If you still aren’t registered to vote, it’s not too late, but you’ll need to hustle–today is the last day to register to vote in the November 3 election.
It’s a great time to get involved by voting in your local elections. In Seattle, this is the first outing for district elections, which means all nine council seats are up for grabs. The critically important Move Seattle ballot measure, which would add seven new RapidRide routes, implement the Bicycle Master Plan, partially fund the deferred Graham Street light rail station and the Northgate pedestrian bridge, and build sidewalks across the city, is on the ballot. So is Initiative 122, which would change the way we fund elections by funding “democracy vouchers” for every citizen to donate real money to the candidates of their choice, and place new restrictions on campaign donations. And Tim Eyman’s latest power grab, Initiative 1366, is waiting for your “no” vote.
In other words, what are you waiting for? Go out, register, and weigh in on the local issues and candidates on the ballot in Seattle and other local elections. And once you’re registered, check out our endorsements for Seattle races, suburban races, and local transit measures. Ballots must be postmarked or delivered to an official drop box or van by 8pm on Tuesday, November 3.
Crushloaded at 6:00am at Mercer Island (Photo by VeloBusDriver)
Zach’s report on Mercer Island’s East Link comments was disappointing reading. It’s clear that not everyone will get everything they want. However, I think there’s a path, assuming goodwill from the major players, that meets a goal that I think regional leaders, interested activists, and concerned Mercer Islanders can all agree on. That goal is that the majority of interested Mercer Island residents should have a plausible means of reaching the station.
There are some challenges:
Parking spots at the station are a precious resource, at 447 not large enough to accommodate likely Link demand (ST projects about 2,000 boardings in 2030, constrained by access limitations) and unlikely to grow significantly.
Buses are already at crushloads beginning very early in the morning (see photo).
Banning outsiders outright from the public garage is unlikely to be acceptable to the rest of the region, and rightfully so.
Although better bus service will help, a significant part of the island will only ever be practically accessible by car.
Although some sacrifices and compromises are necessary, we can achieve the most important goals without vast resource expenditure:
If you have ever attended a neighborhood or city zoning meeting you probably noticed four main arguments of those opposed to new residents:
Arguments from poverty, usually spoken in terms of gentrification and displacement.
Arguments from wealth, usually coded in comments about renters not “putting down roots” or about the preservation of a neighborhood’s culture.
Arguments for the status quo, usually expressing general support for upzones elsewhere, but with concerns about context and scale in their own area.
Parking, usually anger over the prospect of losing their hitherto exclusive access to public spacein the form of on-street parking.
In Monday’s Seattle Times there was a letter from condo owners in the Escala ($) building, upset that a new tower similar to their own will be built across from them. They like their views and seem to believe that their property deed entitles them to said views in perpetuity, even though they obviously did not also purchase air rights. They want the city to step in and give them the air rights they didn’t pay for by taking it from the people who did pay for them (the owner of the lot). Knowing that this argument will likely not get much play, they looked in the neighborhood exclusionist handbook and latched on to argument number 3:
We support growth and density, but it must be responsible and in proper context to the neighborhood.
That is traditional NIMBY thinking applied to downtown Seattle, or NIMBA-ism (Not in My Back Alley). If 500′ towers aren’t ‘in context’ in downtown Seattle two blocks from Westlake Center, where are they in context?
Though FAR regulations, podium heights, and tower setbacks are all legitimate policy questions, the city cannot legislate by the qualitative aesthetic desires of millionaire condo owners. Appeals to “emotional breathing space”, “loss of privacy and neighborliness”, and “Seattle’s soul” are no substitute for good code and property rights, but are instead the recycled rhetoric coming from the Craftsmans of Crown Heights, this time spoken from the 30th floor of the Escala.
Thanks to the Escala owners for pointing out that no matter the neighborhood, for those with a vested interest in the status quo, growth is always ‘out of context’. Hopefully our city leaders are aware of this and give ‘context’ appeals all the consideration they deserve.
David covered the goodies in Sound Transit’s 2016 Draft Service Implementation Plan on Tuesday. Most of the big changes, including opening the new light rail stations, the additional daily Sounder runs, the new ST Express route 541, and long-term construction re-routes on routes 555, 556, and 560 still have to be approved by the ST Board.
Smaller additions of trips to ST Express routes can be approved administratively, as long as the service level does not change by more than 25%. This happens to allow the 15 additional route 545 trips to be added in 2016 without a need for Board action.
Chapter 5 of the Draft SIP explains the process for adding new trips, and lists the unfunded “immediate needs” for additional trips. The wish list and explanation are below the fold. Continue reading “How ST Administratively Adds New Trips”
Perhaps responding to criticism that no one understood the details of the Move Seattle levy, late yesterday SDOT released a detailed spreadsheet that explained their year-by-year spending plan.
According to Director Scott Kubly,
The plan’s allocations are consistent with the levy legislation and its specific funding categories. If the levy is approved, oversight for spending and deliverables will be provided by a levy oversight committee and the City Council, and information on large projects will be available through SDOT’s new online capital projects dashboard.
Quite sensibly, the City retains some flexibility as needs and opportunities arise. But barring any interesting developments, there are three components of the $930m plan through 2024:
A steady $22-23m every year for Safe Routes, for a total of $207m.
$420m for maintenance and repair, including
$250m for paving
$30m for Urban Forestry
$140m for bridges, with about half for seismic reinforcement, and finishing the Fairview Bridge by 2018 ($27m).
$303m for “congestion relief,” various improvements to mobility and access, on which more after the jump.
Eastbound I-90 to one lane this weekend; no special provision for transit.
At the end of this interesting essay about Denmark is an explanation of why America doesn’t have efficient public services, with transit as an example.
Sound Transit running a survey about instituting a low-income fare on ST Express and raising other fares by 25 cents to compensate.
White House reports says NIMBY zoning regulations are a prime driver of economic inequality. The reduction in labor’s share of income economy is entirely lost to housing wealth, not other forms of capital.
Route 65 coach with strangely persistent misspelling. Photo by Kris Leisten.
UPDATE: Metro’s Jeff Switzer provided some corrected information about the routing of Routes 65 and 67. See below the jump for details.
Yesterday, the King County Council approved an ordinance directing Metro to restructure service in much of North Seattle and on Capitol Hill in conjunction with the opening of University Link. The restructure is now final and official. What you see in the ordinance is what you will get in March 2016. Metro has not yet put final detailed information online; when they do, we’ll update this post with a link.
Final approval seems almost anticlimactic after the process, which is the longest and most public process I’ve seen in over two decades of following Metro closely. From Metro, we saw initial maximum- and minimum-change ideas, a second proposal responding to feedback on the initial proposals, and then a substantially different final proposal to the Council when further feedback was lukewarm on the second proposal. Metro assembled a Sounding Board (on which our Zach Shaner served) to help advise it on the changes, and held numerous public hearings following each proposal.
After Metro submitted its final proposal, the Council’s Transportation, Economy, and Environment Committee held a long, dramatic hearing focused on the Northeast Seattle part of the restructure. Committee Chair Rod Dembowski, rumored through much of the process to favor scuttling the restructure altogether over concerns about the UW Station transfer environment, strongly denied that intent and introduced an amendment to fix what he saw as significant problems with Metro’s proposal. Councilmember Dembowski’s amendment, which (among several other changes) restored partial service on routes 43 and 71 and mostly eliminated Metro’s proposed route 78, passed the committee and remained in the final ordinance passed yesterday by the council.
In addition to the U-Link restructure, another ordinance passed yesterday makes official the split of the RapidRide C and D Lines. RapidRide C will now terminate in South Lake Union—dramatically improving bus connections between SLU and downtown, and connecting SLU with West Seattle for the first time in several years—while RapidRide D will now terminate in Pioneer Square.
We’ve always been enthusiastic about the restructure, particularly in Northeast Seattle, and we’re very happy to see it become final. Details of the Dembowski amendment, which represents the only changes from Metro’s final proposal, are below the jump.
Shortly after Earl came to Sound Transit as chief operating officer in 2000, questions about the agency’s ability to manage the Seattle area’s first light rail line grew into a crisis. State lawmakers complained about the transit agency, federal transportation officials launched a two-year audit and pulled back on a big financial commitment, and congressional leaders demanded officials come to D.C. to answer their questions. It was a crisis that might have spun into a death spiral.
As Sound Transit’s then-CEO and a host of other executives left under fire, the board turned to Earl in 2001, just months after her arrival, and asked her to take the helm.
If you weren’t paying attention to Puget Sound transportation issues back then, let’s just say that things were looking pretty grim for Sound Transit and rail as a whole. The 2001 turnaround was quite something. Sound Transit’s 20-year history can be easily separated into two eras: pre- and post- Joni Earl’s arrival. The former era was marred by cost overruns, delays, and poor planning, while in the current era the agency has been able to deliver projects on time and on budget, even through the Great Recession. This record allowed ST to win another vote in 2008 and build a wave of enthusiasm for a third measure as early as next year.
Newly delivered New Flyer XDE60 coach. Photo by SounderBruce.
Faithful readers already know Sound Transit is headed for a banner 2016. University Link alone would be enough to ensure that; it will connect the three most important transit destinations in Washington state with frequent, fast, high-capacity transit for the first time, replacing bus routes that are one of Seattle’s most notorious time sinks. Also no surprise are the opening of Angle Lake Station and a new midday round trip on South Sounder. But that is not all the agency has up its sleeve to drive an expected increase of 18 percent in total system ridership. Last week, ST released an early draft of its 2016 Service Implementation Plan, which includes a most welcome surprise: a substantial increase in ST Express bus service.
The increase is a surprise because ST Express stubbornly has remained a zero-sum program for several years, despite the expanding economy. ballooning ridership, and rapidly recovering tax revenue streams. Expansion of oversubscribed routes such as the 550 and 545 has been paid for by chopping the span of service of less popular routes, while increasing I-405 congestion has resulted in cut trips on South King County-Eastside routes. This time, there are no cuts and no surprises, just a very peak-heavy expansion driven primarily by overcrowding relief and better connections to U-Link and Sounder. Details below the jump.
If you still aren’t registered to vote, it’s not too late, but you’ll need to hustle–today is the last day to register to vote in the November 3 election.
