Month: October 2015

At its September Board Meeting, Sound Transit approved the largest single budget item in its history, $733M to procure the remaining 122 light rail vehicles (LRVs) needed for the full ST2 buildout to Lynnwood, Overlake, and Des Moines. When delivered, these LRVs will triple Sound Transit’s fleet from the current 62 LRVs to a total of 184.

Originally planned to occur in phases, with a vehicle budget within each Link extension project, Sound Transit switched gears and decided to execute vehicle procurement as a single contract, transferring $236M from the Northgate Link budget in order to do so. Sound Transit “determined that procurement of all 122 LRVs under a single project would provide efficiencies in coordinating, monitoring, tracking and reporting of the project progress.”

The design and function of the new vehicles relative to the current fleet is an open question, though Bruce Gray hinted at some of the RFP requirements, such as four bicycle hooks per car instead of two. However, Sound Transit has already said that the two fleets will operate separately due to what is seen as insurmountable technical incompatibility between them. There will not be the ability to couple older and newer cars together.

While this is somewhat unfortunate from a fleet flexibility perspective, it does provide an opportunity to substantively improve over the first-generation design, providing ST with a much wider choice of manufacturer and specs. So how would you improve upon Link’s current fleet?  A few of my ideas after the jump.

Continue reading “How Can Link Vehicles Be Improved?”

Metro’s ORCA LIFT program is one of the first low-income transit fare products in North America, and it is fully worth your support. Earlier this year Sound Transit began accepting LIFT on Link Light rail but not on Sounder or its ST Express buses. Pierce Transit and Community Transit don’t participate in LIFT while operating the majority of ST Express routes, so accepting LIFT there would have introduced operational complexity.

But now Sound Transit is considering expanding its acceptance of ORCA LIFT, either to all express routes wholly within King County, on all ST Express buses, or acceptance systemwide including Sounder. It is also considering a parallel general fare increase of $.25-$.50 to offset the lost revenue.

The comment deadline is November 5, and you can comment by taking their survey, emailing fares@soundtransit.org, by phone (1-866-940-4387), or in person at Union Station (November 5, noon-1pm).

Please comment and ask for systemwide acceptance of ORCA LIFT, as the other options on the table create absurd outcomes for riders. For example, the proposed option to accept LIFT only on routes wholly operated within King County – crucially, distinct from routes operated by King County Metro! –  would create a nightmare of complexity.

Consider just a trip from Federal Way Transit Center to Seattle. Peak riders on Route 577 would get a low-income fare ($1.50), but off-peak riders on Route 578 wouldn’t ($2.75). Thus Metro would be in the business of having higher peak fares while Sound Transit would be in the business of having lower peak fares. And while Community Transit could blissfully ignore the complexity, as none of their Sound Transit routes operate wholly within King County, Pierce Transit would have to accept LIFT on some routes (such as Route 560, 566, and 567), but not on others (574, 578, 580, 590, 592, 595).

Let that sink in. That would be a terrible outcome for system usability, and would directly contradict King County Executive (and Sound Transit Board Chair) Dow Constantine’s goals for agency integration.

Please comment by November 5, and ask for the simplest system with the broadest access for all. Ask for full LIFT acceptance on all Sound Transit services. See TCC’s Action Alert for example language to use in your comments.

Earlier this week, Councilmember Kshama Sawant announced a sweeping set of proposals with the stated purpose of helping small business while flanked by local small business leaders. Two of those proposals relate directly to land use and transit. People simultaneously encouraged by Sawant’s categorical support for transit, and apprehensive about her attitude to market-rate development,* will find a lot to confirm their biases. I chatted with Sawant staffer Ted Virdone about the two relevant policies: tax increases for more nighttime buses and rent control on commercial property.

More Bus Service

Ms. Sawant proposes to restore the $25-per-employee**-per-year  “Head Tax”, with an exemption for small business but removing previous exemptions for employees that use carpools or transit. Council Central Staff estimates that this would generate $4.8m in 6 months of operation in 2016, or close to $10m annually. Furthermore, a 5-point increase in the commercial parking tax (CPT, now 12.5%) would generate about $15m annually. By my calculation, this would fund roughly 200,000 annual service hours, or 548 additional hours every night of the year.

According to Mr. Virdone, this is more than shoring up the night owl network that he described as “skeletal”. Service today gets less and less frequent on the daytime network as the evening progresses, finally switching to a handful of night owl routes sometime after midnight.

Virdone said that SDOT would determine the actual route allocations, but the Council’s instructions would limit the new services to “between the end of the evening peak and the beginning of the morning peak.” Among the objectives they would provide SDOT would be “transit options for drinkers to get home” when the bars close, access to working-class late-night jobs, and anything else likely to generate ridership in those hours. He said Ms. Sawant was “open to input” about other transit demands in the wee hours.

There’s a lot to like about this proposal. Late-night service doesn’t have much to do with “congestion relief,” but it does provide alternatives that discourage drunk driving. Sparse late-night service is also a significant obstacle to car-free living, which transforms transportation choices in a cheaper, more sustainable, and healthier way.

Commercial Rent Control

Continue reading “Sawant Proposes Commercial Rent Control, Tax for Night Transit Service”

A few months back, I wrote, with much exasperation, about an irritating quirk of King County Metro policy I dubbed the “Shoreline Rule”–the requirement that, without exception, all Metro riders who want to contest a transit infraction drive or, more likely, take the bus all the way to King County District Court in Shoreline. I ended up paying a $124 fine for a ticket I believed should have been a warning, because I didn’t want to take a day off work and because I had the money and privilege to do so. Many others, of course, aren’t so fortunate.

Had I chosen to take the bus to Shoreline, Metro’s Trip Planner tells me the trip would have taken me about an hour and a half on four buses each way. For King County Council member Dave Upthegrove, the trip time from the bus stop a block from his house in Des Moines to Shoreline remains unknown–because, he says, “When I entered my home address and Shoreline District Court into Trip Planner, I got an error message that said, ‘Cannot compute due to more than three hours in transit.’

“I’m not that far out” in King County,” Upthegrove continues. “Imagine all the people in Auburn and Covington. You get out there and it’s a fairly transit-dependent population. The people who can’t pay their bus fare can’t rely on the bus.”

This week, Upthegrove introduced a motion that will amend the Shoreline Rule, eventually, to allow juvenile violators to go to court in Burien, instead of schlepping to Shoreline. According to King County Council staff, 72 percent of juvenile violations occur in South Seattle or South King County, so the Burien relocation makes sense. (Upthegrove’s legislation also recommended ending the practice of treating fare evasion and failure to pay tickets as a criminal infraction; adults can still be charged with a misdemeanor for failure to pay or show up in court.) If the county executive’s office develops the legislation and the council passes it on schedule, the Shoreline Rule, for the 200 or so kids who receive fare evasion tickets each year, will be history sometime in 2016. 

Continue reading “Say Goodbye (Sort of) to the Shoreline Rule”

• First Hill Streetcar begins “post-performance testing.”
• CT will use Mountlake Terrace bus ramps to bypass congestion.
• Mayor Murray proposes cheaper sidewalks to afford more.
• Tacoma Link gets $15m from USDOT. But Feds pass over Northgate Bridge and Pronto expansion.
• Freighthouse Square Final Design ready for comment, will open in 2017.
• ST picks Bellevue for the new Operations & Maintenance Facility (OMF).
• Amtrak Cascades is 20 years old.
• September polling for Move Seattle is very strong, 63-34%, before recent bad press.
• Pedestrian accident data in Tacoma.
• Metro still working through driver shortage, cancelled trips.
• Auburn proposing a revamp of its downtown.
• I-405 toll lanes speeding up trips, especially for people who actually value their time.
• A summary of a September Center City Connector open house.
• Local apodment finalist for an Urban Land Institute Award. Too bad the City Council effectively banned them.
• Seatac the nation’s fastest-growing major airport.
• An update on the N 145th St planning.
• 522 Transit Now! meeting tonight.
• “Shared parking” concept could reduce the number of spaces needed on Capitol Hill.
• Every American household spends — conservatively — $1,100 per year to subsidize driving, whether or not they drive themselves.
• Transit Maps of the World now on its third edition.

This is an open thread.

An election that will determine the future of Seattle governance and transportation priorities for a long time to come is just one week from its conclusion. Ballots must be post-marked by Tuesday, November 3, and must include first-class postage worth at least 49 cents.

There are also drop boxes, where you can drop off your ballot without postage until 8 pm on November 3, at the King County Administration Building, the Ballard Branch Library, Crossroads Shopping Center in Bellevue, Burien City Hall, Federal Way City Hall, Issaquah City Hall, Kent Regional Justice Center, Lake Forest Park City Hall, Redmond City Hall, or the King County Elections headquarters in Renton.

Drop vans will also be available on Saturday, October 31, 10 am – 5 pm; Monday, November 2, 10 am – 5 pm; and Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 10 am – 8 pm, at Red Square on the UW campus, Rainier Community Center, Magnuson Park, the south side of West Seattle Stadium, Auburn City Hall, Kirkland City Hall, Tahoma School District Building in Maple Valley, Sammamish City Hall, SeaTac City Hall, Aurora Square Shopping Center in Shoreline, the Greenbridge Branch Library in White Center, and Woodinville City Hall.

Accessible voting machines, open to any registered voter, are available at King County Elections headquarters in Renton, Union Station (just west of International District / Chinatown Station), and Bellevue City Hall. The machines are available this Monday-Friday at the Renton headquarters 8:30 am – 4:30 pm. Union Station and Bellevue City Hall will also be open for voting this Friday 10 am – 5 pm, and Saturday 10 am – 3 pm. All three sites will be closed Sunday. The Renton headquarters will be open Monday, November 2, 8:30 am – 7 pm, and Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 8:30 am – 8 pm, while Union Station and Bellevue City Hall will be open Monday, November 2, 10 am – 7 pm, and Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 10 am – 8 pm.

STB Editorial Board endorsements for the November 3 election were issued here, here, and here. The full list of STB Editorial Board endorsements for the November 3 election is below the fold. Continue reading “Six Days to Election Day”

As an addendum to Bruce’s post about the proposed Pine Street bus lane, I thought it would be worth making the point that despite the opening of University Link and the associated restructure of bus service, that net service levels on Pine Street will be still busier than ever during peak periods.

This chart looks at 4 distinct time periods over the last two years:

• Immediately after the September 2014 service cuts (blue), in which the 47 was eliminated.
• After the first round of Prop 1 investments (red), in which a limited 47 was restored.
• After the second round of Prop 1 investments (green), in which the 47 was expanded, the 11 given 15-minute off-peak service, and Routes 216, 218, and 219 added to Pine Street.
• After the ULink restructure (purple), in which the off-peak 43 is eliminated and the 49 will move to 12 minute service.

With these service levels, peaking at 32 buses per hour in the 4:00pm hour, a bus lane is entirely appropriate and overdue. Please submit your supportive comments to SDOT’s Jonathan Dong.

The Seattle Department of Transportation is proposing to install six blocks of 24/7 bus lane, downtown, on Pine St, between 9th Ave and 3rd Ave. The proposed installation will mirror a similar installation on Pike St, between 2nd and 7th, completed last summer: It will be a painting and signage exercise in the right-hand curb lane, with turns permitted. If approved, the lane should be installed this fall. You can send comments on this proposal to jonathan.dong@seattle.gov.

I don’t have much to say on this specific proposal, except “Yes, please do this last year.” Pike/Pine is the primary transit corridor for service between Westlake Station, the downtown core, and Capitol Hill; plus it serves more than half a dozen suburban commuter routes in the peak periods. Riders on these routes deserve all the relief from car traffic they can get. The opening of University Link next year will change the nature of Pike/Pine, making it an east-west oriented corridor, but by no means negating its importance to the transit network.

If this lane is installed as described, buses making the Pike/Pine loop will be have continuous lanes starting west of I-5, with just one problematic gap: One long block southbound on 2nd Ave. Buses here bog down terribly in the afternoon peak, although I’m not sure what can be done about this, given the eventual certainty that SDOT will (and should) extend the 2nd Ave cycletrack north along that block and into Belltown.

Perhaps, then the next area for attention should be the intersection of Pike and Boren, another rush-hour schedule killer. A well-executed BAT lane and queue jump could free buses from traffic, and get Pike St riders quickly across First Hill’s worst car sewer.

Now that the major bus restructure has passed and questions about transit access to UW Station have been answered, it’s time to focus on another part of the access equation: bikes. While other Link stations (such as Rainier Beach) intersect some of our regional trails, it’s fair to say that the Burke-Gilman is in a league of its own, and that UW Station will be Seattle’s first high volume bike-rail transfer point. It’s important to get it right for several reasons:

• Taking bikes on Link is a niche option that cannot scale. Assuming no luggage in the bike spaces, Link can currently carry 2 bikes per railcar (4 including standees), at a small added cost to boarding/adboarding time. With thousands of commuters taking to the Burke-Gilman every day, it is both unrealistic to believe that Link can absorb the likely demand and inappropriate to allocate excessive train space to bikes. (I say this as a person who bikes every day.)
• Prior to Bicycle Master Plan implementation on Eastlake, switching to the train will be highly attractive for traffic-wary bike commuters from NE Seattle. Link represents a huge opportunity to expand the attractiveness of stress-free bike commuting, and it should be strongly encouraged by the city, UW, and Sound Transit.
• One year after U-Link opens, the “West Approach Bridge North” project will be completed, providing a brand new dedicated bike path across SR 520 that ends at Montlake. This connection will be likely be very popular and a significant number of these riders can be expected to transfer to Link.
• Access between the heart of the UW Campus and UW Station will always be fastest by bike, as transit services will skirt its edges on Pacific or Stevens Way. Pronto will help for pure last-mile connections, but we should expect a surge of riders on personal bikes as well coming up and down Rainier Vista.

Continue reading “UW Station Needs More Bike Parking”