Pros and Cons of Truncating Bus Routes at Link: Route 150

Posted on by Arthur Domby
Route 150 shadowing Link at SODO. Photo by Oran.

Nine years ago Martin looked at the general problem of I-5 buses terminating at Rainier Beach. However, removing buses from the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel provides an opportunity to review if there are cost savings or efficiency improvements by truncating routes formerly in the tunnel and forcing a transfer to Link.

Truncating is a balancing act: Riders can often save time by transferring to a congestion-free mode like light rail, and service hours saved can be used to provide more frequent service on the shortened bus line. However, the benefits can be diminished if the transfer is infrequent or inconvenient. Let’s look at King County Metro Route 150 as an example.

Route 150 map, highlighting congestion areas

The 150 runs from Kent Station to Seattle, providing service from roughly 5 a.m. to midnight with pickups every 15 minutes during the day Monday through Saturday. On weekdays in the fall of 2017, it carried about 6,200 passengers, comparable to RapidRide B. The 150 also serves as the direct connection to Seattle from Kent since there is no ST Express bus. How would truncating the 150 at Rainier Beach Link station affect quality of service for north- and southbound riders?

Continue reading “Pros and Cons of Truncating Bus Routes at Link: Route 150”

Next gen ORCA cards to roll out by 2023, in more retail locations

Posted on by Peter Johnson
Washed. Credit: Wikipedia

The next generation of ORCA cards should be available by 2023 at the latest, according to the contract transit agencies will execute with the company selected to roll out the card with retailers.

The Sound Transit Board signed off on a contract with Ready Credit Corporation at a meeting on April 25. A memo summarizing the contract said that “actual distribution of smart cards” will “begin toward the end of the third year or in the fourth year of the contract,” making winter 2022 the earliest new ORCA cards could be available in stores and vending machines.

Sound Transit already approved the vendor that will create the system architecture, cards, and readers needed for the system, or the back of house, as a restaurant might put it. The Ready Credit contract is for front of house: vending machines and contracts with retailers.

This contract will allow for a significant, positive change in the way people will actually buy and reload ORCA cards. Cards should be available in more locations than they are today.

Continue reading “Next gen ORCA cards to roll out by 2023, in more retail locations”

Floor Amendments May Block the Box for Final Approval of Bus Lane Cameras

Posted on by Brent White
Traffic cameras could help bus commuters from over 20 legislative districts
Credit: Zack Heistand / twitter

Update 1: Y’all wanted to know why Sen. Saldaña proposed her amendment exempting transit from citations. The answer is at the bottom of the post. I promise you won’t have to click 10 times to get to it.

Update 2: Sen. Saldaña has submitted a striker amendment, with the effects listed below.

Update 3: Sen. Saldaña has submitted a second striker amendment, with the effects listed below. The first four amdendments have all been pulled, leaving just the last two eligible for floor discussion and action.

Update 4: Sen. Hasegawa has submitted two amendments to Saldaña’s second striker to push Seattle to operate camera enforcement in-house. Those two make four that could come up on the Senate floor.

Final Update: The bill did not get brought up on the Senate floor by adjournment for the year, midnight Sunday. It goes back to the start line in 2020.

Both chambers of the State Legislature took the morning off while various conference committees (some formal and some informal) and party caucuses try to iron out disagreements on various bills, including biennial transportation appropriations (Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1160). Both chambers are scheduled to reconvene in voting session at 2 pm. The session ends at midnight Sunday.

The bill to add additional allowed uses of automated camera enforcement for traffic violations, including bus lanes, crosswalks, and blocking the box (ESHB 1793), is 53rd – and last – on the Senate’s regular floor calendar, after having gotten voted out of the Senate Rules Committee at first asking yesterday.

Eight floor amendments to ESHB 1793 have been proposed:

Continue reading “Floor Amendments May Block the Box for Final Approval of Bus Lane Cameras”

Elected Officials Ask for More Light Rail EIS Options, Reject Movable Ballard Bridge

Posted on by Peter Johnson
Never again. Credit: Wikipedia

Seattle and King County elected officials have asked Sound Transit to remove a moved bridge in Ballard from future Link plans. They also urged Sound Transit to ditch the elevated “Orange Line” alignment in West Seattle, which would require large numbers of homes to be demolished.

In other areas, the officials mostly declined to endorse other specific choices in the planning effort. Instead, at the final Elected Leadership Group (ELG) meeting for the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions, elected officials preferred a full Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of nearly all the alignments currently under consideration. Comments by business and community groups from Ballard, West Seattle, and Chinatown-International District (ID) generally advocated for the same process.

Sound Transit asked elected officials to endorse specific alignments in the hope of speeding the EIS process and picking a preferred alignment early. Agency CEO Peter Rogoff and project director Cathal Ridge both emphasized in prepared remarks that selecting a preferred alignment would not actually lock the agency into building the chosen project. Continue reading “Elected Officials Ask for More Light Rail EIS Options, Reject Movable Ballard Bridge”

News Roundup: A Good Sign

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

King County Metro

This is an open thread.

Kohl-Welles: Free Fares on Snow Days

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

Route 255 Snow Shuttle

This week, King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles introduced legislation to eliminate Metro fares whenever Metro activates the Emergency Snow Network. It’s early in the process and there is no cost estimate at this time (press release here).

This legislation continues the process of chipping away at the fare structure without taking the financial hit of eliminating fares entirely. Much like New Year’s Eve, snow days are an especially good day to eliminate barriers to using the system, and are rare enough to make the cost negligible. Transit is likely to welcome many newcomers that will be clumsy with a fare, and reducing car use helps avoid total system collapse. As Kohl-Welles told The Stranger, it can also be a matter of life and death, as people struggle to get out of the cold.

Five Years of Lynnwood Link Construction To Begin Soon

Posted on by Bruce Englehardt
A train will run (near) here, in five years’ time (Mountlake Terrace)

The start of construction for Lynnwood Link is only weeks away, just over a decade since the project was approved by voters as part of the Sound Transit 2 package in 2008. The first inter-county Link trains are scheduled to arrive in July 2024, traveling on 8.5 miles of elevated and surface tracks along the side of Interstate 5 between Lynnwood and Northgate.

While a firm groundbreaking date has not been announced yet, Sound Transit has released detailed plans for the scheduled construction activities at and around each of the project’s four planned stations. While the status of Northeast 130th Street Station is still up in the air, the citizens of Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, and Lynnwood will have easy access to their stations once opening day arrives, but will have to deal with varying levels of disruption over the next five years.

Continue reading “Five Years of Lynnwood Link Construction To Begin Soon”

Elevated Light Rail Could Limit Housing Development in West Seattle

Posted on by Peter Johnson
The Junction station of the Yellow line would replace a block ripe for upzoning. Credit: Sound Transit

Elevated light rail alignments in West Seattle have a unique problem. Unlike any other part of the system so far, they run through a built-up, residential area. Planned or existing lines are lie mostly in existing right-of-way, or tunnel into their own.

Sound Transit has had to demolish some housing for other projects, mainly at the periphery of neighborhoods. But one of the proposed elevated West Seattle lines, the Yellow/West Seattle Elevated line, would require bulldozing unprecedented parts of two built-up neighborhoods: Youngstown (the northern end of the Delridge area) and the Junction.

Residents have taken notice, forming the East Alaska Junction Neighborhood Coalition (EAJNC), a community group whose site says they “support and look forward to the arrival of a new Link Light rail extension in our area but have concerns about the proposed plans.” Continue reading “Elevated Light Rail Could Limit Housing Development in West Seattle”