Month: October 2018

Two months ago I wrote about the Downtown Seattle Association’s experiment with a free waterfront shuttle. The pilot’s original term ended on October 1st, and the numbers are in.

September 14th was the highest ridership day, at 1,674. The average weekday attracted 953 boardings, or 95 per hour. Weekends actually saw more usage, at 1,044 per day or 104 per hour. In absolute terms, this is roughly equivalent to a low-ridership Sound Transit Express route, and over much less distance. This isn’t moving the needle regionally, but isn’t bad for a new route with its share of quirks.

But that’s not the really interesting news. After starting as a single loop from Pioneer Square to the Space Needle with unscheduled 25-minute headways, the shuttle is now three separate loops (see right). 3 to 6 buses per hour serve each of these loops, with the congestion issues you would expect. Commute Seattle data suggests all the but the green loop are pretty consistent through the day.

The DSA added the green (east) loop on August 31st “to circulate riders to Pike Place Market and the Retail Core & Convention Center from the waterfront,” according to spokesperson Margaret Steck. Weekly ridership jumped from 3,824 to 6,270 on either side of the change, although some of that may have been Labor Day weekend.

If you’re interested in this service, that’s not the most exciting news. Instead of ending last week, the DSA has the funding to run through at least Sep. 3, 2019, 10am to 8pm, except for Thanksgiving and the week between Christmas and New Year’s. One would expect ridership to dip in the bad weather months, and given the apparent leisure focus of many trips, it’s a bit odd to shut down over major holidays. But it’s always good to have novel funding sources create free transit in some of the region’s most constrained spaces.

It was disappointing to learn that 3 of the 7 RapidRide corridors planned for the Move Seattle levy have been postponed indefinitely.  Fortunately, the most effective way to improve transit is also the least expensive: red paint.

The Mayor’s budget promised 100,000 new bus service hours.  It’ll be a shame if those hours are spent idling in traffic.  Increasing the city’s stock of red bus lanes will make our transit dollars go even further while reducing the city’s carbon footprint and providing a real alternative to driving.

For the first time in a really long time, we’re primed to take advantage of transit priority. The Metro bus network has never been better: thanks in large part to the city’s funding, buses are coming more frequently and serving more destinations.  Now we just need to get them moving faster.

In that spirit, I went back to the original Transit Master Plan look for improvements to the 40, 44, and 48, the three routes that were cut from Move Seattle’s RapidRide program.  By adding bus lanes in a few key spots, SDOT can get many of the advantages of RapidRide at a far lower cost.

Of course, I couldn’t stop there. I polled the STB staff for suggestions on other places where transit priority would help.  The result is seven places for transit priority, distinguished in that they are short stretches of road approaching a chokepoint.

Ridership numbers are from 2016, the most recent available, and have no doubt increased substantially since then.  For the purposes of this post, I’ve ignored other planned RapidRide lines (Route 7, Route 120, Roosevelt-Eastlake, Madison BRT), assuming that they’re still on track for whatever transit priority they’re going to get. Continue reading “Seven Places to Add Bus Lanes Now”

• Paine Field commercial flights begin next year ($).
• Seattle government ditching some cars.
• As we reported previously, CT fares went up a quarter this week.
• Link tracks cracked ($); maintenance work this weekend.
• Everett Transit fares rising steeply through 2020.
• Buses on I-5 shoulder coming soon.
• Once a bikeshare leader, SDOT now squashing scooters ($) and driving manual bikes out of the market.
• More UW workers to receive free transit passes.
• OneBusAway app gets an update.
• E-scooters an early hit ($) in Tacoma.
• ST Board settles on elevated Downtown Redmond alignment.
• Seattle employers of at least 20 may be required ($) to offer pre-tax transit passes.
• Grooming on transit: is it OK?
• Waterfront Streetcar remnants ($) still causing trouble.
• More on the new SDOT budget.
• Why American public transit stinks.
• Developers are switching from apartments to condos ($).
• Why your bus service will always stink.

This is an open thread.

Last week I pointed to some data from Gene Balk that transit ridership was higher for lower income brackets than higher incomes, consistent with conventional wisdom but disproving the argument that transit improvements are an elite project.

But Monday’s column ($) draws the opposite conclusion:

Among Seattle-area residents with a salary of $75,000 or more, 11 percent typically took transit to get to work in 2017. That’s higher than any other income group. Less than 10 percent of workers with wages below $35,000 took transit.

I asked Mr. Balk if he could explain the discrepancy. He pointed out that the first result was 2012-2016 census data, while the latter is just for 2017. Furthermore, the scope changes from King County to the entire Metro area. The 2017 data set shows that within Seattle, poor people still use transit more than rich people.

The data doesn’t prove much more, but it’s easy to speculate. In Snohomish and Pierce Counties, intra-county commutes are easy drives and dicey transit rides. If you’re going all the way into Seattle, it’s probably both a higher-paying job and one better suited to transit.

* Just kidding.

Metro’s head of service development, Bill Bryant, told STB about Metro’s provisional plans for West Seattle bus operations when the viaduct closes later this year, during the 3-6 week period when the SR 99 tunnel has not yet opened. These changes are not permanent. Metro will revise service again when SR 99 is back in operation through central Seattle.

Bryant also provided STB with two maps of the intended route changes. Those maps, and the below plans, were shared with and created with input from SDOT and WSDOT.

One map shows operations downtown, which may have another revision; the other shows operations in Sodo, which are unlikely to change. Bryant emphasized that any part of the plans could change, especially if operations create unforeseen challenges.

“[The map] is subject to change,” Bryant said. “Metro is working hard to be flexible, and we might need to change the routing during the actual closure as well.”

Here are the important points, from a rider’s perspective:

Continue reading “How West Seattle Buses Will Run While the Viaduct is Closed”