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.