Month: September 2015

Update: Geoff at ST pointed out that the Tacoma Link streetcar fare is set to go up automatically in September 2016, unless a funder (such as the Tacoma Business Improvement Area has been doing) covers the revenue ST would gain from installing fare collection equipment and collecting fares.

A menu of proposals will be considered by the Sound Transit Board to honor the ORCA LIFT low-income reduced fare program on ST Express and Sounder. The proposals involve fare increases on these services, partially to offset the administrative costs and lost fare revenue from the LIFT program, and partially to keep up with increased operational costs, including inflation. Any fare changes would take effect March 1, 2016.

For ST Express, the options under consideration are:
1. No fare change at this time.
2. Increase fares across all categories by 25 cents, and create a new LIFT fare category for ST Express routes that serve only King County, matching the freshly-increased youth fare, $1.50. The ORCA LIFT fare would only be honored on routes 522, 540-567, and 577.
3. Increase fares across all categories by 25 cents, and create a new LIFT fare category for ST Express, matching the freshly-increased youth fare of $1.50 1-county, and $2.75 multi-county.

For Sounder, the options under consideration are:
1. No fare change at this time.
2. Increase fares for full-paying adults and youth by 50 cents, and seniors and riders with disabilities by 25 cents, without honoring ORCA LIFT.
3. Increase fares for full-paying adults and youth by 50 cents, and seniors and riders with disabilities by 25 cents, create a new LIFT fare category for Sounder, and match the LIFT fare to the freshly-raised youth fare.

Decisions on each service could be made independently of the other service, but won’t be made until the ST Board meeting on Thursday, November 19. The announcement lists several options for providing feedback, including an online survey, with a comment period opening Saturday, September 19 (today) and closing Thursday, November 12. There will be a hearing on the proposals at noon on Thursday, November 5, at Union Station, 401 S. Jackson St. Continue reading “ORCA LIFT and Fare Increases Being Considered for ST Express and Sounder”

• Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson says upgrading HOV lanes to 3+ “is part of the tools in the toolbox,” but there are no current plans to go beyond I-405.
• Feds grant $38.5m of the $53m cost of Clark County’s “the Vine” BRT, already under construction.
• USDOT also contributes $2m more to Tacoma Link; about $70m of the $165m cost is now in hand.
• Community Transit spending $2m to add service hours solely to make schedules reflect reality due to congestion.
• This KING5 Town Hall on ST3 has good info. Dow Constantine says “we are going to get to” Everett, Tacoma, Downtown Redmond, Ballard, and West Seattle with light rail, plus “real bus rapid transit” on I-405, and many other smaller projects.
• KING5 also seeking lessons from other cities, gets Washington, DC basically correct.
• There’s also a worthwhile interview with Mayor Murray and SDOT’s Scott Kubly on Move Seattle and other items.
• Grays Harbor County ends its Sunday service trial, citing low ridership.
• The 130th St Station advocacy group having a meeting on Oct. 6th.
• Spokane Transit rolling out a OneBusAway-type app.
• Eliminating many turns on red will prevent injuries.
• Mercer Island hiring consultants in the war to retain their special privileges.
• If you haven’t been to Columbia City for a while, stuff has changed. But in a healthy city neighborhoods are always changing.
• Alert Fox News: light rail brings witchcraft and shamanism.

This is an open thread.

This is a sponsored post.

In a growing city with an aging transportation system, will Seattle voters support a $930 million property tax measure this November to Move Seattle?

Seattle Speaks, a live, televised community forum, will consider the biggest levy in Seattle history — $930 million over nine years. The Move Seattle transportation levy, paid for through a property tax, replaces the existing Bridging the Gap transportation levy that expires at the end of this year.

Seattle Channel host Brian Callanan will lead the discussion, 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 29, at Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Ave. Seattle Speaks is presented by Seattle CityClub, Seattle Channel and Town Hall Seattle.

Joining the panel discussion in support of the levy proposal are Andrew Glass Hastings, transportation advisor to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, and Maud Daudon, president and CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Speaking against the measure are Eugene Wasserman of the Keep Seattle Affordable opposition campaign and Fremont business owner Suzie Burke.

Continue reading “SPONSOR: Move Seattle levy subject of live, televised forum, Sept. 29”

[Correction: In the original post I incorrectly stated that Routes 522 and 577 were only gaining 2 trips and 1 trip, respectively. They are actually gaining 3 trips each during peak periods. The table below has been updated.]

While June’s Prop-1 funded transit service additions were welcome and badly needed, many of them were the unsexiest of fixes: more layover time, schedule stretching for reliability, added trips here or there. But beginning next Saturday, Prop 1 will fully be in effect, and if you care about spontaneous mobility through frequent transit it’s truly a red-letter day. Beginning September 26, Seattle will be the closest it’s ever been to being a place where you can count on frequent transit service, 7 days per week.

In another ‘growth dividend’, the booming regional economy is also enabling Metro to add service on its own, doing things such as boosting Rapid Ride E from 12 minute service to 10 minutes. Read the whole package here, but below are some highlights of what you have to look forward to:

More Link Service: Sound Transit will run 25% more peak-hour trains, arriving every 6 minutes instead of every 7.5 minutes. To make room in the tunnel, routes 76, 77, 216, 218, 219, and 316 will move to surface streets. All Issaquah service will now share a common pathway on 2nd/4th avenues.

No More ‘Reduced Weekday’ Service: Buses will now run regular weekday service on minor holidays such as Veteran’s Day, the Day After Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, MLK Day, and Presidents Day. That means more service on routes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 36, 40, 41, 43, 44, 50, 56, 60, 64, 70, 76, 77, 124, 131, 132, 522, 540, 542, 545, 550, 554, 555, 556, 560, 566, 577, and 578.

Massive Systemwide Frequency Upgrades: Most core routes will now feature frequent service on Saturdays, and many (such as 5, 21, 40, 41) will have frequent Sunday service too. The 70-series gets a huge boost and is simplified, with the 70 running frequently 7 days per week, and the 71/72/73 becoming full-time express routes. There’s even brand new service that doesn’t exist today, such as Saturday service on Route 67 and Sunday service on Route 68.

Many other small changes are in store too. Community Transit will not add any service, but will stretch its peak commuter schedules at a cost of $2M, strictly due to congestion on I-5. Sounder schedules will stretch a bit to account for Positive Train Control, providing later departures for the 4 daily trains that originate/terminate in Tacoma rather than Lakewood. Downtown Seattle layovers and peak alignments will shift significantly, with many routes no longer using Stewart St, different routes using 9th/Pine for layover, and more. Please check your route to be aware of your specific changes.

But the overall picture is more transit for more people, and we’re just getting started. Consider this your pre-ULink appetizer, and thank you to Seattle voters for approving Prop 1.

Yesterday, the King County Council’s Transportation, Economy, and Environment (TrEE) Committee had their first briefing over two March 2016 service change ordinances. The first ordinance (Ordinance 2015-0349, Pages 287-358) dealt with suburban changes such as extending Route 200 to Swedish-Issaquah, looking at Alternative Services in Enumclaw, and the Prop 1-funded split of Rapid Ride C and D and their respective extensions into South Lake Union and Pioneer Square. The second (much larger) ordinance (2015-0350, Pages 359-599) is the big ULink Restructure that we have covered extensively. Let’s take each one in turn.

More after the jump. Continue reading “County Council Begins ULink Restructure Deliberations”

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) seem to be the one form of infill that just about everyone can get behind.  Even after pulling back on his earlier support for allowing more flexible construction in single family zones, Councilmember Mike O’Brien, for example, is still a big proponent of the ADU, as you can see on his website.  A “backyard cottage” sounds so non-threatening, who could possible oppose it?

However, despite their attractiveness to many stakeholders, very few actual ADUs have actually been built in the city (159 as of last December).  Despite efforts by O’Brien and others to streamline the process by providing pre-fab designs and other supports (which I’ve praised), ADUs haven’t taken off.   There are good reasons for this.  Many single family home owners simply don’t have the estimated $55,000 sitting in a bank account.  Furthermore, many lots are irregularly shaped, limiting the utility of pre-fab designs.

One option would be to allow an investor – someone with access to capital – to buy a property, build an ADU, and rent out both units, but unfortunately that’s currently illegal (though that could change as part of the HALA process).  In the current context, then, saying “we need more ADUs” is a bit like saying “we need to bring more jobs back home.” Unless you’ve got a plan to change the fundamental economics, it’s just cheap talk.

Now comes a timely Globe & Mail article from our neighbors to the North in Vancouver, BC, who seem to have reached a limit on ADUs (or “laneway houses”, as they’re called) in certain neighborhoods (via @MarketUrbanism):

…on the west side, laneway houses just aren’t serving their intended purpose. They aren’t marketable to the new offshore buyer, who generally wants a garage instead of a rental stream, she says. Most people who build a laneway on the west side have a very specific purpose, such as providing housing for a disabled or elderly relative.

“If someone has gone to the expense of spending $300,000 on a laneway house, I hope they don’t feel it’s adding value to their 80-year-old house,” she says. “Because unless he can convert that to a garage, the new owner will take that house down. It won’t be what the new owner wants.

($300k? Unless the exchange rate’s gone to hell again, Laneway houses are clearly bigger in Vancouver.)

As single-family homes become more valuable, one might expect similar results here in Seattle.  If you don’t need the money, and don’t have an elderly relative, why go through the trouble of being a landlord when you can have a  bigger backyard or a garage instead?  Or, better yet, tear down that aging, 1,500 square foot bungalow and build a modern, 3,500 square foot home instead.  That’s what current zoning laws seem to be driving toward, anyway.

Which is why, in the long term, we can’t preserve affordable housing by retaining single-family zoning.  Eventually the land in centrally-located, transit-adjacent neighborhoods will become so desirable that the house itself will be a rounding error.  Over the next few decades, many of Seattle’s single-family houses will be torn down whether we re-zone or not. The ones that are left will be gutted, renovated, and completely unaffordable. Back to Vancouver:

“Knock down a house and replace it with a bigger building for a single family … is hardly in line with our city’s goals to become more sustainable,” Mr. Yan says. “But knock it down and replace it with two family homes that are sensitive to the neighbourhood context, I’m okay with that one. And the family amenities are already there.”

Sounds about right.  All of which is not to say ADUs are a bad idea. They’re great! But they’re just one part of an overall affordability toolkit. Relaxing owner-occupancy requirements on the primary unit, so that both could be rented out, would be a sensible next step in getting more of them built.

(h/t Gordon Werner)

TriMet, the Portland Streetcar, and C-Tran (Vancouver, WA) have announced the name of the new smart fare payment system coming in 2017: Hop Fastpass. The name derives from a community engagement process in which Portlanders wanted to promote their craft brewery industry.

The Hop Fastpass will be groundbreaking, at least as far as transit systems in the US go, in several ways:

A daily fare cap: Once riders reach the value of a day pass (currently $5, or $2.50 for reduced-fare payers), that is all they have to pay that day.

A monthly fare cap: Once riders reach the value of a monthly pass (currently $100, or $28 for reduced-fare payers), they won’t have to pay any more that month.

The card readers will also accept Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and contactless bank cards.

The daily and monthly caps will only be available on the Hop card.

TriMet unveiled their mobile ticket app a year ago, and have sold over 5 million mobile tickets. Dallas Area Rapid Transit was the first transit agency in the US to implement mobile payment, but originally on its trains only. TriMet is the first to do so on trains and buses. DART is now offering mobile payment on buses as well.

Discussions about density, transit, biking, and pedestrians generally center on two issues: the implications for low-income people and environmental impact. Lest we forget the enormous public health implications of these policies, The Economist has some encouraging figures ($):

London’s authorities calculate that if every Londoner switched to walking for trips under 2km, and to cycling for trips of 2-8km, the share who got enough exercise to remain healthy simply by getting around would rise from 25% to 60%. That would amount to 61,500 years of healthy life gained each year.

Obviously, most Londoners are going to have more short trips than most Seattle residents since stuff is simply closer together. And since walking and bicycling are often unsafe in Seattle, collisions with cars while using these modes would probably claw back some of the health gains. But a directed policy of densification and ped/bike safety would have large, positive economic and quality-of-life implications.

In a companion article, the magazine shares a less London-specific finding ($):

Even a little exercise has a huge health effect, whether or not people shed their extra pounds. Research presented on August 30th at a cardiology conference in London suggests that walking fast for 25 minutes a day can buy three to seven years of extra life. A bigger study by a team at Cambridge University tracked 300,000 Europeans over 12 years, and found that a brisk daily 20-minute walk, or the equivalent, cut the annual death rate for people of normal weight by a quarter, and for the obese by 16%. Getting everyone sedentary to do this would save twice as many lives as ending obesity, says Ulf Ekelund, the lead researcher.

Many readers here probably recognize about 20 minutes of brisk walking inherent in their use of transit. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that transit agencies should deliberately increase the amount of walking their customers do — encouraging ridership through practical usability trumps enforced exercise — but sometimes the time penalty of using transit can be a feature, not a bug.