February 2020 – Seattle Transit Blog

Major climate bills face Monday committee deadline

February 29, 2020March 11, 2020 by Brent White

Monday, March 2, is the deadline for bills to get out of fiscal and transportation committees in Olympia. A slew of bills important to fighting the climate catastrophe, as well as clearing cheaters out of transit lanes, are up against this wall.

Both the House and Senate version of the bill to allow automated camera enforcement of some transit-only lanes have passed out of their original chamber. Bizarrely, both are having trouble getting out of the transportation committees in their second chamber. HB 1793 is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Transportation Committee Monday. SB 5789 is scheduled for a hearing in the House Transportation Committee today. Each has to get out of committee Monday.

Of much larger concern to those who want to see humanity survive the impending climate catastrophe, bills to require cars to emit less CO2, fuels to be less polluting, and to set an overall limit on the state’s emissions in line with 2018 science, are also having trouble getting to the floor of their second chambers. I covered these bills in a little more detail recently.

AAA is bringing car sharing back to Seattle

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020 by Frank Chiachiere

Monica Nickelsburg, Geekwire:

AAA is expanding its GIG Car Share service beyond the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle. GIG will begin rolling out cars in Seattle this April and its full fleet of 250 Toyota Priuses will be deployed in the city by May.

Small Toyota Prius C cars seem like a much more sensible choice for car sharing than full-size German sedans and SUVs. Perhaps that will hopefully give GIG a better shot at amortizing the costs.

That said, a “full fleet” 250 cars is not that many (Car2Go and ShareNow had 750 each), so it’ll be interesting to see how GIG keeps them in use and not semi-abandoned in the far-reaches of the city, while maintaining equity.

Three fundamental challenges to the car share model remain: (1) Uber/Lyft are underpriced, (2) the addressable market is small, and (3) finding a parking spot at your destination is annoying. In addition, the bifurcated Seattle market presents a particular challenge: if you live in an urban village, you likely have good transit service already. If you live outside an urban village, parking is abundant and easy so why bother?

To be sure, GIG can make progress on some of these (apparently they have dedicated parking at BART stations), but others require a rethink from a city level.

(Oh, and don’t take the cars out of cell phone range).

Now is the time to regionalize transit funding

February 27, 2020February 27, 2020 by Guest Contributor

by Kelsey Mesher

A countywide 2020 transportation measure would help address affordability, growth and mobility needs — and maintain Seattle’s current level of service.

With one of the largest and most progressive electorates expected to turn out this year, 2020 presents an opportunity to address our region’s largest challenges, including transportation. On Wednesday, February 26, the King County Council kicked off its first public discussion of going to the ballot to ask voters to support a countywide Transportation Benefit District, which could raise as much as $160 million annually for bus service, programs and improvements through a 0.2% increase in sales tax.

We have seen the successes of transit investment through Seattle’s Transportation Benefit District. In the last two years alone, Seattle has increased TBD-funded Metro service by 36%. As a result, more than 7 in 10 residents live within a 10-minute walk of very frequent bus service. While transit ridership has declined in cities across the country, Seattle has bucked the trends – increasing transit ridership and kept drive alone commute rates at bay. The City has also used TBD funds to support access and affordability programs, providing free transit for students and some residents of low-income housing.

Metro’s long range plan, Metro Connects, outlines how we can achieve outcomes like these throughout King County, which is why Transportation Choices Coalition strongly supports taking a countywide approach to funding transit. The alternative is continuing with a “pay-to-play” system where the most well-resourced cities, like Seattle (or potentially Bellevue or Redmond, should they choose to run their own measures), receive a higher level of service, creating a two-tiered transit system.

We are all well aware of the needs:

Metro sees higher costs, greater funding needs, in long range plan

February 27, 2020February 27, 2020 by Dan Ryan

*RapidRide in Bellevue (image: Shane in the City/flickr)*

Metro Connects is King County Metro’s long range plan. Developed in 2016, it lays out a 25 year vision for the evolution of the Metro network. The plan envisioned a 70% increase in Metro bus service hours by 2040 over 2015 levels. In recent months, Metro has been updating their analysis of how much the plan would cost to implement, and delivered an initial update to the Regional Transit Committee last week. The analysis has already identified billions of dollars in additional costs over the projection in 2016.

The Metro Connects plan was, by design, an unconstrained and unfunded vision of the future network to meet the needs of 2040. Baseline expectations for tax and fare revenue indicated enough funding for just 30% of the additional capital costs and 50% of the extra service hours originally identified. Early goals including RapidRide expansion have been scaled back. The initial plan was to open 13 new lines by 2024. In 2018, that was reduced to just 7 lines by 2027.

A report last June found Metro could reach its 2040 targets with a renewal of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (about $54 million annually) and another $220 million in county funding. A county ballot proposition is being considered for this August, but it will likely be sized at no more than $160 million including replacement of the Seattle levy. That can only be a down payment toward the 2040 targets. Last week’s update to Metro Connects’ costs push those goals further out of reach.

News roundup: zero fare

February 26, 2020February 25, 2020 by Martin H. Duke

As described above, IT ridership up 20% a month after abolishing fares.
Transit commuting is often about making educated guesses about the best way to get there.
Finding more space at an SLU bus stop.
The principle of “why can’t we have that cool thing?”, in both parable and real-life example. Here in Seattle, discussion about who gets a tunnel often fall into this trap.
ST discusses its fare enforcement survey. Most evasion doesn’t seem to be about ability to pay, but it also isn’t malicious.
Why bus stops are usually after the intersection ($).
Complaints about safety of the disabled on Metro.
Chicago has a new way of enforcing bus lanes. This reminds us that when Seattle passes the buck to the legislature to enforce these, it’s a sign of lack of commitment to the goal.
Yakama Nation mulls 150 miles of trails.

This is an open thread.

Major Monorail upgrades to open alongside new Arena

February 25, 2020February 25, 2020 by Bruce Nourish

At a press conference his morning, NHL Seattle, Seattle Monorail Services, and several public- and private-sector partners will announce a major package of upgrades to the Seattle monorail, along with a program to provide subsidized public transit access to NHL events. These improvements will dramatically improve the peak capacity of the monorail system, and improve the rider experience at all times. Along with other local media, STB was given a preview of these improvements.

The big ticket item in this package is a major upgrade to the Westlake terminal. Perhaps the best way to introduce this upgrade is to discuss what once was. As pictured above, the original 1962 downtown station was built over public right of way, and included a platform area that amounted to maybe half a city block. This capacious facility, plus the fact that people in 1960 were less capacious than today, allowed the cars to approach their design capacity of 450 persons on each trip, and in turn to carry about 45,000 riders daily during the World’s Fair.

In the 1980s, the Monorail was saved from likely demolition by Councilmember George Benson, who arranged for today’s station to be shoehorned into the side of the redevelopment we now call Westlake Center. This station suffers from a number of compromises: it’s cramped, access is poor, ticketing is slow, only one train can operate from the station at once, and only four of each train’s eight doors can be used for loading. Barely adequate for today’s tourist traffic on a busy summer day, the Westlake terminal was identified by Via in a 2018 study as the primary obstacle to the Monorail once again serving as a true high capacity transit service.

Vandalism in Beacon Hill tunnel

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020 by Martin H. Duke

Last week, vandals dealt Link riders, already idling thanks to Connect2020 service reductions, a further blow by vandalizing the Beacon Hill tunnel. From Monday through ~~Thursday~~ Wednesday, trains had to single track between Mt. Baker and Sodo, where they could split into Northbound and Southbound platforms before going right back to single-tracking all the way to Pioneer Square. Needless to say, this piled on yet more delays.

On Monday morning, a person entered a tunnel cross-passage, opened a standpipe valve, flooded critical electrical components and disabled the emergency ventilation fan.
Sound Transit

Fire codes disallow use of the northbound tunnel under these conditions. We are fortunate that this part of the system has lots of crossover tracks to minimize the stretch where trains in both directions must share track.

The cross-passage has to remain unlocked in case of an emergency forcing evacuation of one of the tunnels. However, ST’s John Gallagher says ST is ” looking at ways to make sure that the risk of vandalism is minimized” in the future.

SPD is investigating the incident. I have an email out to them.

Sunday Open Thread: Electric Airplanes

February 23, 2020January 25, 2020 by Brent White

This is an open thread.

Kitsap Transit expands Bremerton-Seattle fast ferry service

February 22, 2020February 21, 2020 by Bruce Englehardt

M/V Reliance, one of Kitsap Transit’s fast ferries (photo by author)

Beginning on Monday, Kitsap Transit will be expanding its Bremerton–Seattle fast ferry service to 24 daily sailings on weekdays. The arrival of a new vessel on the route during peak trips will allow for a frequency boost to 30-45 minutes and non-reserved sailings.

The Rich Passage 1, which launched the fast ferry service in 2017, will remain on its normal schedule. The new trips will be operated on one of the two new catamarans that Kitsap Transit acquired last year: M/V Reliance and Lady Swift. All three boats can carry 118 passengers and take about 30 minutes to make the full sailing from Bremerton to Pier 50 in Seattle.

Metro seeks feedback for RapidRide R, to replace Route 7

February 21, 2020October 6, 2020 by Frank Chiachiere

Metro has a new online open house up for Ranier Avenue RapidRide, now known as RapidRide R. The standard RapidRide treatment of off-board payment, new bus shelters and stop consolidation are being proposed. Additionally, the new route would extend the trolley wire to terminate the line at Rainier Beach Link Station, an improvement we suggested in 2014.

You can also view feedback from the last open house, which we wrote about here.

Note that this is an open house for Rainier RapidRide, which opens in 2024. In the interim, SDOT is paving the way (literally) with a Vision Zero and a bus corridor improvement project, which will wrap up in 2022.

Several stops would be consolidated, meaning an average of 3.3 stops per mile instead of just over 4 today, if my napkin math is right. That’s still well below the 1-2 stops per mile of the fastest BRT systems, but appropriate given the ridership characteristics of the 7 today.