Martin and I discuss the STB endorsement process, and where the editorial board netted out with various candidates. For reference:
The first of five Seattle 2035 open houses is tonight, and fireworks are expected, as new maps are being rolled out showing the expansion of urban village boundaries.
The hearings are about changes to Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan, but the zoning changes are likely going to be the most volatile topic.
The open houses are as follows:
Monday, October 19, 6-8 pm
Miller Community Center
330 19th Ave E
Multipurpose Room
Presentation starts at 6:30 pm.
Thursday, November 5, 6-8 pm
Leif Erikson Hall
2245 NW 57th St
Presentation is at 6:30 pm.
Saturday, November 7, 9 am – noon
Filipino Community Center
5740 MLK Jr Way S
Ballroom
Presentation starts at 10 am.
Thursday, November 12, 6-8 pm
West Seattle Senior Center
4217 SW Oregon St
Hatten Hall
Presentation starts at 6:30 pm.
Saturday, November 14, 9 am – noon
North Seattle College
9600 College Way N
Old Cafeteria
Presentation starts at 10 am.
You can also submit written comments on the future of Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan through Friday, November 20.
One of the more interesting tensions in the urbanist left is over development taxes. Everyone is looking for a funding source to build subsidized housing, and skimming from developer profits is an attractive possibility. On the other hand, too much taxation will deter development, and exacerbate the housing shortage from the other end of the income spectrum. People who share a wide array of values still manage to fall on all points of this spectrum.
It might be useful to try to understand these differences in the context of another recent local debate, that over raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. There are important similarities in the vocabulary of these discussions. Everyone is for improving the earning power of low-income workers. But if the minimum wage is set too high, it will deter job creation at the bottom. Unhelpfully, the history of almost every debate on regulation and taxes in American history is business owners complaining that change will destroy their business, a claim that usually proves to be heavily exaggerated.
Put that way, the similarities between this tradeoff and the developer tax tradeoff are obvious. One can be forgiven for dismissing protests that development will halt, in the same way the claims about hiring freezes were. As someone who tends toward the skeptical-about-fees side but supported the minimum wage, that’s a bit uncomfortable. But there’s a crucial difference: there’s a third side in the housing debate.
No matter what people thought about the minimum wage, no one was interested in destroying large numbers of jobs. That provided very strong incentives to not overshoot the wage level. Economics research is hard, but there’s a decent body of scholarship on this one-dimensional problem. Unfortunately, in the case of housing there’s a large contingent of people that would be thrilled if development ground to a halt. That utterly transforms the process of finding the optimum tax rate. It’s very easy to intentionally overshoot and cloak oneself in social justice when one’s true intent is to simply preserve neighborhoods in amber.
Now obviously we have no capability to figure out the true motivations of any particular actor. But it does introduce a structural objection to setting up a system where the City Council tries to figure out exactly how much they can extract out of developers before impairing population growth with all the benefits it brings. I find that objection convincing.
Since its launch back in 2000, Sounder Commuter Rail has had a split personality, with its South Line widely heralded as a smashing success and its North Line as, at best, a series of disappointments. Except for Tacoma and Lakewood, both lines are considerably faster than their bus counterparts in peak-of-peak, and they scale incredibly well when the demand is there, as the marginal cost of adding railcars is almost nothing as long as platform lengths are sufficient.
But beyond the most commonly reported metrics – riders per train and daily ridership – I thought I’d check in on ridership trends between stations and look at things like average load factor. Who rides from where, and how full are the trains on average, etc? Who rides between intermediate, non-Seattle stations? How many people ride the reverse peak trains? Charts, data, and commentary after the jump. Continue reading “Sounder Ridership By Station”
This is an open thread.
Here are Seattle Transit Blog’s endorsements for selected suburban races in the general election. As always, our endorsements are meant to focus entirely on their transit and land use positions.
Longtime readers know our core positions well: in favor of transit investment, concentration of resources into high-quality corridors, upzones, and pedestrian and bicycle access improvements. We are also skeptical of taxes on development, parking minimums, and the assumption that all parts of the region must be cheap and easy to access with a car.
Yes on Tacoma Proposition 3 and Proposition A – Much like Move Seattle, Tacoma is going big for infrastructure this November. Propositions 3 and A would fund $500m in improvements over 10 years, funded by a mix of utility taxes, a property levy, and a 0.1% Transportation Benefit District (TBD) sales tax, while also leveraging state and federal grants. Though using sales tax for roads is regrettable, this measure does not exhaust Tacoma’s TBD authority, leaving room for an additional .1% for transit in a future measure. Moreover, Tacoma needs basic road repair and street upgrades, and the city’s complete streets requirements ensure that rebuilt streets will be better for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders alike. Indeed, 15% of the package is dedicated to bike infrastructure.
City of Redmond Mayor: John Marchione has smartly managed Redmond’s rapid development since his first election as Mayor in 2007, and sits on the Sound Transit Board. His opponent, Steve Fields, is running as a government effectiveness advocate in a campaign that has focused on traffic concerns and the alleged neglect of neighborhoods outside of the growing centers in Downtown and Overlake. While Marchione’s talents and credentials as an advocate for transit and urban development are clear, Fields’ campaign has been oriented toward those who are most uncomfortable with growth.
King County Council District No. 6: Claudia Balducci has been an impressive advocate for transit as both a Bellevue Council member and Mayor. She’s a member of the Sound Transit Board and chair of the PSRC Transportation Policy Board. Balducci supported East Link to Bellevue and Redmond, has a deep knowledge of Eastside and regional transit issues, and recently has been an effective voice for the Eastside in shaping ST3. Jane Hague remains skeptical of ST3, emphasizing concerns about taxes and neighborhood impacts. Both have positive records on transit-oriented development.
Continue reading “STB 2015 General Election Endorsements: Suburban Races”
This afternoon the King County Council Transportation, Economy, and Environment (TrEE) Committee sent the ULink restructure to the full council without recommendation. The restructure ordinance will now be discussed by the full council, with a probable vote, on Monday, October 19.
Chair Dembowski and Councilmember Phillips introduced an amendment that responds to the bulk of the criticism received from the public, particularly on Routes 43 and 71. The amendment passed unanimously by a 7-0 vote.
The amendment significantly changes the restructure proposal:
There were additional items in the amendment related to continued public outreach and transfer improvement studies. There may be further changes behind the scenes prior to full council consideration on Monday, so stay tuned.
North 145th Street is a mess. Providing cross-town auto access to I-5 and SR 522 along Seattle’s northern border, it features very narrow sidewalks, an above-average number of car collisions, and few pedestrian amenities. To add insult to injury (literally), there are utility poles right smack in the middle of the sidewalk, which itself is right up against the travel lane. If you don’t have Google Maps handy, just picture 23rd Ave through the Central District, except with 50% more traffic and even less regard for pedestrians.
Oh, and it’s a jurisdictional disaster: King County owns the north side of the street, Seattle owns the south side, and on top of that it’s a state highway so the whole thing is technically WSDOT’s responsibility (Shoreline starts at the North sidewalk).
Due to all these wonderful challenges, many transit advocates pleaded with Sound Transit to locate the light rail stations at 130th and 155th, to minimize I-5 conflicts and provide better bus and pedestrian connections (anyone who’s spent any time in downtown Seattle knows that the cross-streets that don’t connect to I-5 tend to be the most reliable for buses). In the end, however, 145th won out.
To their credit, the City of Shoreline (having already begun an impressive effort to rezone future station areas), has taken on the unenviable task of trying to herd cats and coordinate ped, bike, and transit improvements to 145th. The main challenge is the limited right-of-way. Any significant upgrade will require taking property on either or both sides of the street, up to as much as 41 feet of additional ROW, depending on the concept selected. Proposed concepts may add some combination of a center turn lane, wider sidewalks, a shared bike/ped trail, and bus lanes. Concept 3, shown above, would include wider sidewalks and Bus/turn lanes in addition to a center turn lane.
Traffic volumes on 145th were between 26,000 and 32,000 cars, near the upper bound of streets that have received road diets in the recent past. You can learn more about the various options under consideration at the City of Shoreline’s website. A preferred design will be selected in February.
Here in the Puget Sound region we are blessed with hundreds of miles of regional bike trails, from the paved non-motorized highway of the Burke-Gilman Trail to the smooth dirt of the Snoqualmie Valley Trail. But nearly without exception, our trails are a series of disparate pieces. They peter out in random places, their right-of-way subsumed by some long ago development, or they are constructed in torturous phases, waiting for further crumbs to fall from the appropriations table.
But what if they all connected, every last one of them? What if they offered a comprehensive network from Anacortes to Enumclaw, and from Gig Harbor to the Columbia River? We’re closer to this vision than you might think. To qualify, each trail segment could be paved or soft-surface, but the important thing would be to remove discontinuity, detours, or sections in busy traffic.
I’ve put together a draft* of a highly stylized map that weaves together each of the disparate strands into something resembling a seamless network. Fully built, this would be a national gem of a trail system, stretching 915 miles across coastal wetlands, river valleys, mountain passes, pastoral landscapes, and bustling urban corridors.
Continue reading “A Vision for a Comprehensive Regional Bike Trail Network”