- ST escalators keep failing ($).
- Car2Go rolls out 200 4-door Mercedes vehicles, increasing options for multiple passengers.
- Erica on where HALA went wrong.
- Rob Johnson spearheading a badly needed upzone.
- KCDOT hiring a position in public engagement.
- As promised, ST tightens rules about ordering stops in Link service.
- 450 more spaces for Kent Sounder by 2024, at $73,000 per space. Auburn would get 500 more.
- $1.6m federal grant (thanks Patty Murray) will help PT buses avoid collisions.
- King County will operate the Kitsap fast ferries.
- Lynnwood Link progress.
- I have no idea why “schools and [elevated] trains don’t mix”, but Mark Twain Elementary has a deal with Sound Transit to move the school away from the tracks.
- The fundamental issue is that driving is often faster than transit. One cause is lack of priority, but land use is more important.
- Why Pronto died.
- Bills to remove I-405 tolling dead this session ($).
- Ideas to fix the Ash Way P&R approaches.
- Trains testing the new Point Defiance Bypass.
- Rumored Trump budget is awful for transit and passenger rail. But other rumors put SeaTac on the short list.
This is an open thread.
What’s Sound Transit’s long-term strategy for contracting out Link operations under ST3? I hope they will just operate Link themselves. But if they don’t, will they just divvy up the lines to the farthest county they go to, I.e., will PT operate Tacoma-Ballard, CT operate Everett-West Seattle, and Metro operate East Link + Issaquah-South Kirkland?
Hopefully though ST can just operate it’s own trains. I don’t see why that would be so difficult.
Currently Central LInk is operated by Metro employees so I’d imagine that would continue to be the case moving forward. The bulk of the system will continue to be in King County with only a few stops in other counties by the time ST3 is completed.
Tacoma Link on the other hand is reportedly run by ST employees. I don’t know why didn’t contract out to Pierce Transit for operators on this service.
http://www.soundtransit.org/q-who-s-driving-those-sound-transit-buses-and-trains
I get why ST contacts out buses and Sounder. The buses need to go somewhere, and local agencies already have bus bases. But why does ST contract out Central Link? They own the tracks, trains, and maintenance base(s). Doesn’t it make sense for ST to just run it’s own trains? It’s not like there are many shared resources between Central Link and Metro buses.
Plus, it makes everything more complicated, especially when there is a call from law enforcement to stop service. And any change to operating patterns require inter-agency communication, which certainly seems like a weak point generally.
There’s a big difference between running more of your own service, and beginning to run any of your own service in the first place. Except for tiny Tacoma Link, right now Sound Transit can be a purely administrative, construction, and contracting body, while Metro/CT/PT have employed operators for decades, with all the attendant unions, supervisory positions, accumulated knowledge, etc etc. Once they cross that threshold into running their service directly, running their own buses will be slowly but surely inevitable.
Link isn’t just Metro train drivers, from what I can tell Metro staffs and runs the Link Control Center too providing dispatching, train control, incident response, security coordination, etc.
“The SeaTac/Airport Station pedestrian overpass elevator is out of service. The platform elevators are operating.
Passengers who require the elevator to street level, ride Link to Angle Lake Station and transfer to Metro’s Rapid-Ride A Line bus service one block east, northbound on International Blvd S just north of S 200th St to S 176th St.
Those who require elevator service from the street level, ride Metro’s Rapid-Ride A Line bus service southbound on International Blvd S to S 200th St and connect with Link at Angle Lake Station.
Updates will be provided when available.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.” -ST Alert
Suggestion: Anyone coming in on the 574 from Tacoma, stay on the bus and get off at the south end of the Terminal. Long walk back to the LINK skybridge, but at least indoors and warm.
On the upper right side of the sandwich sign at the bottom of the broken elevator, there’s a hand-written request more eloquent than I can deliver this dark freezing cold morning. Lucky I can climb steep stairs and don’t use a wheelchair.
Also that soon as pics I took get to whatever State and Federal authorities are responsible, fix won’t need a thousand words. Or years.
Mark Dublin
Mark Dublin
I’d really love it if someone with more access than I have questioned ST about that $73,000/stall figure that’s been floating around. Structured parking generally costs +/-$25,000 per stall in this area; a similar garage to that which ST is constructing was opened a couple of years ago for less than that by San Diego’s transit authority. Everything comes under budget if you are budgeting 3x actual cost!
http://www.ipd-global.com/portfolio/sabre-springspenasquitos-transit-station/
Yes, I’m wondering the same thing. Structured parking with an all concrete structure, costs around $100-150/sf to build depending on the complexity (at grade stalls are cheaper than second floor stalls, etc.) A non-compact parking stall is 9’x18′ plus you need to add in half of the 24′ wide drive aisle for double loaded parking. This gives you 9’x30′, or 270sf per stall. This works out to $27,000 – $40,500 per stall. Of course, that’s just the parking portion of the structure, and you need to build/purchase other things like ramps, stairs, elevators, lighting, etc. But prorated those don’t add up to an additional $32,500-46,000 per stall – even if ST were to buy more expensive elevators that don’t break down.
When a parking garage replaces an existing surface lot, the cost per additional stall is more than the cost of construction because you have to subtract the number of spaces in the original surface lot from the number of spaces in the newly built garage. If the garage is only a couple of stories, so the number of net increased spaces is not that much, the cost per additional stall can become really expensive.
That’s the same no matter what you construct. Replacing anything with anything else is going to cost more than construction; the differences come in what you need to purchase, mitigate and/or remove on the site. A 500-stall structure costs what it costs; materials, design, labor for the structure itself are substantially all the same no matter what site you put it on, assuming a “normal” building site with no high water table or other things requiring mitigation.
Removing a parking lot is one of the least expensive possible things you can do prior to construction; compare that to purchasing the land under and then removing a tower or even a strip mall. ST isn’t saying they need to add 500 stalls to whatever is existing (so if they remove 200 stalls, they’d actually need to build a 700-stall garage); they are saying they are going to build a 500-stall garage. They haven’t even selected a site in some/all instances, so we have no idea what’s going to be removed.
I showed a salient example where the comparison is apples-to-apples in a market with material costs, regulations, seismic issues, etc. similar to ours. The total cost was less than $25,000/stall, inclusive of everything from landscaping to lighting to elevators to painting the stripes on the floors. If the transit authority there owned the land already, then there of course will be added costs here for ST to purchase and demolish whatever is on the chosen sites, add traffic access, etc. I’d even give you somewhat of a fudge factor for materials increasing in cost over the time period. That said, ST’s figures imply that they need an additional $24,000,000 to account for that, and I’d like to see why they come up with those figures. On the face of it, it sounds outlandish–sort of like the airlines’ practice of blocking 6 hours for a 5-hour flight and then claiming a high on-time performance.
I thought these figures were just the cost of building the stall, without regard to how many stalls they replace. A garage doesn’t just add parking spaces. It puts them into a more compact footprint. If it covers only part of the former lot, it releases the remaining land for other uses, such as the TOD in the South Kirkland P&R. South Bellevue and TIB are also intended for possible future conversion if SOVs become less common someday. A vertical garage is also more aesthetic — it doesn’t look like a one-story space-wasting 1950s strip-mall-and-gas-station nightmare — and its perimeter is a shorter distance for pedestrians and bicyclists to walk or ride around, and it allows destinations on the other side closer to you. Saying that the stall costs $30,000 to build or $80,000 for each additional stall beyond the former surface lot ignores all these other factors, which are actually advantages for garages.
Of course, the $15 million total for a 500-stall garage could go a long way toward feeders and other transit and station-access improvements. But garages are what suburbanites want to spend their tax money on.
“Per stall” is just a simple way of comparing costs and has nothing to do with what a 9′ x 18′ piece of reinforced concrete might cost. Project costs are always given as a total figure, which can then be divided by a common factor for comparatives with other alternatives or projects. It’s the same thing as talking about what it might cost to build a “200 room” hotel, a “75 unit” apartment, or a “19,000 seat” arena. The ancillary facilities for all of those things are far more than the rooms, units, or seats–back of house spaces, restrooms, conference halls, what have you–and include parking, landscaping, pools, access improvements and anything else that is required for the given project. Nobody looks at a 9′ x 18′ section of concrete and reinforcing and says this stall costs X for (say) 9 cu yd of concrete and Y amount of rebar, multiplies that by 500 and then tries to figure out what else the structure needs to function. They do what Pete Lorimer above describes (basically).
More parking spaces are a boondoggle.
More connector buses from Sounder stations would be money well spent.
Another suggestion about the Sea-Tac elevator: Considering its importance and how long it’s been out of service, just set up a temporary construction-site elevator. And pay a human operator to run it.
Give me one of those old uniform caps with the hard black visor and I’ll run it for free. Childhood dream stolen. Like public transit. Elegant wood seat and brass wheel controller optional.
Unlike giving our passengers and taxpayers, especially ones who can’t climb stairs a souvenir of the First World.
Mark
Yesterday evening during rush hour, both down escalators at UW station between street level and the mezzanine were out of service. I couldn’t get on the 1st downward elevator because it was crammed full. The 2nd elevator going down also left some people at street level behind.
I know it’s a long walk down, but why can’t ST open up and point people to the emergency stairs when the escalators are broken?
Moving forward, why can’t the “Emergency Stairs” be made accessible to people who might prefer to use stairs over the escalators or elevators? Magnetic holdbacks should be able to isolate them in the event of an actual emergency.
Or, more to the point, why can’t they keep their escalators running? If this technology is beyond them I wonder about their competence with trains…
You don’t have to wonder, you can just look at the trains. They don’t break down even a fraction that the escalators do.
The Ash Way article shows how poorly we are addressing the transit needs of the region. The article features a guy who commutes from Everett to Bellevue. This is precisely the type of trip that Sound Transit was designed to improve. Sound Transit runs a bus there, and it comes frequently enough (especially for a long range commuter). So what is the problem?
Well, there are a bunch, all related to Ash Way. There are no south bound HOV ramps into the park and ride (nor are there the reverse for the evening). So a bus has to work its way over from the fast moving HOV lane into the slow moving general purpose lane. Then the bus spends a lot of time stuck in the Ash Way congestion, before heading towards Bellevue. Getting from Ash Way to Bellevue isn’t great, because there are no HOV lanes connecting the two.
There are a couple solutions I can think of:
1) Simply avoid Ash Way. As much as it appears that Ash Way is “on the way”, it really isn’t, if it takes that long to serve the park and ride and back. So basically just skip it, forcing riders in Ash Way to transfer. This costs money, of course, as somewhat redundant service (e. g. Ash Way to Bellevue) is added.
2) Solve the infrastructure problem. Build the ramps, add the freeway stop and suddenly Ash Way is easy to serve.
Neither will be done for a long time (if ever) by the looks of it. So what is the solution that ST has come up with? Extend Link to Everett. This sounds great (when it finally gets there) but it really won’t solve the problem. A train ride from downtown Everett to Bellevue with take 80 minutes. Thirty minutes to Lynnwood (or 31 as shown here — https://s3.amazonaws.com/stb-wp//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/19164544/Max-vs-Link-Red-Line-01.png) and 50 minutes from Lynnwood to Bellevue (http://stb-wp.s3.amazonaws.com//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/14151500/Screen-Shot-2015-08-14-at-8.12.45-AM.png). My guess is that the bus — as slow as it is — is faster than that now.
He could take the train to Ash Way, and take a bus from there. But getting to Ash Way will be slower, and there will be nothing done to make the trip from Ash Way to Bellevue faster. My guess is, after spending billions, and waiting twenty years, his trip will be no better. Sound Transit didn’t use a sledge hammer to drive in a thumb tack, they used a sledge hammer to try and screw on a bolt.
Under ST3, I think the relevant trip is Link to Lynwood TC and then 405 BRT to Bellevue. Even if that pencils out to nearly 80 minutes, will 80 minutes be competitive with driving alone? If 405 peak traffic continues to degrade, it probably will be very competitive post ST3.
I don’t disagree with you comments on bus solutions pre-Link station.
He’s not going to ride all the way through Seattle to get to Bellevue.
After Link gets to Everett I’m not sure we’ll have an Ash Way-Bellevue bus, because I’m not sure we’ll have an Everett-Bellevue bus — he might have to take Link to Lynnwood, then connect to 405 BRT there. Again, this probably won’t make his commute faster (he’ll lose some station-access delays but gain a transfer penalty and a little out-of-direction travel) but should keep it reliable.
The only dramatic speed-up for his 30-mile commute would come from a route that ran express for most of that distance. That’s what traditional long commuter-train and commuter-bus routes do. There’s only so fast you’re going to go stopping every couple miles.
Having an express would make this commute faster, but the other option — fixing the access issues to the Ash Way station — would solve the problem as well. So that means you would:
1) Build a ramp from the I-5 southbound HOV lane to Ash Way (also build the reverse). This would actually be very cheap. If you look at the map (https://goo.gl/maps/VYUZAJnnYQA2) you can see that the median is available, and all you need to do is a little paving.
2) Move the bus stop closer to the freeway (similar to Mountlake Terrace). Once you do the first item, it isn’t clear whether this is even needed. But it might save a minute or so. To do this doesn’t look horribly expensive, you just need some pedestrian ramps. Folks from Ash Way would have to walk a bit farther (about 700 feet for a transfer from a Community Transit bus) but that seems like a small price to pay.
3) Build ramps from the I-5 HOV lanes to I-405. This is the source of a lot of problems, and wouldn’t go away, even if you ran an express. An express has to get out of the HOV lanes and work its way over to the exit lane (either direction). The situation is worse for the Ash Way bus, because it can’t use the HOV exit (connecting it to I-5) and must slog through surface streets to get to the regular on-ramp because there isn’t enough room to get from the HOV lane to the exit. Building new HOV ramps would be the most expensive project, since they would be flyover lanes. But I don’t think they would be nearly as expensive as extending rail to Ash Way, let alone Everett.
If they ran an express it would certainly be faster, but my guess is these would make it faster than that. An express would still get stuck in regular traffic while making the connection from I-405 to I-5. Without that last fix, you are still encountering a delay, which my guess is substantial, even if the bus driver waits until the last second. Just the ramp itself is a full mile. If traffic is moving at 20 MPH, that means an extra couple minutes, not counting the time getting from the HOV lane and back, which would likely cost another couple minutes. In other words, if you fix the problem — by building what I suggest you build — it would be faster to continue to stop at Ash Way then it would be to have an express right now.
Then you have the issue of Ash Way itself. For the 532, Ash Way has more riders than the main Everett Station. It has more riders than South Everett. The two Everett stations combined barely exceed Ash Way. Yet an express won’t make life easier for folks in Ash Way, because they still have the mess that comes from connecting I-5 to I-405.
I don’t see it getting any better with ST2. From Ash Way it seems like a loss. If it was faster to go all the way to Lynnwood, the bus would do that right now. The same is true from Everett, even if you do an express to Lynnwood (i. e. skip Ash Way). At best you gain frequency, but right row it is actually very good for a commuter run. It runs every ten to twenty minutes during rush hour.
With ST3 you would have what exactly? Move the express up to Alderwood, maybe (the closest stop to the I-405). That really doesn’t give you anything, as getting from Alderwood Mall to I-405 is not easy. It really is no different than ST2 — either the bus continues to slog its way from Ash Way to I-405, or you detour to Lynnwood (this time with a transfer).
As I see it, the only way this problem is fixed is if you spend the money on ramps and similar infrastructure. Nothing has changed, and nothing will change, even after ST3 is all built out. All that fancy new light rail going to all of these places, all those huge new park and ride lots, and these trips (Everett to Bellevue, Ash Way to Bellevue) are no faster.
405 BRT will probably replace all the existing routes. The ST Express planning scenarios from January 2015 show truncating all routes that overlap with Link or BRT. There were three levels of investment, some higher than currently, but all were truncated. ST had not yet approved this or any other operational plan yet, but it shows the direction of their thinking.
Metro will apparently replace the Federal Way-downtown express buses, although it’s unclear whether they’ll be all-day or peak only. The Express category in Metro’s long-range plan covers both half-hourly and peak only service, without stating which corridors will be which. This provides a model for other corridors and agencies that wish to replace routes ST abandons. We haven’t heard from Pierce Transit, whether it willtake over any Pierce-Seattle routes. Community Transit has said it will delete all Seattle service, and presumably that implies it won’t take over any 405 ST Express routes.
But an express from Everett to Lynnwood might be a different matter, because that’s within CT’s primary service area. (Except that Everett isn’t, but the 201/202 go through Everett as expresses.) The 201/202 currently overlap the 51x between Everett and Lynnwood, and maybe CT will continue some variation of that, partly to make up for the Paine Field detour (the third side of the triangle), and partly to cover areas ST misses (the Ash Way office parks).
So what does that mean for the Seattle area if the Republican budget zeroes out federal funding?
Specifically:
1) Sound Transit — They get some money from grants, but are mostly self sufficient. The really long time frame also means I would imagine at worse, it simply takes longer to build things.Right?
2) Seattle projects, like BRT and the streetcar. I don’t know where any of these stand, as far as funding goes. If the money was promised before, do we still get it? If so, anyone know at which point the various projects are when it comes of funding?
3) What about Swift (II)?
Anyone know more about this?
Based on performance starting Inauguration Day, whatever the President says he’ll do, we can plan on getting either nothing or something exactly a hundred eighty degrees worse. Experience shows that like everybody else on Earth we’re out of our class trying to sue him.
So as always, safest course is to figure out our own priorities and see how far we can get on our own resources. And use our elevator repair experience as defense evidence for pulling out of any maintenance contracts in our way. And so within borders of safety, doing things ourselves that we’ll have only ourselves to sue for if the work gets screwed up.
Good example would be to have King County’s own shop start assembling structure for a standard temporary construction elevator on the concrete plaza on the east side of the Sea-Tac Airport Station bridge structure. Only structural change we need to do is remove one panel of black pipes and mesh at bridge floor level.
Can’t be automated, but some film-maker might pay for a situation based on the John Henry song. Target audience everybody who lost their job to automation. Whole population of Aberdeen, for instance.
Substituting “Robot” for “Hammer” doesn’t sound authentic, even though principle and likely outcome are the same. Even in the song, the machine’s drill shaft broke. Before the worker died of a heart attack. Except took less than a month to mount another drill. Maybe because in those days the nearest attorney was in Philadelphia.
Mark
The article about transit time versus driving is misleading. It suggests that driving is usually faster than taking transit to a particular area, yet provides no evidence for that. It simply states that people who drive spend less time commuting than people who take transit. But there is no consideration given to where the commute is. That would be like saying that driving is faster than taking an airplane, because most driving trips are shorter than most plane trips.
I live in the greater Northgate area (Pinehurst). If I’m headed downtown, it is much faster for me to take a bus (assuming regular commute times). But it still isn’t super fast (half hour or so). But if I commute to Fremont (which I’ve done) it is faster for me to drive. It is also a much shorter trip. So if you just go by that, then you would conclude that for Seattle, driving is always faster, which is simply misleading.
There general conclusion (faster service attracts more riders) is of course true (duh) but their city by city data is very misleading. If you are driving to work in New York City, and it takes a half hour, chances are you are driving outside of rush hour or driving a very short distance, probably to an area that doesn’t have great transit. The problem I have with the charts is that it implies that New York is doing something wrong — that even in a city with great transit, it is still faster to drive. That is ridiculous, as anyone who as tried to get from one end of Manhattan to the other can attest.
Yes, it’s meaningless without knowing what other differences there are in average car commutes vs transit commutes. That’s actually something that’s worth knowing on its own. Are drivers and riders mostly making the same kinds of trips, or do car commutes have systematic differences from transit commutes that bias a travel-time comparison?
As a starting hypothesis, driving is the only practical way to reach isolated industrial facilities in the outskirts of Snohomish and Auburn, where the nearest bus stop is more than a mile away. Many people have a roughly equal choice between driving and transit for the same commute (such as the E vs driving on Aurora). The carless and those who really don’t want a driving commute try to live and work in places with a good transit connection between them (central Seattle, the U-District, downtown Bellevue, Northgate, etc). This suggests that a lot of riders have different commutes than a lot of drivers. But I’d hesitate to guess whether these transit commutes are really shorter or longer than car commutes, or subject to more or less congestion, or at different times, or any other variables. We’d need a study of the region’s actual car and transit commutes to confirm that, and I haven’t seen one like that.
In this case “schools and [elevated] trains don’t mix” because the tracks would clobber a third of the school’s playground. The [elevated] editorial addition is as opposed to the originally envisioned underground tracks that displace nothing, not as opposed to at-grade tracks displacing the same amount of land but introducing additional danger.
Agree. Some of the public comments, and then the local news coverage, made it sound like parents were freaking out because “trains and schools” don’t mix, as if train proximity was the problem. While some people might believe that, the actual problem was the station is going to be south of 272nd in the middle of the school’s playground. Moving the school makes everyone’s job easier – the school district, the construction contractor, and ST & Metro. The school district gets a nice lot for a new school, and ST gets a larger staging ground for construction, more space for bus layover space, etc., and then any excess space can be TOD …. even a 4 story apartment building is better TOD than a 1 story elementary.
Basically, everyone is getting made a headlines.
Good point. This happens a lot (people getting mad at headlines). It is pretty easy to write a misleading headline (National Inquirer has always been the master). It is sad that so many respected news outlets inadvertently (we hope) stoop to that level.
Anyway, like you said, it sounds like everyone wins. Kudos to folks for coming up with a good solution (build a new school) instead of haggling forever, or coming up with something terrible. [Not that I have strong opinion on the actual placement — I haven’t looked at the details.]
RE: placement – my understanding is the new school will be at the Redondo Heights Park and Ride, which is at 99 and S 276th St (it’s pretty obvious from Google Maps). Metro will give that land to the Federal Way school district, and the P&R will cease to exist. In return, ST gets the Mark Twain elementary school lot, which will host the station and TOD. The Star Lake P&R will be built on the existing P&R lot, north of 272.
Without the land swap, the station would have been built on the school’s playfield at the corner of 272 and the I5 on-ramp.
Redondo has 697 spaces, a not insignificant number. I don’t believe Start Lake P&R will get any bigger than already planned under ST3, so this may mean a net decrease in parking – possibly another win for this agreement?
The Port of Seattle has started to operate an electric cart service between the Link Station and the main terminal for those passengers who need a ride.
The service will operate between 0500 and midnight as the Port will monitor the use and will make adjustments as necessary. The carts will have Port signage in the future and they are also preparing signage to identify waiting areas.
The service started this week and so far the response has been positive.
Am I stupid for asking which Link station and what main terminal? The Port Authority operates all kinds of terminals.
Sea-Tac LINK Station is one skybridge away from the northeast corner of an extremely large building. This is the main terminal. Ticketing. Security. Baggage. Which has satellite terminals, accessible by automated trains in the basement level.
First thing you’ll find is that the walk from LINK to nearest Terminal door is several city blocks, along a not-very-well-sheltered walkway along the north edge of a parking structure. A moving walkway is probably in order.
But meantime, best the Port can do is to provide passengers with electric baggage carts for taxis.
If you’re really into transit, trip out to Sea-Tac Airport, and a walk through the complex, show you some critical things. Same with every feature of the system. Ride it all- maybe just because I drove them, but trolleybuses are an art to drive, with a lot of lessons for everything else.
Remember that transit in general is composed of thousands of details, any one of which can save or lose thousands of dollars if ignored or misinterpreted. Disaster generally doesn’t owe to stupid questions, but from being in authority and too stupid to ask.
Mark
D’oh! Of course, SeaTac!
Train traffic testing the Pt. Defiance Bypass is supposed to be ongoing in Jan.-Feb. Anybody know how it has progressed?
WSDOT sends letter to Mercer Island reaffirming no SOV access to R8A lanes beginning in June.
http://www.mercergov.org/News.asp?NewsID=2118
38 years later than it should have been, but it puts a smile on my face.
Did ORCA take away the ability to set a one zone as default? I used to use this on an old card, but when (after overpaying by accident) I went to change my zone default on the website on my new card, it doesn’t seem to be an option any more.