Rogoff: We are in careful and ongoing conversations with King County Metro. One of the things that we are most interested in doing and will be launching is an overall condition assessment, so we have a full, eyes wide open understanding of the condition of the asset that we’re taking ownership of.
Lyft and Uber both rolled out $2.75 discount deals Monday on shared rides (on Lyft) (as in two or more passengers, in addition to the paid driver) and all rides on Uber to and from four park & rides and nine light rail stations. The deals run through February 15, 2019.
A Ride2 van in West Seattle (courtesy of King County Metro)
To help West Seattle residents and commuters cope with the upcoming closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the subsequent changes to the area’s bus routes, King County Metro is expanding its “Ride2” on-demand shuttle service to serve the Alaska Junction bus hub and the West Seattle Water Taxi terminal at Seacrest Park.
Ride2, which launched nearly two months ago in Eastgate, uses a smartphone app or a phone service to summon a shared van operated by a contractor like Chariot. The Eastgate pilot, which has been completely fare-free, has seen an average of 100 rides per weekday and 1,600 app downloads—a far cry from what such a service can do for an area with distributed demand that is harder to serve with traditional buses.
Beginning Monday, December 17, Ride2 trips can be requested during peak periods (5 am to 9 am; 2:30 to 7 pm) to and from the Alaska Junction bus hub at California Avenue and Edmunds Street, as well as the King County Water Taxi terminal at Seacrest Park. Trips are not allowed to be pre-scheduled, with expected wait times of 10 to 15 minutes. A separate Ride2 app will be required for the West Seattle service. The service area covers most of peninsula’s north and eastern halves, from Alki and the Admiral District to High Point and Delridge. The Ride2 coverage area also include stretches of West Marginal Way on the Duwamish Waterway that are completely unserved by current bus routes, as well as large swaths of West Seattle that are between parallel routes.
Typical southbound traffic on I-5 approaching Mercer Street
With the closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct next month, the “period of maximum constraint,” now known, apparently, as the “Seattle Squeeze” is officially upon us. Five years of construction as we rebuild the Waterfront, expand the convention center, and (maybe? hopefully?) build a streetcar on First Avenue and bus rapid transit on Madison St.
Unfortunately, the squeeze is coming as the city is delaying bus and bike improvements. Along with a diverse group of organizations, we are calling for the city to re-prioritize some of those investments. While we recognize that not everything can be built at once, and we don’t want to minimize the considerable effort the city is making in re-prioritizing downtown right-of-way, there are plenty of opportunities for short term improvements to keep people moving over the next half-decade.
How are discussions going amongst the Board, and with yourself and other staff? How are you making sure Seattle gets the best project, but also meeting those needs?
Rogoff: We’ve always said for places like Lynnwood and Federal Way, the issue isn’t going to be if we’re going to build out there—or the same is true for Snohomish and Tacoma—it’s going to be when.
If our finances don’t hold together, it causes us to push projects out, at greater cost, while congestion only worsens. That’s obviously a scenario we want to avoid, whether it’s because of the loss of federal funds, or MVET tax revenues, or a very deep recession.
With boardings up a bit and the number of trips essentially flat, this implied an alarming increase in ST’s unit costs. The good news is that a big chunk of this is a mere accounting illusion. The medium news is that some of it is one-time expenses. The bad news is that some of it is an increase in unit costs going forward.
The series in which STB writers travel around to other cities and make wild generalizations about their transit and land use is back, with a slight change in venue. I visited Columbus and Detroit in mid-October for a Wikipedia conference and spent plenty of time on the buses and bikeshare in the cores of both cities, gaining a decent enough understanding of their mobility situations. That being said, both cities sprawl out a bit and I was only able to really see the urban cores and inner neighborhoods of both cities, so there may be perspectives on both systems that I’m missing out on.
First up is Columbus, anchoring the largest U.S. metro area without a single passenger rail service, as Amtrak had ceased service in 1979 and the streetcars were dismantled in 1948. Several light rail proposals have come and gone, along with plans to build a proper inter-city rail system across Ohio, and have only left us with nice fantasy maps and a city that still dreams of building a greater transit system.
From Boston, STB’s frenemy emeritus, d.p., shares this twitter observation:
@danjryan@kptrease@MikeLindblom@fchi Now that the midterms are over and it feels safe to focus on (still important) minutiae again, I wanted to send you all this astounding comparison I noticed.
One can quibble about hills, and placement of the dots. But he’s right that someone that tried to say that Convention Place serves Capitol Hill, or Avalon Station served the Junction, would rightly draw ridicule.
The development map d.p. attaches shows that “new Ballard” isn’t actually east of “old Ballard,” but instead to the north. A 14th station is simply farther away — not at the heart of coming density that will dwarf the existing old buildings.
