station.
The new announcements are equally verbose. For example the announcement for University Street station is: “Next stop: University Street station, tunnel and 3rd Avenue. University Street and Seneca Street. Pike Place Market. Midtown Post Office. Seattle Art Museum. Seattle Central Library.”
I mean I’m all for giving passengers information… but this is reaching the level of information overload.
How about “Everything Useful” and “Everything Else”?
I noticed those tunnel stop displays last weekend. It took me a while to figure out what they meant, and whether it was a joke or malfunction. I actually like the verbose audio announcements, but can’t imagine what they were thinking with the new display wording.
Wait, want the tunnel closed last weekend? Must have been two weeks ago I saw it. Which means they’ve lasted 2 weeks at least, which is impressively long for such a bad idea…
Link wasn’t operating in the tunnel last weekend… but the tunnel never closed.
I saw that too. I wasn’t sure if they were new or I just hadn’t paid attention to them, but it said “PINE ST/4 & 5T AVE” when I thought it said “WESTLAKE” before. I think 6th Avenue will complain that it’s closer to the stop than 4th, I also don’t like the “T” abbreviation for “TH”. Better to leave it out if you can’t fit “TH”, since “T” looks like it means some secret footnote or distinct street name.
I actually like them as they tell you a bit more of where you will end up being after you get off at Westlake or University.
Weird. I rode the 41 the other day (last Thursday) and seem to remember it being obvious (“University Street” or maybe “University”). But they must have changed it (or they are experimenting).. I agree, that idea is stupid. The stations are what they are. Before I left, I knew I wanted to get off at University Street Station. If anything, it was the directions after you get off that are confusing (I wasn’t used to the stop). So I ended up on the wrong street (not the end of the world, but I probably would have been better off if I got off one stop sooner). If they really want to improve things (show that the University Street Station serves more than University Street) they should have better signs.
What’s really going to be challenging when they have University Street Station, University of Washington station and U District station (which I hope isn’t called University District station).
I agree. I would vote for:
Husky Stadium
U-District
Seneca
I was actually on a 73 a few weeks ago, and there was someone who wanted to get off at Wedtlake, but almost missed their stop because the visual announcement said something like “PINE ST/3-4-5T AV”. (The new signage also seems to be inconsistently applied across tunnel buses for some reason.) While I can see the point of including the street intersection on the verbal announcements, the current execution is just ridicuously confusing.
Also, while playing around on transit directions on Google, I noticed that for certain surface to tunnel transfers, Google just asks you to walk from “4th and University” to “University Street”. There is no indication that “University Street” is actualy inside a tunnel, and I would imagine that many first-time riders would have a very difficult time finding the stop. Also, there needs to be more maps in downtown (and the U-District) showing nearby bus stops to help riders make transfers, since the location of the right bus stop is often not at all intuitive.
Rode another bus tonight… Westlake is now “PINE ST/3,4,5T AV” and there is space available for one more character to make that T into a TH.
Confusingly Convention Place station still comes up as “CONVENTION PLACE” and not “PINE ST/9TH AV”.
On a slightly unrelated note, for the electronic signs on the platforms, I find it silly when a train is approaching the sign simply scrolls through what is announced over the speakers: “The next train, North bound, is arriving in, 2 mins”
Why doesn’t it just show “Next Train: 2 mins”? and not scroll?? All people want to know is when the next train is. They are already at the right platform so they don’t need to know which direction the train is going, all they want to know is how much longer they have to wait!
It’s like the onboard signs, they scroll “Now entering Beacon Hill station.” when they should just say “BEACON HILL” like most other cities do.
Definitely saw this — I haven’t been in the tunnel for a while and almost thought the 550 had changed its routing for a second. It’s a sign that makes sense only if you already knew what it meant. Wonder what caused it?
OK if I ask for clarification on a term here…
Sometimes some of you say “Transit Tea Party”. What do you mean?
I want to make sure I understand this term well as I continue to write on Page 2.
I saw that phrase once and tried to figure out what it means, but concluded it doesn’t mean anything. “Tea Party” is usually associated with (a) tax revolt, (b) opposition to mortgage relief, (c) throw the Wall Street criminals in prison, (d) opposition to Obamacare, and/or (e) all the right wing’s religious+libertarian positions. None of the transit-reform factions have claimed this phrase, and I’d caution against applying it to them from outside. What we have is mainstream reformers (STB editors, Seattle Subway), radical urban reformers (DP), radical decentralizing reformers (Bailo), status-quo advocates, single-family nimbys, one-seat riders, and anti-tax people. None of these map clearly to any “tea party” tenet either for or against, and trying to do so would lead to confusion, undeserved prestige, or unnecessary derision. The closest logically to “Tea Party (a)” would be the people who want to cap taxes, roll them back, or privatize Metro. None of them have used the phrase “tea party” for their transit position, even though it might benefit their cause and make their movement larger. Secondmost logical would be single-family nimbys, since they’re “in revolt” against government “urban renewal” proposals. But they have not used the phrase either.
Maybe “When Seattle Transit Blog members have a meetup in an establishment in the International District”
ha ha ha ha.
Very well put Mike. I was going to use the term in a future STB Page Two post after quite a few years of a US Tea Party woman on the Island Transit Board………………………
Now I won’t.
If she has been branding herself as part of the Tea Party movement, that should be noted, and it would be interesting to see her views on transit and whether she believes they reflect her tea party priorities, and if so how. There are several approaches to transit that could be called “tea party”, and some of them contradict each other. Also, even if she says these are the proper tea party transit positions, she can’t speak for the entire tea party movement in the northwest.
Well put Mike. :-)
That wasn’t clear. What I meant to say is, you should cover her tea party views and her transit views, and how she thinks they relate to each other. But don’t take her word for it that these are the official tea party transit views, binding to everybody in the northwest and nationally.
I agree. This individual was quite disruptive like the national Tea Party and wanted transit only for a few places.
The recent Metro fare increase starts to make fares kind of crazy and unfair to riders when peak fares are in effect on Metro.
A one mile ride inside the city limits is $2.75 but a 20 mile ride from Issaquah to Seattle on ST is only $2.50.
People traveling on ST from Redmond or Kirkland to the U-District pay $2.50 but riders from Bellevue on MT 271 pay $3.25, as will the few who remain on MT 277. Luckily a lot of them will have a U-Pass.
MT 268 largely duplicates ST 545 but will charge $3.25 vs. $2.50.
MT 255 at $3.25 peak, but you can save 50c by using ORCA and transferring to ST 545 at Yarrow Point or Evergreen Point.
And the biggest absurdity is that while an 4 mile ride on Metro is $3.25 when crossing a zone, a 42-mile trip on ST 592 from Lakewood to downtown Seattle is only $3.50. And of course that fare undercuts the Sounder fare of $5.25, even though the marginal cost of operating overlapping bus service is much greater than carrying extra passengers on the train.
It’s time for a region-wide fare structure and fare policies and transfer policies across all the operators where there is overlapping service.
hold ‘yer water there pardner. Fare integration was on the ballot proposal ‘Pro’ in 1996, so we still have plenty of time to git-er-done.
I’m suggesting a blue ribbon committee be formed to look into the matter.
With a report due in 2022…
+1
Is crossing the intersection at Mercer and Fairview on the unmarked side merely stupid, or also illegal?
Why do the 124 and 60 travel several blocks on a street with multiple traffic circles and that they can barely fit on (S Carlton Street)? Or conversely, why does a significant bus street have traffic circles? Is it a temporary routing or did Metro and SDOT not talk to each other?
City of Bellevue 1. Density extremists 0.
http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/bellevue-cracks-down-boarding-houses-making-roomma/nkmp8/
Seems pretty obvious that Bellevue has a significant lack of land for multi family housing if developers are passing off a building with 8 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms as a single family house.
Maybe the Expedia building should be turned onto a residential tower?
Seriously – this is what Bellevue polls find important ?
I think it is more like “people in their 20’s, 0”
In the modern economy, if you aren’t a computer scientist and don’t want to live with your parents, you spend your twenties living with friends. If you want people to get higher education, especially, people will live with their friends (grad students avoid the undergraduate slums right next to most college campuses and so live in shared houses in neighborhoods).
And having recently been in my twenties, I can assure you, almost nobody shares food expenses (formula for roommate conflict).
Sorry: all higher education means people sharing housing, but with undergrads that’s more likely to be dorms and apartments (and more people per square foot), whereas grad students are often a bus ride away in a quieter neighborhood. Not that it matters: the point is that higher education requires spending lots of money while making none, while simultaneously not being a part of a family: shared housing is the solution. Having five people in a house, or two, who aren’t sharing expenses, is very reasonable.
Dorms are only open to students at certain times though. If you have a campus job you wind up having to find something other than the dorms for housing during Christmas, summer, etc when the dorms are closed. The place I went to school owned perhaps 100 neighborhood houses for student housing needs that could not be met by their dorms.
You people keep saying you’re not against single-family-only neighborhoods, but then scream and yell whenever SF-only neighborhoods try to maintain that zoning. Boarding houses are a business. Put them in multi-family zones.
If there’re enough multi-family zones, sure. But which multi-family zones?
Maybe the Bellevue planning office should be thinking about rezoning in areas near Bellevue College. There are areas near downtown Bellevue that transitioned from SF zoning to commercial. There were lots of businesses being run from former homes.
First of all, the “its a business” argument is really stupid, Sam, and you should know that. Most of the people who live in neighborhoods with houses have mortgage. That is a business, too (and a very big one — big enough to sink the world’s economy when it failed). Furthermore, it usually perfectly legal to rent to a single family. That is very much like this, only with more restrictive rules.
I think most people on this site who say they have nothing against houses are simply saying they have nothing against houses. If you want to live in a house, go for it. There are a lot of people (myself included) who believe that we should help preserve these houses. I see nothing wrong with such policies (applied appropriately). Unfortunately, rules such as those proposed by Bellevue do just the opposite. For example, here is a very nice neighborhood: http://goo.gl/maps/6lcu5. Just your cup of tea, right Sam? Now, here is a different neighborhood: http://goo.gl/maps/GIwlC. These look very similar. Walking down the street, you would think they are pretty much the same (nice house, nice landscaping, etc.). But the density difference between the two is striking. The first manages to squeeze in plenty of people while maintaining everything preservationists claim they want (the look and feel of the neighborhood). They do so by easing the restrictions on density (allowing more residents) while keeping restrictions on development (no six story buildings).
Seattle, on the other focuses growth into a very small area. The result is economic pressure on all those buildings. This means that buildings that are obviously valuable in their current state are replaced, because that is the only place where new housing is allowed and new housing is in such high demand. The result is this: http://tinyurl.com/kspyu6x
How is that good? How is that better than the first neighborhood I showed you? It isn’t, but that is the end result when you try and squeeze development into a very small area. If not for the ridiculous restrictions, most of the people who are going to move into the new apartment would move into a backyard cottage or a basement apartment, or a converted house. That particular house could be converted, of course, but in today’s market, there is little incentive. You see, converting makes sense because it is cheap, which is why it would happen throughout the city right now if it was allowed in more areas. This would put downward pressure on the market, and houses like that would be converted (or just kept as a single family house). But with today’s hyper-restricted market, you might as well throw away the house and add more units.
So, Sam, that is my point. If you want houses preserved, work for easing the rules based on density (http://daily.sightline.org/blog_series/legalizing-inexpensive-housing/). Of course, there is another alternative, which is to be more restrictive, but that would lead to even higher rents and sky high housing prices. That is basically a “let them eat cake” policy, which I doubt most people subscribe to.
@ Sam
Rental properties of any sort are a business – should we exclude rental homes from nice neighborhoods? It seems like this is just, “eewwww, poor people in my neighborhood”
Also, a boarding house, with it’s Steinbeck connotations, is a very different thing than some friends getting together to share a house.
It’s rare (and a house you want to avoid) to find a place where the landlord puts people together – typically, it’s a landlord who doesn’t discriminate against people just because they aren’t married, and the organization is done by the people living there, who make no money. I see no unusual business there.
I don’t see how it changes the single family nature of a neighborhood if there are adults sharing a house, who don’t happen to be a family. The reason having SF only zoning is ok is that it specifies building type – it’s fine if you want your neighborhood to be full of detached buildings and no apartments (independent of density arguments, here). However, it is a very different thing to make a law targeting the type of people who live in your neighborhood. Redlining, I think we can all agree, is an ugly, ugly part of our history. The young are not a persecuted group like many racial minorities, but trying to keep anybody out of a neighborhood because they are seen as undesirable is ugly and immoral, on a vastly larger scale than any of the density and infrastructure stuff we talk about here.
All I’m saying is, if Bellevue wants to say “no houses of so many bedrooms, so many baths, under so many square feet” than we’re having an argument about density, which is fine and what this forum is about. But a law in the form of “people living like this aren’t welcome here” is discrimination, and a way, way bigger issue.
Who’s building what and where in Seattle on a day by day basis. https://www.seattleinprogress.com/
Thanks Danny for the great article this morning and links to an even greater map with pin for each development. Click on the pin for all the details.
I watch all the pins on the map, and whirlygigs in the air near CPS and SLU wondering how mass transit can ignore the obvious.
I noticed only one small development near Rainier Beach Station. But multiple developments near the other RV stations.
Rented for a while down there and was glad to move. Might not be pc, but living in rainier valley is worst of all worlds. Urban ills without urban amenities is not enjoyable.
Naw, its called coming to grips with reality…
Love this video!
Agree! Overseas transit operations seem to have far more creative advertising than North America.
Map of downtown Bellevue projects. Map not as newfangled as Seattle map. Drawings and stuff stuff of each development below map.
https://www.bellevuewa.gov/pdf/Development%20Services/lu_MajorProjects.pdf
Until they open their doors they can’t meet housing needs today. A year ago Seattle Times said Bellevue was the most expensive city in the region for a single bedroom apartment, at $1,400 a month:
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/seattle-area-apartment-rents-may-stabilize-even-dip-in-2014/
That seems to indicate a lack of supply there.
Supply in SLU, Ballard, etc., is booming. What are rents like in those places?
Also, one of the tenets of this blog is, with the building of a regional transit system, it doesn’t matter where people live. Just because offices are popping up in Bellevue, doesn’t mean Bellevue has to build housing for them. One of the bloggers here even suggested as much, when I pointed out Kemper Freeman admirably lives one block away from his office and walks to work, whereas other people may live in a big house beyond Puyallup and take Sounder into work. He said he didn’t care where people lived. Also, the other day I asked why the guy who lives on the eastside and drives just a couple of miles into work is demonized, but a guy who … lives on Bainbridge, bikes to the ferry, take the ferry to Seattle, then takes Link to the Seatac area isn’t? The latter is almost considered a hero. (He isn’t. He’s a f pig and a horrible human being for living so far away from work. Tens of billions of dollars of transit infrastructure has to be built to sustain his selfish and wasteful lifestyle).
So, 1) Increasing supply won’t drive down housing prices. 2) With regional transit, it doesn’t matter where anyone lives anymore. In fact, the person who super-commutes in on a half a dozen different public transit modes is someone to be looked up to, whereas great Bellevue patriots, such as Kemper Freeman and myself, who …. actually, I forgot what my point was. ttyl
Yes, yes. Poor oppressed and demonized bellevueite. You and one more of them make one person who cares.
SLU and Ballard aren’t Bellevue. Sure transit can help, but living close to stuff can be preferable if the housing price is right.
My mortgage is only $700 a month. Some people in my area do actually commute to Bellvue at only 3 hours per direction. Maybe instead of developing affordable housing in Bellvue they should just make everyone below a certain income level live 3 hours away.
Wow, slow down Sam, so many silly arguments all packed in one post. OK, I’ll bite:
1) Which is worse for the environment, to drive a short distance or take transit a long distance?
It depends. The are various ways to measure your impact on the environment, but they get pretty complicated. Generally speaking, though, encouraging walking (by building areas where folks don’t ride vehicles that often) is good. For example, lots of people in New York spend their day walking (not riding the subway). But at the same time, the subway is great because it allows those who do want to travel a long distance (several miles) a more energy efficient way to get there. This is why cities tend to consume a lot less resources, when measured per capita (and per dollar).
2) With the building of a regional transit system, it doesn’t matter where people live.
Ridiculous. Of course it matters. A regional transit system can only do so much. It still takes a while to get from point A to point B. Furthermore, people don’t want to have to hop on a bus or train all the time (see my answer to point #1).
3) Increasing supply won’t drive down housing prices.
Also ridiculous. We simply have more demand and not enough supply. With all the new construction, it seems like the supply would be sufficient to meet demand, but demand is sky rocketing. It is a bit like when they made the first set of iPhones. They made a huge amount (more than any other phone ever made) but prices were still sky high (because demand was higher than supply). Of course with housing, it gets a bit more complicated. Some housing (like a high rise) is expensive to build per unit, while other housing (like a backyard cottage, a basement apartment or even a low rise building) is not. Thus the cost is not only the result of the high demand (and unmet supply) but the fact that the demand can only be met (legally) by high rise buildings. More details here: http://daily.sightline.org/blog_series/legalizing-inexpensive-housing/. Then there is the fact that people want to live in some areas, not others. For example, the demand for housing in Rainier Valley has not reached the point where building expensive (six story) buildings makes economic sense. It has probably reached the point (a long time ago) where adding backyard cottages and basement apartments and converted houses make a lot of sense (it probably did a long time ago), but those aren’t allowed. So, basically, the supply probably won’t catch up with demand because the supply is artificially restrained to certain areas and requires expensive processes. Because of this, if builders’ forecasts are correct, we won’t see cheap rent. In other words, no one will build a unit expecting $500 a month rent if it costs $1,000 a month to build it. So unless we change the laws (and legalize cheap housing) or there is a bubble (where builders mis-forecast the market) high rent prices are here to stay.
What is Bellevue’s vacancy rate? I think Bellevue’s rent reflects average affluence rather than a relative lack of supply. The thing to watch for is how rents are changing. We must keep construction up to ensure rents don’t reach $2000 or we’ll veer into San Francisco territory and it’ll be very hard to bring them back down again. But if they start increasing more slowly while jobs keep growing like mushrooms, then at least we’re not losing ground at a suffocating rate. My rent, in the center of the Capitol Hill boom, just went up 7%, compared to 7% last year, so at least it’s below the 10% of a few years ago.
@Mike — I doubt affluence has much to do with it. It is possible that rich folks in Bellevue are buying up luxury apartments, the way that people in Malibu buy up adjacent houses and combine them, but I doubt it. There is a lack of supply relative to the cost of construction (obviously) otherwise the rent wouldn’t be so high. There are a lot of things that contribute to the cost of construction; zoning restrictions among them. Since zoning generally allows for wealthy purchases, and limits middle class ones, my guess is that is what it driving it. Same on both sides of the lake. Even without zoning restrictions there is a limit to how low rent can go (because of the cost of construction and the value of the land) but we are nowhere near that (in Seattle or Bellevue).
Most of housing’s cost is in the land and its location, not in the building. Identical buildings can go up in Seattle and Tukwila, but with significantly cheaper rent in Tukwila. That doesn’t mean the developer isn’t getting a profit; the difference is in the land costs. Land is so worthless in Tukwila that freestanding big-box stores with huge surface parking lots are economical for developers. We should focus on that more; it’s an indictment on suburban sprawl. In Bellevue you have a concentration of affluent tech workers who want to live close to Microsoft and downtown Bellevue. They bid up housing prices because there’s only a limited amount of land close to those centers. And close to Bellevue’s upscale shopping and freeway access. And the schools, although all of the Eastside has good schools. It’s not just McMansions but middle-class people buying up regular single-family houses and condos. Apartments go to the highest bidder (whatever the market will bear), so the lowest-income are shut out. As I said, I don’t know that Bellevue has the lowest vacancy rate in the county, but it has a large percentage of higher-income people able to bid up the prices of most house and apartment locations.
NSA is really getting out of hand here, but this evil subterranean surveillance program goes back at least to 1983, and has been responsible for horrendous damage to transportation.
For example, on the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, the world’s top engineers were misled into thinking that more than one large existing thing wasn’t there. Especially an air-pipe that caused the toilets to explode in the King County Courthouse when a machine pulled it out of the ground.
Though maybe, in the County’s prolonged battle with Metro for the both the transit system and also sanitary waste, county-sponsored terrorists flushhed cherry bombs where DSTT could be blamed.
Though it’s equall possible that DSTP’s chief engineer, Vladimir Khazak, ordered the NSA to crop every single image of anything paleolithic or archaeological that would cause a single day’s delay in digging. Or longer.
Actual orders to foremen: “You don’t find one bone!”
The Subterranean Invisibility weapon also led to the project’s missing an underground river under century square, but naturally failed to show how our engineers fixed the problem without losing a day’s work.
But no one can blame The War on Transit for this one. Somebody went to huge effort to make sure that not only did the crew on Bertha not know the pipe was there, but CIA operatives had the workers who had put it there locked in a Black Site in Poland on a kielbasa diet ’til the damage was done.
The real pity, though, is that, given British history, this video misses the thousands of dismembered skeletons of a thousand years of the English governing class. Like our spies didn’t know that Richard III was buried under a parking lot!
Fortunately, workers from the whole British Isles are so used to ghosts that they can steer boring machines using rattling chains and moaning as surveying markers. So I really would like to see the video before London’s real underground got deleted. Any chance, Oran?
Mark Dublin
When a person goes from his home to his car, he expects it to be within say 25 ft so that any packages or bags can easily be put in the trunk or back seat.
But when a person travels somewhere, like a mall or work, or an event downtown, or especially a large structure like a stadium or airport, he assumes and is willing to walk hundreds or even thousands of feet from a parking lot, maybe 1/2 a mile or more sometimes, to and from his car. And he is willing to carry bags, or push a cart with bags that far.
So has anyone been on a tunnel bus lately?
Metro has changed the next stop signs to the point where they are nearly incomprehensible.
“3/UNIV/UNIVSEN ST” is the new designation for University Street station.
“3AV/JAMES/YESL WY” is the new designation for Pioneer Square station.
“S JACKSON ST/5 AV” is the new designation for International District/Chinatown station.
The new announcements are equally verbose. For example the announcement for University Street station is: “Next stop: University Street station, tunnel and 3rd Avenue. University Street and Seneca Street. Pike Place Market. Midtown Post Office. Seattle Art Museum. Seattle Central Library.”
I mean I’m all for giving passengers information… but this is reaching the level of information overload.
How about “Everything Useful” and “Everything Else”?
I noticed those tunnel stop displays last weekend. It took me a while to figure out what they meant, and whether it was a joke or malfunction. I actually like the verbose audio announcements, but can’t imagine what they were thinking with the new display wording.
Wait, want the tunnel closed last weekend? Must have been two weeks ago I saw it. Which means they’ve lasted 2 weeks at least, which is impressively long for such a bad idea…
Link wasn’t operating in the tunnel last weekend… but the tunnel never closed.
I saw that too. I wasn’t sure if they were new or I just hadn’t paid attention to them, but it said “PINE ST/4 & 5T AVE” when I thought it said “WESTLAKE” before. I think 6th Avenue will complain that it’s closer to the stop than 4th, I also don’t like the “T” abbreviation for “TH”. Better to leave it out if you can’t fit “TH”, since “T” looks like it means some secret footnote or distinct street name.
I actually like them as they tell you a bit more of where you will end up being after you get off at Westlake or University.
Weird. I rode the 41 the other day (last Thursday) and seem to remember it being obvious (“University Street” or maybe “University”). But they must have changed it (or they are experimenting).. I agree, that idea is stupid. The stations are what they are. Before I left, I knew I wanted to get off at University Street Station. If anything, it was the directions after you get off that are confusing (I wasn’t used to the stop). So I ended up on the wrong street (not the end of the world, but I probably would have been better off if I got off one stop sooner). If they really want to improve things (show that the University Street Station serves more than University Street) they should have better signs.
What’s really going to be challenging when they have University Street Station, University of Washington station and U District station (which I hope isn’t called University District station).
I agree. I would vote for:
Husky Stadium
U-District
Seneca
I was actually on a 73 a few weeks ago, and there was someone who wanted to get off at Wedtlake, but almost missed their stop because the visual announcement said something like “PINE ST/3-4-5T AV”. (The new signage also seems to be inconsistently applied across tunnel buses for some reason.) While I can see the point of including the street intersection on the verbal announcements, the current execution is just ridicuously confusing.
Also, while playing around on transit directions on Google, I noticed that for certain surface to tunnel transfers, Google just asks you to walk from “4th and University” to “University Street”. There is no indication that “University Street” is actualy inside a tunnel, and I would imagine that many first-time riders would have a very difficult time finding the stop. Also, there needs to be more maps in downtown (and the U-District) showing nearby bus stops to help riders make transfers, since the location of the right bus stop is often not at all intuitive.
Rode another bus tonight… Westlake is now “PINE ST/3,4,5T AV” and there is space available for one more character to make that T into a TH.
Confusingly Convention Place station still comes up as “CONVENTION PLACE” and not “PINE ST/9TH AV”.
They converted to the Decabet.
https://screen.yahoo.com/dan-aykroyd-metric-alphabet-050000965.html
On a slightly unrelated note, for the electronic signs on the platforms, I find it silly when a train is approaching the sign simply scrolls through what is announced over the speakers: “The next train, North bound, is arriving in, 2 mins”
Why doesn’t it just show “Next Train: 2 mins”? and not scroll?? All people want to know is when the next train is. They are already at the right platform so they don’t need to know which direction the train is going, all they want to know is how much longer they have to wait!
It’s like the onboard signs, they scroll “Now entering Beacon Hill station.” when they should just say “BEACON HILL” like most other cities do.
Definitely saw this — I haven’t been in the tunnel for a while and almost thought the 550 had changed its routing for a second. It’s a sign that makes sense only if you already knew what it meant. Wonder what caused it?
OK if I ask for clarification on a term here…
Sometimes some of you say “Transit Tea Party”. What do you mean?
I want to make sure I understand this term well as I continue to write on Page 2.
I saw that phrase once and tried to figure out what it means, but concluded it doesn’t mean anything. “Tea Party” is usually associated with (a) tax revolt, (b) opposition to mortgage relief, (c) throw the Wall Street criminals in prison, (d) opposition to Obamacare, and/or (e) all the right wing’s religious+libertarian positions. None of the transit-reform factions have claimed this phrase, and I’d caution against applying it to them from outside. What we have is mainstream reformers (STB editors, Seattle Subway), radical urban reformers (DP), radical decentralizing reformers (Bailo), status-quo advocates, single-family nimbys, one-seat riders, and anti-tax people. None of these map clearly to any “tea party” tenet either for or against, and trying to do so would lead to confusion, undeserved prestige, or unnecessary derision. The closest logically to “Tea Party (a)” would be the people who want to cap taxes, roll them back, or privatize Metro. None of them have used the phrase “tea party” for their transit position, even though it might benefit their cause and make their movement larger. Secondmost logical would be single-family nimbys, since they’re “in revolt” against government “urban renewal” proposals. But they have not used the phrase either.
Maybe “When Seattle Transit Blog members have a meetup in an establishment in the International District”
ha ha ha ha.
Very well put Mike. I was going to use the term in a future STB Page Two post after quite a few years of a US Tea Party woman on the Island Transit Board………………………
Now I won’t.
If she has been branding herself as part of the Tea Party movement, that should be noted, and it would be interesting to see her views on transit and whether she believes they reflect her tea party priorities, and if so how. There are several approaches to transit that could be called “tea party”, and some of them contradict each other. Also, even if she says these are the proper tea party transit positions, she can’t speak for the entire tea party movement in the northwest.
Well put Mike. :-)
That wasn’t clear. What I meant to say is, you should cover her tea party views and her transit views, and how she thinks they relate to each other. But don’t take her word for it that these are the official tea party transit views, binding to everybody in the northwest and nationally.
I agree. This individual was quite disruptive like the national Tea Party and wanted transit only for a few places.
The recent Metro fare increase starts to make fares kind of crazy and unfair to riders when peak fares are in effect on Metro.
A one mile ride inside the city limits is $2.75 but a 20 mile ride from Issaquah to Seattle on ST is only $2.50.
People traveling on ST from Redmond or Kirkland to the U-District pay $2.50 but riders from Bellevue on MT 271 pay $3.25, as will the few who remain on MT 277. Luckily a lot of them will have a U-Pass.
MT 268 largely duplicates ST 545 but will charge $3.25 vs. $2.50.
MT 255 at $3.25 peak, but you can save 50c by using ORCA and transferring to ST 545 at Yarrow Point or Evergreen Point.
And the biggest absurdity is that while an 4 mile ride on Metro is $3.25 when crossing a zone, a 42-mile trip on ST 592 from Lakewood to downtown Seattle is only $3.50. And of course that fare undercuts the Sounder fare of $5.25, even though the marginal cost of operating overlapping bus service is much greater than carrying extra passengers on the train.
It’s time for a region-wide fare structure and fare policies and transfer policies across all the operators where there is overlapping service.
hold ‘yer water there pardner. Fare integration was on the ballot proposal ‘Pro’ in 1996, so we still have plenty of time to git-er-done.
I’m suggesting a blue ribbon committee be formed to look into the matter.
With a report due in 2022…
+1
Is crossing the intersection at Mercer and Fairview on the unmarked side merely stupid, or also illegal?
http://imgur.com/b3Njhpt (the highlighted unmarked side)
I’m reading http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/pedrcw.htm and nothing seems to ban this crossing, but maybe others with better / less biased reading comprehension can point out otherwise.
Why do the 124 and 60 travel several blocks on a street with multiple traffic circles and that they can barely fit on (S Carlton Street)? Or conversely, why does a significant bus street have traffic circles? Is it a temporary routing or did Metro and SDOT not talk to each other?