Month: February 2018

At recently as 2012, Sound Transit had less than one billion dollars of debt. That increased to $4.6 billion by the end of 2017. The ST3 program will push it much higher, peaking at a projected $17.6 billion in 2035. That path puts Sound Transit close to legal limits as major ST3 projects are delivered. After 2035, as most major projects are completed, the outstanding debt could be reduced.

Sound Transit’s ability to take on more debt is constrained both by statute and by policy. Most immediately relevant is a statutory limit of non-voted debt at 1.5% of the assessed value of property within the RTA. This is the same limit all Washington State municipalities face. With 60% voter approval, the statutory limit would increase to 5%, though other policies and bond covenants would prevent the debt ever getting that high. The cushion between actual and allowed debt is most narrow in 2035, when the $17.6 billion in outstanding debt nudges against the $20.1 billion limit.

All financial projections over such an extended period are uncertain, combining assumptions about revenue growth, federal grants, project costs, and interest rates many years into the future. The legal debt limit may be lower than anticipated if the growth of assessed property values slows. Some risks correlate in unhelpful ways. Prolonged slower growth would mean lower tax revenues and less ability to borrow to fill the gap.

The long-term debt plan is very sensitive to small changes in the financial plan in the early years. Consider the bills to correct MVET valuations. The tax revenue loss from updating the valuation schedule is just $780 million between 2017 and 2028 if there is no other mitigation from the Legislature. The implications for Sound Transit debt are larger. Absent offsetting cost reductions, the lost revenues must be replaced by debt. The average interest rate is anticipated at 4% through 2021 (reflecting low recent bond rates), and 5.3% thereafter (a more typical pre-recession cost of debt). Sound Transit pays a 1% origination fee on bonds and typically begins repaying principal after five years. The principal and interest payments are themselves funded with more borrowing. At those rates, the MVET reduction accumulates to $1.6 billion in outstanding bonds by 2035, or $2.2 billion by 2041. That appears to just fit within future debt limits, but the margin of error is much too narrow for comfort in a decades-long financial forecast.

Could Sound Transit borrow to replace a loss of federal funding? Lynnwood Link and Federal Way Link alone were anticipated to receive $1.67 billion of federal grants, with several billions more in future New Starts loans on other projects. There is some short-term flexibility in the plan, as Sound Transit is still far from its maximum debt capacity. But extend out the cost of replacing those grants with accumulated interest, and the debt impact roughly doubles by 2035. More debt in the 2020s means exceeding debt limits in the 2030s. A significant shortfall in federal funding would almost surely mean delays or scope reductions somewhere in the capital program. Continue reading “Sound Transit’s debt limit”

Large five-lane intersections dominate Bellevue. To eke out every little bit of roadway capacity, the city in 2015 finished installing adaptive signal technology at all 203 of its signalized intersections. The system adjusts the timing of the traffic signal cycle based on real-time traffic conditions. In theory, the less unused green left at the end of each light cycle, the better, resulting in more traffic moving through the intersection.

This system, known as the Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS), has reduced afternoon delays at some intersections as much as 43%, but is also benefiting pedestrian and bus riders, the city says.

Traditional traffic signals work on a fixed cycle, which might allow for a couple of settings to be used over the course of the day. But the timing for a traffic signal cycle that works best for the morning commute isn’t always the most efficient for the evening rush or during non-commute hours. Instead, SCATS uses detectors embedded in the roadway to constantly monitor traffic volumes at intersections, adjusting cycle lengths based on current demand. The system tries to decrease delay by reducing the amount of unused green time during each cycle. Generally, the higher the traffic volume through an intersection, the longer the cycle length is to serve the demand.

Continue reading “Smart Technology Alerting Commutes in Bellevue”

Sound Transit and Metro have released their 2017 ridership numbers, and they paint a rosy picture for our regional transit system amid a national decline in transit ridership (particularly among buses). The two agencies alone carried 155 million total passengers within King County; add estimated figures from Pierce and Snohomish counties and the number of total transit trips taken in 2017 increases to over 190 million. Leading the way is Link, which averaged 72,028 weekday riders and carried 23 million total passengers, an increase of 22 percent over 2016’s huge ridership. Sound Transit’s ridership grew by 10 percent overall, with only a small decline in ST Express ridership holding it back.

To put things into perspective, Link is now ~40 daily passengers away from surpassing the Minneapolis–St. Paul light rail system, which averages 72,064 riders on 23 miles of track. Even without the boost from the Northgate Link extension, ridership could come close to – or surpass – Denver’s RTD light rail system, which carries 75,900 daily riders over a sprawling 59 miles of track.

More numbers after the jump.

Continue reading “2017 Regional Transit Ridership Grows By Leaps and Bounds”

At least 55 metro lines in 37 cities around the world are fully automated, according to the International Association of Public Transport, an advocacy group that promotes public transit.

Many of these fully automated lines are closed systems, in contrast to Sound Transit which, at times, mixes with other vehicular traffic. The agency says it will eventually study automating or semi-automating parts of the Link system, but today, ST uses a hybrid system with operators and computers working together to operate the train. Here’s how it works: 

In response to a successful challenge by a Phinney Ridge neighborhood group over the lack of onsite parking proposed for a 57-unit apartment building, the city is planning changes to the land use and zoning code that would allow the project to continue.

The legislation under consideration would change how the city defines “frequent transit service” areas, allowing developers to continue to build apartments without parking in transit-rich areas. The move would also require the unbundling of parking space rentals from lease agreements in buildings with 10 units or more.

A 2017 hearing examiner’s decision halted plans for an apartment building at 6726 Greenwood Ave., agreeing with the group, Livable Phinney, that the location of the proposed housing units did not meet the city’s definition of frequent transit service and therefore was not exempt from onsite parking requirements. A West Seattle group, Neighbors Encouraging Reasonable Development, has also challenged the city’s definition of frequent transit service.

Currently, the city defines frequent transit service as “transit service headways in at least one direction of 15 minutes or less for at least 12 hours per day, 6 days per week, and transit service headways of 30 minutes or less for at least 18 hours every day.” Onsite parking is not required for new buildings within a quarter-mile of areas with frequently-served transit stops.

Livable Phinney argued, based on actual arrival times of Metro Route 5 the location of the future apartment building failed to meet the definition of frequent transit service. Continue reading “City Pushes for Apartments Without Onsite Parking”

On Tuesday night, Sound Transit put on an open house in West Seattle that was well attended (a little crowded, at that) and seemed to generate good ideas. It had all the standard fare: a looping video of the project alignment; some rollplots with maps that vaguely showed the alignment over some aerial imagery; boards with basic information about the project; a venue with ample parking and a decent bus connection; and an audience of older people who were able to make the 6:00 pm start time by not working downtown. This post isn’t about that meeting, however.

This is the 21st century, and it seems like Sound Transit has finally updated the public comment process to suit it. The online scoping open house (which is open until March 5) features a neat comment system that allows you to place notes over an interactive map of the representative project alignment and vote on the comments of others. The comments can be sorted by the number of “likes”, providing a rough way of gauging the popularity of particular ideas, which makes the lives of us bloggers a bit easier. It seems to be a hit too, with over 600 comments generated in the first week of going online. While some of the comments were off-topic, off-kilter, or repetitive, a lot of the more popular comments offered good ideas, including some that transit advocates overlooked while pushing their own agendas.

Continue reading “West Seattle and Ballard Link’s Draft Alignment and Many Comments”

Seattle’s $50M yearly investment in additional bus service has helped deliver frequent transit service to a majority of households in the city. After three years, the percentage of families living near routes with transit service every 10 minutes has more than doubled, SDOT says. Now a driver shortage could limit the extra service Seattle can buy from King County Metro Transit, as the city strives to bring frequent transit service to even more households this year.

In 2014, voters approved Proposition 1, which created the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD) to pay for increased bus service funded by a $60 licensing fee and a 0.1% sales tax increase. The funding increased the frequency of buses and eased overcrowding by adding 270,000 hours of annual bus service to 68 bus routes.  

Three years later, the city estimates 64% of households are within a 10-minute walk of all-day transit service running every 10 minutes or better, up from 25% in 2015, leaving the city only 8 percentage points away from its 2025 goal of 72% of households.

“As soon as the service gets out there, it gets filled up with riders,” said Andrew Glass-Hastings, SDOT’s director of transit and mobility, while giving members of the Sustainability and Transportation Committee the annual STBD report in January. “It’s a good thing, but it also means we are continually a little bit behind meeting demand for service.”

He pointed specifically to RapidRide Lines C and D, which remain overcrowded even as Seattle pays for more than a third of the service for both routes. But a Metro labor shortage might limit the city’s ability to purchase additional bus service.

Continue reading “Metro Labor Shortage Limits Transportation Benefit District”