Month: June 2015

Don’t be caught off guard by the significant transit service reductions on Friday, July 3, the day the federal government is observing as the Independence Day holiday. Very few transit agencies will be running a regular weekday schedule. Some will even shut down completely. Others will be shut down Saturday and open for business Friday.

However, on the night of Saturday, July 4, the South Lake Union Streetcar and * Tacoma Link will be in service later into the evening. ** The ferry from Vashon to Fauntleroy will have an additional sailing, at 11:25 pm.

Washington State Ferries is taking extra measures to handle the 350,000 passengers they are expecting over the holiday weekend, including spacing cars more tightly, and having police directing traffic at the downtown Seattle ferry dock. Check WSF’s terminal status page for the most up-to-date information on your route. Walking on is strongly encouraged. There should be more than enough space for the expected walk-on crowds, and ample space to transport bikes. If you want to avoid long lines, 4-6 pm Wednesday and Thursday evening is the wrong time to take the ferry.

If you are planning to take the ferry between Port Townsend and Coupevile, or any of the Anacortes / San Juan ferries, and taking a car, making a reservation is strongly encouraged. And then, be there 45 minutes before scheduled departure. ** Several additional sailings are planned for the Anacortes ferries July 1-5.

For-hire, taxi, and rideshare services with special deals this weekend, or any free-ride-home services, are welcome to mention those deals in the comment thread.

Service Levels for the various transit agencies in the region for July 3-4 are below the fold:
Continue reading “Expect Crowded Transit & Unusual Schedules July 3-4”

The #waleg Senate passes $16b transpo bill 39-9. House floor action expected Tuesday.

— Michael C. Lindblom (@MikeLindblom) June 30, 2015

Less than 10 hours after the public received details about the state legislature’s transportation package, the Senate approved it. By the time you read this, the House’s vote will be imminent. Governor Inslee is a party to the deal and unlikely to veto any section of it. We’re not ones to lament lack of process — a good bill is a good bill even without public comment, and a bad one is bad even with it — but the lack of time to even digest the legislation, much less mobilize around it, is breathtaking.

We’re left with only the opportunity to reflect on what is about to become law. The basic highway/transit tradeoff was probably inevitable, because our allegedly climate-focused Governor either doesn’t grasp or doesn’t care about the link between highways and carbon emissions, and therefore fought hard for the highways. We were ready to grudgingly accept that deal, partly because some of the highway projects were at least defensible from a transit advocate’s perspective. But the additional stipulations are too onerous to accept.

First, there’s a further $500m subsidy of drivers by taking tax revenue from the general fund — from schools, state parks, health care, social services, public safety and all the other things the State does — and give it to WSDOT through a new sales tax exemption.

To raise the Sound Transit 3 revenue authority from $11 billion to $15 billion, the State will claim over $500m of that ST revenue, intended for transit, in addition to having Sound Transit forfeit virtually all state grants (already pathetically behind other urbanized states). So this last $4 billion of taxes will purchase perhaps $3 billion of transit. The $500m replaces the $500m WSDOT exemption, a barely obscured transfer of regional transit funds to statewide highways.

And then there’s the provision banning low-carbon fuel standards, which shows that Senate Republicans care so little about non-car modes of transportation that they will gleefully use its funding as a hostage.

In the short term, there’s little we can do about these bills. Perhaps there will be an initiative or referendum to target one or more package elements. A good target would be SSB 5990, the sales tax exemption, a straight giveaway to construction contractors and to WSDOT, the single state agency doing the most to aggravate the climate problems that are already damaging our state’s economy, at the expense of everything else the State does to serve its citizens.

The STB Editorial Board currently consists of Martin H. Duke, Frank Chiachiere, and Brent White.

[Update from Martin 4:10pm: Section 319 specifically prohibits Sound Transit, if it enacts new MVET, from receiving any state grants except for “transit coordination grants.”]

Today, the state Senate made public the details of the “compromise” transportation proposal agreed to by transportation committee leaders in the state House and Senate.  The public documents include proposed bill text, project lists, and a balance sheet. We understand that both houses will vote on this proposed compromise tomorrow.

STB staff are still reviewing the documents and determining exactly what they mean for Seattle-area transit, but there are a few important highlights from the proposed revenue bill, ESSB 5987:

• Sound Transit gets authority to ask voters for a basket of new taxes that would raise approximately $15 billion for ST3 projects (Sections 318-321).
• However, up to $518 million of the new ST3 taxes would be diverted to the general fund (Section 422).  This exactly matches a sales tax break that would be given to WSDOT under SSB 5990, so it is effectively a transfer from ST to WSDOT.
• ST must contribute $20 million over five years to affordable housing, and must give developers of affordable housing the first opportunity to bid on 80% of its surplus property, including property acquired for ST1 and ST2 (Section 329).
• The Snohomish County Public Transportation Benefit Area gets authority to ask voters for an additional .3% sales tax, which would support Community Transit (Section 312).
• Cities or counties may absorb, and take on the powers of, transportation benefit districts (TBDs) that have identical boundaries (Sections 301-308).
• TBDs get authority to impose $40 to $50, up from $20, of the maximum $100 vehicle license fee without a public vote (Sections 309-311).

On the one hand, this package gets ST3 all of its requested authority, and could also help fund Community Transit.  On the other hand, this package contains numerous policy provisions which are hard to swallow, and (as always in Washington) proceeds full speed ahead with highway projects while requiring transit projects to submit to yet another public vote.

The Seattle Times reported last evening ($) that Governor Inslee and legislative leaders from both houses have reached agreement on a transportation package. Of highest relevance to STB, the package contains the full $15B requested authorization for Sound Transit 3.* This could either give the ST board some flexibility in choosing its revenue sources while still meeting some regional goals, or the whole sum could fund very close to all of the main regional priorities. (See here for a guess as to what $15 billion — as well as some smaller sums — could come out to in terms of project budgets).

Apparently one key Democratic concession was acceptance of the “poison pill” provision that essentially negates any chance of a low-carbon fuel standard in the short term. Gov. Inslee’s quote is worth reproducing in full:

I oppose [the poison pill] and have worked hard to find a better alternative,” Inslee said in a statement. “But legislators tell me it is essential to passing the $15 billion multimodal transportation package and authorizing an additional $15 billion for Sound Transit light rail expansion.

And then there’s the matter of the highways, which have been there from the beginning thanks to bipartisan enthusiasm. As always, the package doesn’t adequately fund highway maintenance and actually makes the problem worse by adding many more decaying lane-miles on SR 520, I-405, SR 167, and in North Spokane. Highway expansion is a futile response to congestion, encourages environmentally damaging driving, and literally destroys neighborhoods. About the only good thing to say about it is that it’s funded by gas taxes, which in a small way offsets a little of the environmental carnage.

A deal isn’t a vote, so we’ll see how Democratic and Republican backbenchers react to what the leadership forged. Those highways, together with the poison pill, have been enough to turn some climate-oriented environmental organizations against the deal and lobby legislators to vote no. As much as I want the ST3 rail investments, it’s hard to blame them.

*According to House Transportation Chair Judy Clibborn (D-Mercer Island).

Produced for a real estate firm, the silent film shows the construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel through the mountainous center of San Francisco and development of land on the west end of the tunnel.

• Better enforcement coming to regional Park & Rides, with KIRO highlighting a recent crackdown. (KIRO)
• More First Hill Streetcar delays: SDOT and Inekon are another 30 days behind their most recent goal of having all cars certified by the end of June. (KING 5)
• Mercer Island’s development moratorium has been extended another six months. Meanwhile, the Stakeholders Group was tasked with writing a news article from 2035 describing Mercer Island, and the submissions are fascinating. (MI Reporter)
• Ready for the 90° heat this weekend? Take heart that this is the last summer in which you’ll have to suffer through the  stagnant swelter of Metro’s current trolley fleet. (KIRO)
• The Mayor announced a new Office of Planning and Community Development, tasked with coordinating and directing growth. Both neighborhood groups and urbanists are cautiously optimistic, which really just means it’s an unknown quantity. (The Urbanist)
• Dueling ST3 editorials from the usual suspects, local electeds on the Pro side and Niles and co. on the other. (Seattle Times, $)
• Gag order: in a sign that things are about to get mighty litigious, the state pulls the plug on Bertha’s Expert Review Panel, because “hav[ing] an ongoing three people out making opinions which are public …could hurt taxpayers.” (Seattle Times, $)
• In a recent PSRC survey, only 1 out of 5 solo drivers said that they could be persuaded to stop driving. (Seattle Times, $)

This is an open thread.

University Link light rail train testing from Sound Transit Video on Vimeo.

This afternoon Sound Transit released its first video of full-speed testing of the ULink alignment, showing a northbound trip from Capitol Hill Station to UW Station. The video gives a nice sense of how the ride quality and acceleration will feel once in service. The train slowly accelerates from Capitol Hill Station, taking 40 seconds to accelerate to 55mph underneath Volunteer Park. The train then cruises at 55mph for 2 minutes in the downhill northeast straightaway between Volunteer Park and the Montlake Cut. The train passes under the Cut at around the 2’30” mark, turning north and slowly making its way into the station at the 3’00” mark.

Tunnel videos are generally among the most uninspiring things to watch, but when you remember that during those 3 minutes the #43 would only make it as far 15th Ave, what the video represents is very exciting indeed. Just 8-9 more months to go!

When more buses are needed during peak hours, and no extra money is available to add more runs, it is usually off-peak frequency, and then off-peak span-of-service, that gets reduced first. Sunday and then Saturday service are at the front of that queue for taking away service.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when the route I ride most, if it is in service, got a serious investment, with nearly half of the investment being on weekends. Route 60 is a very dependable, but often-not-close-to-full cross-town route connecting Broadway on Capitol Hill, Madison St, Harborview, Yesler Terrace, Little Saigon, North Beacon Hill, Beacon Hill Station, 15th Ave S, southern Georgetown, South Park, Arrowhead Gardens, White Center, and Westwood Village. It splices together a lot of short trips, and yet shows up on time whenever I ride it (at least since the reliability-destroying loop through the congested Veterans’ Administration Hospital parking lot got removed).

Seattle Proposition 1 provided the funding to bring route 60 up to par with a lot of downtown routes, with half-hourly service all day from roughly 7:00-11:00 on weekends, and at least that frequent on weekdays. Service investments added four late-evening trips each way on weeknights and eight evening trips each way on weekends, plus an additional northbound trip on weekends earlier than the previous span of service.

Mid-day frequency got boosted to every 20 minutes a few years ago, with 15-minute scheduled headway during peak, which has since been fine-tuned to headway of no worse than 20 minutes, but as good as 10 minutes for the peak-of-peak period in the peak direction. There are portions of the route where the bus fills up during peak, including at Cleveland High School before and after school.

One of the major stops for boardings and alightings is at Beacon Hill Station, with lots of riders transferring to/from Link. Route 60 is slowly but surely becoming a success story as a Link-connecting route that doesn’t go downtown. Indeed, a major draw of the route is that its reliability isn’t wrecked by having to slog through downtown. More of this, please!