Month: January 2017

Last year Zach reported on a Republican bill in the legislature that would replace the current, appointed Sound Transit Board with an elected one. Politicians don’t mess with an agency’s governance when it’s on the right track, so we can only assume HB 1029 is an attempt to fundamentally change ST’s trajectory from the one voters approved last November. Zach’s post makes several cogent arguments why electing the Sound Transit board is a terrible idea, and links to a couple of my essays on the same subject.

The newest wrinkle is a Democrat, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, who has joined seven Republicans to sponsor this bill (along with 8 senators – all Republicans – on the Senate version). What’s more, Rep. Santos represents the 37th District (CD/Rainier Valley/Skyway), the heart of the light rail system. 68.7% of 37th District voters voted yes for Prop 1., third among all districts. Voters there are broadly happy with the agency’s path, so it seems odd for Rep. Santos to cross party lines to pursue the longtime Republican objective of  disrupting Sound Transit’s progress.

Rep. Santos’s office did not respond to my request for comment. If you live in the 37th, as I do, you should contact her and let you know what you think about her sponsorship of this bill.

• The beleaguered Washington Metro finally gets some praise, handling it’s inaugural ‘stress test’ pretty well.
• Foxes in the henhouse: President Trump taps his two biggest Washington supporters, Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale) and Former Senator Don Benton to lead the EPA transition team. Ericksen will stay in the State Senate and do both jobs. Meanwhile, State Senator Brian Dansel (R- 7th District) resigned to work in Trump’s Department of Agriculture. Senate Democrats may use their temporary 24-24 Senate tie  to pass some Democratic priority legislation.
• 100 years of photos on the Paris Metro.
• New York’s horribly ugly Penn Station loses one of its last charming features, its Solari departure board.
• Frustrated by suburban-urban conflict with its 2,300 sq mi regional agency, RTD, the city of Denver mulls creating its own mini transit agency.
• More traffic collisions and injuries on NE 65th, and this time Mayor Murray and Councilmember Johnson react quickly. They will present a rechannelization plan by February 14th.
• Oh the travails you have to endure to build a grocery store in a rich neighborhood.
• Seattle is not dense. Really. We have such a long way to go.
• CM O’Brien will not challenge Murray for Mayor this fall.
• The First Hill Streetcar turns 1 this week, with free rides and cupcakes galore.
• Minor controversy from a Snohomish couple who weren’t eligible to vote on ST3 but will be taxed for it.

This is an open thread. 

The Sound Transit Board met for its first meeting of 2017 Thursday, elected its new leadership, selected the alignment for Federal Way Link, and approved several construction contracts.

To start things off, Dave Somers (Snohomish County Executive) was elected the new board chair, while John Marchione (Mayor of Redmond) and Marilyn Strickland (Mayor of Tacoma) were elected vice chairs.

The Environmental Impact Statement phase of Federal Way Link planning, which started back in 2012, came to a close, as the board unanimously selected the alignment, profile, and station locations.

Federal Way Link will add three elevated stations to the south line, currently terminating at Angle Lake Station.

The first is along 30th Ave S in the Midway neighborhood at the boundaries of Kent and Des Moines, crossing over a new section of S 236th St, a couple blocks east of Highline Community College.

The second is just south of 272nd St and west of I-5, at the northeast corner of Federal Way, on the east edge of the Mark Twain Elementary School playfield.

The third is along 23rd Ave S, between S 317th St and S 320th St, just north of the Federal Way Commons. Tail track for that station is planned to cross over 320th, which is the major east-west arterial for the city.

In order to move forward with the elevated station over the west side of the Mark Twain Elementary School playfield, Sound Transit, Federal Way Public Schools, and King County Metro met frequently for the past month to arrive at a Memorandum of Agreement that the three entities will work together to find an alternative site on which to build a new, larger Mark Twain Elementary School. Continue reading “Sound Transit Approves Federal Way Link Alignment, Bel-Red Station Builder”

About nine months ago, Metro released a draft of its first Long Range Plan in quite some time.  We were enthusiastic about the plan, which lays out a comprehensive vision for the Metro of the future, including network, Sound Transit integration, facilities, fleet, and capital improvements.  We nerded out over some of the network planning ideas, and spent hours poring over the network maps, which show real imagination and are a revealing distillation of planners’ ideas for improvement throughout the county.  More than anything else, we got excited about Metro’s isochrone maps, which show how far you would be able to get from a given point with ST3 and the LRP network in place.  They paint a picture of timely car-free mobility throughout the city and even to many suburban areas, one which probably seems like a faraway dream to anyone who spends their afternoons stuck along Denny on the 8 or Dexter on the 62.

The King County Council has been considering the plan ever since, and Councilmembers apparently liked what they saw as much as we did.  In its Monday meeting, the full Council adopted the plan unanimously, with only minor changes from the draft Metro released last April.  The final documents include some welcome additional information about the assumptions behind the plan, including detailed data on how many residents of each area will be near frequent service; minute-level estimates of travel times between areas; and a breakout of expected cost per service hour for each of the four service types included in the network (RapidRide, frequent, express, and local).  Network planning for integration with ST3 reflects some additional work by planners, with a significantly revised post-ST3 network in Magnolia and Ballard, and other smaller network changes throughout the area.  We expect to provide additional coverage of Metro’s newest Ballard network vision in another post, as it has some new and interesting concepts we haven’t seen before.

As always, shepherding a mostly abstract, years-away long-range plan through the Council is an easier task than implementing specific service improvements with immediate winners and losers.  Nevertheless, adoption of Metro Connects is a very welcome step, and the apparent lack of controversy is an encouraging sign for faster, easier transit service throughout the county that uses the considerable resources we are putting into ST3 as effectively as possible.

Saturday’s Womxns’ Marches were unprecedented in their breadth of participation, drawing 120,000 in Seattle and nearly 4 million across the country (and it’s worth nothing that President Trump’s 320 campaign rallies drew 1.8 million total). Beginning in a low-density neighborhood park and bisecting downtown on its way to Seattle Center, the march was fairly disruptive to transportation arterials, particularly for the 50 or so routes that use or cross Jackson St or 4th Avenue. Jackson and 4th were totally impassable for several hours, as the sheer volume of marchers occupied the entire route simultaneously.

Metro said in a release yesterday that its ridership was 40% higher than normal for a Saturday, with 250,000 boardings compared to the usual 180,000. And though Link has crested 100,000 before when sports and weekday commutes converged, the Womxn’s march set a Saturday record for Link ridership, cracking 80,000 for the first time and doubling up on its normal Saturday tally of around 40,000.

Metro and Sound Transit added unscheduled service to 17 routes and dispatched them as needed, though crushloads and delays were unavoidable. Had the march been held 6 years from now, 4-car trains could have arrived at Judkins Park Station up to every 4 minutes, significantly alleviating the burden. But Seattleites love their transit and chose it in large numbers Saturday. Well done, y’all.