When most Seattleites saw the draft ST3 plan that Sound Transit released on Thursday, they were taken aback. 22 years to get to Ballard with a long section at-grade? 15 years to get to West Seattle? None of the other extensions we need? Seattleites were expecting more out of a $50 Billion dollar regional plan. Upon further review of the draft ST3 plan, however, Seattle Subway believes that we’re really not that far away from a plan Seattleites can get behind.
Here is how to fix it:
1. Expedite the construction of light rail in Seattle.
The biggest criticism of the proposed package that we’ve heard from Seattle voters and our supporters is the glacial pace of construction to Ballard and West Seattle. Sound Transit must do everything it can to expedite the construction of light rail in Seattle, including the elimination of projects that do not contribute the same benefits to mobility in Seattle. The line to Ballard is the single best project in the package, by every possible metric (Ridership per dollar? Check. Potential for Transit Oriented Development? Check. Potential for federal funding? Check.). Seattle voters will not support a package unless they will live to ride the rail.
2. Make Ballard to Downtown fully grade separated.
Once light rail is constructed at-grade, our city will be stuck with a flawed system, forever. Delays from our existing stretch of at-grade rail ripple throughout the system and limit the future capacity of rail through the Rainier Valley. All new light rail must be constructed with grade separation. This line, in particular, needs to be built to the highest quality possible. The high range ridership estimate for Ballard to downtown is 145,000 riders per day, which would mean:
-Ballard to Downtown’s daily ridership will be greater than the entire population of Bellevue.
-Ballard to Downtown’s daily ridership will be equivalent to the entire Portland MAX system.
3. Provide complete funding of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the extensions from Ballard to UW and from West Seattle to Burien, and add both lines as “provisional projects” if additional funding becomes available. Continue reading “How to Fix ST3 so Seattle Will Vote For It”
Now that Sound Transit has released its Draft System Plan – a 25 year, $50B behemoth that would build Link from Everett to West Seattle, Ballard to Tacoma, and Bellevue to Issaquah – it’s time for you to come out and provide feedback on project selection, project phasing, financing, and more. In addition to Sound Transit’s online survey, there are 7 public meetings scheduled for the last couple weeks of April, spread throughout ST’s 4-county service area. All meetings are 5:30-7:30pm, with the exception of the April 28 meeting at Union Station.
Recently the DC Metro, which has had its share of challenges over the last few years, was closed for an entire day for an impromptu safety inspection. During the outage someone tweeted this article from The Washingtonian about how bad things have gotten at the agency. Once the shining example of postwar US rail, the system is starting to fall apart, for reasons mechanical and political.
As we contemplate expanding Link here in the Puget Sound, let’s make sure we’re not repeating all of DC’s mistakes. For example, replace WMATA with Sound Transit and see if any of this rings a bell:
The first [structural problem] was the power-sharing compact among DC, Maryland, and Virginia. The hastily designed agreement creating WMATA handed control of the agency to political appointees from three jurisdictions (four, once the feds were added). The board reps aren’t required to have a background in transit—they just need to use Metro.
This didn’t hinder the agency much in the beginning, when Metro’s main job was to build new stations. But the arrangement became unwieldy after 2001, once the original build-out was complete. At that point, the agency had to transition from what was a de facto construction company to a rail operator. Officials were now tasked with the more mundane challenges of providing reliable, timely service along 103 miles of tracks. And parts of the infrastructure were already more than 30 years old.
Fortunately, Sound Transit taxes include dedicated operations and maintenance funding, something DC lacks. Still, it’s not hard to imagine a future where maintenance gets shafted in favor of new service:
The board generously supported other parts of WMATA. According to a 2010 report by former Metro GM David Gunn, then a consultant, government funds for the buses doubled and for handicap transit tripled from 2000 to 2009. During the same period, rail funding increased by only 12 percent.
It came down to politics, Gunn says: A board rep might not be able to get a new Metro station in his district—too costly—but could certainly swing a bus stop. “They stripped [funding] out of the rail system, and they had it go to the handicap services or to buses,” he says. “And they did that because those are politically positive things.”
While all this is happening, Metro is trying to become more of a late-night subway and less of a commuter system:
Unlike the previous proposal, the proposal would leave Routes 106 and 107 as is, with both positive outcomes (no cuts in Georgetown) and negative outcomes (foregone opportunity for improved connections between Renton and the Rainier Valley, which we’ve been advocating for in some form since 2012). The likely reasons for Renton’s omission are political simplicity and because including Renton would bring the new routes below the eligibility threshold for a Prop 1-funded boost. In a phone call yesterday, Metro staff noted a continued openness to a larger restructure if city funding partnerships emerge.
Instead, the scaled-back proposal would simply retain the raison d’être from the original proposal, namely the restoration of a direct connection between mid-MLK (in between Link stops) and the International District. The proposal would extend newly-minted Route 38 to the International District, but only on weekdays from approximately 6am-6:30pm. Evening and weekend trips would continue to terminate at Mount Baker Station as they do today. The extension would be paid for by cutting Route 9 back to peak-period, peak-direction only, which is how a majority of its riders use it today.
The 15-minute route would combine with Route 7 for 10 buses per hour along Rainier and Jackson, albeit at unavoidably uneven combined headways. Routes 7, 14, 38, and Link would combine for 18 services per hour between Mount Baker and the International District. The 38 would be far slower than Link but a tick faster than Route 7, retaining the express stop pattern of today’s Route 9.
During peak hours, savvy riders headed to ACRS or the Filipino Community Center would still often save time by using Link + Route 38 instead of Route 38 alone, as peak hours are when Link frequency is highest and bus reliability lowest. 6 minute Link headways and a 9-minute travel time to Mt Baker (average trip time of 12 minutes) compare favorably to 15-minute Route 38 headways with an 18-minute travel time (average trip time 25 minutes). Transfers between bus and train will be frequent but also suboptimal, as Metro doesn’t have the available funds to both extend Route 38 and offer frequencies to match Link.
In an ideal world we’d ease transfers by expediting the rebuild of Mt Baker, harmonize fares between agencies, reduce or eliminate the ORCA card fee, radically expand ORCA access, and then reinvest these service hours to provide 6-10 minute frequencies on Route 38 and extend it all the way to Renton. But lacking good movement on any of those issues, community advocacy for restoration of MLK-IDS bus service is more understandable. The opportunity costs are significant, but the new route would provide a simple, direct, and frequent connection for cash payers, those using paper transfers, or those for whom a second or third transfer is prohibitive.
Frank and Martin talk about Ulink opening for a bit, then shift to the ST3 draft plan. We take a detour through the sustainability of the suburban model and speculate about a low-carbon future. Finally, the Washington caucuses.
There is only one fare medium that allows you to get free transfers between Link Light Rail and buses: the One Regional Card for All (ORCA).
ORCA is a “smart card”, which you use by holding it flat against the reception area of an ORCA reader, until you hear a single beep. I keep my ORCA card in my wallet, and hold the wallet flat for a second on the ORCA reader, and it works just as if I took the card out.
The card allows 2-hour transfers, when using e-purse you loaded on your card, charging only the fare of the most expensive ride during that window, among trips on Link Light Rail, Metro buses, Seattle Streetcars, Sound Transit Express buses, Sounder trains, Community Transit buses, Everett Transit buses, Pierce Transit buses, Kitsap transit buses and water taxis, and King County Water Taxis. The day passes and monthly passes cover their face value for trips on all these services. For trips with fare higher than your pass’s face value, the difference is deducted from your e-purse.
Monthly passes generally cost $9 for each 25 cents of ride face value covered. Note that the ORCA card is not accepted on the Seattle Center Monorail, and passes are not accepted on Washington State Ferries, unless you buy a pass that is only for Washington State Ferries.
Still from KOMO’s 1975 documentary on the future of Seattle transportation.
If waiting until 2038 for a Ballard line has got you down, watch this 25-minute 1975 KOMO documentary on urban growth and transportation plans for Seattle. It surveys the current options for growth, what agencies might play a leading role, and ends with the emerging consensus for building the DSTT and the I-90 HOV lanes, both of which were still 15 years away.
The doc speaks glowingly of the planned community of Reston, VA, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary. San Francisco’s subruban-oriented BART, which was brand new at the time, is presented as a cautionary tale, with high operating costs and reliability issues (which have only gotten worse, it appears) wooshing people into the city from the suburbs without meaningfully addressing sprawl.
Seattle can’t get away from comparing itself to San Francisco, it seems. While we’re in the wayback machine, check out this 1992 New York Times piece by Timothy Egan on urban villages (via @bruteforceblog):
With its high real estate prices and low percentage of families with children, San Francisco is a city that has largely closed the door to middle-income residents, the Mayor said. “The worst thing that could happen to Seattle would be to become like San Francisco,” Mayor Rice said in an interview last week. By creating urban villages with schools and parks, and not just new apartments or condominiums, the Mayor said he hoped to attract families rather than single adults.”
While the Eastside has grown in the intervening 24 years, attitudes haven’t changed as much:
Still, even with the water threat, the plan has been well received east of Seattle, where the combined population of cities like Bellevue, Redmond and Issaquah will soon surpass that of Seattle, which has 516,000 people.
“This is the first time that a Seattle mayor has ever had the guts to stand up and accept the fact that the city has to accept its share of growth,” said Mayor Cary Bozeman of Bellevue, the largest of the cities surrounding Seattle. “Politically, it is very difficult to buck the no-growth, not-in-my-backyard neighborhood groups.”
One such group in North Seattle has attacked the Mayor’s plan as a blueprint for more crime and congestion. “I don’t buy that we have to accept all the growth,” said Cat Newsheller, a neighborhood leader, at a public hearing on the plan last week.
As of 2015, Seattle has an estimated 662,400 residents.
See Zach’s story from February on the troubles Tunnel Boring Machine Pamela had to overcome. TBM Brenda is closing in on hole-through at the receiving pit just north of UW Station.
One idea of how corner stores could fit into a residential zone.
An integral part of Seattle neighborhood history and appeal is quickly being lost. Corner stores were once a staple of neighborhood life in Seattle, and remain so in many of the most vibrant cities around the world. They speak of a time when community was tightly knit, people knew the names of their neighbors and local businessmen, and children were free to explore their streets. While there are fewer and fewer remaining examples, those that survive provide insight into the characteristics that make these buildings successful and how potential new uses could enliven community life.
History
The Wallingford neighborhood inventory from the late 1970’s states that “There are many street corner grocery stores scattered throughout the community, serving as neighborhood meeting places.” The historic Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps confirm this distribution, as these buildings are easily identifiable due to their lack of setback. In describing neighborhood stores, the Wallingford inventory says, “unpretentious owner operated corner groceries of various architectural styles add color and serve as foci for neighborhood identity.” Since that time, pressure from larger chain stores has overwhelmed small businesses and zoning restrictions have prevented the replacement of these buildings, within single-family zones.
One of two non-conforming corner store buildings in Wallingford’s Single Family Zone, 53rd and Woodlawn Ave.
Imagine if you could walk to work, or to the store to pick up groceries? Ride your bike with your children to their daycare, or pick up locally made holiday gifts from the boutique right around the corner? What if just doing the errands meant you’d run into a neighbor or friend who was happy to see you? Continue reading “We’re Losing Character in Single Family Zones”
