Month: November 2016

A bit lost in the tornado of Trump and ST3, King County unanimously passed its $11B 2017-2018 budget yesterday. As we wrote about in September, the budget restores Metro’s capital program, provides 300,000 new bus service hours, hires 213 new bus drivers, and prepares Metro to implement the Metro Connects Long Range Plan. The Metro portion of the budget is $1.6B for the 2017-2018 biennium.

The 300,000 service hours will be broken into buckets as follows:

• 160,000 hours for Metro investment according to Service Guidelines priorities
• 33,400 hours added to routes for Comfort Station (restroom) access for drivers
• 39,710 hours available for City of Seattle reinvestment under Proposition 1
• 68,300 hours ‘to preserve existing bus service levels when buses leave the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel’, which the documents estimate will occur in Fall 2018

Dow’s budget (unusually) included specific route allocations for the non-Prop 1 service hours, and in a welcome departure from past meddling, the Council mostly left them alone. Any increase in service hours greater than 25% would require Council approval by ordinance, but Metro is free to add fewer hours ‘administratively’ as it deems appropriate.

As we wrote about in October 2015, Metro may struggle to actually deploy the budgeted hours. As Council Legislative Analyst Paul Carlson wrote in a memo to Councilmembers:

Transit’s operational capacity to add 323,000 hours of service is affected by several limits.  Prior staff reports discussed how base capacity constrains the addition of buses to about 100, the number identified with the proposed 323,000 hour addition.  Other factors include the risk that trips might be cancelled because vehicles or operators are unavailable; the need to fill 100 operator vacancies and recruit 1,000 trainees to meet attrition and support new service; limits on available fareboxes and ORCA equipment for additional buses; and a backlog of vehicle service preparation that is projected to last through the biennium.

Council-led changes to the budget were mostly additive, and they included:

• A quadrupling of Alternative Services funding (from $1m to $4m) for service in low density areas
• A reduction in the required nonprofit match for Human Services Bus Ticket costs, from 20% to 10% (a policy win for the Transit Riders Union)
• Increased funding for the King County Marine Division, which operates the West Seattle, Vashon, and (soon) Bremerton Water Taxis. Ridership and performance will also now be analyzed like any other route through the Service Guidelines process.
• A proviso requiring King County to study either eliminating the $5 ORCA card fee, or adding $5 in value to all newly purchased cards. A report to Council will be due in February 2017.

Tables of route investments after the jump… Continue reading “King County Unanimously Passes $11B Biennial Budget”

Reader Greg Briggs wonders “if there is a way to just get the full low level schedule” for 3-car Link trains, because they’re much more comfortable to ride than the 2-car trains during rushhour.

There is, although it’s important to remember that Sound Transit will change the schedules on days of big events. Furthermore, if there’s a disruption, operations will try to maintain 6-minute headways rather than adhere to the schedule.

Regardless, at right are the 35 trips from UW and 31 trips from Angle Lake that have 3-cars in them on a typical weekday (thanks to Oran) [Correction: the original schedule had the directions swapped. It has been fixed.].

Tuesday’s election was an existential whiplash in a number of ways, but it was a particular disaster for our cities. As Erica Barnett wrote in The C is for Crank this morning, Trump has promised to withhold all federal funds from Sanctuary Cities, of which Seattle is one. If enacted, human services, parks, housing, and transportation projects could take the hardest hit, including local projects such as the Center City Connector, Madison BRT, all Move Seattle bus corridors, the bike share relaunch, and Sound Transit 3. At the federal level, Trump’s has hinted that “ranch/farm-to-market” are as important as “crowded subways”, he has chosen a highway-industry lobbyist to lead transportation policy, and he will almost surely undo our already halting efforts at addressing climate change.

This is all happening not because of our cities, but despite them. Hardly the ‘hell’ Mr. Trump described, our thriving cities nonetheless received a stunning rebuke from rural America. Rural Obama voters who believed in “Yes We Can” in 2008 turned out in 2016 to say “Well, We Didn’t“, especially in the upper Midwest. Continue reading “Cities in the Age of Trump”

While we celebrate a huge victory for transit here in Seattle and lament the result of the presidential race, one must not forget about the plethora of other transportation ballot measures put on by other cities across the country Tuesday night. Out of a total of 48 local and state transit measures, 33 were approved as of Tuesday night (including ST3 and the Kitsap fast ferries measure), a success rate of 71%, and representing over $200 billion in transit investments (the lion’s share of which is taken by Seattle and Los Angeles).

The Transport Politic has an excellent list of measures, results, and a basic summary of what is required for each to pass (and what is in each package). Streetsblog USA has also been going around the country and looking into the measure during the run-up to the election, and each piece is worth a read.

For now, let’s review some of the major measures and others of regional significance here in the Northwest. Continue reading “Across the Nation, Transit Wins on Election Night”

Beginning at 4 p.m. today, Sound Transit will hold a press conference in the wake of ST3 passing and what next steps the agency will take to expand mass transit in the region. ST will have a Facebook Live stream to watch, and we will be live blogging and live tweeting comments made by Sound Transit Board members, CEO Peter Rogoff, and other officials. Continue reading “Moving Forward on ST3 – Press Conference & Live Thread”

Friday, November 11 is Veterans Day, a day most rural transit agencies treat as just another day, while agencies like King County Metro have traditional painfully reduced service. Thanks to SDOT funding, the only Seattle-only routes cut back on Veterans Day are those cut back due to the University of Washington not being in session for the day, and the West Seattle Water Taxi.

As Zach pointed out, transit still suffers deteriorated bus service on Veterans Day thanks to SDOT’s free parking days.

Here are the service levels for transit agencies around the region Friday: Continue reading “Friday is Veterans Day, with a Little Less Transit Service”

• Mike Lindblom reports on how light rail will change Downtown Lynnwood ($).
• But is its 196th St going to be too wide?
• New Alaskan Way FEIS up to nine lanes wide in places.
• Car ownership is expensive ($).
• More on Spokane Transit’s win.
• Utility work begins for Center City Connector; full funding not entirely lined up for construction.

This is an open thread.