Month: March 2023

“North of CID” station concept for the Ballard Link extension:

• Executive Constantine pushes for new Pioneer Square Station (The Urbanist)
• Stephen Fesler critiques the idea (The Urbanist)
• Mayor Harrell and Executive Constantine to announce additional funding for it (Mike Lindblom tweet)

Portland transit network review (RMTransit) Mostly MAX, a bit on fares, buses, WES commuter rail, and bikeshare.

Are urban growth boundaries effective? (City Beautiful) With examples of Seattle and Portland.

Yes, there’s walking in L.A. ($) A meditation on Rosencrans Avenue. It’s not a walker’s paradise or pretty, but it spans several different parts of L.A. “the only other way I know how to encounter so much of Los Angeles, to see so many of its diverse communities coexisting, is to go to the beach.” Then there’s the song.

Metro has several bus route changes starting next Saturday, March 18.

• RapidRide H launches, replacing route 120 on Delridge Way in West Seattle and Ambaum Blvd in Burien. Here’s the H timetable and map.
• Routes 11 and 49 eastbound will take on the 10’s routing, remaining on Pike Street until Bellevue Avenue, and then switching to Pine Street..
• Route 73 will start earlier in the morning and run until late night. It will run half-hourly from 6 am to 11:30 pm every day.
• Routes C, D, E, 3, 4, 28, 33, 36, 40, 44, 48, 50, 65, 67, 70, 106, 107, and 331 add more trips.
• Route 245 will no longer serve the Houghton P&R, which is closing.
• The Seattle additions are funded by Seattle’s Transit Benefit District.

The reroute on routes 11 and 49 is part of Seattle’s Pike-Pine rechannelization, which is optimizing the corridor for pedestrians, bicycles, and transit, while still allowing cars. The city is currently widening the sidewalks at 1st & Pine. It recently added traffic lights or stop signs to several blocks between Melrose Avenue and Broadway, so pedestrians can cross the street easier. And it’s making Melrose Avenue into a neighborhood greenway.

Community Transit on Sunday, March 19 will suspend some weekday trips on routes 101, 105, 115, 116, 119, 196, 201, 202, and 412. These reductions will increase reliability and reduce the number of last-minute cancellations. Many routes have schedule adjustments, so check the timetable for your route. (The reductions are presumably due to the nationwide bus driver shortage, affecting all local agencies.)

Sound Transit has a few ST Express changes Saturday, March 18. Route 511 is replaced by additional trips on the 512. Route 513 loses four trips. Route 532 adds two trips. Twelve routes have schedule adjustments to reflect current travel times. Route 586 northound trips at the Federal Way Transit Center move to Bay 2. Sounder South has schedule adjustments on two trips. Sounder North riders have two newly-restored Amtrak Cascade runs they can use with a Rail Plus ticket.

Pierce Transit on Sunday, March 19 will add Saturday trips to routes 1, 4, and 212. It will add Sunday trips trips to routes 10, 11, 16, 28, 41, 42, 45, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 100, 202, 206, 214, 402, 409, and 501. And it will add weekday trips to route 497. Schedule adjustment are made to routes 11 and 212.

Everett Transit appears to have no changes until June 18, when it will have an expansion.

It’s fairly well-established at this point that bus driver shortages nationwide are hampering transit recovery efforts. The problem is particularly acute at Metro, which is currently short over 100 full-time operators. These impacts have bled downstream to affect a substantial number of riders, who often endure cancelled trips and gutted service with insufficient notice.

While I don’t have the inside scoop on how trips get canceled, the staffing deficit means that a slate of scheduled runs are left unpicked by drivers and that any additional call-outs have no extraboard (i.e., spare) operators to fill them. On the rider end, it basically appears that trips are getting indiscriminately canceled with no nod to headways. That’s why there are large gaping holes at some points in the day but not others. Unfortunately, planners and schedulers don’t have a real-time way to make service adjustments on the fly.

Even if not much can be done to fill service gaps, the lack of information is also a major point of irritation. Metro previously highlighted cancelled trips on their published web schedules but no longer does so. It’s possible that there was too much overhead to do this on a daily basis, although Sound Transit manages to continue this practice.

Not having readily available service information ultimately means that riders have to take an extra step of finding out about cancellations, whether through some GTFS-fed app, trip alerts, or the Trip Planner. In my own experience, however, even these sources sometimes conflict with each other.

On the hiring front, boosting pay and offering bonuses is a solution, albeit a partial one. However, significant compensation package changes often have to go to the King County Council, which is lined with its own bureaucracy. Even so, pay alone may not be sufficient incentive to draw in new operators. There are additional exogenous factors that further exacerbate driver morale, like substance abuse and homelessness, which impact perceptions of safety for both riders and operators.

Policies to tackle these issues head-on, like fare enforcement or driver intervention, are controversial and fraught with risk. Nonetheless, I’ve spoken to a number of former riders who no longer feel safe on transit so these points certainly warrant substantive discussion at the leadership level for both Metro and King County.

I’m cognizant of the fact that there are many complex issues at play here, but transit agencies are at serious risk of losing many long-time riders for good. Tackling these head on now will better help lay the foundation for recovery.

We have until this Friday, March 10th to comment on the Metro Bus Restructure for Lynnwood Link. I’ve written about the initial plan, made suggestions and explored ideas on the subject. Here are my recommendations, in order of priority:

1. Run a bus on Lake City Way to make up for the loss of the 522. This is important from both a ridership and coverage standpoint. The simplest and cheapest way to do this is with a live loop through the Roosevelt neighborhood.
2. Send the 348 to the UW, not Northgate. This eliminates the need for the 67, saving money. Riders lose their one-seat ride to Northgate, but gain a one-seat ride to the UW. The station at Roosevelt replaces Northgate for riders heading south.
3. As a way to save money, eliminate the proposed 324 and cover the area between Kenmore and Bothell with an extension of the proposed 334.
4. Extend the 72 to Shoreline Community College, and truncate the 333 there. This improves connectivity. This is also a more natural fit in terms of frequency, as the rest of the 333 is a coverage route (while the 72 is not).
5. Straighten out routes to avoid long delays caused by turning.
6. Avoid running infrequent routes that overlap or compete with frequent transit.
7. Put the savings from the various cost saving changes mentioned above into better frequency, especially on east-west routes that run on the main transit corridors.
8. Explore extending the 61 to 15th NW, with a live loop like so. The bus would then intersect every north-south bus north of the ship canal. This would be especially handy for trips to Ballard from Northgate and Lake City.

To visualize these changes. I came up with two maps, the first of which is oriented towards ridership:

While geared towards ridership, it actually provides better coverage in many places. From a baseline standpoint, most of the buses would run every fifteen minutes or better. The 75, 333, 334 and 336 would run every half hour. But since this has a lot less overlap, and a lot fewer turns, the buses could run a lot more often. East-west service (on buses like the 61, 72, 348, etc.) could be bumped up to 12 or 10 minutes. Some of the half-hour buses buses could run more often. For example, the 334 could run every 15 to 20 minutes to give Northwest Hospital more frequent service, while the 75 could be restored to its current service level (15 minutes).

The second map is geared towards coverage:

This is similar to the other map, but with a few changes. The 336 provides a lot of additional coverage. Service is restored in the Hillwood neighborhood (west of Aurora Village). The bus loops through the Briarcrest neighborhood, passing by a high school, middle school and several elementary schools. The 333 is extended to serve Four Freedoms House. Despite the extra coverage — more than the Metro proposal — it would still have better frequency, as there is less overlap and more efficient routing.

Metro will expand its on-demand taxi service ($). (Official announcement.) These are app-hailed vans like Uber, charging regular Metro fares within a few last-mile service areas. Starting Monday, It will unify existing services (Via, Pingo, Community Ride) under a new brand “Metro Flex” wth a new app. Service areas are “northern Kent, Tukwila, Renton Highlands, Rainier Beach/Skyway, Othello, Sammamish/Issaquah Highlands and Juanita.” You can pay by ORCA, credit card, or the Transit Go Ticket app. Reduced fares like ORCA LIFT are accepted.

King County repealed its bicycle-helmet law a year ago, but helmet usage remains high. ($) I didn’t know it was repealed.

Amtrak Cascades restores full Vancouver BC service. ($)

Why new developments are ugly. (Adam Something video)

This is an open thread.

Get Link done ($), says ST’s Technical Advisory Group in a report to the board. The group suggests taking a harder line against local government requests, and treating contractors better.

Reconnect South Park gets grant to study removing Highway 99 through the neighborhood.

Zoning, Explained (City Beautiful)

New York state considers joining the zoning-override bandwagon ($) to get more housing, especially in New York City’s suburbs.

Malls are adding housing ($)

Spain’s high-speed rail network (RMTransit)

Empire Builder ($), a documentary about James J Hill, founder of the rail line from Seattle to Chicago.

This is an open thread.