Month: June 2018

Friends, I was struck by something I heard Chris Hayes say on a recent podcast, in the middle of a conversation about the tumult in the country today and how we might turn a corner.  He said:

And then finally I think about how do we create shared public life, civics based institutions. The thing that I think of, as a New Yorker, always is the subway, which is right now a total disaster. But the subway is a little like … The subway in New York is a little like the NHS in England, which is that it really is used by everyone. It is a public thing that people commute to their Wall Street jobs in, and they commute to their nursing jobs in, and their teaching jobs in, and their janitorial jobs in, and homeless people use it, and it is a genuine shared public entity of which we have so few in American life.

Not many cities in America have a public transit system used by people from all walks of life. But Seattle kinda does. And the main reason I keep this blog running is that I really want to keep it that way.  Because “shared public entities” are at a premium right now. They can give us empathy, help us get over our fears, and help create a shared understanding.  Transit in particular gets us out of our steel boxes and into the public realm. And I love it, even if it frustrates me sometimes.  I love riding it to work, or with my kids or home late at night. And I want everyone to have the opportunity to use it. I want it to be better.

We’re lucky to live in a city with such a diverse media ecosystem that can cover the transit system. But even in Seattle, the landscape for journalism is changing  radically.  We need your support more than ever.

Each year hundreds of donors have stepped up with a generous one-time donation or a monthly subscription to support our work. While advertising does contribute to our bottom line, it is the donations from the small percentage of our readers who provide the lion’s share of our operating budget. This year we hope you’ll consider joining them.

This is (hopefully) the last time I’ll bug you in 2018.  So go ahead and make a donation before you head out on that holiday weekend.  And thanks.

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• Don’t believe the hype on microtransit.
• 144 affordable homes going in at Mt. Baker. Finally.
• Construction beginning over Capitol Hill Station. Finally.
• 3,000 Metro drivers, an all-time high.
• Tweaks to Lynnwood Link Station designs.
• ST has a new deputy CEO ($), Kimberly Farley, a veteran of many large construction projects.
• UW Station escalator purchase was penny-wise, pound-foolish.
• Downtown Bellevue getting serious bike lanes.
• Study of Center City Connector overruns ($) and delays is itself delayed. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
• JUMP bikeshare eyeing Seattle, but a $2 fee plus docking stations sounds like a loser.
• Three fascinating articles from The Economist ($): a convincing (!) defense of gentrification, declining public transport ridership worldwide, and e-bikes and scooter companies may be lucrative after all.
• Dow Constantine proposes $100m from lodging tax to build subsidized housing, on top of $87m approved in 2016.
• Good points about why affordable housing is especially important around transit, though I have a somewhat more nuanced take.
• Tacoma Council reviewing Route 1 BRT.
• Island Transit narrowly rejects fares. The minority is concerned that this leaves the agency dangerously exposed to the next recession.
• TriMet chief is thinking big.
• Eugene, OR reducing frequency on its BRT line to four per hour due to low ridership.
• Oregon now paying a statewide tax for transit. Such a measure is inconceivable in Washington.
• Roads are subsidized, part XXIV: the opportunity cost of giving up all that land.

This is an open thread.

Ask any dieter: the last ten pounds are the hardest.

For the past several years, Seattle has been racking up amazing year-over-year declines in the percentage of downtown commuters who arrive by single-occupancy vehicle, despite adding tens of thousands of new jobs and residents.  This didn’t happen magically – it required hard work and coordination from various agencies and employers (and voters) to create viable alternatives to driving.

But even though a 25% drive-alone rate is pretty darn low, and the envy of our peer cities in America, it’s not low enough. Downtown will be a mess for the next few years, and we need to take even more cars off the road to have a chance of keeping things moving.

The last few percent are the hardest.

Continue reading “To Get More People Riding Transit, Make it Faster”

Today, Richmond gets a new bus network and a new BRT line named the Pulse.

by KATIE WILSON and SAM SMITH, Transit Riders Union

Dear Members of the Sound Transit Board,

The Transit Riders Union is concerned that Sound Transit is passing up an important opportunity to serve the densest neighborhood in Washington: First Hill. Thousands of constituents in each of your districts commute to First Hill each day. And while we understand that there are some cost concerns with the slightly additional track length and tunneling twice beneath Interstate 5, we urge you to conduct a study of this possibility with sincerity and in good faith.

We recommend relocating the Madison Street station from 5th or 6th Avenue to a location between 8th and Boren Avenues. This relocation would make much of First Hill walkable to the thousands of workers, residents, and medical patients. Meanwhile, it would decrease the walkshed redundancy of building a station so close to the existing line beneath 3rd Avenue.

First Hill is a large employment center for many sectors, from nursing to administrative to custodial, that historically and presently employ mostly women, and they deserve to be considered equitably in comparison to other regional employment centers with white-collar, mostly male tech workers (South Lake Union) and blue-collar, mostly male workforces (Paine Field), which will rightfully be served upon completion of ST3.

Presently, some First Hill commuters ride Sounder to King Street Station, where they then must either:

• connect to a slow and circuitous streetcar,
• ride Link into Downtown and walk to a connecting bus as many as three blocks away (as in the case of Metro routes 2 and 12), or
• ride two buses or a combined distance of one mile

Each of these options is unnecessarily sluggish. Imagine if these workers could walk out of King Street Station, cross over the International District Station, and ride in minutes directly to First Hill. For the many other First Hill commuters whose irregular schedules prevent them from accessing Sounder, they deserve, and would exponentially benefit from, a direct connection the regional Link system.

Many people access First Hill for medical services, including many people with disabilities. Disabled passengers, for whom approaching and waiting for a bus on the steep eastbound streets of Downtown Seattle can be difficult or prohibitive, deserve simpler, faster, more comfortable, and more accessible service to First Hill.

The Transit Riders Union is very grateful for all the work that Sound Transit does for the riding population of the Puget Sound, and we thank you for your consideration of this proposal.

Katie Wilson is the TRU’s General Secretary. Sam Smith is the Disability & Access Committee Co-Chair.