Month: August 2015

I ran Ross’s Open BRT plan for West Seattle because it’s a good analysis of the best the region could do with a budget roughly four times lower than what it takes to build light rail to West Seattle. There are many reasons Sound Transit may need to economize on the West Seattle segment, and in that case they could do worse than to follow Ross’s blueprint.

But Ross’s thesis is much stronger: that BRT would be better than light rail for most riders, largely because an open BRT system would avoid transfer penalties. This runs counter to a lot of work on STB that shows the merits of a transfer-oriented system, which largely involve the operating savings of not running downtown to enable other trips. This aspect doesn’t appear in Ross’s work because he completely punts the issue of operations. This is crucial, because it’s in the operational details where claims of “rail-like” BRT collapse.

(1) One can only assume that Sound Transit 3 would pay for the excellent capital projects Ross proposes. But does ST actually take over operations on the C Line, 21, 120, 37, 55, 128, 116, and all the other buses duplicating each other on the bridge? If so, that’s a lot of ST’s taxing authority tied up in running buses forever. It also assumes an unprecedented level of ST bus service provision in this corner of the region, and other corners without light rail may wonder why they’re not getting the same. Both problems would kneecap ST’s ability to deliver big capital projects.

If Metro keeps running these buses, then that forfeits the opportunity to seriously increase the frequency of buses within West Seattle. This not only would cut headways to board the bus, thus eroding the putative time advantage of no transfer to light rail, but would also improve all intra-West Seattle trips.

(2) On a related note, Ross blithely asserts that his BRT system will have off-board payment. Off-board payment either requires turnstiles (and someone to monitor them) at all stops (which is not going to happen), or fare inspectors, which are one of the big cost differences between light rail and traditional buses. But this is an open BRT system! So are these routes fully equipped and staffed over their entire length, with machines at essentially every bus stop in West Seattle, or do the rules change when they enter the BRT zone? If the latter, then that will impair reliability of what feeds into the zone. Or is it, as I suspect, not really going to be 100% off-board payment?

Continue reading “Light Rail is Best for West Seattle”

[Author’s note: The above video has little to do with city council issues. I put it up as an ode to flailing candidate Tony Provine and nihilist filmmaker Jean Luc Godard. Provine’s bulldozer’s-are-coming mailer is about as absurdist as a Godard flick. The only difference is that Provine is actually taking his delusions seriously.]

The bulldozers are coming for your homes! Okay, not really. But we have the chance Tuesday to toss the most outrageously incendiary and reality-challenged campaigns into the compost bin of history (hopefully without destroying said compost bin).

To vote in person, get in line by 8 pm at Union Station (the building right next to the ID/Chinatown light rail station), at the King County Elections HQ in Renton, or at Bellevue City Hall.

You can drop off your filled-out ballot at any of these sites or any of a couple dozen ballot drop boxes all over the county, by 8 pm.

If you mail your ballot, get it post-marked by Tuesday, and don’t forget to affix first-class postage worth at least 49 cents.

If you haven’t filled out your ballot yet, refresh yourself on our city council endorsements.

Come back here for live-blogging Tuesday night, as we attempt to divine and spin results based on a minority of ballots coming in, since they traditionally trickle in over the next week.

DMUs or Diesel Multiple Units are self-propelled rail cars. They are often used on suburban and rural lines. These training films are from the 1950s when first-generation DMUs were introduced to Britain.

STB did its endorsement interviews late in the day, but that wasn’t enough to catch all late policy revelations. I think it would be an overreaction to actually retract an endorsement — they didn’t rest on that thin of a reed — but the changes are notable.

First, in her interview District 5 STB endorsee Mercedes Elizalde strongly implied she was not for linkage fees, before signing up for the Jon Grant/Kshama Sawant drive to amend the delicate HALA compromise in just such a way. Erica wrote about the apparent contradiction or change on her personal blog, so check it out. We’re sticking with Elizalde, who impressed us with her developer wonkery and good service planning instincts. In any case, some of us are skeptical of linkage fees rather than violently opposed. But if this is more of a dealbreaker for you than it is for us, then I’d suggest Sandy Brown as your next best choice in a stacked 5th District race.

Second, endorsees Mike O’Brien and Tim Burgess led the stampede out of changes to single-family zones (SFZs), soon followed by Mayor Murray himself. Here’s Burgess:

While the list of recommendations from HALA is long, one specific policy has received the most attention and criticism from neighborhoods across Seattle. It’s the recommendation that single-family zoning be relaxed in all areas of the city to allow for new duplexes, triplexes and stacked flats, a policy some believe will lead to speculators buying up homes, tearing them down, and replacing them with more expensive multi-family structures. We should take a step back from any policy that leads to that kind of speculation, disruption, and the widespread loss of existing, more affordable housing.

And here’s O’Brien, speaking to Josh Feit at Publicola:

While O’Brien told me he supports “in principle” tinkering around the edges of SFZs (rezoning about six percent of SFZs around transit corridors, urban villages, and SFZ/multi-family borders)—though he still wants to evaluate the specifics of each rezone—he also told me that allowing the possibility of tearing down an existing house for new duplex or triplex construction in the remaining 94 percent of the SFZs “would be taking it further than I’m willing to go—or I think the city is willing to go.”

While only one aspect of a very large plan, the SFZ proposals was probably the biggest qualitative strike for diverse and affordable housing types in Seattle. Duplexes, triplexes, and row homes in single family zones are by far the most plausible path to more large-family housing in Seattle, and critical if we’re not to restrict such housing to the very prosperous and the winners of the subsidized housing lottery. Furthermore, it also further endangers the compromise between all the interest groups on HALA.

Continue reading “Candidate Land Use Positions Evolve”