Month: February 2017

After multiple warm winters and a few false starts during this cold one, the Seattle metro area finally got a substantial amount of snow Sunday night. Nearly a foot has fallen in places like Bonney Lake, with 2-3 inches here in Seattle. Metro is reporting numerous cancellations and serious delays throughout the system this morning, and buses are running with chains and on snow routes. Thought there is method behind the appearance of madness, riders are often left bewildered by the snow-related changes, so we thought it would be a good time to repost our Snow Route Refresher from December. Here’s the relevant section:

It’s a good time to refresh your knowledge of transit snow operations in Seattle. The first thing you should do is sign up for alerts. Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit, Pierce Transit, and WSDOT all provide thorough information on road closures and reroutes. Being a Twitter user often gives you a leg up too; follow @seattledot, @kcmetrobus, @SoundTransit, @MyCommTrans, @PierceTransit, and @wsdot_traffic.

Route 62 Snow Route

In major Seattle snow events, there are a few basic reroute principles:

• First Hill: no service west of Broadway. Trolley routes such as #2/3/4/12 detour all the way down to the International District.
• Queen Anne: No routes travel up the Counterbalance, with routes 2/13 getting a tour of Kinnear/10th Ave W along the way instead.
• Capitol Hill/Central District: Route 8 is basically an entirely different route, using 8th, 9th, Pine, and Union between South Lake Union and the Central District. Route 11 skips the steepest part of Madison east of 23rd. Routes 10, 48, and 49 operate normally.
• SE Seattle: Link usually hums along normally, and Route 7 runs normally except skipping the Prentice Loop. Routes 106 and 107 skip Skyway, staying along Lake Washington between Renton and Rainier Beach.
• NE Seattle: No service on NE 65th street east of 35th Ave NE. There is a convoluted shuttle system for Wedgwood and Ravenna, and new routes such as Route 62 detour all the way to UW Station.
• West Seattle: All routes skip the Viaduct and the high bridge, using 1st/4th and the Spokane Street Bridge instead.
• NW Seattle: The least disrupted area in Seattle, most routes operate normally. Exceptions include Route 5 (no Fremont Ave) and Route 26 (no NE 40th St).

In 2010’s Snowmageddon, Link was the only mode that didn’t fail, With the ULink extension, Capitol Hill and UW riders can now join the ranks of the snow-immunized.

King County Metro started offering free carpool parking permits at six park & ride lots on February 1.

Standing up to demands for perpetual privilege, WSDOT has informed the city of Mercer Island that its 40-year special access to high occupancy lanes will end in June. At that time, the I-90 express lanes will permanently close for the 6-year construction of East Link, and additional HOV lanes will be added in the main roadway between Mercer Island and Seattle. Like everyone else, Mercer Islanders will be required to meet the HOV-2 standards to use the new HOV lanes.

Back in 2015, we wrote in no uncertain terms about the sense of entitlement embedded in Mercer Island’s demands for mitigation from the scourge of high capacity transit. Those unprecedented demands included permanent SOV access to HOV lanes, permanent exemption from future I-90 tolling, resident-only parking at the Mercer Island Station, complete abandonment of bus transfers on Mercer Island, and even dedicated and guaranteed seats for Islanders on Metro and Sound Transit buses.

To defend their claim, Mercer Island has argued that the 1976 agreement provided them with perpetual rights to HOV lanes, in intent if not the letter of the law. Section 1(e) of the agreement states:

As alternative long-term mitigation, WSDOT will study three alternative options (descriptors mine):

1. The Good: conversion of the new I-90 HOV lanes to High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes, which would allow Islanders to have SOV access in exchange for something they have in abundance: money. The median home on Mercer Island is $1.3m, and median family income is $154,000.
2. The Bad: building a new ramp from Island Crest Way to westbound I-90, adjacent to the east entrance of Mercer Island Station near 80th Ave NE. This would likely cost $60m or more, and possibly require some station redesign.
3. The Ugly: Getting rid of HOV lanes entirely and returning I-90 to exclusively general purpose lanes, even though WSDOT admits this would contravene “regional mobility goals” and likely require repayment of federal grants.

In the short term, Islanders will lose their special access in June, and any future SOV accommodation would have to go through the full array of environmental review, cobbling together funding between various bodies, and the alphabet soup of agency approvals. Though Mercer Island is losing a uniquely privileged asset, the impacts are real and sensible mitigation is appropriate, including much greater frequency of Route 204 up and down Island Crest Way. But I humbly suggest that Mercer Island see their future Link station less as an impact deserving mitigation and more as an asset deserving of gratitude.

In one of the first tangible signs that the Point Defiance Bypass is coming to a close this year, Sounder trains will not serve Tacoma, South Tacoma, or Lakewood from February 17-22. During the 6-day closure, crews will prepare to open the south track of the new Tacoma Trestle. Despite it being a 6-day closure, Sound Transit has minimized rider impact by aligning the closure with with a weekend and a lightly-ridden Presidents Day holiday. Service will resume for the afternoon commute on Wednesday, February 22. So if you’re a Sounder commuter who is fortunate to have Presidents Day off, your total inconvenience will amount to just 2.5 days.

Once service begins on the south track of the new trestle, the historic Milwaukee Road wooden trestle will be demolished and crews will continue work on the second (north) track, and this work will finish in 2018. Amtrak Cascades trains will begin using the new trestle later this fall.

Given the geography of the alignment, stations from Puyallup northward have always enjoyed the best time advantages and the highest ridership. Tacoma, South Tacoma, and Lakewood together accounted for 14% of South Sounder ridership in 2015, less than Puyallup alone (16%). So rider inconvenience should be relatively minimal.

In addition to regularly scheduled Sound Transit 580 buses between Lakewood, South Hill, and Puyallup, Sound Transit will run 4 timed shuttles to connect Lakewood (Green Line), South Tacoma (Orange Line), and Tacoma (Blue Line) to Puyallup, and to connect reverse commuters from Puyallup to Tacoma (Teal Line).

• 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.

Earlier this month the Kent Reporter had a story about disagreements between the Kent City Council and Sound Transit on restroom facilities at its two Kent stations (Kent/Des Moines and Star Lake/272nd). For the more dramatic account, see KOMO. Back when Kent was adopting its (impressive) rezone for the Kent “Midway” area in advance of light rail, the city also adopted dozens of requirements for Link stations within its jurisdiction, on everything from restrooms to parking requirements to the volume of trees planted. The relevant section on restrooms comes from Kent City Code 15.15.120:E, “Site Furnishings for High Capacity Transit Stations”:

E. Restroom facilities. HCT stations associated with a park and ride lot, as described in RCW 47.12.270, as amended, and HCT stations with parking facilities, shall include public restrooms with sanitary sewer connections, as well as hot and cold running water.

Against this requirement, Sound Transit has a general preference against siting restroom facilities at Link stations, citing both regional and national precedent, and the difficulty of maintaining them in a functional and sanitary state. Everett Station has had endless difficulty with sanitation and public health hazards associated with contaminated needles. Spokesperson Kimberly Reason:

What we’ve found is that restroom facilities attract illicit and unsafe activities anything from drugs to other things so that is a big issue. Our number one priority is safety for all of our passengers and riders.”

Continue reading “Should Rail Stations Have Restrooms?”