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.

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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”