Month: June 2015

Good overview of Honolulu’s rail transit project, which will be the longest driverless transit system in the US. Honolulu is already one of the most transit intensive cities in the US, ranking sixth, just below Boston, in terms of annual per capita ridership (88.4 in 2012).

While King County Metro, Community Transit, and Pierce Transit are expanding service starting this weekend, Sound Transit is cutting a few trips on its least productive bus routes. Cuts to Sound Transit Express bus service, effective this coming Monday, June 8, will include one trip from route 560, six trips from route 566, one trip on route 578, and three trips on route 590.

Bruce Gray at Sound Transit explained that the trips being cut from route 566 had only 11-18 passengers per trip, and more hours were needed for the peak-hour peak-direction runs, due to increasing travel time. However, some mid-day trips just between Renton Transit Center and Auburn Station will be added.

Routes 567 and 577 will have related significant schedule changes. Routes 545 and 550 will have minor schedule changes. Route 586 will have its standard summer service reduction starting June 12.

You can view the updated weekday ST Express schedules here. Also available online are Metro’s, Community Transit’s, and Pierce Transit’s new schedules.

This is the second and final weekend (for now) of transit tunnel closure for system upgrades. Link Light Rail will once again only run as far north as Stadium Station, with several connecting options to downtown, including free route 97 shuttles.

• Seattlish writes up WSDOT’s new video explaining how to use the “crazy confusing” I-405 Express Toll Lanes.
• Sound Transit has launched SoundTransit3.org, with a web survey, list of public meetings, background documents, and maps so generic no constituency could possibly mistake them for a promise of service. Please take the survey.
• PLU’s magazine Resolute has a great profile of TCC’s Andrew Austin.
• A motorcyclist hit both the crossing gates and a Sounder Train on Wednesday, but amazingly escaped with minor injuries.
• We could use this here: San Francisco transit officials have pledged to ride transit for the next 22 days.
• 4 new Pronto stations are coming: one at 12th/Yesler (already installed), one in SLU, one in Denny Triangle, and one Downtown.
• A horrible story involving a Lyft driver attempting to extort sex in exchange for returning a rider’s phone. But the bright side is that TNCs make prosecutions much easier: each ride is GPS tracked and both rider and driver have extensive personal info on file.
• Yes, please. The city will pilot a pedestrian-only Pike/Pine this summer, likely between Broadway-11th on Pike at night.

This is an open thread. 

Last November, the state Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) fined Metro for failing to provide adequate restrooms for bus drivers.  The fine reflected longstanding problems along a number of Metro routes.  Famously, Metro seemed incapable of ensuring the basic cleanliness of a portable serving eight buses an hour, at the Othello Station end of routes 36 and 50.  But that was only one of many issues.

Metro acknowledged the problem in its response to L&I, and came up with an abatement plan that included a list of routes needing help.  Some routes were addressed by paying 24-hour businesses near route ends to allow drivers access.  But many other routes do not have such businesses near their ends.  Starting this Saturday, three routes are changing to give drivers easier restroom access.  More routes will see changes over time.

Most important to riders will be changes to routes 245 and 246 in Bellevue.  There is no restroom at the Factoria end of route 245 or the Clyde Hill end of route 246.  Both routes will be revised to give drivers time to use a restroom in the middle of the route: Eastgate P&R for the 245, and Bellevue Transit center for the 246.  This means that riders from the affected end of the route will have to wait through a layover, or transfer to another bus, if they want to ride past the designated restroom point.

For route 246, a 30-minute coverage route that uses small buses, this isn’t a big deal.  Very few Clyde Hill riders ride past Bellevue Transit Center, and the change comes with a sweetener in the form of a very useful extension of the route to Yarrow Point Station.

But for route 245, the change is bigger news.  Route 245, with 15-minute frequency, is a core service on the Eastside.  It’s the major crosstown route outside of downtown Bellevue, connecting Factoria, Eastgate, Bellevue College, Crossroads, Microsoft, and Kirkland. (Think of it as the “48 of the Eastside.” ) Plenty of riders originate in Factoria and ride past Eastgate, and all of them will now have to wait or transfer at Eastgate on every trip (except a few late at night).

Metro’s Jeff Switzer reassured me that this is an interim solution.  But, even in the interim, it creates a major slowdown for a lot of riders.  If this sort of solution is extended to some of the even busier core routes on Metro’s list, such as the 11, 48, or 128, many more riders would be affected.  Choice riders are not going to put up, and should not put up, with a 10- to 20-minute delay of service in the middle of their routes.  Given the severity of the rider impact, it is probably worth cutting service at the margins to fund real solutions.

In some cases, Metro might be able to build small, standalone permanent comfort stations with running water, such as those that exist at the ends of a number of Seattle routes today.  For example, it appears there is room for such a comfort station to be built near the Factoria terminal of route 245.  In other cases, Metro might be able to extend or change routing so that riders are covered without delay.  (Old route 65 in Lake City was a good example of this sort of routing: buses served north Lake City, then doubled back to Fred Meyer without passengers to provide drivers with restroom access.)

The other change is to cut route 73’s “tail” on 20th Ave NE.  Buses will lay over behind the Jackson Park QFC, together with route 65.  This is not a major change for most riders, given that the “tail” largely overlaps with the main routing on 15th Ave NE.

I want to emphasize that I do not support just keeping things the way they are.  Drivers need reliable access to clean, well-maintained restrooms at both ends of all but the shortest routes.  But forcing passengers on busy core routes to wait through long layovers, like Metro will do on route 245, is not the right way to provide that access.

Google Maps keeps getting better for Seattle-area transit users. After last week’s integration of Community Transit route data, we now have real-time information for the major Seattle-area agencies, including King County Metro, Sound Transit, Pierce Transit, and Intercity Transit.

Once again, Brian Ferris, who created OneBusAway and works at Google had a major hand in making it happen. Via email, Brian says he’s “excited about the way Google is able to integrate real-time information into its trip planning features.”

Real-time means that Google not only knows the bus schedule but knows if it’s running on time or not. Combine that feature with Google’s already excellent trip planning, and you have a one-stop shop for determining what bus to take. “We are getting better and better about being able to tell you the fastest way between two locations given the state of the world,” Ferris said.

The upgraded Google Maps is coming to Android first and will appear soon on iOS.

Everett Herald reporter Noah Haglund says Everett and Snohomish County officials are adamant that light rail must serve Paine Field, Downtown Everett, and Everett Community College north of downtown:

A letter [Everett Mayor] Stephanson sent to Sound Transit’s board Friday listed three destinations he believes light rail must reach in Everett: the Boeing Co. and other manufacturers clustered around Paine Field; the downtown transit hub at Everett Station; and the expanding higher- education district around Everett Community College at the city’s north end.

There’s overwrought language about “promises” and “priorities,” but ST studies suggest the vision Stephanson articulates would cost as much as $3.72 billion. My (optimistic) assessment is that Snohomish County will generate at most about $2.5 billion for new capital projects in Sound Transit 3. It’s fine to have a vision that exceeds your immediate financial resources, but their reaction is not to complete it in ST4:

Stephanson and other Snohomish County leaders are nervous, in part, because transit authorities have been talking more lately about light-rail segments to places such as West Seattle and Ballard. They’re worried that those destinations could come at the expense of Everett and other cities where people have been paying taxes since the 1990s based on the promise of the original plans.

This is a pretty creative reading of history. It’s fine to prioritize the light rail “spine” to Everett, Tacoma, and Redmond, but back when the spine construction was only in North and South King County, Snohomish and Pierce County officials had no interest in contributing to those regional priorities. Instead, they spent their counties’ tax dollars on ST Express service, Tacoma Link, and Sounder. That may have been a vote-maximizing decision that also improved transit outcomes, but it isn’t a single-minded emphasis on “the promise of the original plans.”

It’s mighty convenient, now that the Seattle sections of the spine are fully funded and the East King sections are very close to that, to now say that the region must subordinate all other projects to the spine. The case for more rail in Seattle’s inner neighborhoods is both obvious and strong, in both the electoral and technical senses.

There are non-ridiculous arguments for the core to subsidize the periphery. Seattle isn’t allowing nearly enough new housing to absorb growth, which is going to force a lot of people out into the I-5 corridor. It’s unbecoming for allegedly liberal richer areas to heartily object to a transfer of wealth to the poorer ones. It’s also true that North King residents have gained more than zero benefit* from ST Express while paying nothing for it. But the argument that Seattle spending its own money on its own needs is a violation of existing agreements and norms ignores everything that has happened before.

*though mainly the East King routes.

We had a full house of STB readers for last Friday’s meetup at the Impact Hub to discuss Metro’s Alternative 3 for restructuring Northeast Seattle and Capitol Hill buses when U-Link opens next year.  Metro planners Jeremy Fichter and Ted Day gave a short presentation and then took your questions for over an hour.  Afterwards, a few of us decamped for Good Bar down the street to continue the discussion.

Thanks to everyone who showed up and to Ted and Jeremy for coming out to answer questions and share their thinking with us.  Were you there? Say hi in the comments and tell us what you thought.