Month: December 2018

It’s time to look back at the top articles of the last year. The major themes should be no surprise: ST3 and high-speed rail dominated. But our series on East Link and how it’s shaping the Eastside was popular as well.

1. Introducing Cascadia Rail by Cascadia Rail (Feb 12, 2018). The launch of a new organization advocating for state-wide HSR.
2. Seattle Metro Rapid Map “circa” 1990 by Oran Virincy (Feb 17, 2018). Oran’s retro-fantasy map shows what Forward Thrust-powered Seattle rapid transit might have looked like at the dawn of the grunge era.
3. ST3 Level 2 Planning – Time to Make Decisions by Seattle Subway (Sept 21, 2018). The Ballard-West Seattle options begin to narrow.
4. ST3 Must be Built for the Future by STB Editorial Board (Feb 7, 2018). We argue the Ballard line should be built with expansion in mind.
5. Reimagining Bellevue for Light Rail by Lizz Giordano (Apr 9, 2018). deep dive on Bellevue’s transformation around the train.
6. How much would high-speed rail actually cost? by Alon Levy (Jan 17, 2018). A critique of the high costs in WSDOT’s initial high-speed rail study.
7. ST3 Plan needs to put riders first by Seattle Subway (Nov 29, 2018). Feedback as the Ballard-West Seattle process moves toward the “preferred alternative”
8. An Opportunity to Make Light Rail Exceptional by Seattle Subway (Feb 13, 2018). Seattle Subway’s opening gambit.
9. Redmond Waits for Light Rail by Lizz Giordano (Feb 5, 2018).
10. 14th Avenue is the Wrong Spot for a Ballard Station by Frank Chiachiere (Oct 17, 2018). Explaining why 14th is substantially worse than 15th.

And here are the most commented ones:

Continue reading “Our Most Popular Articles in 2018”

Here’s Greta’s longer TED talk.

This is an open thread.

• Mercer Megablock is up for sale.
• Sen. Hobbs (D-Lake Stevens) trying to fund a new transportation package ($) with a carbon fee.
• Link escalators a disaster, but you knew that already.
• Redmond Mayor John Marchione is the new ST Board chair. He’s been pretty good on the board.
• Angst over Tacoma Link construction staging.
• Jan 14th meeting with ST about Kent Station parking and the coming Link station.
• Some good trends in how Seattle gets around.
• If in 2018 John Niles is arguing that Link isn’t enough transit, I think an important part of the argument has been settled. Although the pause he proposes is counterproductive, and I’m more pessimistic about Snohomish County ridership than he is, I fully support a close look at capacity-enhancing options. A simple, if partial, solution is to buy better railcars.
• Transit-oriented development plan near TIBS could displace some immigrant businesses ($).
• Sound Transit has a 2019 budget.

This is an open thread.

Sounder North turned 15 years old on Friday. The line has four daily round-trips that carry an average of 1,750 people per weekday.

This is an open thread.

In an extended press conference about the Seattle Squeeze on Thursday, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, WSDOT, SDOT, and Metro laid out their plans to mitigate the planned mobility crisis.

It’s a mixed bag. The coordinated government effort does include some promising transit benefits, but doesn’t go as far as it could—by the agencies’ own admission.

The officials—WSDOT’s David Sowers, SDOT’s Heather Marx, and Metro’s Bill Bryant—presented a long list of changes to downtown mobility, organized into three categories:

• Planned changes;
• “Initial response,” which would be implemented if the initial plan doesn’t do enough;
• A set of worst-case-scenario options, blandly titled “secondary responses”

Continue reading “Downtown mobility in the Carpocalypse”

• Your ORCA beep has changed.
  
• Peter Rogoff in line for a $16,000 bonus ($).
• Columbia River Crossing meetings try to get over hard feelings from Washington Republicans’ irresponsibility. Jay Inslee wants light rail on the new bridge.
  
• Judge sets back Burke-Gilman “missing Link” yet again; apparently environmental impact statements are also meant to assess if any business might possibly be hurt, anywhere. Just scrap the whole law and start with a new EIS that actually focuses on the environment.
• New Lime ridership numbers.
• Positive Train Control work still on schedule for a spring return to the Point Defiance Bypass. With unfortunate timing, a Cascades derailment yields no injuries, a year after the last one. It will take years for train service to recover from that tragedy.
  
• The war on pedestrians.
• Meet Mike Lindblom. Some of the anecdotes are really precious.
  
• If California messes up their HSR project, it will be very bad for America.

This is an open thread.

That U.S. Census Bureau data says so probably doesn’t surprise you.

However, the data pokes holes in the narrative that Silicon Valley transplants are the main reason for the Puget Sound’s explosive growth in population—and housing costs.

More of the out-of-state newcomers to King County from 2012-16 were from California than the rest of the top five states combined. Eight of the twenty out of state counties that sent the most people to Seattle are in California.

However, more of the people new to King County were nearby already. Most of the people who moved to King County in the same period already lived in Washington, and the Puget Sound region itself. Together, Pierce and Snohomish Counties sent more people to King County than California.

Also, Southern California sent more new residents to King County than the Bay Area, and Los Angeles by itself sent nearly as much. The five Bay Area counties (San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda, San Mateo, and Contra Costa) sent 5,158 people. Los Angeles County sent 4,550. The Southern California counties (Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, and San Bernardino) sent 8,542.

The Census Bureau estimates that 143,088 total new residents moved to King County between 2012 and 2016. That number combines people moving from foreign countries, people moving from other U.S. states, and Washington itself.

The data comes from U.S. Census Bureau figures compiled from 2012-16’s American Community Survey (ACS) statistics, which estimate county-to-county migration in each county in the United States. These figures measure only in-migration—the number of people who moved to King County—not net migration, which would account for the combined in- and out-migration.

On Dec. 10th Sen. Guy Palumbo (D – Maltby/Bothell) prefiled a bill to end the High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes on I-405. Although most transportation experts would line up to slay this bill, its passage — which is not likely — may actually be a good outcome for transit.

The bill doesn’t return the highway to the old, clogged status quo of one HOV-2 lane.  Instead, the unwidened stretch north of NE 160th St would be HOV-3. The recently expanded segment between Bothell and Bellevue would change to one lane of HOV-3 and one of HOV-2.

The current configuration is HOV-3 during peak hours and HOV-2 at other times, plus anyone willing to pay the toll.

Continue reading “New Bill Would End I-405 Tolling”

This is an open thread.

Add another workaround to the list of fixes for the Period of Maximum Constraint Seattle Squeeze Carpocalypse: King County is increasing the number of Water Taxi ferry sailings between West Seattle and Downtown.

The Water Taxi is adding an additional vessel starting on January 14, which will allow the following service improvements between then and March 27:

• Ferries will run the 10 minute route with 20 minute headways, instead of the present 35 minutes
• The number of peak sailings will double from six to twelve
• New, hourly off-peak, midday sailings will run between 11:25 AM and 3 PM

King County’s release also mentions “additional parking available on Harbor Ave SW, SW Bronson Way, and Pier 2 with free shuttle connector,” and “no charge for bikes onboard, additional bike parking available at Seacrest Park.”

Metro will set up additional last mile service to get passengers on board the new boat. As Bruce wrote on Tuesday, Metro is rolling out app-dispatched Ride2 shuttle service to the West Seattle dock, along with additional bus service on Routes 773 and 775 from the Junction and Admiral District/Alki, respectively.

The Water Taxi will undoubtedly be a more reliable, and likely faster, mode than the bus. As Metro head of service development Bill Bryant told STB in October, travel times for the Sodo segment of West Seattle buses is likely to increase by 50 to 100 percent.

Find maps for 773 and 775 buses and Ride2 here, plus timetables for the buses.

Learn more about Metro’s revised bus service plan for the Viaduct closure here.

We’ll create a more comprehensive post rounding up all updated Downtown transit service on the eve of the Carpocalypse.

• Fort Lawton affordable housing push rumbles on ($).
• Renton ahead of Seattle on the backyard cottage front.
• Seattle booming, not adding cars.
• 3 finalists for SDOT director
• Mountlake Terrace planning its station area.
• The scooter ban is indefensible.
• Seattle Central College doesn’t want to build any more parking.
• Geofencing 3rd Ave.
• ST has a new executive.
• All your questions about SR99, answered ($)
• Hot East Link pics.
• UW Master Plan finally approved.
• Tacoma still studying a fast ferry to Seattle ($).
• Gov. Inslee announces his climate plan, without a carbon tax.
• Spokane mulls fees on Uber and Lyft.
• New housing is not reducing affordable housing stock.
• Portland land-use proposal may hit the sweet spot.
• TriMet trying out double-deckers.
• Luxembourg tries free transit.
• Trump turns the TIGER program into another road fund.

This is an open thread.

At the Sound Transit Board’s executive committee today, ST CEO Peter Rogoff said that Sound Transit will be the sole operator in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT) starting March 23, 2019, as King County Metro vacates the tunnel. 

Rogoff also announced that ST will run trains in both directions on a single track for a yet to be determined part of 2020, as part of East Link construction.

ST spokesperson Geoff Patrick said that six minute peak headways will remain the same after ST takes over the tunnel, but the trains will “actually be able to meet them.”

At present, bus-related impediments, like onboarding and payment, prevent ST from meeting ideal reliability standards in the tunnel. After the changeover, trains will be able to operate at higher speeds between stations, with less time spent idling between stations or lingering at the platform.

Patrick said that “there’s no way to finish construction” without the single-tracking, which will be located just south of the Chinatown/International District station. Switches will be installed in the tunnel guideway, to connect East Link’s ramp—which previously carried Eastside-bound buses into the DSTT—to the existing rail network.

ST will have to increase headways and reduce train speeds to complete the connection. 

Patrick said that ST staff are still planning the construction work, and will announce firmer plans in January.