Month: December 2015

Last Week Heidi Groover described the 2016 committee assignments under incoming Council President Bruce Harrell. These committees are the figures that do the most to shape legislation in their subject areas. Of most interest to STB readers are Sustainability and Transportation, which manages Seattle’s bus service purchases, Move Seattle implementation, and Seattle’s rights of way; Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability, which handles zoning; and the new “Affordable Housing, Neighborhoods, and Finance,” whose exact relationship to PLUS is not yet clear . Each committee has a chair, vice-chair, member, and alternate, listed respectively below.

Sustainability and Transportation (formerly “Transportation”):

Old: Tom Rasmussen, Mike O’Brien, Jean Godden, Nick Licata.

New: Mike O’Brien, Rob Johnson, Kshama Sawant, Lisa Herbold.

My Take: A big improvement. Jean Godden acted like the former Times columnist she was, skeptical of transportation taxes and anything that reduced the primacy of car access. Licata and Rasmussen are both big bus fans, skeptical of rail, and cranky about different things; Rasmussen turned out to be more obstructionist, but both were on-side when the big decisions came down. All three were, of course, Deep Bore Tunnel supporters.

We expect Rob Johnson , former head of TCC and longtime friend of the blog, to be an absolute rock star. Sawant and (likely) Herbold share Licata’s agitation over regressive taxes, but recognize that it’s better than no revenue at all. We expect them both to not be huge improvements, but mildly less representative of old Seattle and therefore of easy and cheap driving, everywhere, any time.

So the whole committee gets considerably younger (which likely changes their outlook in a positive way) and adds one bona fide rock star.

Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability

Old: Mike O’Brien, Tim Burgess, Nick Licata, Sally Clark/John Okamoto

New PLUS: Rob Johnson, Mike O’Brien, Lisa Herbold, Lorena Gonzalez

New “Affordable Housing, Neighborhoods, and Finance” Committee: Burgess, Herbold, Johnson, O’Brien.

My Take: This is hard to read because there are two committees that cover the biggest fault line in Seattle’s progressive politics: between upzoning and affordable housing incentives.* So perhaps it’s best to view this as Licata being (in more ways than one) replaced by Herbold, Tim Burgess with Rob Johnson (one great urbanist to another), and then the Clark/Okamoto seat filled by a Burgess/Gonzalez platoon. People perceive Gonzalez as a Murray ally and she endorsed HALA without reservation, which is good. And of course the two committee chairs are the two I’d pick for land use stuff. So at the margins there ought to be a bit of an improvement.

This isn’t a set of committee members that will intentionally blow up HALA, but it could try to chip away at some of the pro-growth developer provisions at bit. In particular I can see the PLUS committee finding excuses to softpedal upzones.

* Setting aside the other fault line between pro-growth people and NIMBYs, where every returning member and Herbold have seen fit to side against upzones on occasion.

Last week, County Executive Dow Constantine transmitted an ordinance to the King County Council containing proposed changes to Metro’s Strategic Plan and Service Guidelines.  These are a big deal for King County bus riders; they will shape how Metro service evolves over the next decade or so.  There is a lot to digest in the documents.  We have spent the usual quality time reviewing them, and I spoke last week with Metro Deputy General Manager Victor Obeso and Supervisor of Strategic Planning Chris O’Claire about some of the most important proposals.

We have covered the history of the Service Guidelines and Strategic Plan on a few occasions.  In short, their 2011 adoption by the King County Council replaced an ad hoc planning process often driven by individual Councilmembers’ wishes with public, verifiable criteria for planning service additions, reductions, and restructures.  Executive Constantine rightly wrote in his transmittal letter that the Guidelines helped “make the transit system more efficient and better focused on the county’s most important public transportation needs.”  The Plan and Guidelines represent exactly the type of political guidance that the Council and Executive should be providing to Metro’s professional staff.  This sort of guidance is entirely different from interference with micro-level planning decisions.  It’s essential to ensure that the Metro system reflects the values and preferences of King County’s voters and taxpayers and remains accountable.

A bit more about the process underlying the recommendations is after the jump.  First, the major headline recommendations:

Revise the categories of routes used for Service Guidelines analysis.  Currently, routes are divided into two categories: “serves Seattle core” and “does not serve Seattle core.”  All routes that touch downtown, the U-District, SLU, Ballard, or certain other dense neighborhoods are in “serves Seattle core,” regardless of whether they are core all-day routes, suburban peak expresses, or infrequent coverage routes.  The proposal would scrap these two categories and replace them with “urban,” “suburban,” and “alternative service” categories, based on the areas the routes primarily serve.

Provide special protection for peak-only services.  Service Guidelines Task Force members felt that Metro’s September 2014 cuts, and proposed further cuts that did not occur, exacted too heavy a toll on peak-only services.  The proposed changes would protect peak-only services that enjoy either a travel time or ridership advantage over all-day alternatives from the first round of future reductions.

Revise criteria used in corridor analysis.  There are a number of different changes included in this bucket, with the most significant being 1) a change in the definition of “low-income” used in setting target service levels from 100% to 200% of the federal poverty level (for a family of three $20,090 annually), and 2) inclusion of park-and-rides together with other types of ridership generators.  Metro’s Ms. O’Claire estimated that all of the corridor-analysis changes would significantly increase the amount of new service recommended under the Guidelines, by approximately 250,000 hours over today’s recommendation of 471,650 additional hours.

More below the jump.

Continue reading “Changes to Metro’s Strategic Plan and Service Guidelines”

Last week I described the overall goals for the RapidRide program. Today I’ll look at all the corridors themselves.  Keep in mind that everything described here comes from the Transit Master Plan addendum and represents early-stage ideas.  This will all be refined through community input as these routes are designed and implemented over the next seven years.  Overall, though, the 2015 addendum includes more aggressive use of exclusive lanes than the original 2011 TMP.  There is also mention of center-running bus lanes on every route, raising the possibility of buses with left-hand doors.  It’s quite possible that within 10 years the majority RapidRide routes could require left-door buses.

First, though, a brief taxonomy of bus lanes, for those who might need a refresher.

• Center-running bus lanes are preferable: buses can’t get stuck in traffic or blocked by right-turning cars. the downside is that they require median bus stops (typically on wider streets) and often require special buses with left-side doors. They also mean taking lanes from cars and are so the most controversial and expensive.  The TMP generally refers to these as “transit lanes.” They are orange in the maps below.
• Business Access and Transit (BAT) lanes are bus only-lanes that cars can enter to make turns into side streets or businesses. They are yellow in the maps below.
• Peak-only BAT lanes may allow parking outside of rush hour, or may only operate into downtown.  This can be problematic for reverse-peak trips.  Thankfully these are kept to a minimum.  They are magenta in the maps below.
• General Purpose lanes, sometimes referred to as “mixed traffic”, are used by all modes.  Buses can still benefit with bus bulbs, which allow the bus to stop without moving out of the lane (SDOT is planning bus bulbs for all RapidRide+ corridors).  They are black in the maps below.

In general, more exclusive the lane, the faster the bus can go.  Now, on to the corridors…

Continue reading “RapidRide+: The Corridors”

SDOT dropped the Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA) for Madison BRT on Friday.  The outreach phase, which included surveys and public comment,  showed that the public valued transit reliability and pedestrian safety.  Speed of autos and parking were low on the list, so good on everyone who showed up and commented.

There’s nothing too surprising in the report for those who’ve been paying attention. This tracks with what we’ve heard in the open houses.  More dedicated lanes East of 18th would have been useful. Alas, it was not to be. Parking spaces will remain East of 22nd (despite ample parking underneath Safeway and presumably the other new developments as well).

Here are the highlights:

• A western terminal at 1st Avenue, shared with the Center City Connector
• Eastbound operation on Spring between 1st Avenue and 9th Avenue
• Stations near I-5 at both 5th Avenue and 8th Avenue
• Center-running transit-only lanes from 9th Avenue to 15th Avenue
• An eastern terminal at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way

BAT lanes will be provided from 15th to 18th.

The LPA will be submitted to council in 2016.  Design will happen in 2016 and 2017, and, pending federal grant funding, the line will open in 2019.

Metro announced today that, as part of the U-Link restructure scheduled for March 2016, it will change route 10 to use John St and Olive Wy, rather than Pine St, between 15th Ave E and Bellevue Ave E.  The change comes in response to concerns that the previous final restructure plan, as modified by Metro after turns at 19th Ave and Madison St proved unworkable, did not provide enough connectivity to Capitol Hill Station and removed service between the dense Summit neighborhood and downtown.

We advocated for the change, but were hardly alone.  Lots of people independently suggested it, and it played prominently in many different discussions of the restructure.  While it’s not perfect — it compromises north-south connectivity within Capitol Hill and may result in some overcrowding on route 11 — the change will improve connections to Link and preserve service for the many downtown riders in Summit.  Metro should be commended for its flexibility in implementing this change at the very last minute.

It is that time of year again, to pay attention to the special holiday week schedules at King County Metro, along with holiday and holiday eve service reductions on other agencies around the region.

King County Metro will run a UW Reductions schedule, cancelling designated trips on routes 31, 32, 48, 65, 67, 68, 75, 167, 197, 271, 277, 331, 372, and 373 Monday through Wednesday of Christmas Week.

Christmas Eve and Monday, December 28 through New Year’s Eve, Metro will continue running a UW Reductions schedule, along with a Reduced Weekday schedule, cancelling routes 114, 192, 201, 237, 304, 308, 316, 330, 355, Group Health Express, and 930, and cancelling designated trips on routes 31, 32, 48, 65, 67, 68, 75, 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, 197, 212, 214, 218, 219, 232, 242, 244, 249, 252, 255, 269, 271, 277, 303, 311, 312, 331, 342, 372, 373, 907, and 931.

Service levels for the various transit agencies around the region for Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day are below the fold.
Continue reading “Holiday Service Reductions Start Monday”

For a city that prides itself on its green reputation, it may surprise you to learn that only 1 in 4 Seattle households lives near frequent transit, where the bus or train comes every 10 minutes or less.  That’s not King County, mind you…. that’s within the city limits.  If we’re going to get more people out of their cars, we’ll need to put more frequent transit service closer to where people live.

Fortunately, Seattle DOT has a plan to do just that.  With money from last fall’s Let’s Move Seattle levy along with 2014’s Prop. 1, SDOT envisions a world where 72% of Seattle households are within walking distance of 10-minute transit service by 2025, almost triple the number today.

A key piece of that agenda is expanding the city’s RapidRide network, which Move Seattle called “RapidRide+.”  What is RapidRide+?  How is it better than today’s RapidRide? And how will it put frequent transit near the front doors of 3 in 4 Seattle residents?  Today we’ll look at the system all-up, and then tomorrow we’ll look at the individual corridors.

Continue reading “An Introduction to RapidRide+”

• Toll lanes successful ($) in providing a congestion-free commute; it turns out people value their time, and transit benefits. So of course some legislators want to repeal them, partly because almost 25,000 people have signed a petition to end the tolls and restore HOV 3+ to HOV 2+.
• Growth advocates accuse Mike O’Brien of introducing a neighborhood veto into upzones of the existing HALA bargain, at least allowing them to change the upzones from “zone-wide” to something more uneven.
• SDOT rolls out project list to get South Lake Union ready for the C Line.
• The Urbanist wants to move the Green Line down to Denny St.
• Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize in Seattle, pending inevitable lawsuits. Legislation passes 8-0 (Bagshaw absent), Mayoral signature both irrelevant and not forthcoming.
• Shoreline City Council discusses Metro’s long range plan for the city (video starts at 59:00).
• Mercer Island does the right thing, rejects ban on dividing lots ($).
• Uncharacteristically informative Seattle Times editorial ($) asks questions about the Convention Place deal: is it a good one financially for Metro?
• The Everett Herald argues forcefully for Link to Paine Field.

This is an open thread.