Month: August 2016

Sound Transit released a pair of videos showing Northgate Link’s progress.  First up, if you’ve ever wanted to see a tunnel boring machine (TBM) up close, here’s your chance:

Next, a rubber-tire vehicle makes its way from Roosevelt to U-District station, showing the completed tube, sans tracks:

This is an open thread.

Whether or not the current run-up in housing prices constitutes a “new bubble” is an open question, but it can’t be denied that the U.S. housing market is awash in investor capital, seeking outsize returns in a world where there aren’t many to be had.   Case in point: Goldman Sachs bringing back the bubble-inflating CDO.

The Giant Pool of Money is back, and it’s hunting for houses.

Re-inflating the housing bubble is problematic for plenty of urbanist reasons (and for other reasons as well, but let’s stick to the urbanist ones). It makes affordable housing construction more expensive, exacerbates NIMBYism, and, most importantly, reduces diversity through displacement.

From a political perspective, however, re-inflating the bubble is a winner.  Homeowners vote in disproportionate numbers, and bubble re-inflation is an easy way to put people back in the black.  Consider that the number of voters who are underwater on their houses has been cut in half since 2010:

Four years ago, 28.2% of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage were underwater.
Now: 12.1% https://t.co/2E52m92uRu pic.twitter.com/TPKpGuNFTC

— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) August 18, 2016

Unwilling to make critical investments in public infrastructure or education, or force the banks to take a haircut after the 2008 crisis, our austerity-obsessed government has inadvertently deployed the giant pool of money in service of private infrastructure – granite countertops and roof decks. At least we’ll get the units.

Cities, meanwhile, lacking adequate representation in Congress, have been left for us to sort out the problems of expensive housing for ourselves. (Not just housing, but a host of issues, from housing to transit to guns.  It’s a national version of Ford-to-City.)

Charles Mudede and Cary Moon have a series of articles – 1, 2, 3, 4 – in The Stranger channeling this line of thought in the context of Seattle’s housing crisis and, importantly, offering some solutions.   If you can set aside the repeated swipes at neoliberalism (a frustratingly vague term), the articles are useful for widening the scope of our housing debate away from a provincial battle with NIMBYs to the challenge of a world awash in cheap capital.

It’s hard to endorse all of Mudede and Moon’s solutions, since many of them are vague toss-offs, often in the form of a question.  Requiring all homes to be owner occupied, for example, is probably a bad idea (although Vancouver’s tax on foreign buyers seems to be having an effect).   But at the core is a sound set of policies: expand public housing, allow more development, get creative about new forms of collective ownership (including land trusts, which I’ve written about previously).  A good chunk of these ideas could be described as HALA on steroids.  Notably, the phrase “rent control” appears zero times.

Two points that I would add to the debate, which may or may not make me a neoliberal squish: first, today’s market-rate housing is tomorrow’s affordable housing.  Once the original owners have paid off the construction costs, a house or apartment becomes much more affordable and can remain so for 100 years or more.  Much of the “naturally occurring affordable housing” Moon and Mudede laud was originally built for wealthy people.

Secondly, we do need to upzone, an idea that goes mostly unmentioned in the article. Backyard cottages aren’t gonna cut it.  Especially in the urban villages but really across the city. And not only within Seattle but across the region as well.  Housing reform can’t stop at the edge of Lake Washington.  Fortunately at least some upzoning is on its way.

Community Transit announced Friday that the agency’s board of directors has approved the purchase of at least 57 buses to be delivered beginning next year. The buses ordered were part of three contracts awarded to three different manufacturers: Alexander Dennis for 17 double-decker (“Double Tall”) buses, Gillig for 26 40-foot buses to be used on expanded local service, and New Flyer for 14 60-foot articulated buses that will replace older commuter buses.

The order for double-deckers came as part of a joint procurement with Sound Transit and Kitsap Transit, which the former approved last month. The additional double-deckers would bring the fleet to 62 vehicles, cementing CT’s place as the operator of the second-largest double-decker fleet in the United States, after Las Vegas.

These bus replacements and additions are in line with Community Transit’s 5-year plan, which lays out a need to continually replace articulated buses with new models and Double Talls through 2021. The 40-foot buses used for local service are estimated to need a large replacement order in 2019 and 2020. Community Transit will also need to hire at least 115 new coach operators for these new buses and trips, during a time where other agencies are facing shortages.

The choice of Gillig for this order of 40-foot buses comes as a surprise, as they beat out New Flyer, who has been building most of CT’s buses for the last 20 years. Community Transit does, however, operate a fleet of 30-foot Gillig buses for their rural and lower-frequency services that have been running for three years.

An additional order of 15 articulated buses for the Swift Green Line will also be considered in the next few months, as Community Transit nears the line’s 2019 launch date. Delivery of those buses, which will be inter-operable with the existing Blue Line, is expected in late 2018.

In addition to the fleet changes, the previously discussed service changes will take effect on Saturday, September 11. Two new routes, 109 and 209, will create a loop around Everett using Highway 9, serving Ash Way, Mill Creek, Snohomish, Lake Stevens and Marysville every 30 minutes during weekday peaks. To accommodate the new route 209, route 222 in Marysville will be given a new route that restores service to the city’s library and serves the Getchell High Schoool and city’s new Walmart. Additional trips on commuter routes to Downtown Seattle and UW will be used to boost schedule reliability and keep up with rising congestion on I-5. Route 417 from Mukilteo will no longer serve the Lynnwood Transit Center, shaving a few minutes off the commute through the area.

Next March, Community Transit is planning to adjust local routes with additional morning and evening trips and frequency boosts at midday. In total, the changes in September and next March will eat up about 38,000 new bus hours funded by Proposition 1 in 2015. Details of the March changes will come in the next few months.

• Roosevelt station progressing [DJC]
• Car makes illegal left, gets hit by light rail [KIRO]
• Sen. Reuven Carlyle reflects on ST3 after reading Zach… [Reuven Carlyle’s blog]
• … while Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon writes a full-throated rebuttal… [PubliCola]
• … and Rich Soltz of OneAmerica piles on [the Stranger]
• Wallace Properties – yes, that Kevin Wallace – making bank on transit-oriented development [PSBJ]
• Mercer Slough neighbors looking to protect the park. [Seattle Times]
• City proposes a density-neutral rezone in Ballard [The Urbanist]
• An autopsy of Hyperloop One.  19th-century trains, anyone? [Yahoo! Finance]
• Dan Bertolet looks at the root causes driving housing displacement [Sightline]
• NIMBYism could be sucking $8B per month out of the Bay Area economy… [Brad Delong]
• …fortunately, the (likely) next VP is on the case [CNN]
• Is Oregon DOT more than just a state highway department? Should it be? [OregonLive]
• Investigating bike accidents on streetcar tracks [Seattle Times]

Photo: Northgate TC from above by SounderBruce

This is an open thread

Thursday evening at 7pm, the Shoreline Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on two ordinances (750, 751) that will formally adopt the the 145th Street Station Subarea Plan (145mb PDF). If you live in Lake City, Bitter Lake, Shoreline, or other nearby areas, the meeting could use urbanist support for the currently preferred Alternative 4.

Set to open in 2023, the 145th Street station is located in an awful place for transit access, far inferior to nearby station options such as 130th (delayed) or 155th (foregone). The station area is currently surrounded by a freeway on its west, a golf course to the south, single-family homes in all directions, and a soon-to-be-built 500-stall parking garage. Shoreline only has jurisdiction of the northern half of the station walkshed, but they have done an impressive and comprehensive look at the station’s TOD potential.

The current Alternative 4 is called “Compact Community Hybrid”, and will likely be selected over Alternative 1 (no build), Alternative 2 (“Connecting Corridors”, a broader but shallower upzone), and Alternative 3 (“Compact Community”, a narrower but taller upzone). The hybrid option rezones immediately adjacent parcels to 70′, and slowly steps down to 45′, 35′, and then back to single-family. Though the concepts surely could have been more aggressive, the preferred Alternative 4 is the best politically possible outcome, and it deserves urbanist support.

There will be an amendment presented at the meeting to retain single-family zoning as a buffer around natural areas such Twin Ponds Park and Paramount Open space. While the area affected would be small, it would reduce the number of units available to be built in both the 70′ and 35′ zones. If you want a walkable station area and believe that multi-family housing and natural areas can coexist, we encourage you to speak up at the hearing in support of Alternative 4 and in opposition to the amendment.

Meeting Details:  Thursday, August 18, 7:00 PM, Shoreline City Hall, 17500 Midvale Ave N

On primary election night, there were two nail-biter races for who would take the second spot on the November 8 general election ballot, involving candidates endorsed by this blog. The nail-biting is over, and the two upstarts endorsed by STB have advanced.

In the wide-open race to replace longtime Congressman Jim McDermott to represent the 7th Congressional District, STB-endorsed former State Representative Brady Walkinshaw has opened up a wide lead over third-place finisher County Councilmember Joe McDermott. Councilmember McDermott conceded on August 5. Shortly thereafter, McDermott endorsed Walkinshaw in the general election. Walkinshaw faces State Senator Pramila Jayapal in the finale.

In another shocker, Snohomish County Fire Commissioner and STB endorsee Guy Palumbo has beaten out 3-term State Representative Luis Moscoso to advance in the senate race from the 1st Legislative District. Moscoso had come out against all tolling on I-405 in his Voters’ Guide statement. The two Democrats were fighting over second place in the primary election, as the other candidate is a Republican, and the 1st is a historically tight swing district. Moscoso conceded last Tuesday.
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Other STB endorsees who have advanced to the November 8 general election include:

Jay Inslee, running for re-election as governor

Patty Murray, running for re-election to the US Senate

Dan Shih, running for the open position 1 seat in the 43rd Legislative District

Derek Stanford, running for re-election to position 1 in the 1st Legislative District

Shelley Kloba, running for the open position 2 in the 1st Legislative District

Rick Talbert, running for Pierce County Executive

Linda Farmer, running for Pierce County Commissioner, District 6

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If you aren’t registered to vote at your current address, you can do so from the convenience of your home right now, online.

During a press conference Friday morning with U.S. Representatives Suzan DelBene (1st district) and Rick Larsen (2nd district), Community Transit CEO Emmett Heath introduced details about the upcoming second Swift bus rapid transit line, including the all-important line colors.

As speculated during the planning process, the first line, which opened in 2009 and runs along Highway 99 from Everett to Aurora Village, will become the Blue Line; and the second line, set to open in 2019 and run from Paine Field through Mill Creek to Canyon Park in Bothell, will become the Green Line. The two lines intersect at Airport Road in southern Everett, forming an X-shaped network in southwestern Snohomish County. Both colors coincide with those of the Seahawks, who are celebrating their 40th anniversary this month.

While Community Transit’s 5-year plan published in May anticipated a September 2018 opening for the Green Line, Community Transit spokesperson Martin Munguia stated that hitting 60 percent design on the project brought a “more realistic picture of both cost and schedule.” Other hold-ups include construction on the 128th Street overpass crossing Interstate 5, where WSDOT is restricting construction to one side of a time to minimize traffic disruptions and thus will be split between the summers of 2017 and 2018 along with station construction. The early 2019 launch will fall a few months shy of the Blue Line’s 10th anniversary in November, and come only four years before the possible launch of a third line to feed Lynnwood Link at Lynnwood Transit Center.

15 new articulated buses will also be ordered and delivered in late 2018, and are planned to be inter-operable with the Blue Line, sharing the same branding and similar features.

Sound Transit’s decision last year to name its lines after colors poses some potential confusion with Swift’s new lines, but Munguia says that the two agencies came together and felt that the two modes were distinct enough to not be easily confused. For the time being, Community Transit will append the Swift brand to every mention of the project.

The $73 million cost of construction will be funded mostly by a $50 million FTA Small Starts grant that is part of the 2017 budget. $17 million from the state will help build the line’s northern terminus at Seaway Transit Center, adjacent to Boeing’s massive Everett factory. Operations will be funded in part by a portion of the 0.3 sales tax approved by voters last November as well as a $5 million FTA Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality grant for the first two years, allowing for the voter-approved increase to fund other services.

The line ends at Canyon Park P&R to the south, a few miles short of downtown Bothell, where an extension has been considered and put on the back-burner until the completion of a major road project by the city; as the line would fall into King County like routes 105 and 106 do today, Community Transit has held discussions with King County Metro about the extension.

The “Blue Line” moniker will begin appearing in schedules, on bus headsigns and at stations near you this fall. When the Green Line begins service in 2019, it will operate at 12-minute headways on weekdays and 20 minutes at night and on weekends, and is expected to attract 3,300 riders in its first year. Additional lines are also planned on major corridors, stretching as far north as Arlington and as far east as Highway 9 near Silver Firs.