Month: May 2016

There is a certain type of anti-transit writer whose perspective can be summarized as: “For every agency proposal n, the agency should instead do n-1.” When rail proposals are on the table, such writers often make substantive and seemingly pro-transit arguments for bus rapid transit (BRT) as a superior alternative for less capital cost. When BRT proposals are advanced, their arguments generally shift to either a defense of the sufficiency of traditional bus service, or to a more transparently anti-transit stance that focuses on impacts to general traffic.

In Spokane, the city is set to go it alone the Spokane Transit Authority (STA) is set to try again this fall after voters defeated a larger regional proposal by less than 700 votes last April, asking voters to raise the sales tax by .2% to fund transit improvements including the Central City Line. To many efficiency-minded conservatives, Spokane should be a model case; for years it has studied a higher-capacity transit service connecting its urban western districts (such as Browne’s Addition) with downtown and its University District (serving WSU-Spokane, Spokane Community College, and Gonzaga). The agency has dismissed light rail and streetcar options as prohibitively expensive, and has a solid plan for an electric trolleybus alternative that would carry 900,000 riders per year. What’s not to like?

Plenty, if you’re someone like the CATO Institute’s Randall O’Toole. Writing in the Spokesman Review, O’Toole describes the project as a deliberate waste of taxpayer dollars intended solely to win federal grants: Continue reading “For Anti-Transit Writers, the Answer is “Always Less”: Spokane Edition”

Last week we wrote about technical problems delaying analysis of the First Hill Streetcar’s ridership. With the Automatic Passenger Counters (APCs) data transmission process broken, SDOT staff had noted that March ORCA data showed 50,000 boardings, or roughly 1,600 per day (though higher on weekdays and lower on weekends, of course).

Yesterday SDOT’s Norm Mah sent us updated APC data for the past 30 days, April 14-May 14, indicating that the data problem has been fixed.

The past 30 days have seen roughly 75,000 boardings, or 50% higher than the March ORCA-based count. The large difference is likely best explained by a combination of genuine growth, U-Link induced transfers, and a seemingly high rate of non-ORCA use (both via fare evasion and paper ticket purchasing).

A couple other things to note from the chart below. Sunday ridership is quite low, but it actually performs as well as Saturday ridership on a per-service-hour basis, as the streetcar operates a 20-hour (5am-1am) service span on Saturdays but only a 10-hour span on Sunday (10am-8pm). Second, the low May 1 ridership was due to suspension of service at 1pm due to May Day police activity. Finally, the recent free ridership promotions on Thursdays do seem to induce ridership, as the two highest ridership days in this data window were May 5 and May 12.

• Gubernatorial candidate Bill Bryant (still!) opposes light rail on I-90, thinks WSDOT is too focused on transit (!).
• Kirkland leaders present their updated vision for ST3 and beyond.
• Sumner Sounder garage close to final approval.
• Mercer Island, building its case for least environmentally conscious city in the region, considers downzoning ($) around its light rail station.
• Seattle Times freaks out ($) over Sound Transit marketing expenses.
• Tacoma’s Stadium District growing fast.
• Seattle City Council asks ST to consider a tunnel in West Seattle.
• 71 units, 20 parking spaces proposed for SW Avalon Way.
• SR520 bridge completion is finally in sight.

This is an open thread.

Beginning next Monday, May 23, the Yesler Way bridge over 4th avenue will close for up to 16 months for a $20 million structural and seismic renovation, funded jointly by Move Seattle’s predecessor (Bridging the Gap) and by a Federal Highway Administration “Historic Bridge Replacement” grant.

The 1910 y-shaped steel structure is Seattle’s oldest bridge, covering Yesler Way from 3rd-5th avenues and Terrace Street from 4th to 5th Avenue. The desire to preserve the historic steel facades adds both to the timeline and to the cost, and after rehabilitation the bridge will look much like it does today.

Regrettably, Metro and the City have declined to fund the addition of trolley wire on Yesler, despite the closure being a perfect opportunity for concurrent construction. The Yesler trolley wire project was included in the original draft of Move Seattle, then dropped in later revisions without public explanation. Moving routes 3 and 4 to Yesler would allow riders to skip the interminable and unfixable jams on James Street, and make use of the precious commodity that Yesler offers, namely a street over I-5 immune from freeway queueing. We’ve also opined about other changes such a project would enable, such as moving Route 40 to serve South Lake Union, First Hill, and possibly Cherry Hill.

In terms of transit impacts, the closure will primarily affect Route 27 and routes that use the Terrace/5th pathway to access the I-5 Express Lanes, including Community Transit routes 412, 413, 416, 421, 425, 435 and Metro routes 304 and 355. Additional full closures of 4th Avenue on select nights and weekends will also affect Sound Transit routes 510, 511, 512, 545 and 594.

Continue reading “Yearlong Yesler Closure Begins Monday”

The King County Council unanimously approved Metro’s September service change at its meeting Monday afternoon.

Public testimony is from 36:17-51:35 of the video. Debate and action on the item is at 1:07-1:10 in the video.

A line-up of eight speakers from various Asian immigrant communities testified in favor of proposed route 106, which creates a one-seat ride between Renton, Skyway, MLK Way, Rainier, and Jackson. Among their concerns and reasons for wanting a one-seat ride were the lack of sufficient shelter at transfer bus stops, safety, and avoiding jay-running to catch connections.

A couple points they raised were outside what the restructure accomplishes. One speaker mentioned Harborview Medical Center as a desired destination. Another talked about having more frequency along MLK Way.

Bruce Kelly, Principal of Raisbeck Aviation High School, testified on the utility of more frequency on route 124, which will be upgraded to 15-minute headway during weekdays. The school has 10 students and one staffer who ride route 124, and some of them have tardiness problems resulting from taking the bus.

County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove said, “I was particularly struck [by testimony from Tukwila] about the value of increasing the frequency of route 124.” Route 124 has been toward the top of the list of routes needing frequency investment in Metro’s annual Service Guidelines reports.

Councilmember Claudia Balducci said “It was really important to do all the updates that the community had been asking for.”

The council then passed the service change unanimously.

Knute Berger recently wrote a great piece on the current state of Seattle media:

But even The Stranger, known for its criticism of the Blethen-family-owned Times, has concerns about what’s happening media-wise in this town. We are losing something with the twilight of the old media, like real journalism. Stranger Publisher Tim Keck tells me the “Seattle Times, a severely damaged publication, does more for our city in a day than Yelp and Craigslist (to pick up a couple of brands that have been around for a while) have done in their lifetimes.” In other words, surviving is one thing, but operating with a real news commitment and resources is something else. Seattle needs that more than ever, and not every new media iteration is going to fill that gap. “Cities are humans’ greatest invention. Cities don’t work without good local media,” says Keck.

Collectively, the local media are crowdsourcing a solution. New partnerships, experiments, cutbacks, all are the order of the day, but as yet there is no single answer to how to improve and grow substantive local news in the new media environment. Change, says Keck, is not just a reality, but has to become part of a media entity’s brand — the expected thing, not the resisted one. “The stakes are high, and local media has to figure it out,” he says.

Here at Seattle Transit Blog, we’re running our own experiment. Our theory is that if we put out quality, original reporting with deep expertise in a specific subject matter, we can build a community that will support a sustainable journalistic enterprise.  In just the last month, Zach’s met with everyone from ST staff, to activists, to elected officials, and reported from 5 public meetings.  We couldn’t do any of that last year.

You, our readers, are part of our experiment. It will only work if we hear from you.  We’re almost halfway to our goal of 100 new donors.  To put that in perspective, that’s fewer people than visited our site in the last hour.  Will you be one of them? A few bucks is all it takes.  If you’re feeling generous, remember that a printed version of Oran’s beautiful Seattle Transit Map is available to those who give $150 or $12/month.  If that’s more than you can swing right now, even just $10 is greatly appreciated. To those who have given, thank you! To those who are considering it, I can’t stress enough that whatever you can give is valuable.

Make a donation or click on the donate button above.  Seattle Transit Blog is a 501(c)4; donations are not tax-deductible.

a fascinating documentary from 50 years ago about the engineering and development of BART. They literally reinvented the wheel.

In a win for efficiency, operational speed, and regulatory simplicity, beginning today all Rapid Ride lines will allow 24/7 all-door boarding. Until today, the lines have reverted from proof-of-payment to traditional front door boarding after 7pm, causing unnecessary complexity and confusion for riders.

The change comes after Metro management polled operators about the proposal, with the results coming back in favor of the change.

Metro’s blog post below the jump…

Continue reading “Rapid Ride Gets 24/7 All-Door Boarding”

At Thursday’s meeting of Sound Transit’s Capital Committee, staff updated boardmembers on both the latest concepts for expediting ST3 project delivery and modifications to the ST3 financial plan. It was an excellent and substantive conversation, and we’ll post video when it becomes available. CEO Peter Rogoff’s presentation on project delivery was a particularly good primer on how projects are developed and delivered in our region, one we’ll likely come back to again and again.

But the big news came later during a presentation on the financial plan, when ST’s Ric Ilgenfritz and CFO Brian McCartan led the committee through a discussion of subarea equity. While Sound Transit normally allocates project costs to the five regional subareas (Snohomish, North King, East King, South King, and Pierce) based on a determination of the proportional benefits that accrue to each, there is also a need to determine “systemwide assets” whose costs should be shared by all subareas. CFO McCartan gave the example of fleet and maintenance costs that should be equally shared between subareas even if the facilities that accommodate them are physically located in one subarea.

With that preamble by McCartan, Ilgenfritz then put up a graphic showing the future capacity constraints of the core segments underneath downtown Seattle, making the case that “All users benefit from core capacity expansion, and the core stations will carry the heaviest load.” CEO Rogoff then chimed in, saying “Ric put this in the positive frame, but it can equally be put in the negative. Absent new tunnel capacity, these regional lines will fail.”

The upshot is that, if the Board approves, Sound Transit will seek to allocate the marginal cost of the new Downtown tunnel to all 5 subareas as a systemwide asset. As a refresher, the Draft ST3 plan allocated 80% of the new tunnel’s costs to North King (Seattle), and 20% to Pierce County since the planned Green Line to Tacoma would use the new tunnel. This would presumably free up additional financial capacity (potentially a few hundred million?) within North King to either expand project scope, expedite project delivery, or both.

The committee seemed warm to the idea, as there was little pushback. King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci particularly rose to its defense, albeit asking for transparency in cost allocation to appease the inevitable criticisms of suburban money funding “a Seattle tunnel.” But the benefits of the new tunnel to suburban riders seemed clear. A trip from Lynnwood to SeaTac, for instance, would use both Seattle tunnels even though the trip originated in Snohomish and ended in South King.

Several groups asked for regional funding of the tunnel during the comment period, including Seattle Subway and the Seattle Transit Advisory Board (disclaimer: I serve on that board). And it makes a ton of sense. Rogoff is right that the “regional spine” is impossible as as a single line concept, that new core capacity is essential, and that all regional users will benefit from it.

Without regionalization, Snohomish County in particular would be getting a free ride, as all 3 King County subareas paid for the original Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel and Pierce County was already slated to contribute to the new tunnel. Recognizing the new tunnel as a regional asset would be good policy, and let’s hope the Board agrees.

Back in December we reported that the Office of the Waterfront would undertake a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) to study removal of the planned bus lanes on the future Alaskan Way. There was some confusion at the time because no organized groups were agitating for such an outcome, and that all parties had generally agreed on the merits of transit priority. But the number of understandable complaints about the overall roadway width from bicycle and pedestrian advocates exceeded a threshold that triggered SDOT to study a narrowed footprint. From our followup post:

Office of the Waterfront Director Marshall Foster said the total number of comments asking for a narrower roadway hit “a tipping point” that forced the City to formally respond to their request, necessitating a SDEIS that studied a narrower roadway. However, Foster said the funding agreement between the State and the Port explicitly codifies two general purpose lanes in each direction, effectively prohibiting the City from studying reducing those lanes in the SDEIS:

Section II, A, 5: The Central Waterfront from Pine Street to Colman Dock will have two lanes in each direction plus a turning lane; the segment south of Colman Dock will have 3 lanes in each direction plus a turning lane.

So the City is in the odd position of being required to study a narrower channelization because enough of the community asked for it, but since the only mode not explicitly protected in its right-of-way allocation is transit, the City will study eliminating transit priority even though neither the City nor advocacy groups see that as a preferred outcome. Isn’t process fun?

Well, that SDEIS has been published, and comments are due May 18. Read the full document here, or the Executive Summary here. And the results are a slam dunk. The SDEIS shows that removing the bus lanes would worsen travel times for transit, general purpose traffic, and freight.  Continue reading “Support Waterfront Transit Lanes: Comment Deadline May 18”

• Everett contemplates redeveloping the Everett Station area.
• Pierce Transit’s public feedback form is a service planning game.
• Subjecting fewer projects to design review would be a huge improvement.
• The next iteration of ORCA sounds cool, but won’t arrive earlier than 2019.
• A review of the new Seattle 2035 draft.
• Closing the viaduct wasn’t a disaster, but it noticeably boosted light rail ridership.
• Portland chooses light rail for its “Southwest Corridor.”
• Reader Michael Logsdon built this little tool for STB comments.

This is an open thread.

While ULink is already setting ridership records, it’s easy for this North Capitol Hill resident to forget about the First Hill Streetcar, the beleaguered line that opened in late January after a series of delays and technical problems.

Curious about the line’s ridership both before and after ULink, I asked SDOT for ridership data a couple weeks ago. Sadly, it appears that ridership data for the First Hill line is not available due to yet more technical difficulties. In a twist out of our robot overload future, it appears the computers know the answer but the humans don’t.

From SDOT’s Michael James:

Here is where we are with the data.  Our [automatic passenger counters] and servers are collecting data.  However, we are having technical issues transmitting it back to our source software program.  We are actively working to correct the technical issue.  As soon as we get and review the daily data, we would be happy to share it with you.

We did calculate monthly ridership using ORCA tap methodology for March 2016, which was 50,159.

So stay tuned for further stats and analysis, but if the ORCA data is reasonably reliable, it appears that the First Hill line is carrying roughly 1,600 riders per day. Though Link and the First Hill line are obviously very different services operating at different scales, a good shorthand appears to be that Link carries in a day what the First Hill Streetcar carries in a month. If 1,600 riders per day were a bus route, this would place the streetcar near the bottom of all-day routes within Seattle, in the same ballpark as Routes 31, 47, and 50. Given the short length of the line, other metrics such as ridership per mile would likely rank the streetcar a bit more favorably.

County Councilmembers Joe McDermott and Larry Gossett kindly offered some reasons for supporting more bus service in southeast Seattle last Thursday. STB supports adding more service in southeast Seattle that delivers real improvements to riders, which means avoiding wasteful duplication. The councilmembers’ arguments failed to explain why these specific route restructures (in particular, the extension of route 38 / proposed route 106 to the International District) are on the table.

For all the talk of unmet demand on MLK, the proposal has no additional service there. Indeed, by introducing reliability problems with no additional frequency, intra-MLK trips will likely get worse. Starting trips in the International District will scramble arrival times and degrade the transfer from Link to buses on MLK.

The councilmembers understand the advantages of replacing two routes (106 and 124) between eastern Georgetown and downtown with one (124) running twice as often, which is more likely to maintain proper spacing between buses. One alternative for the ID/Mt. Baker service hours would apply the same lesson to high-ridership route 7, potentially matching the peak frequency of Link.

Another alternative would actually improve service for the aforementioned communities on MLK Way by boosting its frequency beyond 15 minutes. This would also improve an already high-quality transfer at Mt. Baker Station. Either alternative is superior to running duplicate service which does nothing but avoid high-quality transfers between 7, 38, and Link. The Metro proposal effectively resurrects the 42, historically a poor performer. Continue reading “Editorial: Fix the SE Seattle Restructure”

It’s no subway, but Los Angeles once again has a train through the Westside to its world-famous beaches. The Metro Expo Line Phase II opens May 20. It’s been an exciting Spring for new rail openings this year.

After decades of deferred maintenance and neglect that has led to crashes, fires, and in some cases killing its own riders, the DC Metro will soon rip off the band aid with a year of painful closures and single-track operations affecting hundreds of thousands of riders. View the full closure details here. The intensive work will replace infrastructure that in many cases dates back to the first days of the system.

Meanwhile, at Sound Transit’s Executive Committee meeting on Thursday, Boardmembers were getting their first chance to review the draft ST3 financial plan when CFO Brian McCartan read a new proposed financial policy:

The Board will maintain capital replacement and maintenance reserves and annual budgetary amounts sufficient to fully fund the system in a state of good repair. Sufficient funds will be set aside to fully meet these obligations and their funding will have precedence over other agency expenditures.

Pausing to ask if Boardmembers had any questions, CEO Peter Rogoff turned on his mic. Perhaps mindful of his experiences in DC, he said, “There would be no greater crime that we could do to our children and grandchildren than to not do this.” Dow then chimed in as well: “I’m super excited about this. This is exactly the kind of thing government ought to be doing…We’ve had challenges over the decades with our roads and bridges, with our parents and grandparents investing in infrastructure and then not doing the things needed to maintain it.

Acting WSDOT Secretary Millar – whose agency has come under frequent fire for prioritizing highway expansion over maintenance – agreed, saying “As the manager of legacy assets, I think this asset management is a wonderful idea.” Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers was stunned that such policy language was so unprecedented both nationally and locally, saying, “I’m shocked and appalled we have to even adopt such a policy, and that it wasn’t done earlier. We’ve had significant discussions at PSRC regarding the difficulties we’ve had with our highway system by not having such a policy.” So at the committee level at least there was unanimous agreement that such a policy is necessary and prudent.

This is very welcome news, basically codifying Fix It First as official policy. Let’s hope the Board agrees in June, and let’s hope that WSDOT someday follows their lead.