“Powering Progress: Federal Way Link Extension Groundbreaking” by Sound Transit
Federal Way Link, the last of the core ST2 light rail projects, has finally broken ground. In lieu of the traditional ceremony with elected and community leaders speaking from a podium and tossing dirt, Sound Transit has chosen a pandemic-friendly alternative: a virtual groundbreaking.
Sound Transit’s virtual groundbreaking (linked above) has short videos from many local officials and representatives from businesses and organizations like the Multi-Service Center and the Federal Way Black Collective. The golden shovels, a hallmark of the regular groundbreakings, remain and are handed off with some nice cuts in the video.
Last Friday, the Seattle City Council Transportation committee met and passed an initial round of amendments to a proposed Transportation Benefits District (TBD) on to full council. The last amendment, to increase the funding from 0.1% to 0.2% sales tax, was proposed by CM Tammy Morales and eventually withdrawn so that council could have more time to consider and get feedback from their constituents.
Though we agree with the concerns voiced in council that adding a regressive sales tax is not ideal, the proposed plan would cut TBD service funding by 75%: a far more regressive outcome. This funding is needed to maintain bus service that an increasing number of Seattlites will depend on just as we try to recover from a recession that is hitting people with lower incomes the hardest.
This change means replacing the $60 Vehicle Licensing Fee (VLF) from 2014’s TBD with a 0.1% sales tax, which will still represent a tax cut for households with lower incomes who own a car. A household would have to spend $60,000, not including rent or groceries, to match the VLF for one car. For lower income households that already fully rely on transit, cutting service could be devastating.
Full council is meeting next Monday, 7/27, to finalize the package that will appear on the ballot. Please join us in letting the City Council and The Mayor know that you support the full .2% TBD and emergency funding for transit next year using this quick form.
A silent movie of various activities performed by the Seattle Department of Streets and Sewers in 1926. Skip to 1:14 for some footage of trolleys and automobiles at a familiar spot.
If you are a (responsible, of course) user of public transportation, there’s a good chance that you’re eagerly awaiting the day that Link will once again run at frequent service levels. In the meantime, you might (perhaps after missing a train one day) have made sure to download the massive PDF Link schedule to your phone to make sure you aren’t left waiting on an platform with other people for up to 30 minutes longer than necessary. In any case, even a less-frequently-running Link Light Rail has a schedule that stretches on and on, despite mostly repeating at 20 and 30 minute intervals. Disappointingly, you won’t find the right schedule on OneBusAway either, so you settle for the endless grid of numbers.
Since an endless grid of numbers is hard to navigate (especially when you’re in a hurry), I’ve put together a more compact schedule. Arrival times are shown for six stops (both termini, and both the start and end of the downtown and Rainier Valley parts of Link). The arrival times of the first and last few trains are shown in detail. In between, it just shows what minute of every hour you need to be there to catch the train (with a +1 to indicate a trip extending into the next hour):
The most progressive change we can make to the proposed Seattle Transportation Benefit District (TBD) is to make it larger. Even if we focus on funding transit service as we urged last week, the initial proposal of a .1% sales tax with nothing to replace the current $60 Vehicle Licensing Fee will mean big transit cuts. Those cuts won’t be academic, they will mean cutting critical service just when many Seattleites will need it the most.
After I-976 passed last year it took away the city’s ability to include a Vehicle Licensing Fee as part of the new TBD. This would mean about a 50% cut to the TBD funding in normal times, but in the post Covid-19 recession, the cuts are much bigger. Sales tax receipts have fallen off a cliff and the recovery could be slow. We should be looking to use all the funding available in the TBD, the full .2% sales tax, so that we can return service after as the recession wanes – but we should also be looking for emergency funding for next year.
Though sales tax is a regressive funding source, it’s far better than cutting the transit people will increasingly rely on. This recession is hitting people who were already struggling to afford Seattle the hardest. About 19% of Seattle households don’t own a car and that number will almost certainly rise – cars are expensive. Inaction means forcing people on a tight budget to buy a car or continue to maintain a car because transit doesn’t serve their needs.
Metro should also be looking to structure service to match the demand that exists rather than demand that used to exist. Focus funding on supporting people trying to get to jobs that don’t conform to 9-5 schedules downtown. Transit needs to be flexible and support people’s individual economic recoveries.
We have to think about this in post Covid-19 terms. This is a ballot measure for November with funding that won’t start until April of 2021. As the pandemic fades and more people have to rely on transit, demand will go up sharply. Our transit agencies will need to be responsive and meet that demand where it is – and have the funding to back it up.
We should also be looking to improve transit funding for the future. The legislature has the power to enact progressive options for future transit funding packages. A future TBD should be at the King County level and use a progressive funding source. That work needs to start now so that we’re not having this same conversation again in a few years.
There is a Seattle City Council meeting on the proposed Transit Benefit District this morning at 10 am. Please join us in urging the council to be bold and save our transit by:
Increasing funding as much as possible (both .2% sales tax and emergency 2021 funding);
Focusing funding on Transit Service; and
Structure transit service to better serve the needs of people who are transit dependent
Sound Transit and King County Metro, along with agencies in other major cities, are making a concerted effort for more federal assistance in the upcoming COVID-19 relief package. Yesterday, the leaders of 27 major agencies joined in calling for up to $36 billion in aid for transit to cover COVID-related expenses and replacing depleted local tax revenues in 2020 and 2021.
Transit operators face a variety of needs. For legacy systems, decreased farebox revenues have put extraordinary pressure on operations while costs related to COVID mitigation have increased. For newer systems that are growing, the recession will reduce local tax revenues for years, imperiling expansion timelines.
While King County Metro is reducing operations, Sound Transit is facing a delay to planned rail and BRT extensions. Current operations are a relative small part of the Sound Transit budget, but the long-term loss of sales tax revenues combines with statutory limits on debt to put the current planned system expansion timeline out of reach.
Among the various assistance measures being debated, the most valuable to Sound Transit could increase the federal share of existing Full Funding Grant Agreements (FFGA) by 30%. A similar provision is in the Investing in America Act recently passed by the House.
In the current FFGAs, Lynnwood Link received a federal match of 36% or $1.17 billion. Federal Way Link received a 25% match for $790 million. A 30% increment to those FFGAs would mean $1.9 billion of additional federal support for Sound Transit.
There’s a certain thread of argument in transit advocacy that is frustrating because it is totally factually accurate, and yet completely misses the point. The latest example is this report on American light rail by the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, called The Economics of Urban Light Rail: A Guide for Planners and Citizens.
America has way fewer light rail boardings per route-mile than Europe and Canada. However, Seattle does well, one of only 5 in the US to have more than 3,000. No surprise: the strongest indicators of success are frequency and density around stations, two standards Link currently meets.
On the first day of summer, I complained that the City hadn’t opened more streets to pedestrians, specifically in high-density commercial districts, to allow for more outdoor social distancing and commercial activity. I figure I should follow up to note that the day after my post went live SDOT announced it was opening up several more Stay Healthy Streets, including Bell St. in Belltown.
Then, a few days later, SDOT announced an expanded street use permit system for businesses to use for outdoor retail and restaurant activity. SDOT is streamlining the permitting process for these applications: instead of the usual 2-week public comment, businesses can open right away and inform their neighbors that they’re doing so. Businesses can set up in the sidewalk if right-of-way is sufficient or in a parking space.
These are all great ideas. I’d still love to see entire streets closed off for both public gathering and retailing in some of our commercial neighborhoods. I can name at least a dozen blocks in Seattle’s urban villages and downtown that could easily support outdoor street life if permitted.
Check out the twitter threads below from the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board meeting where these plans were presented last week if you want to learn more, and thanks to SDOT for getting this program up and running before the July 4 weekend.
A recent view of the East Link alignment through Bellevue, courtesy of Bellevue Transportation Department. Heavy civil construction is expected to be substantially complete in Bellevue this Fall, except on the central Bellevue segment where it will complete early in 2021.
