Month: April 2015

On behalf of the Seattle Transit Blog (STB), I would like to welcome the American Planning Association to Seattle for its four day national planning conference. STB has covered transportation and land use policy in the Puget Sound region since 2007, becoming a recognized source of transportation reporting and advocacy. Written by a group of passionate advocates, we dive deep beyond the headlines.

To help APA attendees from across the country get oriented in our fine city I’ve pulled together a topical compilation of posts and links which will help you get up to speed on the what’s happening in Seattle. If you want information about getting around the city check out Seattle for visitors or consider using our bike share system called Pronto! If you have questions leave a comment and our awesome readers will help answer your questions.

1. Seattle recently implemented a regional low-income transit pass. Here’s why we support it, how it was studied and how it was rolled out. Don’t forget about Seattle’s $15 dollar minimum wage.
2. Housing affordability in the nation’s fastest growing city has becoming an omnipresent issue, especially in Center City neighborhoods like Capitol Hill. The Mayor has set up a committee and has called for 50,000 new housing units (20,000 affordable) in the next 10 years. Recently the City Council “went a little to far” on micro housing regulations which some have opposed.
3. Link Light Rail is expanding north to Lynnwood, south to Federal Way and east to Bellevue and Redmond (despite years of lawsuits). The region could vote to expand regional high capacity transit as soon at 2016 but first the State Legislature has to expand Sound Transit’s funding authority.
4. Seattle is a national leader on performance based on-street parking management. However, off-street parking regulations which were eased years ago have recently been thrown into a state of limbo. In Downtown thousands of off-street spaces go unused every day and the Mayor has proposed some innovative ideas for moving forward.
5. Seattle has a complicated relationship with Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). For example there are insincere BRT “supporters”. Metro’s RapidRide BRT wouldn’t likely get federal funding now because it’s too watered down. Madison Street is poised to get the City’s first true BRT.
6. Seattle would like to connect the First Hill Streetcar to the South Lake Union (SLU) Streetcar with an alignment operating in exclusive lanes along 1st Avenue in Downtown. Seattle would also like add a transit only lane on Westlake Avenue to get the SLU Streetcar and buses out of traffic.
7. Seattle is tearing down the waterfront viaduct, but the largest tunneling machine in the world is having issues. We would have loved the Surface + Transit solution but the questions now is what should the waterfront look like? Parks or commerce? Grand or understated?
8. Seattle has the largest Car2Go fleet in North America and it’s expanding. How does Car2Go compare to Zipcar? Why does it work so well with paid parking? We sit down and talk with Car2Go’s CEO.
9. How do you integrate bus and rail service? Mt. Baker Station is bad example, which might get better. Metro and Sound Transit are looking at how to restructure bus service when University Link opens in 2016 but transfers at UW Station will be far from ideal.
10. South Lake Union, home of Amazon, is booming, but transit service is having a hard time keeping up despite planning.

A Sunday Times cover story ($) late last year told the story of some longtime renters driven out by a new building owner’s intent to renovate and move upmarket:

The record pace of apartment construction… is skewing the average rent higher, said local apartment expert Mike Scott. In part that’s because the new apartments tend to be steel high-rises with luxury-condominium finishes and amenities like gyms, theaters and game rooms that aren’t typically found in older apartments.

 “The rent has gone up, but the product is so much superior to what they were doing 10 years ago,” said Jon Hallgrimson, executive vice president at commercial brokerage CBRE.

Many people are skeptical of regulation micromanaging the housing market, and with good reason. Arbitrary rules can retard one thing that capitalism does very well: matching supply with demand.* Detailed rules can also create perverse incentives and unintended consequences.

But if Seattle is considering these kinds of regulations, as it is in the aPodment debate, it could do worse that trying to limit free amenities like pools and gyms in new or renovated buildings: not banning them outright, but forcing them to unbundle from the rent and instead operate as separate businesses, open to the public.

Consider the following advantages:

• To the extent it deters construction of these amenities, it leaves more space for units. More units are critical to most of the social challenges density can address.
• Developers evidently believe they can command higher rents by devoting valuable space to these areas. It follows that separating out these features would lower prevailing rents.
• Opening a gym to the general public enriches the neighborhood, allows multiple buildings to diversify their amenities, and uses space more efficiently.

Urbanists are familiar with the identical argument when the subject is parking. Residents shouldn’t pay for expensive services they don’t use; bundled parking encourages car ownership (with serious negative externalities) and raises housing costs for everyone. While the externalities of a pool, gym, or private club are not in the same league, unbundling these services strikes me as a much better idea than taxing the housing construction we desperately need to encourage.

* And by “demand” I mean “demand with money behind it.”

Last week Sound Transit released its long-awaited Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Link’s extension south from Angle Lake (S. 200th) to Federal Way Transit Center (FWTC). As the DEIS is the document that guides the ST Board to select a Preferred Alternative in early 2016, the DEIS is perhaps the last chance for advocacy and public comment to sway a project’s future before political inertia begins to harden opinions and preclude positive change. You can comment now through May 26 here.

As a refresher, Link to the tip of Federal Way (S. 272nd) was included as the marquee project of ST2 in the South King subarea, only to be deferred south of Highline College when South King fell harder, and recovered more slowly, than its peer subareas during the recession. In  early 2012, County Councilmember Von Reichbauer and Senator Tracey Eide successfully funded $24m for design and engineering for the project so that it could be ‘shovel ready’ as soon as funding were to be identified, and the DEIS is the result of that effort. Most recently, a relatively unexpected TIFIA loan saved Sound Transit so much in financing costs that it freed up an estimated $200-300m in capacity, money which could potentially pay for Link to get from Highline to 272nd St, leaving just the segment to Federal Way unfunded and to be covered by ST3 and/or federal grants.

The DEIS presents 4 general alignments: SR99, I-5, I-5 to SR99, and SR99 to I-5. Within these 4 options are over a dozen station alternatives that further complexify the choices, something with which anyone who has been following the alphabet soup of alternatives in East Link can identify. Notably – and perhaps suspiciously – all alternatives present nearly identical ridership projections  (24,000-27,500 daily riders) and with travel times that only vary by 2 minutes (12-14 minutes). Cost estimates vary by nearly 70%, however, from roughly $1.25B to just over $2B.

While this may seem like a dizzying array of options, Sound Transit has done a good job of presenting the material, both in the video above and in an interactive exercise at federalwaylink.org; and the corridor itself is linear and relatively uncomplicated.

But all the options essentially boil down to a handful of fundamental questions:

• Should we use an I-5 alignment, and SR 99 alignment, or some combination of both?
• How well should we serve Highline Community College?
• Where should the 272nd station be?
• How important is it to serve FWTC directly, or would it be better served obliquely?
• Should there be additional stations at S 216th and S 260th?
• How important is TOD?

A summary of each alignment, and brief commentary, are after the jump.

Continue reading “How Should Link Get to Federal Way?”

• The city’s deploying some interesting strategies to re-think parking.  The Urbanist and West Seattle Blog have details.
• Some Seattle reps are balking at the property tax piece of ST3 funding.
• Nobody wants to actually run for a City Council seat, but if you make it a job application, folks will come out of the woodwork [$], apparently.
• Shiny new, adjustable-rate smart parking meters are being installed in Pioneer Square.
• Is Bertha ready to get going again? SDOT wants more study.
• The reservation system for San Juan ferries is off to a bad start.
• It sounds cool to build a bridge made out of old aircraft carriers, but it’s probably a bad idea.
• The City is determined not to get caught flat-footed by another fish-truck-apocalypse.
• House Dems transportation plan features a 12-cent gas tax.
• An amendment led by Rep. Gael Tarleton (D-Ballard) would fund $12M for reliability improvements on Metro Routes 40, 44, 48, and 67.
• Another amendment from Rep. Tarleton (same link) would complete a complete walk/bike “loop” trail between West Seattle and Ballard.  No word on whether a bridge of aircraft carriers across Elliot Bay would be required to complete said loop.  Old 707 fuselages, perhaps?
• The Hack the Commute Championship Round will take place April 29.
• Water main damaged by Bertha repairs is getting fixed [$].  But who will pick up the tab?
• Charging fares on Island Transit.
• San Francisco gets all the headlines, but the horrendous land use policies of Silicon Valley are a bigger problem.
• Meanwhile in Seattle, developers are happy to hit the Mayor’s goal of 50,000 new units.
• Getting excited about Mt. Baker Town Center.
• Save money this week on Pronto Bike Share.

Community Transit has joined the real time rider information party, although the data is as yet only available through their own website, not OneBusAway:

Customers can access BusFinder at www.mybusfinder.org on their computer or mobile device, or by calling Community Transit’s customer service phone line at (425) 353-7433 (RIDE) and selecting Option 1.

Mobile device users will be redirected to a mobile version of BusFinder. The mobile version is a web-based application, not an app that needs to be downloaded.

BusFinder works best by entering the bus stop number found at all Community Transit bus stops. Users can also enter a stop name, which is the primary street of the bus stop followed by the nearest cross street. The program is intuitive, so entering a primary street will create a list of options from which you can choose your stop.

[…]

Riders catching buses in King County should use the Map or Nearby Stops features to find their stop, as Community Transit stop numbers are not displayed on Metro bus stops. Once a stop is found, it can be saved in Favorites for future use.

CT Spokesman Martin Munguia tells me that publishing a real time feed for consumption by OneBusAway and other apps is on their radar, but as yet has no firm ETA; their team is focused on working out the kinks with their own site first. He also clarified that CT stops in King County transit centers all have CT stop numbers, and alluded unspecifically to “a couple of alternative solutions for King County stops that I hope will be implemented by this summer.”

UPDATE: Apparently, King County transit center signage does not include CT stop numbers, but  “We are working on a solution, vague as that may sound. There are options and we are in negotiation on the best and quickest to implement.”

I’m thrilled to see CT make this leap in usability. Real-time arrival data, on all but the highest-frequency routes (few of which really exist in Washington), is something which I can no longer function without, and I know I’m not the only one. Up-to-date confirmation that the bus is on its way is priceless to riders. I will say, though, that the real champagne moment for most riders will be when CT is plumbed into OneBusAway, the de facto virtual transit interface for Puget Sound.

I have questions out to the current OneBusAway maintainers at Sound Transit to see if any other agencies are in the pipeline, but I can separately confirm one: Spokane Transit will launch a public beta of their own real time service late this spring, with a public feed to follow shortly thereafter.

Once CT and STA are on OneBusAway, the five biggest bus agencies in the state will be on a single real time app — a huge measure of convenience for travelers. Next up: Sound Transit needs to get its rail services up to speed with its buses, C-TRAN needs to gets its own real time service (Next Ride) on OneBusAway, and Whatcom Transit needs to get itself a real-time service. I know the latter two can do it, because they’ve been beaten to the punch by smaller-but-scrappy Intercity Transit.

The State Spring Fair is upon is this Wednesday Thursday through Saturday Sunday, April 16-19, at the Puyallup State Fairgrounds.

Sounder may by a good way to get there or head home in the late afternoon today through Friday. At other hours, not so much. For Pierce County residents, Sounder will be available on an even better schedule Saturday Sunday, thanks to the special service to the Mariners’ game.

ST Express route 578 fills in the gaps with half-hourly service all day, and hourly service on Saturday, at least to get to Puyallup Station. From there, the Fairgrounds is a walk of a few blocks south on S Meridian St or a ride on the eclectic Puyallup Connector (Pierce Transit route 425)

The Saturday Sunday Sounder baseball run is the only special service for the Spring Fair.

Last summer Seattle Subway pointed out how the PSRC’s population estimates for Ballard were EXTREMELY low. In summary, just built/under-construction/permitted units will result in Ballard meeting it’s 2035 Puget Sound Regional Council projections in 2017 if not sooner.

In response PSRC reached out to us and wanted to go over their methodology. When we sat down they agreed that their numbers for Ballard were low. When we dug into the why, it turned out that the designation of Regional Growth Center is pretty significant. It signifies that the local jurisdiction is going to put in the infrastructure and land use policies necessary for growth. The converse of that is the assumption that areas that are not designated as Regional Growth Centers will not be slated for that kind of intensive infrastructure investments and land use policies. Thus in PSRC’s modeling those areas are not projected to grow very quickly.

PSRC’s numbers are important because as our regions Metropolitan Planning Organization they allocate 100s of millions of dollars of federal transportation money (that isn’t an exaggeration, click the link, the last grant was for $440 million). Currently, suburban and exurban locals are more than willing to label themselves growth centers (Silverdale, Bothell Canyon Park and Totem Lake are all Regional Growth Centers) while due to NIMBYS urban areas are afraid to. Combined with outdated models of urban v suburban growth patterns that means this huge pot of money is being incorrectly allocated. The numbers are also important as they are the basis for  Sound Transit’s ridership projections.

Right now Seattle only has 6 of the region’s 28 Regional Growth Centers. Four of those six are in the Central Business District (CBD). Only Northgate and the University District are outside of that core. However, rapid growth is happening all over the city. It’s just not recognized by the modeling and thus is missing out in the infrastructure improvements that should come with said growth.

I contacted Councilmember O’Brien (chair of Seattle’s Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee) to find out if the city had started the Designation Process for adding any more of our De Facto growth centers (for instance Ballard, Lake City, etc.) and he looking into it. He was kind enough to pass along his response from staff. Tom Hauger, who works on growth management and comp plan issues at DPD (below the fold): Continue reading “The importance of a name; Regional Growth Centers and why Ballard isn’t one”

Next Tuesday evening, Transportation Choices Coalition is running a phone bank in support of STA Moving Forward, the Spokane Transit Authority’s ballot measure to maintain and improve service throughout the Spokane region. As I wrote in March, Spokane is a real city, our state’s second largest, with lots of transit riders, and a well-run transit agency that’s full of smart, cost-effective ideas to grow ridership and improve mobility. STA, Spokane transit riders, and the Yes! for Spokane Buses campaign deserve your support.

TCC needs about seven more people on their phone banks that night. There will be pizza and beer. I plan to be there: That’s how much I want this to pass!

Where: Transportation Choices Coalition Office, 219 1st Ave S, Suite 420.
When: Tuesday, April 21st, 4-7:30 PM. (You don’t have to stay the whole time.)

You can optionally RSVP at this Facebook event.

The ORCA Joint Board met Monday, held a brief public hearing at which nobody spoke, and unanimously approved the regional day pass program.

The regional day pass program, scheduled to roll out in June, creates an $8 ORCA day pass, good for the first $3.50 of fare on any transit service that honors the Puget Pass. It also creates a $4.50 Regional Reduced Fare Permit (for seniors 65+ and riders with disabilities) day pass, covering the first $1.75 of fare on any transit service that honors Puget Pass, but only available on the RRFP version of ORCA.

22 comments were received during the comment period, all supportive of the program.
6 expressed concern about the cost of getting an ORCA card.
5 asked for a youth and/or LIFT version of the pass.

The regional day pass has long been on the wish list of many STB commenters. The program took two years of development.

Previous blog coverage of the regional day pass program can be found here.

On March 31st, King County Metro held a Visioning Workshop to kick off its new long-range planning process.  The process will supplement Metro’s current 2011-2021 Strategic Plan with a new long-range plan, to be presented in draft form in spring 2016 and adopted by the King County Council in late 2016.  The launch party was a transit geek’s extravaganza: it featured breakout sessions for riders and citizens to talk with Metro personnel about what they want from the transit system, as well a “visioning” panel with transit eminence Jarrett Walker, Seattle civic leader Rebecca Saldaña, and UW transportation planning professor Mark Hallenbeck.

Because of scheduling conflicts, I was unable to attend the event itself, which was very well attended and garnered consistently positive reports from attendees (at least those who talked to us).  However, Metro invited STB staff to a media Q&A session immediately before the event, which I was able to make.  At the session, Metro deputy general manager Victor Obeso and Walker offered an interesting, frank, and informative discussion of the long-range planning process. A few highlights of that discussion follow below the jump.

Continue reading “Metro Talks Long-Range Planning”

One of the more interesting developments in Seattle’s recent building boom has been the conversation among some residents of the Central District to attempt to organize in the face of displacement. The community is looking to purchase the Mid-Town Center property on the Southeast corner of 23rd & Union. CHS and The Stranger have covered the issue recently. Here’s a quote from The Stranger’s piece, in February:

Among the possible solutions: buying the property. Bangasser has offered to give the Union Street Business Association (USBA)—a small group composed of people who care about the black business community—site control, kind of like a down payment, for just 10 percent of the asking price. (Bangasser is currently the USBA’s director and treasurer, although he said he’s being replaced given his conflict of interest.) And at the community meeting, the total cost to purchase the property was put at $16 million, but Bangasser’s response to that number was, “I don’t know where that came from.”

“The USBA is now trying to come up with the money,” said local architect Donald King, who’s an adviser to the USBA. “If it’s successful, it could be a model for not only other neighborhoods in Seattle, but other neighborhoods across the country.”

CHS adds that “a Public Development Authority or a land trust [are] still on the drawing board.” Indeed, a land trust would be an interesting model for a large, urban site like this. While rent control and zoning restrictions are usually ineffective in combatting housing affordability, and may even exacerbate it, land trusts are a proven model for permanently affordable home ownership.

In a nutshell, land trusts work like this: the trust acquires land. It then enters into an agreement with a buyer (pre-qualified to meet the necessary income requirements) whereby the buyer purchases a house on the land at an affordable rate. When the buyer is ready to sell, they agree to sell to the another pre-qualified buyer, allowing the seller to earn a reasonable return on their purchase. By sharing the cost of purchase, the trust is able to acquire land less expensively, and the buyer knows they won’t be evicted because they “own” the property.

Occasionally entire neighborhoods can be acquired by land trusts, as was the case with the Dudley Street neighborhood in Boston.

In an effort to learn more about land trusts, I spoke with Erika Malone at Homestead, the largest land trust in Washington State. Homestead receives about 300 applications per year from would-be homeowners and has a waiting list of 700. They currently have 2- and 3BR houses within the Seattle city limits for around $200,000. And since they only require a 1% down payment, it can often cost less up front to buy a home from Homestead than it would to put down first/last/deposit on a 2BR rental.

“Some people think it’s a scam,” Malone joked. It may not be a scam, but it is something of a rarity. Homestead had 36 house transactions in 2013. “Our challenge is supply,” she said. “We need capital and land like any other developer.”

On the plus side, the joint relationship between the trust and the homeowner can help keep the property affordable for the long haul. Today’s affordable housing can become tomorrow’s unaffordable housing as soon as it’s sold. Homestead’s renewable 99-year leases keep the property affordable, theoretically in perpetuity.

For a multifamily development, the land trust could be even more powerful. One reason we don’t see more small condo buildings in Seattle these days is that condo owners have an almost routine habit of suing the developer. Developers have generally decided that it’s not worth the risk unless the building is a large tower. In the case of a land trust condo, the developer and the buyer would jointly own the property, thereby making the relationship more cooperative than adversarial.

Like any developer, Malone says they’re attracted to fixed rail because it offers a sense of permanence, which is important when you’re thinking about a 99-year lease. She said they’d like to get more involved in transit-oriented development, but they “aren’t in a position financially” to take advantage of opportunities around LINK in places like Othello Station. One wonders what a land trust might have done with a free piece of land right next to Roosevelt Station.

While Malone stresses that land trusts are “not a silver bullet,” they are a useful tool in the affordable housing belt, preventing displacement and building equity in a sustainable way.

The ORCA Joint Board will be holding a public hearing this coming Monday, April 13, at 10:30 am, in the 8th Floor Conference Room at 201 S. Jackson St, on its proposal for making the ORCA regional multi-agency day pass permanent, and adding a Regional Reduced Fare Permit version of the day pass. Details of the proposal were covered here. Comments will be accepted at contactus@orcacard.com until meeting time. Action on the day pass proposal is scheduled to follow the hearing.

It happens to everyone eventually. My turn came a year ago, when I managed to tap an odd number of times between getting off and back on Link downtown. As has happened numerous times, my car was boarded by a team of Fare Enforcement Officers (also known by the unfortunate acronym “FOEs”). This time, I was given a warning for fare evasion, and threatened with a $124 fine if I did it again. [Click here for Sound Transit’s fare enforcement policy.]
Continue reading “Two New Reasons to Honor Passes as PoP: LIFT & the Proposed Day Pass”

Despite spending $42m on two new trainsets just two years ago, ODOT might be forced to suspend Cascades service south of Portland on July 1. In the post-PRIIA landscape – in which states must fully fund rail corridors of less than 750 miles – Oregon needs $28m in the 2015-2017 biennium to keep the trains rolling. With $17.6m already set aside from a hodgepodge of sources including unclaimed gas tax refunds and custom license plate fees, a gap of $10.4m remains. Former Governor Kitzhaber duly requested the full $10.4m, but the legislature thus far has only proposed $5m. If the $5.4m gap isn’t closed by July, the service will disappear.

When ODOT purchased its trainsets, it also prioritized intra-Oregon travel, changing the schedule to enable day trips from Portland to Eugene for the first time and reducing daily Seattle-Eugene trains from two to one. The expected demand never materialized, and ridership has fallen by 9.1% since 2013. While the other train’s ridership is mostly flat, the added morning train from Portland to Eugene has been a disaster, with just 8,800 riders in 2014, or 24 people per train.

ODOT’s recent performance report to the legislature paints a similarly grim picture, with runaway costs, poor on-time performance, worsening freight interference, and dropping ridership:

On the route’s performance:

Continue reading “Portland-Eugene Cascades Service May Disappear”

• What if there were an oil train fire in the GN tunnel under Downtown Seattle? Due to the hazards of sending in first responders, the city may just let it burn.
• KING 5 writes up the transit+strollers policy change. Ahem, I wonder where they got the story?
• A few new cracks and settlement issues have been reported on the Viaduct, but not enough to change SDOT or WSDOT’s assessment of the Viaduct’s usability. And AWV Project Manager Matt Preedy also has a new job, at Sound Transit ($).
• How to make a Mercer Island bus transfer point sound menacing? Call it “an intercept”.
• Bellevue and Sound Transit have signed their East Link MOU, clearing the way for construction to begin.
• “Why would we not have just as nice of things as Seattle?” — The Spokesman-Review has a good write up of STA’s Proposition 1, including that quote from the Pro campaign
• Suburban ST Board members are out with a joint op-ed supporting ST3 funding. ($)
• The ‘unenforceable’ law is back: Ed Orcutt is trying to cancel state-funded transit service on SR 99. ($)
• Jeanne Kohl-Welles will seek to fill the shoes of the retiring Larry Phillips, running for a seat on the King County Council ($)
• The Federal Way Link EIS has been released a couple days early. The comment period begins Friday.

This is an open thread.

When Mayor Murray first announced his Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory Committee, there was always a risk that it would be undermined by a lack of specifics. To get the committee on track for a May announcement, the mayor recently announced a goal of 20,000 affordable units over the next 10 years, nearly triple the current rate of production.

Funding these units will be difficult. (One would assume that the sometimes-maligned linkage fee, which Martin described last fall, will play a role.) Given that it costs $20,000 or more to build an urban parking spot, it would be counter to the spirit of affordable housing to spend scarce funds on private car storage. For the purposes of this blog, then, it’s interesting to consider how these 20,000 units might be oriented around transit and walkability, and what that might do to the transit landscape.

Ryan Curren, who manages the City’s Community Cornerstones program, told me that the city has financed “several really interesting affordable housing mixed-use projects at light rail stations” in the last few years, including projects at Mt. Baker Station (Artspace), Beacon Hill (El Centro de la Raza) and Columbia City (Mercy). All of thee projects feature limited parking and a mix of commercial and residential uses.

Financing and construction for projects like these would need to be expanded dramatically to hit the Mayor’s target. It would also mean acquiring more land near transit at a time when the cost of such land is at an all-time high.

“Land costs are an obstacle, specifically the escalating cost of land over time and land costs at stations relative to land located further out along corridors,” Curren said. Federal and state programs can help, but they’re limited.

Rather than chase the expensive land near current transit stations, the task force might consider how to bring frequent transit to more parts of the city. That would open up more neighborhoods to potential affordable housing. It’s encouraging that Prop 1 and Move Seattle, along with Metro’s long-range-plan, all nod in that direction. The housing task force could be another voice pushing for fast and frequent transit in more parts of the city.

In the comments of my post last week it came out that Metro had actually adopted a new stroller policy about a week earlier, it just hadn’t made it’s way down to all employees or their website. Later that day we obtained the new operator bulletin confirming the change and outlining the policy. This weekend a spokesperson from the agency got back to us with some good background info.

Here’s the new policy:

• Once on board the coach, a child may remain seated in the stroller as long as the child is strapped in the stroller and the stroller is secured in the securement area. If the securement area is not available, the child must be removed from the stroller and held in the lap of the adult customer or in a seat alongside the adult customer. Customers with disabilities using mobility devices have priority in the securement area. (This rule does not apply to ADA Accessible strollers.)

• Folding strollers must be folded and placed under or between seats, unless the stroller is too full to do so or if the stroller is occupied and secured per above.

• Non-folding strollers:

• Must not block the aisle or doorways.
• Must be under the control of the owner at all times.
• May be parked with the brake set in the priority seating area if space is available. Note that customers with disabilities and seniors have priority use of this area.

This is similar to progressive stroller policies adopted by Chicago’s CTA and L.A. Metro, and is a good common sense solution. Thank you Metro!

Below the fold, background info from Metro spokesperson Jeff Switzer:

Continue reading “Metro’s welcome update to its Stroller Policy”

Last week ST released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the light rail segment from Northgate to Lynnwood Transit Center, due to open in 2023. Mike Orr wrote up the Draft EIS two years ago (and an update here). The main difference is a formal preferred alternative, although it also refines estimates and describes mitigations in response to various public concerns.

As before, there are three segments. Segment A runs from Northgate to N 185th St. Segment B continues to just south of Lynnwood TC. Segment C is the terminus in Lynnwood. The “preferred alternative” is new since the DEIS, and contains ideas taken from many other alternatives. It has the following stations:

• N. 145th St., elevated with a 500-car garage
• N. 185th St., at-grade with a 500-car garage
• Mountlake Terrace, placed to the east of the existing transit parking garage and therefore quite a bit off the freeway, closer to the planned town center
• Lynnwood Transit Center, where the elevated train would take a very direct route and stop in the northeast corner of the parking lot, the choice closest to Lynnwood’s planned town center. This is the “modified C3” Lynnwood asked for, and arguably best in terms of placing the rail near future development.

There are also two “optional” stations: the much desired N. 130th St.($30-50m), and 220th St. SW ($50m)*, the latter west of I-5. The study says that 130th St. would largely cannibalize riders from 145th. If the study considered the likely faster bus access on 130th, a quick scan suggests it doesn’t say so except to acknowledge stakeholder comments to that effect. In fact, “I-5 access” is referenced as an advantage rather than an impediment.** It’s certainly interesting that the bubble chart above shows that 130th St. boardings overwhelm those on 145th when both are present.

Continue reading “Sound Transit Releases Lynnwood Link FEIS”