Month: November 2015

Wednesday is Veterans Day, which is a holiday for some, but not for most transit agencies.

Indeed, Sound Transit, the monorail, the South Lake Union Streetcar, Pierce Transit, Community Transit, Everett Transit, Skagit Transit, Island Transit, Whatcom Transit, Intercity Transit, Twin Transit, Jefferson Transit, Greys Harbor Transit, and Mason Transit are all running on regular weekday schedules.

Kitsap Transit will be running regular service except for route 19, which will not be running. There are also some administrative and non-fixed-route reductions.

The King County Water Taxis and Clallam Transit are the only transit agencies in the region that will not be operating on Veterans Day.

For Washington State Ferries, the advice on holidays is to always check the schedule for your route.

King County Metro’s holiday schedules are a little more complicated.

Thanks to funding from Seattle’s 2014 Proposition 1, no Seattle-only routes will be running a reduced weekday schedule. However, a few routes will be running on a reduced UW schedule, namely routes 31, 32, 48, 65, 67, 68, 75, 167, 197, 271, 277, 331, 372, and 373. The specific trips that will be cancelled are designated in the schedule for each route.

A longer list of routes that serve areas outside Seattle will have designated trips cancelled for Reduced Weekday Service: routes 101, 102, 105, 106, 107, 111, 116, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 128, 143, 150, 153, 157, 158, 159, 167, 168, 169, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 187, 190, 212, 214, 218, 219, 232, 242, 244, 249, 252, 255, 269, 303, 311, 312, 342, 907, and 931.

A few routes will not run at all: routes 114, 192, 201, 237, 304, 308, 316, 330, 355, 601, 661, and 930.

Sound Transit held a hearing on the proposals for fare increases and honoring ORCA LIFT on ST Express and Sounder last Thursday, followed by a meeting of the board’s Operations and Administration Committee, where the proposals were vetted for a recommendation to the full board.

Sunnie Sterling, ST’s Revenue Analysis Manager, gave staff’s reason for bringing forward a fare proposal on ST Express as the need to consolidate its fares with partner agencies. Currently, the Regional Reduced Fare Permit fare — for seniors and riders with disabilities — on intra-county ST Express is 75 cents, while the RRFP fare on Link, Metro, Seattle Streetcars, Community Transit local buses, and Kitsap Transit local buses is $1. Pierce Transit is considering raising its RRFP fare to $1. The youth fare on intra-county ST Express is $1.25, while the youth fare on Link, Metro, Seattle Streetcars, and Community Transit local buses is $1.50. Multi-county ST Express fares are lower than Community Transit commuter fares, and would still be even after the proposed fare increases.

Sterling gave the need to maintain minimum fare recovery goals, and a projection that Sounder will be falling short starting in 2018, as the reason to bring forward the fare proposals for Sounder. Sterling cited the costs of implementing ORCA LIFT as the reason for accelerating proposals on both services.

CORRECTION: In an email from Bruce Gray at Sound Transit, Sterling clarified that “LIFT and the other fare changes are part of updating Sound Transit fare structures on ST Express and Sounder to be consistent with partner agencies’ fares and to implement Board policies regarding farebox recovery goals.”

The additional fare revenue from the proposed fare increases on Sounder is projected to be $566,000 per year. The decreased fare revenue from honoring ORCA LIFT on Sounder is projected to be $56,000.

The additional fare revenue from the proposed fare increase on ST Express, less the decreased fare revenue from honoring ORCA LIFT just on the routes wholly operated in King County, is projected to be $661,000. However, the projection for honoring ORCA LIFT on all ST Express routes is for a $294,000 annual deficit. In other words, the annual cost of honoring LIFT on the routes not wholly operated in King County is projected to be $955,000.

Nine public speakers, all but one of them in favor of full ORCA LIFT adoption on all Sound Transit services, spoke. The ninth speaker complained about highway tolls and the state of the national government, with no mention of any Sound Transit policies. Seven of the speakers were from various groups that had signed on to a coalition letter in support of agency-wide ORCA LIFT adoption, including One America, the Transit Riders Union, Transportation Choices, and the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness. All eight speakers opposed Option 2 for ST Express, which would implement a LIFT fare only on routes operated wholly within King County (522, 540-567, and 577), pointing out the confusion such a system would create for LIFT riders. Continue reading “ST Ops Committee Punts ORCA LIFT Debate to Full Board”

Zurich: Where People Are Welcome and Cars Are Not from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

University Link is coming in roughly one quarter. Expectations are high, not only for the revolution in travel time it will bring, but for the sheer volume of people expected to use the service. Sound Transit’s draft 2016 Service Implementation Plan (p. 122) projects average weekday boardings of 34,600 this year jumping up to 51,800 in 2016 and 60,500 in 2017, the first full year of service. In subsequent years, it will grow to 65,600, 68,400, 70,800, and finally 79,800 in 2021, the year when more North Link stations will open.

This is as good a time as any to remind everyone that comparing actual riders to projected riders proves nothing about if the model was valid, nor does it convince any real voter that their vote was or wasn’t justified.

The principal things that drive absolute ridership are the things that drive ridership systemwide: job growth, population growth, zoning decisions, fare levels, and the costs of driving (gas, tolls, parking). Transit consultants are not particularly qualified to predict many of these items, which will unfortunately overwhelm the technical merits of the line itself.

Moreover, as a rhetorical device appeals to projections utterly fail. Approximately zero people who voted for Central Link in the hopes for 40,000 a day would have changed their vote if the number was 32,000. Similarly, no light rail opponents suddenly become converts at 50,000. Within an order of magnitude, a project is useful and high-quality enough for a certain rough level of taxation or it isn’t. Tweaks to the ridership models or tax micro-concessions don’t change the politics.

What models are useful for is comparisons between projects, where the imprecisions from secular trends cancel each other out. Regrettably for pundits, there is no experiment where two versions of Seattle build different projects. At best, the region might build more than one of the possible projects, in which case network effects still complicate any assessment.

Going on about projections after they’ve completed their usefulness in alternatives analysis is a fun parlor game, but do not mistake it for thorough analysis or effective messaging.

Late Friday morning, Sound Transit’s tunnel boring machine ‘Brenda’ holed through at the future University District station at NE 43rd St & Brooklyn Ave NE. The machine took 6 months to tunnel the mile between Roosevelt Station and the UDistrict and will be refurbished before digging the last mile of the northbound tunnel to UW Station.

The holethrough comes as Northgate Link’s TBMs have struggled with soil conditions, premature cutterhead wear, and slower than expected progress. The unmitigated success of ULink’s tunneling has set the bar very high for this project, and it’s not unreasonable to expect occasional setbacks, which is precisely what schedule float is for. The project is still well within its schedule and budget, with several months of project float remaining. (The Sound Transit Board heard a more detailed briefing on these issues at its October meeting, and those materials are not yet online.)

Meanwhile, TBM Pamela is busy digging the southbound tunnel, and was 600′ south of Roosevelt as of the last briefing on October 22., having just passed under Ravenna Boulevard as of the last update on October 31.

Are you ready for ST3? Project evaluation begins in earnest 4 weeks from Friday, when the ST Board will begin reviewing updated project analysis while beginning to look at financial models and overall package size options. Back in May, the initial project list caused considerable alarm (and a record 529 comments) among our readership for not including a grade-separated option to Ballard among other flaws, prompting a quick rebuttal from ST’s Ric Ilgenfritz that there was plenty of room in the process to advocate for quality projects.

So we’ll be watching intently as the board begins its deliberations, looking for hints as to what’s on and off the table, and what has or hasn’t been negotiated behind the scenes. The basic frame for ST3 remains, namely that the Snohomish subarea will likely set the pace for the package at large, as a tax rate that funds both Paine Field and Everett would considerably scale up the package and stretch it to its financial limits or beyond. A smaller package that meets Snohomish’s desires is also possible, albeit only through a politically toxic large-scale transferring of funds between subareas. With voter approval of Move Seattle and Community Transit’s Prop 1 – and with ‘the spine’ as perhaps the only sacrosanct shared value among boardmembers – a smaller incremental package seems less likely than it did just a few months ago.

At ST’s sleepy and sparsely attended Executive Committee meeting yesterday, staff presented the templates for project evaluation that the board (and then the public) will see beginning December 4th (below). As you can see, a binary yes/no on the regional spine is the first criterion, followed by metrics you’d expect such as cost and ridership. There does seem to be an expanded emphasis on bike and pedestrian access, and it’s encouraging that projects will be evaluated with this in mind from the outset. Stay tuned!

• Metro enrolled 18,384 people in ORCA LIFT through September, and are 3% of all Metro boardings.
• Sound Transit hiring a transit planner.
• Pierce Transit considers a fare increase.
• Jarrett Walker tries to understand the other side.
• The full “Gridlocked” forum video is now online.
• ST seeking contractor for Lynnwood Link.
• Congress fighting over Positive Train Control; deadline slipping to 2018.
• Current Othello development deal now dead.
• Seatac may bus passengers to their planes.
• Seattle’s tax burden especially low, unless you’re poor.
• Community Transit’s lost-and-found inventory is awesome.

This is an open thread.

[Correction: SDOT says in an email the updated concept will have no bus priority east of 18th Avenue, with buses running in mixed traffic from 18th-MLK. The original post has been updated below.]

It’s been roughly six months since we last heard from the (newly funded!) Madison BRT project. Back in May, public feedback generally preferred center-running bus lanes, an MLK terminus, 3 stops downtown (1st, 3rd, 6th), two stops in First Hill (Boren, Boylston/Broadway), as well as a Madison/Spring couplet downtown to connect to University Street Station and Link.

SDOT and the consultant team spent the summer and early fall integrating this feedback with further technical analysis, and they are hosting an Open House at Seattle Public Library on November 16 to unveil their “Complete Concept Design.”

In a phone call yesterday, SDOT staff said that the Complete Concept Design will propose curbside bus lanes for the majority of the alignment, from 1st to 9th Avenues and again from 13th to 18th Avenues 13th Avenue to MLK, with a center-running section in First Hill for the 10-block stretch between 9th-13th Avenues and mixed traffic from 18th-MLK. This mixed profile alignment will likely require coaches with doors on both sides, with right boarding at curbside stops, island boarding on Spring Street outbound (where buses would use the left lane to avoid the I-5 mess), and left boarding on the center-running section. On the short section of Madison shared by both center-running BRT and curb-running Route 60, the latter would have its own stops in the general purpose lane.

Figuring out layover options has been tricky for the project team, due to public feedback that both preferred MLK as a terminus and objected to the best layover candidates on Arthur Place. In October SDOT took feedback on two options for the BRT terminus:

• Options 1A and 1B: This concept would have created two layover spaces on Madison Street in downtown, with a third layover space just off Madison/MLK, either on MLK or on Harrison St.  This would result in a split service pattern that would live loop two-thirds of buses in Madison Valley and live-loop every third bus downtown.
• Option 2: This concept would have extended the service deeper into Madison Valley, with a layover for all 3 coaches on the north side of Madison, just west of Lake Washington Boulevard above the Washington Park playfield.

SDOT staff now say that neither of these options will be carried forward, and that the open house will take feedback on a modified ‘Option 1C’.  In Option 1, the split service pattern would have added operational complexity in direct contradiction to the project goal of providing seamless, intuitive, reliable service. For example, inbound riders wanting the closest connection to Link at University Street Station would have had a 1-block walk on every third bus, with a 2.5 block walk on other buses. Meanwhile, Option 2’s extension to Lake Washington Boulevard would have added $2m in project costs and likely faced significant neighborhood opposition.

So Option 1C will attempt to find the necessary 3 layover spaces in the vicinity of MLK/Madison, with an added layover on Madison just west of MLK, in addition to using both locations identified in Options 1A and 1B.

For more details, to see maps of the latest concepts, and to ask questions of SDOT staff, please attend the open house on the 16th and make your voice heard.

When: Monday, November 16, 5-7pm
Where: Seattle Public Library, 1000 4th Avenue, 4th Floor, Room 1

In initial results posted last night, Seattle voters largely embraced the center-left urbanism of Mayor Murray, approving Move Seattle, retaining all 5 City Council incumbents, and easily beating anti-growth candidates such as Bill Bradburd. Happily, here at STB we are enjoying a 9-0 lead in our Council endorsements, though races may shift as more ballots come in. Here’s a roundup of the early returns.

Council Races

• In West Seattle’s District 1, Shannon Braddock has a narrow lead over Lisa Herbold, 53-47. Expect this race to tighten.
• In Southeast Seattle’s District 2, Bruce Harrell has a comfortable lead over Tammy Morales, 55-45. However, low voter registration and low turnout means that his nominal lead is small, just 889 votes.
• In Central Seattle’s District 3, Kshama Sawant opened a 52-47 lead that will surely grow as late ballots trickle in. Sawant’s 8,200 votes nearly exceed Harrell and Morales’ combined tally in District 2, giving you a sense of the imbalance in turnout between districts.
• In Northeast Seattle’s District 4, the win-win race between Rob Johnson and Michael Maddux tipped toward Johnson, 55-45.
• In North Seattle’s District 5, Debora Juarez handily beat Rev. Sandy Brown, 63-46.
• In Northwest Seattle’s District 6, incumbent Mike O’Brien had a tighter race than expected but still won easily, 58-40.
• In Downtown’s District 7, Sally Bagshaw faced no credible challenger, winning 80-20.
• In a heated at-large race in Position 8, incumbent Tim Burgess opened a 58-42 lead, a difference of 13,000 votes. Tho Grant did not concede and the final tally will be tighter, his likely insurmountable deficit is exactly double the one overcome by Sawant against Richard Conlin two years ago.
• In a sleepy race for at-large Position 9, Lorena Gonzalez easily dispatched Bill Bradburd, 76-23.

Move Seattle

Despite internal polling predicting doom that had election party attendees nervously nursing their beers, Move Seattle jumped out to a comfortable lead, 56-44. The Northgate Bridge is now fully funded. 7 more corridors will get bumped up to RapidRide standards. Half the Bicycle Master Plan is now funded on top of normal appropriations. Graham Street Station is still alive and kicking, though in need of more funds and more political persuasion. Routes to school all over town will be slower, safer, and more humanly scaled. Thank you to Seattle voters for being generous with your dollars and supportive of our mutual rights to a safer, saner city.

Community Transit Prop 1

In a race too close to call, Snohomish County voters within Community Transit’s tax district are approving Prop 1 by razor thin margins, 50.83% to 49.17%, just a 746 vote lead. This measure would build two more Swift BRT lines, create a frequent service network in Snohomish County, and prepare Community Transit to optimize for Link’s arrival in 2023.

I-1366

Tim Eyman’s $8B missile aimed at the state budget is regrettably passing, 54-46, with only King, Thurston, Jefferson, and San Juan counties opposing. The measure would cut the state sales tax from 6.5% to 5.5% unless the legislature puts before the voters a two-thirds threshold for raising taxes.

Other Races

• In King County Council Position 6, Bellevue Mayor Claudia Balducci beat incumbent Jane Hague handily, 60-40.
• Incumbent Snohomish County Executive John Lovick was beaten by Dave Somers, 57-42.
• In Mercer Island, Mayor Bruce Bassett fended off a challenge from anti Sound Transit and “Save Our Suburbs” founder Thomas Acker.
• In Burien, pro-transit newcomer Austin Bell has a mere 2 vote lead over Darla Green.

STB Election Podcast

As the results came in last night, Martin and Frank recorded their latest podcast. Tune in to hear Martin nearly perfectly predict the results.

What else interesting happened last night? Let us know in the comments.

Welcome to STB’s 2015 General Election Open Thread! We’ll be posting results as they come in (first drop is at 8pm), and we’ll be chiming in with additional commentary throughout the evening. We’ll also be sharing reactions on our Twitter feed using hashtag #seaelex.

5:00pm

• If you want to know where to celebrate and ‘network’ tonight (otherwise known as drinking), Seattlish has done the leg work to put together the full list. There are parties in every district in Seattle. You might see us at the Let’s Move Seattle party at the Belltown Pub starting at 7:00pm. Other STB endorsed candidates will be taking in the results from various pubs and community centers, including Shannon Braddock (Talarico’s), Kshama Sawant (Melrose Market Studios), Rob Johnson (Third Place), Debora Juarez (Seattle Drum School), Mike O’Brien (Peddler Brewing), Sally Bagshaw and Tim Burgess (together at Belltown Community Center), Lorena Gonzalez (Rendezvous), and Claudia Balducci.  (Bellevue Tutta Bella).

6:42pm

• King County elections expects its 8:15pm ballot drop to account for approximately 245,000 ballots, or about 20% of registered voters countywide. The turnout is the same for Seattle, with 85,000 out of 420,000 registered voters in tonight’s first drop.

6:46pm (Updated 8:48pm)

• If you want quick links to your favored races, start manically refreshing the following pages at 8:15pm.
  • Council District 1: Braddock 52, Herbold 46
  • Council District 2: Harrell 55, Morales 45
  • Council District 3: Sawant 52, Banks 47
  • Council District 4: Johnson 55, Maddux 45
  • Council District 5: Juarez 63, Brown 36
  • Council District 6: O’Brien 58, Weatbrook 40
  • Council District 7: Bagshaw 80, Zech-Artis 20
  • Council Position 8: Burgess 57, Grant 41
  • Council Position 9 Gonzalez 76, Bradburd 24
  • Move Seattle: 56 Yes, 44 No
  • Community Transit Prop 1: 51 Yes, 49 No
  • King County Council District 6: Balducci 59, Hague 40.
  • All Pierce County results
  • Statewide results

7:33pm

• Here’s the scene at the Move Seattle party, with the usual suspects in the house, including Dow, Cascade, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, TCC, and more. Lots of media too
• 

7:55pm

• No matter the results of Prop 1, Mayor Murray will speak at 8:30 from the Belltown Pub. We’ll post video shortly thereafter.

8:15 First Drop

• In initial results, Move Seattle is leading 56-44. Our council endorsements are sweeping the ticket, with Braddock, Harrell, Sawant, Johnson, Juarez, O’Brien, Bagshaw, Burgess, and Gonzalez all leading relatively comfortably.

8:30 Community Transit Now

• A nailbiter! Community Transit Prop 1 is leading by just 746 votes, or 50.83% in favor.