If you want a chance to ride ULink’s inaugural train on March 19th, with a “Golden Ticket” commemorative ORCA card to go with it, a reminder that the the deadline to enter is today, February 29. The easiest way to enter is via social media; simply like/follow Sound Transit on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and share a photo or video using #ULink2016 and you’ll be entered to win. For more info, see ULink2016.org.
Two New Services for ORCA LIFT Tuesday; Other Fare Increases
On the first birthday of the ORCA LIFT (low-income fare) program, this coming Tuesday, March 1, low-income fares will go live on two more services:
($1.50 in-county,
$2.75 inter-county)
($2.50 to $4.25,
based on distance)
.
It took 30 years for Kitsap Transit’s low-income fare program, started in 1985, to be adopted elsewhere. Martin proposed the idea of a low-income ORCA card for King County Metro back in 2010. A coalition of transit and social justice advocacy groups, now known as Transit for All, got together and sent a joint letter to the King County Council in late 2012, asking for such a program. The County Council unanimously created the Low Income Fare Options Advisory Committee, which issued its report in June 2013. The council then created the Low Income Fare Implementation Task Force, which issued its report in August 2014. The council formally adopted the low-income fare program in its 2015 budget, and the program was given the name ORCA LIFT.
On March 1 of 2015, the ORCA LIFT card went live, and was honored on six different services:
Continue reading “Two New Services for ORCA LIFT Tuesday; Other Fare Increases”
Save Pronto, Then Make It Work Better as Transit
Back in 2012 I wrote a skeptical piece about the prospects for Pronto (née Puget Sound Bike Share) in Seattle. I saw our dearth of safe bicycle facilities and rare all-ages helmet law, alongside the traditional complaints of hills and weather, as potentially fatal to the confident spontaneity that drives bikeshare ridership. Though some of my fears proved unfounded – Pronto safety hasn’t been an issue – other even greater problems have depressed ridership and revenue and led to an early crisis and possible demise. Absent a city buyout, Pronto risks shutting down on March 31.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee will vote tomorrow (Tuesday, 3/1) on whether to proceed with a $1.4m buyout of the system. The proposal before the Council would purchase Pronto’s privately-held capital assets, namely the remaining 26 stations it doesn’t already own, maintenance and fleet rebalancing equipment, helmet vending equipment, etc. The City would retain the current contract operator (Motivate) for the remainder of 2016, and then restructure the system for relaunch and significant expansion in 2017. The $1.4m would incur no new costs, but rather incur lost opportunity costs by transferring 28% of the $5m already allocated in the City’s budget for bikeshare expansion. Failing to purchase the system would also trigger repayment of a $1.0m FTA grant, so the net outlay here is $400,000, or roughly what King County Metro spends every 2.5 hours.
If you believe, as I do, that Pronto’s problems lie in its execution rather than any systemic inability for Seattle to embrace bikeshare, then saving it is an essential first step toward building the successful system we know is possible. If you believe in Pronto’s ultimate success, shutting the system down only to inevitably relaunch at a later date at much greater cost would be incredibly foolish. If you agree, please let your committee members (O’Brien, Johnson, Sawant, and Herbold) hear from you today.
My Top 5 ways to fix Pronto after the jump. Continue reading “Save Pronto, Then Make It Work Better as Transit”
Sunday Open Thread: Fixing Rainier
Podcast Listener Mailbag #1
For our next podcast, which will air sometime next week, Frank and I plan to select some questions from readers. So if there’s any subject you’d like us to discuss or questions you’d like us to answer, put it in the comments below before Sunday evening and we’ll consider if we have anything remotely interesting to say about it.
Expensive Land Means Expensive Houses
Daniel Hertz, writing at City Observatory:
Land costs are also part of why yearning for the old days of moderate-cost bungalows is unproductive. A century ago, in most cities, it was possible to find relatively cheap land within commuting distance of downtown—partly because the invention of streetcars had just radically expanded the definition of “commuting distance”—so if you could build a house cheaply, you might end up with a relatively low-cost home. But as cities grow, and especially as their metropolitan economies grow, there’s more and more people competing for a fixed amount of land within easy commuting distance of job centers. As a result, the price of easily accessible locations—that is, land—increases substantially. At that point, it doesn’t really matter so much if you can build a home very cheaply, because the cost of the land it sits on will ensure that the total price of construction will be very high.
We’ve made very little progress in the last 100 years in reducing commute times. Every time we get a new transportation technology (i.e. cars) we burn up the time savings building more sprawl. Long live Marchetti’s Constant. But now that we’ve hit the limits of sprawl, we’re just spending more time in traffic.
It’s becoming cliche to note that 65% of Seattle’s land is off limits to development (zoned for single-family homes and parks). Some percentage of the remaining 35% is presumably already developed to the zoning limit. That means all the city’s growth has to happen in the small fraction that remains. Intensive development + small amount of buildable land = high land prices. Some may lament that new housing is only built for the top end of the market, but when land prices are high and height limits are low, expensive houses are really all that can be built. And yet the developer, not the landowner, receives the bulk of the public’s ire.
Municipalities try to ameliorate the expensive housing with subsidies, but the cost of land eats through scarce government funds. San Francisco, for example, is planning to spend almost $900,000 per apartment to build affordable housing in the Mission because of high land costs.
The simplest answer is to build more densely where the land is cheaper, i.e. in single-family neighborhoods. Instead, current city policy encourages people to tear down single family homes and replace them with even larger, more expensive single family homes, which seems like the opposite of making things more affordable. The “charming” old bungalows are going away one way or another, the only question is what they get replaced with.
What “Early Wins” Could Look Like for Sound Transit 3
During institutional comment on Sound Transit 3, Seattle strongly asked for “early wins” that would show near-term value for Sound Transit 3. The intent of the request seems to be twofold: to chip away at today’s myriad transportation needs and also to incentivize additional ‘yes’ votes on the eventual ballot measure. Yesterday at the Sound Transit Board, Planning, Environment, and Project Development (PEPD) Director Ric Ilgenfritz and PEPD Development Manager Karen Kitsis briefed boardmembers on the types of projects Sound Transit would be willing and/or able to expedite. Staff cautioned the Board that given the likely length of the package, early spending disproportionately reduces later spending due to inflation, so care must be taken to strike a balance between showing quick value to the public and delivering the full investment promised at the ballot. So what could be on the table?
“Pre-rail” improvements. Those within the advocacy community worried about ST3 funds being shortsightedly used for new bus operations can likely breathe easy, as staff stressed that any projects must fit within Sound Transit’s statutory mission of delivering high capacity transit. So while we won’t see Sound Transit making Prop 1-style frequency additions to Metro for RapidRide C and D, Sound Transit did indicate a willingness to pay for capital improvements to bus corridors selected for rail. For Ballard and West Seattle, for example, this could include mean an ST3 contribiution towards extending and improving bus lanes in Interbay or on the Waterfront, adding better transit signal priority (TSP) for Rapid Ride, and other rechannelization type efforts.
Infill stations. Staff noted that the infill stations on the Candidate Project list are all within ST2 corridors, enabling their construction prior to any further ST3 Link extensions. Potential locations include Graham Street, Boeing Access Road, N 130th St, and SW 220th St in Lynnwood. Graham and BAR could be finished in just a few years, and 130th and/or 220th could open on Day 1 of Lynnwood Link in 2023. But again, the Board would have to explicitly prioritize them.
Expedited BRT Projects. There are a number of bus-based improvements ST could expedite. SR 522 BRT could be scheduled early to ensure it opens at the same time as 145th Street Station, ST could pay for shoulder-hardening on I-5 and I-405 to allow more transit access, and I-405 BRT could be phased with some early projects.
Access improvements. Staff indicated that many of the small capital projects in the Candidate Project List could be completed early, including new parking garages, bike parking expansions, and Sounder platform extensions.
Technology improvements. This category could include full real-time arrival info at all Central Link stations (currently unfunded), mobile ticketing, NFC payment, and/or expediting the development of ORCA 2.
Three on Housing: Walkability, Taxes, and ADUs
MRN’s almost ready in Ballard #seattlenewconstruction #seattlerealestate #mrnhomes
A photo posted by Kelly Deen Morse (@seattlenewconstruction) on
A few interesting articles on housing and land use caught my eye recently. First up, Nick Fitzpatrick in Forbes:
An Axiometrics study of two metropolitan areas – Dallas and the San Francisco Bay Area — showed that the submarkets with the highest-ranking Walk Score in the market tend to have the highest average rent per unit. Though correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, high Walk Scores seem to be in high demand.
Walkable neighborhoods are popular. We should build more of them! Next up, Roger Rudick in Streetsblog, drawing attention to a huge plot of undeveloped land right next to a CalTrain station:
The problem, said Levin, boils down to the fact that the station and the adjacent land is located outside of the San Francisco limits, in the City of Brisbane, population 4,282 as of the 2010 census. Developers would like to add enough mixed-use, transit oriented development to double the population of Brisbane. But Levin said the city council doesn’t want that–and has pushed for office parks and retail that, she said, might provide more tax revenue. “It’s still partially a Proposition 13 mindset” which puts sharp limits on how much residential property taxes can increase.
Residential property taxes in California are so low, nobody wants to build more housing. Instead, the idea is to build more office parks and hope some other municipality coughs up the housing units. It’s NIMBY-ism at the the city level. Finally, closer to home, Dan Bertolet, in his new gig at Sightline, looks at one of my favorite topics, backyard cottages (ADUs):
Myriad regulatory barriers currently litter the law books of Cascadian cities, clogging the ADU pipeline. Vancouver’s success in building more than 26,000 ADUs has been all about undoing those restrictions. Starting in the late 1980s, the city legalized thousands of existing, but illegal, ADUs. Over time, it eliminated the most counterproductive barriers.
I’ve been kinda meh on backyard cottages as a scalable housing solution because of all the regulatory barriers Dan enumerates. But if the HALA plan succeeds in removing those barriers, ADUs could certainly put a dent in our housing shortage.
News Roundup: Close to Launch
[Update 11:30am: WSDOT responded that the MyNorthwest link reporting Good2Go identity theft is a 2013 issue that has been resolved. We’ve uploaded WSDOT’s full statement here.]
- I-405 HOT lanes saving bus riders an average of 7 minutes during peak.
- Othello Station is my favorite in terms of food available.
- Mason Transit GM resigns under a cloud.
- Way too much green in UW’s West Campus vision.
- 46 units, 15 parking spaces coming to Beacon Hill.
- 55 units, 13 parking spaces on Capitol Hill.
- With no interested tenants, the third floor of King Street Station will become an arts exhibition space.
- Metro is surveying Capitol Hill bus riders.
- The headline says “war on cash”, but actually Trimet is rolling out a smart card and will consider mild measures to discourage cash fares way down the line.
- Ugh. Cascades to allow pets on some trips ($).
- Mayor offers $650,000 directly to 23rd Ave businesses affected by construction.
- O’Brien and Johnson will join the PSRC Executive board.
- Yet another WSDOT GoodToGo tolling disaster; this time, identity theft. [See update above.]
- ORCA LIFT applies to ST Express and Sounder starting Tuesday.
- BMW’s carshare service is close to launch.
- California HSR will now open the Bakersfield-San Jose segment first, in 2025.
- WSDOT wants your help improving their website.
This is an open thread.
I-405: More Lanes, and Worse
In the race to pander to people that object to any genuine escape from congestion, Jay Inslee’s latest entry is more of the same old thinking ($):
He is advocating two projects:
• Adding a lane on I-405 at Highway 520 to Northeast 70th Place in Kirkland, where it would become an exit-only lane. Costs might range from $5 million to $30 million, based on noise reduction and fish-protection needs.
• Strengthening the right shoulder of northbound I-405 in Bothell for use as a general lane beginning at Highway 527 and ending as an exit-only lane onto Interstate 5 at Lynnwood. It would open to traffic only in peak times, and at speeds far below the usual 60 mph freeway limit, as announced previously by tolling director Patty Rubstello. Costs could range from $30 million to $50 million.
The bottleneck on I-405 used to be in Kirkland. The addition of new lanes did what highway expansions always do: it simply moved the bottleneck around, in this case to the 522 interchange. So now Gov. Inslee wants to double down on this with further quasi-widening. The outcome is predictable: the added volume will simply create bottlenecks elsewhere, either on I-5 or on the arterials that feed 405. Adding an exit lane in Kirkland will simply bring the congestion back to Kirkland. Drivers who use the old bottleneck will benefit, and drivers that use the new bottleneck will be worse off. There will be calls for more asphalt, and the cycle repeats.
Not to be outdone, presumptive Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Bryant “bested” Inslee’s knee-jerk highway widening by proposing to force the buses back in congestion:
Opponents including GOP challenger Bill Bryant are seizing on toll snafus in an effort to weaken the incumbent. Bryant called for “freeing 405’s HOT lane” by converting one of the two special lanes each direction into a general traffic lane, then allowing two-person carpools into the only toll lane for free. That would likely unravel the toll program, as there wouldn’t be much room left for toll payers to join the bus-carpool lane.
After applying the Bryant plan, the I-405 project would ultimately simply add a general-purpose lane and leave buses and vanpools in status quo congestion. As always, we’re only an election away from squashing the region’s halting progress towards good BRT.