Month: June 2015

After much STB hand-wringing over the distance between existing Montlake Triangle bus stops and the coming UW Station, at the last meetup Metro revealed that they’re working to improve the status quo.

Sending most 520 buses to UW Station instead of downtown saves service hours that Metro and Sound Transit can use to improve frequency to UW. It can also save time and improve reliability to downtown, but only if Seattle provides transit priority on Montlake Blvd. and the transfer penalty due to stop placement isn’t onerous. That’s why early failures to rethink car and transit flow in the Triangle were so disappointing.

The latest concept is a significant improvement over the status quo. In the figure, the half-green circles are pick-up only, the half-red circles are drop-off only, and the yellow circles are both. Among all-day routes, the 44, 45, and 67 would stop immediately across the street from the station. These routes also terminate there, so transfers from frequent Link to (relatively) infrequent buses should be reliable.

The 48 and 271 would have a southbound stop very close to the station’s south entrance. Their northbound stop, closer to the hospital than the station, would split into a boarding-only and dropoff-only stop, the latter a quicker operation that would block the lane near the intersection for a shorter amount of time. As both routes will terminate in the U-District, few people would likely board at this stop.

Beatwalk is a neighborhood music festival held in Columbia City for the past 21 years. After the successes of 2013 and 2014, this year will also be a whole series of events held the second Sunday of the month June-October from 6-10pm. All shows, indoor and out, will be FREE. The location of downtown Columbia City is a short walk east from the Columbia City Link station.

Each Sunday event will have its own theme and unique lineup. Tomorrow’s will be funk oriented:

Join us Sunday, June 14 as we kick-off Beatwalk 2015 and celebrate Beatwalk’s 21st Birthday! Funky Times is the theme and we have a freakin’ phenomenal line-up! Get your groove on to Grace Love & The True Loves, The Chancellors and Thaddillac! KEXP’s DJ Johnny Horn will be spinning fantastic tunes on the street! There will be the usual circus of buskers on the sidewalks and spoken word artists. Also be sure and check out our new youth initiative program! As always it is FREE and Family Friendly!

For more information check out their facebook page.

See past Link excuses here.

I’m eager to rip Sound Transit when their operations department does rider-unfriendly stuff, so it’s fair to commend them for absolutely flooding the zone with employees during tunnel closures the last two weekends.

I had a couple of trips to the Sodo/Stadium area on Sunday, and there was so much staff there that no one could be confused about the transfer to the 97. With an unusually high tourist content, this human contact was worth any number of online tweets and alerts.

Moreover it seemed like there was pretty much always a 97 around when people got off the train, minimizing the delay for riders.

Bravo to Sound Transit.

On Thursday, the Sound Transit Capital Committee approved permanent names for the planned East Link stations. Their recommendation will go to the Board for approval on June 25th.

Six of the ten planned stations have ‘new’ names. Names were selected after a public comment process with input from the cities. Sound Transit received 823 comments from the public and affected jurisdictions. Most notable was a suggestion that Rainier Station be renamed for Jimi Hendrix. The Committee instead recommended ‘Judkins Park’, but with a staff recommendation that the art and legacy of Jimi Hendrix be reflected in the station design.

Names also had to meet naming criteria established by the Board. They should reflect the nature of the environment, such as neighborhoods, street names, landmarks, or geographical locations. Names should be brief, easy to read and remember. They must comply with federal ADA guidelines and be limited to 30 characters. Commercial references are to be avoided because they may change. Similar names or words in existing facility names should also be avoided.

The Committee approved an amendment from Mayor Claudia Balducci to reverse the names for some stations in Bellevue so that they not start with the numbered street name first. Putting the numbers first would have created wayfinding and legibility issues.

So, drumroll please, here are the approved names, and some runners-up from the public input process:

• The city applied for a TIGER grant to massively increase the bike sharing area.  Will an additional 200 stations be enough to cover such a wide area?  Also: e-bikes!
• Portland’s operating costs for buses approaching rail. Does that say more about Portland’s buses or MAX?
• Councilmembers Licata and Sawant formally propose rent control, would require changes to state law
• City gets new broadband study, balks at the price tag
• Planning begins for Eastside Rail Corridor
• Public hearing on the Seattle 2035 comp plan update (video)
• KUOW looks at rent across Seattle neighborhoods
• Seattle’s road diets get good marks from the feds
• Councilmembers working to put their mark on the proposed Move Seattle levy
• Are you a transit agency? Then you likely have an “M” in your logo.

This is an open thread.

Sound Transit’s summary then some analysis and my charts after the fold.

Total Sound Transit boardings increased by 7% during the first quarter of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014. Boardings increased on all modes except Paratransit. System growth is trending about 6% over the annual budget and SIP forecasts. Aside from 56 slide-related train cancellations on Sounder North Line, there were no major service disruptions during the quarter.

ST Express buses had 6% more boardings in Q1 2015 compared to the same period in 2014. Average weekday boardings reached 62,285 for a 7% increase. No major changes in service took place during the quarter.

Sounder commuter rail boardings were up an impressive 17%, with an 18% increase in average weekday boardings. Ridership increased significantly on both Sounder lines. Mudslide conditions resulted in 56 cancelled North Line trains, compared to 91 annulments in the first quarter of 2014.

Tacoma Link Link light rail ridership also showed impressive growth with total boardings up 11%, and a 12% increase in average weekday boardings. This stands in sharp contrast with 2014, when ridership declined during each quarter.

Link light rail boardings were up 5%, with a 7% increase in average weekday boardings. A planned service closure related to University Link preparations and a drop in the number of major sports events this year contributed to lower growth compared to escalation rates seen in 2014.

Full report here. My charts and more below the fold.

Continue reading “Q1 2015 Sound Transit Ridership Report”

Both King County Metro and Sound Transit will be conducting a flurry of public outreach this month.  Metro is finally climbing out of its multi-year revenue hole and is in a position to start thinking about how to grow service for the first time in a long time.  Sound Transit, meanwhile, has a little initiative called ST3 they’d like you to weigh in on, as alluded to in Monday’s guest post. There will be multiple opportunities for public commentary, online and in-person.  Here’s the Metro site and here’s Sound Transit’s.  Four of the six open houses will be joint ST/Metro affairs.  There’s a wealth of information at both sites.

This past Saturday, King County Metro rolled out three new public safety announcements to play on buses. A day later on Sunday, Metro decided to pull the plug and remove the announcements, effective Monday morning.

I got to be on the receiving end of the aural assault Saturday and Sunday, as an announcement played after every door closure and every five minutes thereafter, reminding riders to hold on while the bus in motion, to stand behind the yellow line, and most annoyingly, that their every activity is being surveilled and recorded and that illegal activities will be prosecuted.

While the first two were merely annoying and unnecessary, the surveillance message needed to be put back through sensitivity training. Hearing it every five minutes left me wondering if my driver was paranoid. Nor did the message educate riders on what the rules are. We later learned that drivers had no control over the timing or volume of these announcements, and that many of them were just as upset about them as riders were.

We are used to hearing announcements multiple times to please turn down the volume on cell phone conversations and music players, and they are played when someone is actually ignoring the rules. Usually, the announcements are effective, and don’t get the rider mad at the driver. This latest message about cameras recording all our illegal activities not only crossed the line of sensitivity, but quite likely had drivers worried that irate riders would take measures. And irate riders did take measures, flooding Customer Service with complaints about the announcements. Reading Metro’s @mentions on Twitter gives you a sense of the intensity of rider displeasure.

To their credit, Metro issued an apology and statement, late Sunday night. Of note, Metro promised to take better care before rolling out the announcements again:

We’ll be reassessing and taking into consideration concerns about the volume, frequency and tone of the announcements before moving forward with any revised announcements, and be sure to share them with customers ahead of time.

I hope that when considering future messages, they think not only of their content, but also their timing and automation. Drivers should have broad discretion about playing messages in contexts that make sense. Forcing riders to endure the same message every time the door closes – tens of thousands of times per year  for a daily rider – is indeed an unnecessary aural assault. Kudos to Metro for being so responsive to pulling the plug, and let’s hope that many valuable lessons were learned this weekend.