Month: November 2021

• The Point Defiance Bypass ($) is back
• Poll says multi-use streets are popular in Seattle
• Herbold still trying to kill the Center City Connector
• Poll says multi-use streets are popular in Seattle
• Herbold still trying to kill the Center City Connector; problems mounting for the existing streetcars
• Community Transit starts on its 2024 restructure
• I am pretty excited about digital ads in sterile light rail stations, quite aside from the revenue
• Early scoping for extending Link to Everett
• Kitsap Transit service changes on November 29th
• Metro planning $67m for South Base electrification
• $75 for blocking the box
• How to fix the ferries ($)
• Free transit extended from Seattle public high schoolers to middle school, as well
• Sound Transit cancelling runs due to operator shortages
• This is a good report on light rail resentments in the Rainier Valley, but I wish Lizz had observed that ST is, in fact, building surface rail in Bellevue
• Trains running in Bellevue this month
• Ben Franklin Transit (Tri-Cities) is going to need a new General Manager
• Cascadia HSR as decarbonization has strong “now, more than ever” vibes
• An extra ferry ($) on the San Juans run

This is an open thread.

If you’re an organization that works with populations eligible for free bus tickets, you can apply to distribute them in 2022. Apply here; the deadline is November 30th.

There is a pool of $4m in tickets at face value. Of course, to the extent that this doesn’t displace fare-paying ridership, there is no actual budget impact to distributing as many of these as possible.

Over 10 years ago (!) I wrote that rebuilding a short road near Bellevue College to support buses would straighten multiple Bellevue trunk routes and save millions in annual operating expenses. I’m pleased to announce that the project has now reached the municipal hype video stage:

Today, the 221, 226, 245, and 271 all travel in this corridor. The project page suggests that these trips could save about 6 minutes by taking a more direct route that avoids multiple turns.

Over the weekend, the South Bellevue P&R inconspicuously reopened to the public after being closed for more than 4 years of East Link station construction. The new park-and-ride greatly expands capacity from the previous 500 some surface stalls to around 1500 spaces. Prior to its closure, the park-and-ride was a major source of commuter ridership for those coming from east via I-90 and south via 405.

East Link service itself is still some two years out but the City of Bellevue had prioritized early reopening of the park-and-ride. However, with ridership still hampered due to the pandemic, the garage is unlikely to see substantial use for now. With the reopening, routes 241, 249, 550, and 556 are also now using the new bus loop, sparing riders the unpleasant experience of having to wait on busy and pedestrian-unfriendly Bellevue Way.

Longer-time readers will remember that the location of the park-and-ride was in dispute when Bellevue bitterly clashed with Sound Transit over the alignment. There was a brief period of time when an alternative station location straddling I-90 was proposed. Although we would view picking between mega-garages as choosing the lesser of two evils, the existing site is far superior, in terms of pedestrian and transit accessibility.

With the park-and-ride reopening and live train testing finally commencing on the Bellevue-Overlake segment, glimpses of operational rail transit should plenty whet the appetite of Eastside transit riders for 2023.

Maybe we can back to weekly roundups soon…

• Name the new ferry
• Metro’s new real-time info signs
• Comment on Kent/Des Moines TOD through Nov. 15
• Results from giving out ORCA cards
• Seattle Council fighting over the CCC, again; plus, carshare regulations
• Children’s is hiring a transportation planner
• Lake Forest Park “wins” battle to extort stuff out of Sound Transit using permitting authority, but the garage is pushed back to 2046
• West Seattle Link DEIS punted to early 2022, because it’s all about “consultation” instead of building the damn thing
• ST donates Rainier Valley lots for development
• Ventilation in Link cars
• Potential Everett Transit merger still moving along
• Another quarter of tweaks to relieve the pain of West Seattle
• Seattle Council struggles to fund bridge repairs
• Cracking down on West Seattle Bridge violators
• Spokane’s BRT opening slides to July 2023
• Saying Anderson Island would “wither and die” ($) with fare increases seems excessive
• Federal Railroad Administration sticking with existing crewing rules

This is an open thread.

Last Thursday’s Rider Experience Committee meeting featured an update on the parlous state of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel’s escalators. While the overall system has recovered from some early hiccups with the three new stations, the current snapshot* shows 1 elevator and 13 escalators out of service, all in the DSTT. This involves all four stations, which have 36 escalators in total. None of these have an official repair date.

Deputy Director of Vertical Conveyances John Carini reports that four of these outages are due to “water intrusion” issues and they hope to recover these by mid-November. A source reports that the narrow street-level up escalator for the NE corner of Pioneer Square is among these four.

Regular Link riders might notice that real-time arrival information did not, in fact, come back with the Northgate stations as promised in September. ST’s John Gallagher says that “While the system was accurate the majority of the time, when it was wrong, it was really wrong.” It would cost “a significant amount of money” to correct these problems.

On the other hand, I saw real time data on the signboards at Westlake on Sunday, so maybe they’re under-promising and engineers have hacked something together?

Regardless, the good news is that ST’s PIMS program is set to wrap up in Quarter 2 of 2022, so the next-generation system will be here soon enough that it’s not worth it to patch up the old one. The result of an RFP in 2018, in 2019 ST shared some early mockups (at right in the picture above) and projected it to be ready with East Link. It appears we’ll get these many months early.

Beginning Sunday, November 7th, Pierce Transit will reduce service on some routes, including some PT-operated ST Express routes, due to persistent shortage of bus operators. The hope is that with service reduced to match the level of service that current operators can reliably provide, trip cancellations will be much rarer, and you can be more reasonably sure that scheduled bus service will be delivered. Here are the changes by route:

Progressive candidates did well in the Port and County Council races, while business- and Seattle Times-backed candidates are winning handily in Seattle. Discuss.

Results here.