Ever since the advent of commuter express routes, park-and-rides (P&Rs) have been a mainstay in the built environment of the American suburb. You can see why it was an easy proposition to make: after postwar suburbanization but with jobs still in city centers, policymakers needed a way to keep transit viable among white-collar workers. The answer, of course, was what one old professor of mine called “fake density”: the park-and-ride.
Over the last fifty years, P&Rs have taken on different forms. Substantial but overlooked capacity often comes from leasing agreements with churches or other institutions that have low utilization during the work week. But the public is probably most accustomed with the large P&Rs, with multistory garages and thousands of parking spaces, that typically accompany a transit center or rail station.
Incorporating large P&Rs with major capital projects has been the de-facto expansion strategy of Sound Transit. In the pre-COVID mind of the transit advocate, P&Rs were a necessary evil: they dissuade transit-oriented development and exacerbate sprawl but can carry a transit project through an election. Just about every Link expansion project — north, south, and east — features multiple thousand-stall garages.
Before the pandemic, there was already a compelling case we didn’t have to join P&Rs and transit stations at the hip. Even if parking had to be built, I was always partial to the idea of letting local municipalities shoulder the cost of building and maintaining the P&R, letting an agency like Sound Transit to focus outlays exclusively on transit infrastructure. And when COVID happened, it virtually reset every preconceived notion about our perceived need for parking.
My commute downtown from the Eastside usually has me pass through either Eastgate P&R or South Bellevue Station, which have a combined 3,000 parking spaces between the two. I have been on my current commuting pattern since about summer of 2021 and the utilization of these two garages, although growing ever slightly the last 20 months, has stagnated around a few hundred vehicles by my count. Keep in mind that Eastgate regularly met or exceeded 100% of its capacity pre-pandemic.
Although Metro no longer publishes yearly P&R usage reports, these observations are corroborated by route-level ridership. Many of the Eastside peak-only commuter routes are only serving ~10-15% of their pre-COVID baseline ridership. Compare this to Metro’s core workhorse routes and RapidRide lines, where about ~60-70% of ridership has been recovered.
We have already alluded to a general post-pandemic strategy that focuses more hours on frequent reliable all-day service and fewer on commuter routes. But now is the time for Sound Transit to formally divest of the P&R strategy it has employed for decades. At bare minimum, planned parking projects should be substantially scaled back (or delayed) and station area land be aggressively purposed for TOD, more than it has been in the past.
With all that said, I don’t expect suburban commuter routes to be wiped off the face of the earth. As much as urbanists hate it, transit governance relies on the political capital of suburban constituents. Having a viable commuter base does not mean overbuilding parking, however. Agencies can pick the low-hanging fruit by looking at the glut of existing suburban parking lots from malls, churches, and even office parks that have lost their own workers to remote or hybrid work.
Well, some on this blog dream of the return of the peak commuter with their 100% fare paying percentage that funds Metro’s and ST’s O&M costs through farebox recovery (20% and 40% respectively) and revitalizing downtown Seattle. If we agree that transit rider is forever gone (and I doubt Harrell hopes that is the case) then I agree based on current park and ride usage — especially on the eastside — at least new park and rides are no longer needed. I would be hesitant to put any county wide transit levies on the ballot if that commuter is never going to ride transit again.
The reality is no one is going to remove or develop current park and rides anytime in the near future, certainly something like the S. Bellevue park and ride that has 1500 stalls and serves the 550, but sees little use. Other park and rides like on MI are popular for game days and to handle local retail parking. The park and rides in ST 3 were “extended” to afford WSBLE, which is probably going to see the same fate as those ST 3 park and rides. If somehow that commuter rider does return those ST 3 park and rides will be built, because just like some other questionable projects they were promised to the one subarea with the money to build any of this ST 3 crap.
After safety probably the number one Achilles Heel of transit is first/last mile access. If you can’t get to it you can’t ride it, even if you want to, even if both first and last mile are safe. Most experts put the distance a normal person will walk to transit at around 1/4 mile. The dream that the suburbs (including WS) are going to fundamentally change their land use to manufacture the ridership for transit is remote. Easier to change transit, which is what Uber is.
Metro can’t serve an area as large and undense as the eastside (because eastsiders like undense neighborhoods) either logistically or financially. So folks don’t ride transit they can’t get to; they drive. The good news is nearly every retail establishment on the eastside provides plenty of free parking.
If I were ST or Metro I would dream of those pre-pandemic days when eastside and S. King Co. park and rides were full by 7 am, and ST was even thinking of charging for park and ride space because ST is that stupid. Because at some point, coverage and frequency for Metro and ST will have to begin to match ridership and farebox recovery. 2023 is the year of the new normal when it comes to budgets, although many on this blog want to believe it is not the new normal for transit ridership levels.
The one thing that could change the paradigm (and no, it isn’t forcing workers to once again commute an hour each way to the office in a dangerous and dead downtown) is micro-transit, and Metro — and the rest of the country — is beginning to experiment with that concept in places like Sammamish where regular buses are impractical and not affordable as first/last mile access. Personally I think micro -transit is the future, and think Metro sees the writing on the wall if Uber had 94 million miles in Seattle in 2017 and is growing in miles driven each post pandemic year. I just think it will be very hard for a public agency like Metro to catch up to Uber or a private company, especially when driverless technology starts up, and local governments would be wise to just contract with private companies, in part with tax breaks for miles driven.
So yes, sadly I think park and rides are dinosaurs, but I also think in the near future buses will be dinosaurs, and ST will not have the O&M funding to operate its more suburban lines, although those folks can always drive. Those O&M budgets were estimated based on packed park and rides.
I have always thought it ironic that the hatred of cars and park and rides among some transit advocates has had such negative consequences for transit. For example, transit advocates hoped restricting parking or making it very expensive would encourage transit use, when instead it created Uber and free parking at nearly every retail establishment except downtown Seattle, which is the deadest retail wise and will get badly hurt when Northgate opens with tons of free parking. Then it was terrible first/last mile access in the suburbs when commuters were transit slaves, which led to WFH. Each time transit or transit advocates try to disadvantage the competition, including eliminating park and rides which just means that rider is never coming back with their 100% fare paying percentage, it backfires.
Transit in this region reminds me of the NY Jets claiming the team is so bad there are very few fans in the stadium so a ticket is cheap, the concession lines short, and there is plenty of parking.
> I have always thought it ironic that the hatred of cars and park and rides among some transit advocates has had such negative consequences for transit.
It just really isn’t scaleable. Just how many parking garages is one going to build for each rider.
> For example, transit advocates hoped restricting parking
What really should have been built was yes some parking garages, but more importantly apartments next to the transit stations.
“What really should have been built was yes some parking garages, but more importantly apartments next to the transit stations.”
For whom? The eastside work commuter? Do you live in an apartment next to a transit station or Link station or freeway? They did not move to the eastside to live in an apartment next to a surface train station or freeway. Those folks all own cars. There is not a significant number of transit riders who cannot get to transit if they want without moving next to a station. TOD will have a negligible impact on ridership, and even more negligible impact on farebox recovery, which is the real goal with ridership. If you build a transit system for way more riders than show up or pay you are going to have some real O&M issues in the future, although most folks on this blog hate talking about that (except TISGWM).
That is the myth of TOD. Someone ELSE wants to live next to a surface or elevated station or freeway because so many stations are along freeways and elevated. Sure if it is publicly subsidized and you can’t afford market rate housing anywhere else, but who wants to live next to a train station or freeway? Try siting a maintenance facility to see how much folks want to live next to it. Or wait for the fights in WS and Ballard. Or the fight with the CID.
Yes, if it is underground, neighborhoods like Roosevelt don’t mind a Link station, which is why now everyone wants underground lines and stations (too bad East Link is already built: we had the money and could have demanded it be all underground and not in a greenbelt) and new Link projects are not affordable.
Cars did not scale pre-pandemic during peak hours to basically one destination: downtown Seattle that in part artificially manufactured its congestion (along with a poorly designed I-5). Cars scale today, even during peak times, and there is plenty of free parking, Uber if you have to go to downtown Seattle, which ironically now has some of the lowest congestion because no one is going there. Harrell is desperate as is the DSA to get that congestion back. I don’t know why transit advocates keep going on about cars not scaling post pandemic. People with cars certainly don’t buy that canard used to sell transit or upzoning or lane diets or bike lanes or whatever.
You measure scale by traffic congestion. Last Friday at 5 pm it took me 21 minutes from my driveway on the north end of MI to 1st and Seneca and back. Two weeks ago I drove to Redmond at 5 pm on Friday to watch a movie and was there in 20 minutes, going from I-90 to 405 to 520 AT 5 PM. . There is never congestion on I-90 anymore. We built all our roads and freeways to handle peak loads and when WFH came those peak loads decreased below capacity, just like we built our transit system to handle peak loads when those same transit systems and coverage and frequency are over-scale today and need to be scaled back just like drivers have scaled back. The one place there is still congestion is 405 south, but that is due to the work demographic (which is why the congestion starts so early) and too few lanes, which is why WSDOT is building more lanes and I don’t expect Stride to have high ridership.
It is a mistake to think the vast majority of folks rank mode of transportation in the top 10 when considering where to live (which is probably why 81% of Seattleites own cars including UW students and those too poor to own one). Everyone wants someone else to live in TOD in an apartment while the rest of us prefer not to. Most don’t even want to live in an apartment, let alone one next to a train or bus station, and if they do they choose urban areas like Seattle (not many I know think about transit when buying in Kirkland or downtown Bellevue or even MI which has very good transit access in the town center although no one uses it).
Cars do scale post pandemic, and transit is over scaled based on ridership. The good news is we probably don’t need many new roads except widening 405, but also we need to think about scaling back transit because ridership is critical to O&M budgets. Scaling cuts both ways.
> For whom? The eastside work commuter? Do you live in an apartment next to a transit station or Link station or freeway? They did not move to the eastside to live in an apartment next to a surface train station or freeway
I’m not exactly sure what you are getting at then. You understand both that there are less commuters and that there are less park and ride demand. So what else would one build next to the stations.
> That is the myth of TOD. Someone ELSE wants to live next to a surface or elevated station or freeway because so many stations are along freeways and elevated….. There is never congestion on I-90 anymore. We built all our roads and freeways to handle peak loads and when WFH came those peak loads decreased below capacity
There’s still the housing crisis, and suburbanites complain not to build apartments since there’s too much traffic. Then once one builds the light rail tracks and station then they complain to not build the apartments and only build park and rides next to the station.
> Cars do scale post pandemic, and transit is over scaled based on ridership.
Sure, if that is agreed, then have the cities stop blocking new housing construction.
Cars scale today…
I don’t think you know what scale means (in this context). When I write “transit scales” it means that as more people use it, costs (per person) go down and quality improves. Cars don’t do that. At best, it is flat. Double the number of users and the experience is the same. But quite often, as more and more people use the system, it gets worse (for users).
If I understand what you are saying, it is that cars in this area have not reached that point. I disagree. There is definitely a problem with congestion at rush hour. Outside of rush hour, there is less congestion, although there is plenty on the weekend. Parking is increasingly a problem (because again, it doesn’t scale). It is hard to park downtown of course, but also Capitol Hill, UW and some other places, like Ballard (although ironically, it is fairly easy to park around 14th). The tech companies (like Microsoft) are laying people off, but that tends to be cyclical. Despite the downtown, it is likely there will still be plenty of riders at that station once Sound Transit finally finishes East Link.
As I wrote elsewhere, the pandemic just amplified some of the poor decision making made by Sound Transit. Everett Link was never a good value. It is worse now. There were never that many people commuting from Everett — and now there are fewer. The farther you are from your destination, the more likely you are to work from home. Someone in Roosevelt is way more likely to commute to work downtown than someone from Everett, even if they work in the same place.
But it isn’t just commuting. Commuting was always a subset of transit use. Now it is a smaller subset. People take transit for a number of different reasons, which is why urban stations (like Capitol Hill and Roosevelt) are doing quite well. But the more you go away from the urban core, the less likely someone is to take transit for those sorts of trips. It takes less than ten minutes for a train to get from Roosevelt to Capitol Hill. Even with the wait time, and the deep tunnel, that is enough to make spontaneous trips common. In contrast, Mountlake Terrace to Capitol Hill will take 22 minutes. For destinations further north, it is a lot worse. It is tempting to think that there are “Capitol Hill’s” to the north (which would be a shorter trip for folks in Everett) but there really aren’t. Not along the rail line. What is true of the north end is true for the south. Outside of the satellite cities and the airport, there is very little until you get into Seattle proper.
So again, much of ST3 was a bad value before the pandemic, but it is even worse now. But that doesn’t mean that cars scale, or that transit doesn’t. It means that the investment in transit should be in the urban core, with good bus-to-train interfaces for the suburbs (like Federal Way and Lynnwood). So basically ST2, the infill stations, Ballard-to-UW, maybe a “Metro 8” line and a bunch of bus improvements.
WL: correct neither park-and-ride nor micro transit can scale; they are too costly. For park-and-ride, the land next to frequent transit is better used for dense housing; the transit funds are better used to reduce headway and waiting. The cost of dirt is rising fast; using it for car storage cannot make sense. During the 90s, the Seattle comp plan, led by Gary Zarker and Gary Lawrence, included the notion of little vans connecting folks with big buses at urban village hubs. No one can afford that. I hope this generation of leaders learns that. Uber and Lyft are burning up billions; they do not make a profit; they disrupt. Same for dockless e-scooters and e-bikes. See Walker: https://humantransit.org/2019/08/what-is-microtransit-for.html
Thompson: West Seattle and Burien developed along streetcar lines; folks walked to better transit. They may have become more auto-oriented with the West Seattle bridge, I-5, SR-509, and SR-518. Watch WSDOT sell Houghton; watch developers build housing.
Pre-Covid, it would have been interesting to co-locate a church or entertainment venue next to a P&R; then the parking could have been used twice during the day, commuters and patrons. The Kent station movie use came close. At Northgate, the Lorig movie theater users park in the county lot in the evening.
Sherwin: great piece.
” Uber and Lyft are burning up billions; they do not make a profit; they disrupt.”
https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2023/Uber-Announces-Results-for-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2022/default.aspx
Not sure I agree with you that Uber does not make a profit. I do agree they are a disruptor, which is a critical part of our economy. https://ijmar.org/v5n1/18-001.html
“Disruption is an occurrence that interrupts events, processes, systems or paradigms. It is a violating force. Disruption of an event, a system, or a process is tantamount to discontinuity and a suspension or even a reversal of what is considered a normal flow.”
Disruption occurs when there is a flaw in the existing processes, and/or a better mousetrap is invented. Cell phones and land lines are a good example. So is WFH. Taxis sucked, public transit sucked, parking was limited or expensive, cities were unsafe, people like door-to-door service, so disruption was prime to occur.
Disruption cannot occur unless the existing processes it seeks to replace are flawed or unresponsive. Trying to stop disruption is pointless. It is usually too late to fix the flaws once the disrupting force has arrived because people’s attention span is limited, and today the number of apps they will put on their phone limited. A good example are taxis. They tried to respond but it was too late once Uber had taken hold.
My guess is Metro is playing around with micro transit because it does scale based on Uber, and the future is pretty obvious, but probably too late for Metro.
No, they don’t. If anything the implacable trend toward larger and larger personal vehicles worsens the geometric problem.
It’s true that here has been a temporary reduction in the need for two-plus storage spaces for each vehicle because of work from home, but that will not last after the coming recession. Bosses are going to regain the “upper hand” in the Class Struggle as soon as unemployment gets back to six percent, and they love to “supervise” their underlings’ efforts. It’s why they became managers in the first place, not some grand impulse to “inspire” others. Most peoples’ “vision” is a pitiful pastiche of TV watching and anecdotes told by has-beens.
I do not exclude myself from that bleak assessment.
Before Covid, there was a really significant increase in drop-off and pick-up to get to and from stations. Texting, ride hailing apps and location notice apps make it easier for someone to get dropped off or picked up. That cuts into the need to offer parking at stations.
ST doesn’t publish surveys for this. BART did in 2015:
https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/StationProfile2015_HomeOriginOnePagers_rev0629.pdf
Post-Covid it will be interesting to see if the proportions changed. Transit ridership is down — but did transit systems lose parking riders, walking riders or drop-off riders?
Rather than merely speculate, let’s encourage surveying to get at these data. Then we can better see the relevant performance of park and ride lots!
Regardless, parking transit riders will not disappear. It will merely shrink. It may however disappear from some lots if the serving transit route doesn’t have dependable frequency. I think riders don’t have an emotional attachment to a lot, and will switch to nearby lots for more frequent service.
Rather than unscientific surveys focused on the people still riding, why not try the masked-up-car option, and see how many riders that simple measure can claw back? Basically, the masked-up-car would simulate post-COVID conditions, at least for people who don’t have to ride a bus to get to the train. If that car becomes crowded, choose a second car to add to the experiment, like the 1st and 4th cars or the 2nd and 3rd cars. Be sure to add a mask dispenser at the other end of these cars, and keep them stocked. Enforcement would be less stringent, as in, politely redirecting those refusing to wear a mask to a different car.
Simultaneously, CT could declare the upper decks on the double-deckers a masked-up zone, for an additional data stream. The senior/disabilities section might also need to be declared a masked-up zone. Rapid Ride could also designate the front portion of the bus to be masked-up, through with maskless riders allowed to make their way quickly to the back. Nobody would be excluded from any portion of the train or bus, so long as they wear a mask, and everybody would have somewhere they are allowed to sit or stand mask-free.
There is one useful side effect of park and ride lots: the assembly of land for future TOD. If a station is designed for surface lots, an agency can acquire blocks of land! That is a powerful asset that can be leveraged for TOD later when the demand wanes (or the open lot gets replaced with a garage that reduces the needed parking footprint).
Creating several blocks of surface parking near a station thus is one of the few ways that transit agencies can directly and legally act to “insure” that future TOD is possible when it’s appropriate to remove the lot.
Al, if the transit ridership does not support the park and ride it does not support TOD. In both cases there is not the transit ridership to support either. Any smart developer building on a previous park and ride because there was too little transit use of the park and ride is going to load up his development with parking.
Sure, if a city thinks a park and ride has such low use (transit or otherwise) and wants to rezone it for housing — affordable or luxury housing — or retail or commercial or industrial that is a valid decision depending on neighborhood concerns and where the park and ride is located (probably not too many want to live where the S. Bellevue Park and Ride is, and MI would never consent to replacing its park and ride with housing for any reason). But if the use of a park and ride is so low the land needs to be repurposed you don’t repurpose it based on transit.
Right now there is very little chance, at least on the eastside, that ST is willing to admit ridership on East Link will be so low and park and ride use so low that the park and rides should be converted to some other use. My guess is even when East Link opens in 2025 or 2026 and ridership is maybe half of estimates ST will still claim ridership is coming back, just like so many on this blog, although it isn’t coming back, and probably somewhere down the road near 2030 ST might be willing to admit some park and rides could be repurposed to a non-transit use because the riders are not coming back.
The great irony is just in 2019 ST was looking at charging for park and rides. How quickly things change and how different the future than we thought. In the next few years O&M budgets and not park and rides will be the real issue because when O&M begins to get short transit agencies begin to cut back maintenance, frequency, and most importantly saving for replacement, until you become MTA. Maybe then ST will need to sell the park and rides to cover O&M but cities control the zoning and decision making on that. If the project is like Seattle’s new 801 low income units I think eastside cities would object. If like The Spring Dist. development those folks won’t ride transit.
“Any smart developer building on a previous park and ride because there was too little transit use of the park and ride is going to load up his development with parking.”
Sure, but having it be “mixed use” instead of only parking for a third of the day is surely much better.
I’m actually in favor of having parking adjacent to transit stations, IF it comes together with a development that is useful to the neighborhood outside of commuting hours.
“Al, if the transit ridership does not support the park and ride it does not support TOD”
Utter nonsense. Just because an apartment building is next to transit doesn’t mean you have to ride the transit to live there. Even if just 10% of the residents ride semi regularly, simply having the option available of somewhere you can live and have good transit is still valuable.
Or, are you going to try to argue that the mere presence of transit somehow makes a location a bad place to live under some many-times debunked theory that criminals will ride the transit to your neighborhood and commit crimes.
What? A P-n-R in the ‘burbs might be empty of its former users now working from home, but fill up a pleasant apartment or condo development on the same lot.
It would be occupied by the sort of people who 1) work in Seattle or downtown Bellevue. 2) are not in the obsessive “drivers’ caucus”, and 3) don’t yet have children or are now empty nesters who don’t like yard work.
Do you deny that there several score thousands of people in the Central Puget Sound region who match that profile? A TOD on the site of South Bellevue TC — which is adjacent to a nature preserve and far enough from I-90 that it’s quiet enough that there are very expensive houses just across Bellevue Way — would be very popular..
Not everyone has the same goals and value system you have. Many do, of course, but far from all, and even the ones that do can’t all have waterfront on North Mercer Way. Some people have big dreams that will not come to fruition for a decade, and many will never achieve them at all.
You complain constantly that “POC’s have been pushed out of The Central District by rich ‘Progressives'”, but I don’t see you advocating for housing them on MI. Goose. Sauce. Gander.
Yes, ST2 has built a garage at South Bellevue. A village would have been better; folks would like to live next to the slough on frequent reliable transit. We will never know; it was suggested, but could not be comprehended by the ST board or senior staff.
The Sherwin piece is about the ST3 parking that can still be changed.
Thompson: yes, Stride 1 and 2 will likely have low ridership. It is difficult to get pedestrians (riders) to transit in the middle of freeways.
South Bellevue would be an awful location for housing, or even a mini village. Just because an area has a Link station, doesn’t automatically mean it would be a great place for housing.
@Sam
> South Bellevue would be an awful location for housing, or even a mini village.
Why not? It would be pretty close to both downtown Bellevue and downtown Seattle.
> Just because an area has a Link station, doesn’t automatically mean it would be a great place for housing.
That’s literally how every city around the world views station locations as awesome places to build housing. It’s not nearby the freeway either. There are concerns around how it replaced Mercer Slough but then again we’ve sited a massive park and ride garage there.
There was a parking lot there as far as I can remember (about 20+ years ago) – South Bellevue P&R is not new. Sam and Mike may remember what was there before, but it predates me.
Whether housing could be built (perhaps after obtaining a zoning variance from the city) is another question. I tried to find any info on the geological structure, and from what I can see it is not particularly dangerous (other areas near the slough are more problematic due to erosion risk etc.) so in that sense it seems feasible.
One thing to remember is that there is no retail to speak of anywhere near there. The one things more than a block South of Main Street along Bellevue Way are the Pancake Coral, together with a dentist office or something like that. And maybe a dry cleaner’s shop. Hardly the sort of walkable neighborhood. So pretty much everything would require a train ride to either MI or downtown Bellevue or Wilburton for retail (Main St. station is in a similar boat, though there are some closer amenities if you hike up the hill then down to 106th or so). So the overall observation that the location is not “great” is, in fact, reasonable, but I completely agree that it’s also not “terrible”. It’s just not Roosevelt Station or anything like that.
South Bellevue P&R was built in around 1980. Before that it was farm fields.
And, I just think it’s a bad place for housing, relative to other station areas. Aside from being able to get to commercial areas, etc., on transit, South Bellevue is a very isolated area, and an area whose potential for growth and expansion is very limited. Maybe I’m just projecting my preferences on to that station area. I wouldn’t like living there without a car.
WL, I think you are conflating ST monies (park and rides) with Metro services (271). Any ST savings would need to go into ST service. The eastside subarea with ST 2 and 3 has more ST revenue than it reasonably knows what to do with (and should cut express bus services based on ridership), ST claims ridership in 2025-26 when East Link opens will fill the park and rides to their limit, and those funds are not available for Metro.
When it comes to the station at S. Bellevue that is in a green belt, and could never have received the zoning or environmental permits for a housing development or retail village. It probably should have not been zoned for a light rail park and ride and elevated line in a green belt to begin with (it would be like running elevated Link through one of Seattle’s parks or the UW) but no one else wanted such a huge park and ride and elevated light rail near them.
@Daniel
> WL, I think you are conflating ST monies (park and rides) with Metro services (271). Any ST savings would need to go into ST service.
No, I know. I meant why not have Sound Transit improve such routes as well. Stride 3 is a similar avenue corridor. Or also Sound Transit is planning on subsidizing rapidride C,D.
> ST claims ridership in 2025-26 when East Link opens will fill the park and rides to their limit, and those funds are not available for Metro.
Could have Sound transit run it directly and call it Stride 4 or just slap a 5 in front of the number. (Yeah, I know it is more complicated than that)
I mean as you acknowledged, East King subarea does not really need the such large parking garages, and some express busses have low ridership from work from home.
Bel-Red station has a surface P&R that’s explicitly a placeholder until Spring District growth reaches the area.
I’ve heard TIB and South Bellevue P&Rs are designed to be convertible to housing later.
Mercer Island is a small and old P&R, so its maintenance costs and the housing that could be there is minimal.
South Bellevue P&R was built in the early 70s. When I started riding the 226 through it in 1979, it was already several years old. There’s also the Bellefields office park in the slough. The wetland-protection restrictions went into effect after the P&R and office park and I-90 were built.
There’s nothing around the P&R; the nearest businesses are a 10-minute walk north. There’s no sidewalk on the west side of Bellevue Way between the P&R and 112th. That doesn’t matter if you’re walking from the P&R to the businesses, which are on the east side that has a sidewalk, but it shows how highway-oriented and desolate the area around the P&R is.
When we say downsize and defer P&Rs, I think we should focus on the further-out and future ones like Eastgate, Lynnwood, Shoreline, Northshore, etc. Mercer Island is so small it’s no big deal. South Bellevue is old, and is wonderfully away from walkable downtown Bellevue, and perfectly located to intercept cars from the south, east, and north, so we can just leave it until last. That also obviates the issue of developing in the wetland and not having retail around it.
Eastgate P&R has commercial development all around it, so that would be an easier place to put TOD and walkable retail. And figure out some kind of walkable retail corridor and transit between the P&R and Factoria, to redeem the area. RapidRide K and a Redmond-Eastagte RapidRide will also be coming down to the P&R.
“South Bellevue P&R was built in the early 70s. When I started riding the 226 through it in 1979, it was already several years old. There’s also the Bellefields office park in the slough. The wetland-protection restrictions went into effect after the P&R and office park and I-90 were built.”
Thanks Mike. I couldn’t remember the Metro route but that must have been the one I took sometimes when I worked in Bellevue in the early 90s because I remember the bus pulling into that lot before continuing on. I think it had a reputation for being a high car prowl area at that time but folks still parked there anyway.
There’s a blurb about the history of the P&R on ST’s site:
“The original South Bellevue Park-and-Ride lot, which was demolished in 2017 when East Link construction began, was built in the 1970s with federal funds to mitigate the impact of nearby I-90 construction. Operation and maintenance of the park and ride was overseen by WSDOT, in partnership with King County Metro. Sound Transit will maintain these partnerships as it takes over operation of the facility.”
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/south-bellevue-park-ride-garage-opens
You can see the site’s transformation from farmland thru the decades using the aerial maps on the site linked here. Just enter the address (2700 Bellevue Way SE) and then click on the aerial maps tab and then select a year.
https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer
There were no Metro P&R’s in the early or mid 1970’s. The first two were built in 1977, in Auburn and Kent. By the end of ’77, there were a few others, mostly on the Eastside, but not one in South Bellevue. While I don’t have an exact year South Bellevue was built, I suspect it was built between 1978 and 1980.
PS, I hope Metro is starting to cut back on the many dozens of small parking lots (at churches, etc.), that they lease.
South Bellevue would be an awful location for housing, or even a mini village.
I disagree. It is adjacent to a large green belt, that also contains various bike paths. It is a bit close to the freeway, but unlike other stations, not adjacent to it. Bellevue Way is a fast street (40 MPH) but that can be made safer over time. Along with Link, you are likely to have pretty good bus service. Getting to the high school should be really easy, while getting to places like Factoria and Eastgate might be good. Apartments or condos there would sell very quickly. A mini-village would help, as otherwise you would still have a lot of people driving everywhere. But I think there would be plenty of people who don’t. The best bet would probably be low income housing, since they are less likely to drive (if there are decent alternatives).
I think overall it is better than a lot of the areas where they are building park and ride lots. For that matter, it is better than a lot of places slated for development. Look at Federal Way. There are plans (as well as initial development) to turn that area into a mini-village with apartments (and condos?). It would appear to have a lot less going for it. There is no big, attractive green belt. It is a very long ways to Seattle, and even getting to the Tacoma Dome will take a while. I like downtown Tacoma more than I like downtown Bellevue, but from South Bellevue, the downtown is a very short hop on Link. In contrast, getting from Federal Way to Tacoma will take a lot longer, and the train won’t even get you downtown. Federal Way does have a good connection to Highline College, but (most likely) South Tacoma will have a good connection to Bellevue College. Overall, South Bellevue just looks like it is much more promising place for TOD than most of the stations outside Seattle.
Aside from transit and the park, what are some other neighborhood amenities of South Bellevue station?
“Along with Link, you are likely to have pretty good bus service. Getting to the high school should be really easy, while getting to places like Factoria and Eastgate might be good.”
I believe that right now the main bus service you get (other than the 550, which would get replaced by Link) are the 241 and 249. The 249 is hourly (half hourly during white collar commute periods) and stops running around 7pm; the 241 is similar but runs later (maybe 11pm?). Both are hourly-ish on weekends, I think. Hardly “pretty good” bus service by standards of this blog.
They do both go to the high school (if on different sides of it), and the 241 is a short freeway hop away from Factoria. Eastgate is longer to get to (I think the 241 does eventually make it there after meandering a little).
Anyway, I really do encourage people to go check out the spot. It looks pretty on the map, but maps don’t tell you everything. For one, I find it pretty loud, as it’s nestled right into the crook of the 405-90 interchange. It’s far enough that it’s not, say, Mountlake Terrace TC or MI Link station loud (which others have complained about here before, too) but I generally find it loud enough to not enjoy the green space surrounding it. I have not been to the Federal Way location Ross mentioned, but I would much prefer less accessible locations which are quieter, myself. I am curious what others think.
Federal Way Transit Center, which close to where the Link Station will be, is pretty far off I-5. Little to no traffic noise, from my experience.
I’m not certain where the housing development is going to happen, however. Right now the area is a small park, a mid-tier mall, some big-box stores, and a massive amount of parking lots and garages.
https://goo.gl/maps/QzfEjxotPJyjrwQv5
Hopefully the apartments will eat up some of that concrete.
It looks like “The Commons” recently lost Macy’s, their last true department store anchor. They still have a Target, a movie theatre and a Japanese dollar store.
Maybe that’s where the housing is expected to go, given the mall may soon no longer be a going concern.
I just noticed there is a mobile home park across from The Commons. Which appears to be interspersed around a par-3, 9 hole golf course. They bill themselves as a 55 and older “Country Club”.
I’m not sure why I love this, but I do.
I think Federal Way’s station area, especially in terms of multifamily development, should have a bright future once the economy improves. It seems like a lot of the ingredients are there for residential development. A lot of underutilized land that isn’t overly expensive. Soon will have a light rail station.
Btw, History Link’s KC Metro page said this about FW’s new P&R back in the day … “When Metro Transit opened its Federal Way Park & Ride in 1979, it was filled to its 800-space capacity by the next day.”
Generally, Federal Way is set up well for redevelopment around Link. Underutilized parking lots and shopping centers with struggling retail make easy sites to clear and neighborhood opposition is nil to low.
I think that the big problem that remains is 320th St pedestrian crossing. With 8 lanes of traffic often flying at 50 mph, it’s a difficult and very wide stroad to cross. I wish they had figured out a station entrance for the south side of 320th. Maybe with redevelopment there can somehow be one added.
That was the ST2 notion behind the surface lot at the Link station at 130th Avenue NE in Bel-Red. The East Link Connections P3 network has no bus route at the station.
“ Al, if the transit ridership does not support the park and ride it does not support TOD. ”
Well that’s a weird analogy.
1. Surface parking is different than garage parking. It requires assembling lots more land. So a park-and-ride lot that contains a 300 vehicle capacity is a much larger footprint than the 500 space garages that ST is currently building. So there doesn’t have to be high demand; just higher utilization.
2. There are plenty of midrise buildings recently built around our region that “pencil out” near relatively empty park and ride lots. I just see no correlation between density and park-and-ride. Your logic seems to be saying that because Houghton park-and-ride lot does poorly that no one would want to put a higher density building there.
3. Demand changes over time. An area where surface park-and-ride made since in the 1990’s May be better suited for TOD today. Had an agency put that land together in the 1990’s, they could entice a developer to build TOD now.
So let’s get back to my original point: Acquiring surface parking is a great way to assemble land that lays the groundwork for future TOD.
When Angle Lake Station opened, a trailer / RV park was shut down, to make way for the future tracks to Federal Way, with no relocation assistance.
Maybe ST can atone for this sin by designating some of the surface lots for interim RV and trailer hook-up. Consider it TOD on the cheap.
Lots of neighborhoods that fought to get rid of RVs on the public asphalt would probably be delighted at such a plan.
> We have already alluded to a general post-pandemic strategy that focuses more hours on frequent reliable all-day service and fewer on commuter routes.
I agree the P & R model is increasingly failing.
> With all that said, I don’t expect suburban commuter routes to be wiped off the face of the earth. As much as urbanists hate it, transit governance relies on the political capital of suburban constituents.
Focusing a small amount of Sound Transit funds to brt avenue corridors would be fine. I discussed this idea in a past comments threads though it received a lot of pushback. Though am still confused why most commenters had such a heavy insistence on the Sounder capacity improvements and building parking garages (or at least smaller ones) that really aren’t being used.
Though am still confused why most commenters had such a heavy insistence on the Sounder capacity improvements and building parking garages (or at least smaller ones) that really aren’t being used.
Is that true? I don’t remember anyone defending any parking garage project, or for that matter, the Sounder capacity improvements. I for one have been opposed to both from the beginning. Expensive new parking garages are a bad idea, for the reasons mentioned elsewhere. There are alternatives to improving capacity for Sounder — although right now they definitely don’t look necessary.
> Is that true? I don’t remember anyone defending any parking garage project, or for that matter, the Sounder capacity improvements
Daniel wrote “Some on this blog hate park and rides but eastsiders like them, and more importantly can afford them, which is why they were promised in ST 3”
Cam wrote “Second, I am optimistic, perhaps overly so, that if you provided hourly Sounder service it would be in time be noticed and used much more often than the reverse-peak service might suggest. ”
But either way, it seems even for supporters of cutting the parking garage they’d like to use the money solely for express bus frequency or link improvements. I’m actually a bit surprised that most are against the idea of Sound Transit funding some brt along avenues.
Depends on the subarea WL.
If the eastside subarea sold or developed its park and rides where would it use the money? We have plenty of money (and pay 100% of east/west/east express buses so probably don’t want to increase those) for Link and express buses that cost us $64 million/year. It hardly makes sense for ST to increase bus coverage or frequency when no one on the eastside is riding buses.
When it comes to S. King Co. better ask them.
If East Link is still claiming that in 2- or 3-years East Link will have between 43,000 and 52,000 riders/day you can’t very well start selling park and rides, including non-East Link park and rides like Eastgate that will serve the 554 which will be much more popular than Link, and also serve feeder buses to East Link.
ST has to come out and say the park and rides on the eastside will not be necessary when East Link opens because ridership will be very, very low, maybe 25% of pre-pandemic estimates on the eastside, before you can begin to remove park and rides, and so far ST is not willing to say that, and won’t say it even after East Link opens and ridership is 25% of estimates.
Just like so many on this blog, ST’s hopes that transit ridership returns to pre-pandemic levels springs eternal. If they and ST are right, and eastside park and rides were full by 7 am before East Link, then better keep those empty park and rides until ST gives up the ghost.
ST’s dishonest ridership estimates have confounded the eastside for a decade. First it was capacity, and now it is keeping empty park and rides open.
There are two kinds of Sounder capacity improvements: longer trains and more runs. Longer trains on Sounder South is what ST is doing now, unless it has been paused. That’s the least useful improvement because you still have to wait as long as before. More runs, or hourly or half-hourly Sounder all day, would make Sounder South more useful.
@Daniel
> If the eastside subarea sold or developed its park and rides where would it use the money? We have plenty of money (and pay 100% of east/west/east express buses so probably don’t want to increase those) for Link and express buses that cost us $64 million/year. It hardly makes sense for ST to increase bus coverage or frequency when no one on the eastside is riding buses.
There’s possible improvements on Redmond way, 108th ave ne, or bus route 271. Even just building smaller parking garages rather than cutting them completely could fund those.
@Mike
> There are two kinds of Sounder capacity improvements: longer trains and more runs. Longer trains on Sounder South is what ST is doing now, unless it has been paused. That’s the least useful improvement because you still have to wait as long as before. More runs, or hourly or half-hourly Sounder all day, would make Sounder South more useful.
The problem is we can’t make Sounder South more frequent since BNSF owns the tracks. I mean if Sound Transit owned those tracks we wouldn’t have to build large portions of the Tacoma link and could have half-hourly runs between Tacoma and Seattle today. They can add slightly more runs, during peak times but even that seems a bit unnecessary.
I mean we currently have the Stream (pacific ave) 1 brt cutting back on median lanes due to lack have money; and then we have sound transit trying to find where to spend a billion dollars on Sounder improvements that is currently under utilized.
Cam wrote “Second, I am optimistic, perhaps overly so, that if you provided hourly Sounder service it would be in time be noticed and used much more often than the reverse-peak service might suggest. ”
I did, I have also said I’d pay for it partially by canceling train capacity expansion as well as the extension to Dupont.
To be clear, I am against Park and Rides. I am against capacity expansion. I am for increases in frequency to make transit usable. Currently nearly all transit that touches Pierce County is pretty close to unusable. The exception is the ST express buses. And in the future, the t-link, because it will be the only local service that travels at a usable frequency. For that reason alone, I support it.
“The problem is we can’t make Sounder South more frequent since BNSF owns the tracks.” WL
I don’t think this is true. I’ve heard people’s opinions differ on this topic. I’ve heard pretty knowledgeable people say it will be expensive, but with UP and BNSF tracks running parallel, were there a will (and a bucket of money) there would be a way. There would be plenty of capacity for both freight and hourly service. It’s a political and a fiscal problem, not a practical one. Or it likely is. It should at a minimum be studied and the costs and constraints quantified.
I would love to see a direct comparison to TDLE, scaling back the longer trains and Dupont silliness, and have a reasonable comparison. I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too far different, budget-wise, but that’s a wild-assed guess.
The other thing about Bellevue Way, especially that section – speaking as a pedestrian, now, and one who has walked that section a few times over the years (but not too many, admittedly)…
The walk is pretty annoying. On the West side of Bellevue Way, you have no sidewalk at all. I have in fact seen people get off the bus at the 108th Ave SE stop North of the South Bellevue area and then walk literally in the median to get to their house a few blocks down, it’s scary as **unprintable** to me, especially at night. But the walk on the East side, where the sidewalk is brand new, is still not pleasant… it’s exposed to the elements, since the Slough side is pretty wide open, and the cars move fast right past you. It’s not quite highway speeds but it’s still a major road with lots of traffic. It doesn’t get better until past 108th where it becomes more residential and less highway-like. The closest to a comparison I have is the section of Bothell Way near 405, around the UW Bothell campus, and that’s another area I dislike walking in (and in fact, as I’ve mentioned here before, rejected the idea of living in an apartment near there because of the walking conditions).
Obviously the apartments up there in Bothell Way do fill up; and so I’m sure that apartments in the South Bellevue station area would also fill up. But it’s not “pleasant”, again. If people have not experienced it in person, I encourage them to catch the 550 and check it out for themselves.
Apologies – my previous comment was supposed to nest in the previous thread South Bellevue, not here.
“The problem is we can’t make Sounder South more frequent since BNSF owns the tracks.”
I meant we should cancel the platform-lengthening projects.
“On the West side of Bellevue Way, you have no sidewalk at all. I have in fact seen people get off the bus at the 108th Ave SE stop North of the South Bellevue area and then walk literally in the median to get to their house a few blocks down, it’s scary as **unprintable** to me, especially at night.”
I first noticed the lack of sidewalk when I started studying the Link station area. People are trapped in their houses if they don’t have a car, and there’s not enough room at the edge of the road to stand and walk without getting hit by 45 mph cars. I’ve never seen anyone in those driveways, so I just trusted they knew when they bought the house it was inaccessible by foot. The houses are from the 50s or 60s, so it’s possible they bought them decades ago and have remained there ever since. It’s not exactly a desirable location I would think. To go southbound you have to get into semi-highway traffic without a light, and to get to your house from northbound you have to cross several lanes of high-speed traffic.
The worst section is between 108th and 112th – and there are lights at both intersections, the true freeway onramp starts south of 113th I think which is the last crossroad before I-90. But yes, otherwise I agree – I literally cannot imagine living in a location like that.
I don’t mind not having a sidewalk on a small residential road (NE Seattle comes to mind) but even there there are exceptions. We once considered living a house in Sand Point which was on a somewhat winding road with no sidewalk, and I vetoed it because the idea of walking down that street every night during winter after getting off the bus was harrowing. But somewhere closer to 15th and Northgate Way would probably be okay, the roads are straighter there, and there’s better visibility.
I agree 100% with this essay. Notice the subtlety, not obvious from the headline. The author is not against all park and rides. There is an acknowledgement that “Substantial but overlooked capacity often comes from leasing agreements with churches or other institutions that have low utilization during the work week” and that “Agencies can pick the low-hanging fruit by looking at the glut of existing suburban parking lots from malls, churches, and even office parks that have lost their own workers to remote or hybrid work.” In other words, try to get the most out of your park and ride dollar by looking at alternatives to the large garages.
The interesting thing is that this was true well before the pandemic. Unlike just about every other form of transit, park and rides don’t scale. Buses and trains become cheaper per rider, the more people use them. Agencies improve frequency in response to high use, which then leads to more ridership and more savings. Street improvements or tunnels allow the vehicles to go faster leading to greater savings. In general, the more popular transit becomes, the cheaper it becomes to operate (per rider) and the better it is.
Park and ride lots are the opposite. The least expensive lots are those described (those based on leasing agreements with churches or other institutions that have low utilization during the work week). A little more expensive is building and maintaining a surface lot. Once you start building multi-story lots, the cost per user gets especially high. Meanwhile, things aren’t necessarily better for the user. Faster, more frequent buses and trains save the agency money, but they are also better for users (faster travel times and less waiting). In contrast, parking in a big lot is often worse than parking in a small one. You might have to loop around and around and have a long walk (and an elevator ride) to the bus or train.
Building a bigger park-and-ride lot at best helps those drivers. In contrast, other improvements — even in response to a crowded park and ride lot — can help other riders. If a small park and ride lot is full, one alternative is to increase feeder buses to the area. Many of the riders would not only have room to park, but some would walk to the bus stop, or drive a shorter distance.
All of this was true before the pandemic. But just as focusing almost exclusively on long-distance commuters was a bad use of money then, it is an even worse use of money now. The same is true with large, expensive, multi-story parking garages.
The issue with using small park and rides on private property (like the 630) is then the bus must make a lot of stops, not ideal if the bus is any kind of express, and not usable if we are talking Link. I don’t know how much cheaper that bus or train will be to run without the large park and ride, but it will be slower and time of trip is a very important consideration.
Storm water and other greenfield development regulations just get more and more onerous with every code revision. Installing a surface parking lot is a way to get the foot on the door on a site buildout. In the long run it probably saves a long term developer money over leaving the site in native condition.
It might be interesting to list some P&R’s, and say whether they should remain a P&R, or redeveloped into something else, like housing, or something else. A couple of former P&R’s that became multifamilies … Northshore P&R in Kenmore. Overlake P&R. Redmond P&R (now called the Redmond TC). Both were surface lots, btw. But will Metro or ST be more hesitant to sell or demolish large, multi-storied garage P&R’s, like Eastgate? Houghton P&R will probably become housing. Bear Creek might be a good one to close and convert to housing. Twin Lakes in Federal Way would be a good one to close and turn into housing. Shoreline would be a good one to scrap. Possibly Woodinville.
> But will Metro or ST be more hesitant to sell or demolish large, multi-storied garage P&R’s, like Eastgate?
For multi-storied garages, I’d suggest instead building an apartment building on the surface lot of Eastgate, and for parking for the apartment dwellers let them lease usage of the existing park and ride garage. Could probably have a direct connection rather than having them go down and walk back up. Or maybe part of surface lots to the east of 142nd bridge and see if those businesses are willing to park partially in the park and ride.
For example in DC they have some shared park-and-ride garages with apartment users.
I’m going to throw a contrary argument out there for the wolves.
What’s very clear is two-fold:
– Transit demand has taken a permanent hit because there is less demand for travel, particularly commute-oriented traffic to dense downtowns.
– That reduced demand is affecting all modes at all hours, but it is concentrated in suburban longer distance peak hour commutes. The archetypal choice rider now has an additional choice of just working from home. When they do venture to the office, there is less traffic congestion and easier parking if they drive, so it’s easier than before.
What’s less clear is the right response. Clearly, it’s unsustainable to continue as if ridership were about to bounce back. Metro is running about 90% of service for 50% of the pre-pandemic ridership. In the suburbs, it’s more like 80% for 20% of riders.
How to serve the remaining suburban riders? Park & Rides have lower demand than before. But so do suburban neighborhood buses. The argument for P&Rs has always been that it allows riders to concentrate themselves at nodes that are dense enough to serve more frequently than sparse neighborhood service.
Inasmuch as anything works in the suburbs anymore, it may be P&Rs.
To Russ’ point up the page, that’s not to warrant a lot more investment in these facilities. There is less total demand whatever one does. But it might warrant a rebalancing, in relative terms, towards parking rather than away from it.
Important caveat to the above. As long as Sound Transit can’t figure out how to build parking for less than $250,000 per incremental stall, all parking projects should be killed with fire, whatever their merits at some more reasonable price tag.
Are you saying that even though suburban P&R usage has decreased, it’s best not so close the low performers?
> What’s less clear is the right response. Clearly, it’s unsustainable to continue as if ridership were about to bounce back. Metro is running about 90% of service for 50% of the pre-pandemic ridership. In the suburbs, it’s more like 80% for 20% of riders.
I mean as you noted these 3 parking garages for Sumner/Kent/Auburn cost in total 300 million. I’d suggest scaling down the parking garages and using the funds them for say 150 or 168 bus improvements.
> How to serve the remaining suburban riders?
I’m not sure what to fund (south king subarea) if one wants to continue focusing on solely on suburban commuter riders. The Sounder capacity seems unnecessary, I guess more express busses in other suburbs (Fairwood, East Renton) that currently don’t have service direct service to Seattle, but I don’t think they’d be too successful?
There’s still no all-day Kent-Seattle express. The 150 takes 63 minutes at noon. That’s just to get to Kent Station, then you have to take another bus to East Hill or further where most of the population lives. That’s too long and deters people from taking transit. Peak-hour Sounder takes 20 minutes. Peak-hour 162 takes 50 minutes. Link to SeaTac takes 39 minutes, and then 28 minutes on the 161, plus transfer, so that’s not better than the 150, and could be worse if you have to wait half an hour for the 161. So Link will not solve this.
The only way I could see Kent-Seattle getting remotely close to Sounder times is if one adds a bus lane to Kent-Des Moines road and just runs the bus route 162. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/routes-and-service/schedules-and-maps/162#route-map. Then one could make the run in around 30~35 ish minutes.
Alternatively, after building state route 167 with the hov/express ramps then adds a direct access ramp to kent. and have the bus go down i5, then 405, then SR 167 exiting at kent. That would take around 25~35 minutes.
I’m not sure how much ridership it would get even if running say every 15 minutes, though either way it would be much much cheaper to implement than buying the BNSF line.
One opportunity to recoup the cost of building a parking garage is Mercer Island. Sell it to MI, and let them manage the garage however they want (after the 2 Line fully opens).
“The age of the park-and-ride is over.”
Well, maybe? But what does this say about the “The age of rail transit”? Because if you honestly believe park-and-rides are doing the way of the dinosaur, what does that say about commuter rail? Why spend billions on trains when buses can handle the reduced mass transit needs?
And really….. TOD = crap. Nobody wants to live next to a freeway in planned Soviet style housing. Much of the time TOD is the enemy of the 15 minute city. Worst urban planning since Stalin.
The US&A has developed better housing solutions, like racial deed restrictions, single-family zoning, tax deductions for a second mortgage, height restrictions, setbacks, mandatory parking minima, unlimited design reviews, RV parking space along every street, and encampments wherever there is grass that is not private property. We sure showed Joseph how it’s done!
I know that Mike has spent time in Moscow. Perhaps he can tell us what he thought about the Soviet bloc apartments while he was there, and how they compared to the typical suburbia housing in the US.
I have never been to Russia, but I know enough about other parts of the Warsaw pact countries (some from personal experience) to know that I would pick the US style housing any day. I encourage you, also, to discuss the topic with ex-Soviet and ex-Mao era (or a little later) Chinese immigrants (as I have) – I am sure that you will find the discussion informative. One point of note from the latter is that the Chinese bloc units that my friend grew up in did not have private bathrooms or kitchens, they were just “rooms” with shared services. If you would prefer such housing over unlimited design reviews and mandatory parking minima, all the power to you, of course. I do not, personally.
Having said that, the comparison with Soviet style housing of any TOD in Seattle is, frankly, absurd, as it is nothing like what I just described. So there is no reason to hyperbolize on either side. What we have here is generally pretty good, and we should be proud of it, frankly. We should also be quite open to improving it to fix issues that do exist, such as the inability to provide any housing for a subset of people who wish it and cannot afford it. That is the real problem to solve.
MI wanted to buy the park and ride but ST said it could not legally sell it, or reserve space for Islanders. The 2017 settlement provided $4.5 million in ST matching funds for a MI only commuter garage. The city entered into a MOU with a developer for a mixed-use development next to the 80th St. station that would build 100 underground commuter stalls that would be mixed use. That fell through due to the pandemic and citizen objections to the scale of the project. I think we have until 2025 to find a use for the $4.5 million. We tried rented e-bikes and subsidized Uber but those did not work, and driverless shuttles are too far into the future, and I can’t see Metro’s new micro-transit serving MI.
I don’t think the city has the money to buy the existing park and ride even with ST’s matching $4.5 million, and it isn’t needed today, or at least reserved space for Islanders. There is no way to generate any kind of income from the park and ride to offset the upkeep costs. Ridership on cross lake ST express buses is very weak — and non-existent during non-peak hours — East Link will not open for at least 2-3 years, and no one really knows what capacity East Link will have over the bridge and how many express buses will run after East Link opens, or will need to run.
Four years ago all anyone talked about was the park and ride. Now it is irrelevant, except for game day, although my suspicion is retail employees park in the park and ride, and overflow residential parking from the mixed-use developments that only have one parking stall per unit which has turned out to be one stall too few. At least that has removed that parking from the town center streets.
ST still claims to the eastside that East Link will carry 43,000 to 52,000 riders/day in 2025 or 2026 so be ready, and so the park and rides will be packed again. If ridership does return it will be seen in the park and rides first, especially MI because our bus service after East Link opens is pretty infrequent so best to drive to the park and ride if you really need to use East Link. Like all things transit on the eastside these days no one cares.
The parking garage actually sits in a residential zone with a conditional use permit. The residential neighborhood to the north would likely oppose any change in zoning to develop the park and ride unless a few SFH, and the reality is there are a number of vacant lots in the town center proper to the south that have much better regulatory limits than a park and ride in the residential zone, unless you want 2 or 3 SFH’s. With the new zoning under HB 1110 near Link stations the city and adjacent neighborhood would be even more opposed to developing the park and ride although at best we are talking about a four-plex which will be hard with MI’s regulatory limits.
ST is finishing up the last of the roundabout and station landscaping on 80th and it looks pretty good. ST bought two houses along NMW for the storm water vault and turned those basically into a park next to the park and ride once the vault was installed (after the vault the residual lot area was just under the legal limit to build anything on the lots because they also sit in the residential zone. HB 1110 does not affect minimum lot sizes).
MI has two landscaped station entrances, a platform 35′ below grade that is completed, a very expensive round about, new bus stops, new landscaping along N. Mercer Way, an empty park and ride, just waiting for East Link.
None of it matters anymore post pandemic. I get the feeling the citizens are relieved East Link won’t open for several years and it would be ok if it never opened, and that the eastside transit restructure reduces the frequency of buses on MI to so low the only practical first/last mile access from MI is the park and ride. Express bus frequency on MI today is better than East Link will be due to the number of bus routes, although few are riding them. No one wants to go to Seattle, and parking is free to the east.
I don’t believe there are 40k+ parking stalls along the entire East Link. If East Link is depending on park and ride to fill its trains, that is a losing game. If any transit line is depending on park and ride to fill its trains, that is a losing game. If your projected daily ridership is anything near the parking capacity, that would be a failed transit station! You need several times this, from a combination of walk/bike and bus transfers. Cars simply do not scale in that way even if there were the demand. The capacity of SeaTac airport garage, said to be the largest in North America, is only around 12k, we’re not building one of those at every transit stop, no way.
I hear what you’re saying…. but it translates into “Let’s skip building transit and stick with cars” Cars are real flexible machines… you can use them to do multi-task trips, haul stuff around in, ferry kiddos…. there’s a big reason driving is so popular.
If transit doesn’t want to play nice…. well, cars might take their toys and go home. Personally, it’s easy enough to mix the two…
Anecdotally, I agree with Tacomee that it is easy enough to mix the two. What can be said for the park and ride is that it creates positive “transit experiences” for people who might otherwise not use transit. It’s good PR, which is easy to remember because it’s P and R. Get it?
I hear what you’re saying…. but it translates into “Let’s skip building transit and stick with cars”
That sounds like a very strange translation, because I didn’t get that at all. Brandon simply pointed out that if you are dependent on large park and ride lots, you are bound to have a failed system. You have to get riders some other way, or you’ve lost.
Fortunately, you can. If your stations are close to a bunch of people, or a place where lots of people like to go, you get a lot more riders that way. If you have very good connecting bus service, you get a lot more riders that way. If you have both, you will get a ton of riders. That doesn’t mean you don’t have park and rides, but it means they are a relatively small part of your system. The key here — mentioned in this article — is to keep the park and rides small (and cheap). Once they fill up, figure out where the park and riders are coming from, and increase bus service to those areas. That might mean adding additional (cheap) park and rides there, but the end result is a much more cost effective system.
One local example is the 41. For years it ran between Northgate and downtown, as an express. At Northgate, it served a major park and ride lot. They built another one, not too far away. This worked, but ridership wasn’t that impressive. Eventually they added more service throughout the day, offering fairly frequent service well beyond the park and rides, and down to Lake City. Another, much smaller park and ride was added (using a church parking lot) off of 125th. The addition of this tiny park and ride, as well as the additional service lead to fewer people using the bigger park and ride lot. Eventually they just closed the second park and ride lot, and turned it into a park. Ridership kept growing. Prior to Northgate Link, it was one of the best performing buses in our system — very unusual for an express. Fewer and fewer people drove to the park and ride. More would take it from the neighborhood. Many would take connecting buses (that didn’t go downtown). A few drove to that smaller park and ride lot (that handled about forty cars). The proportion of riders who drove to a park and ride and took the 41 dwindled, while ridership soared.
The same thing can happen in other parts of the region. For example, Auburn. The 184 connects riders in Auburn to the Auburn Station. It goes very close to this church here, which has about 100 parking stalls: https://goo.gl/maps/Mxwjpqkjtn9QMqGD9. It probably isn’t that expensive to lease that lot during the week. There are a number of different church lots that could be leased out. Many of them don’t have bus service, but could use it. The addition of a parking garage can help justify the route, but mainly it is about money. Instead of spending enormous sums on a new parking garage, spend it on bus service and smaller park and ride lots, that are closer to where people live. Eventually you may find that the park and ride lot is really a minor thing, and most people walk to a bus stop (like they did with the 41).
@Daniel T
“The 2017 settlement provided $4.5 million in ST matching funds for a MI only commuter garage.”
You’re talking about that roughly $10 million mitigation package, correct? Did the other $5+ million ever get spent as directed in the agreement?
This is how your local paper covered it at the time:
https://www.mi-reporter.com/news/mercer-island-city-council-approves-tentative-settlement-agreement-with-sound-transit/
Thanks in advance for your reply.
Tisgwm, yes MI has used some of the $5.1 million from the ST settlement for mitigation.
MI like most cities adopts a 6-year rolling transportation improvement program each year that funds and prioritizes capital projects on the list. Around 80% is road maintenance, but each year one or two projects are selected.
The settlement agreement was entered into in Nov. 2017. There was a lot of turnover on the council in 2018. Then MI and ST began litigating over the configuration for the bus intercept, the city focused on using the $4.5 million matching funds on a mixed-use project with 100 parking stalls in the town center that was abandoned, the pandemic hit, ST delayed East Link until 2023 (now 2025), MI lost the litigation, the eastside transit restructure reduced the intensity of the bus intercept by around 50%, and ST is just completing the roundabout on N. Mercer Way. So determining what mitigation is or will be needed has been a moving target, and may not be fully known until 2025/6.
So far the city has completed two pedestrian/bike crossings with islands, one in the town center and one at the entrance to I-90 on West Mercer Way. This year the council will once again debate using some of the money to build the “missing gap” in the north-south bike path at the southern end of Island Crest Way that the Island has debated for 15 years and is a study in local municipal politics, and IMO is not politically feasible, at least not on ICW.
“Cars do not scale” means that each car takes more space than a person. Each car has on average 2.5 parking spaces: one at home, one at work, and a shared one at retail establishments. Each parking space needs a half-space in front of it for the car to get in and out. Most P&R usage is for 9-5 commuters, so one car parks in the morning and nobody else can use it all day. Car take much more space to transport a hundred people than buses do.
Look at any supermarket, big-box store, or fast-food joint with a surface parking lot. The lot is as big as the store or larger. The owner has to pay for twice as much land as the store requires. The cost gets added to retail prices, even for shoppers without cars.
If a train is near full, there are several times more passengers than P&R spaces, so most of the passengers will have to come another way than driving. To allow them all to drive, you’d have to double or quadruple the size of the P&R.
So if a city adds 100,000 people or doubles its population, its car footprint increases exponentially more. That’s what “cars don’t scale” means.
Cars don’t scale means there is inadequate road space or inadequate parking for the number of cars in use.
Pre-pandemic that did occur during peak hours on certain freeways and arterials, which drove transit ridership. Post pandemic it is very rare. Most cities have parking minimums for onsite parking, and every retail establishment I can think of has free parking except in downtown Seattle, including U Village which is packed. Capitol Hill and UW may have parking restraints but mostly on free parking. If you are willing to pay there is always parking available, but there are usually alternative places with free parking. There are many alternatives to Capitol Hill.
To the non-urbanist, and 81% of Seattleites who own a car and probably 90%+ of eastsiders, scale means can I get in my car and drive to point B without undue congestion, and will there be parking available when I get there, free or paid. If not, which is very rare today, the questions then are do I go, go later, do I get a ride, do I take a ride share, or do I take public transit.
Folks who own a car don’t need someone else — especially someone who does not own a car — telling them whether their car scales based on some ideology or transit “expert”. They know. Pre-pandemic they knew cars didn’t scale to downtown Seattle during peak hours if you could not afford the parking so they took transit. Those days are gone. They chose to WFH. Now cars scale pretty much 24/7 so fewer are taking transit, and more are driving.
If things change people will change their travel patterns. They know when cars scale because they are the ones driving and parking.
It will be interesting to see how the US changes over the next couple years. I’m guessing we (as a nation) become much more local…. shorter trips, working from home. Maybe a free local shuttle bus to shopping works better than huge subway projects? WFH certainly changes urban planning.
The statement that rush hour isn’t congested anymore post pandemic is simply not true. Just today, I rode my bike to Seattle, passing a solid line of cars from Yarrow Point to Montlake. I-5 and I-405 are congested as ever. The local streets downtown may be less congested than they were prepandemic, but they’re hardly empty. It is still a 15 minute slog to go one mile from I-5 to parts of Belltown.
Asdf2, I did not say there was no congestion, but that congestion had gone way down. (I am surprised there was congestion on 520 because since it has opened I have never seen congestion on 520 because it is tolled, with the highest tolls during peak times, which shifts that traffic to I-90 and I-90 has very little congestion today).
The one place congestion remains a chronic problem is 405 south during peak times. This is because much of the demographic can’t work from home because they are in the trades, 405 feeds 167 and that part of S. King Co. has boomed, and 405 doesn’t have enough lanes which WSDOT is trying to remedy. That is why peak congestion on 405 is an hour earlier than for white collar workers.
The difference between Mike and me when it comes to cars “scaling” is Mike believes it is an objective urbanist term somehow enforced by folks who don’t drive, which it is for them, but the people who decide whether THEIR car scales for each trip are the individual owners, because they have a car in the garage. We can only decide whether a car scales for our trip individually, not someone else’s trip.
There are a lot of factors folks consider whether their car scales. Extent pf congestion (not zero congestion), parking, and then alternatives. Uber solves the parking cost but is more expensive. Transit has safety, first/last mile, time of trip, kids, convenience, ability to carry things like tools, issues. Not making the trip. Going someplace else that has free parking. Taking a different route. Look at me. For 32 years I decided it scaled for me to commute by car to Pioneer Square in heavy congestion and pay $275/mo. for a parking stall. Now our offices are on MI there is zero congestion and free parking I walk to work for the exercise, even though my car scales.
All those cars on 520 or even 405 have owners who made the decision their car or truck “scaled” for their trip when compared to the alternatives. Pre-pandemic more office workers felt transit scaled, especially the peak commute to downtown Seattle where parking was very expensive, but many of those now WFH which reduced peak congestion which makes driving a car during peak hours scale better today.
It is a free country. Folks can own cars. Cities can restrict cars but then like downtown Seattle retail you lose a lot of customers, because one factor in whether a car scales is the ability to go someplace else that does scale or has free parking. Transit is just going to struggle with this because congestion and expensive parking were the things that forced peak commuters to have to take transit, when they didn’t want to make that trip anyway, in a car or on transit.
If you see someone driving a car or truck you know they made the individual decision their car or truck scaled for that trip, compared to the alternatives. If they are driving in heavy congestion, it just tells you they determined the alternatives to driving were worse than traffic congestion.
“Cars don’t scale means there is inadequate road space or inadequate parking for the number of cars in use.”
No, it’s an urbanist phrase. It has a fixed definition. It means the exponential amount of space a cars-first city implies is unacceptable. Half the buildable land in American cities is dedicated to car infrastructure. All that car infrastructure pushes everything apart and makes it harder to walk to. It paves over fertile agricultural land, costs a lot of money to maintain, causes a heat island and stormwater concentrations, etc.
To be fair, that may be what it means in urbanist circles, but it’s clearly not what it means to lay people like Daniel. I appreciate the educational response, as well as the patience in doing so repeatedly, but it is worth keeping in mind that it is not true that the definition is “fixed”, outside of places like this.
I appreciate your occasional replies questioning any overgeneralizations I may make.
In this case, has Daniel heard the phrase “cars don’t scale” used the other way? (I.e., that we need more lanes to accommodate all car trips.) I haven’t heard it used that way, but it’s possible some people say it.
My use comes from the sense of “X doesn’t scale”; e.g., Certain kinds of web server software “don’t scale” because they can’t handle lots of simultaneous requests without melting down. They’re fine for low-volume sites but not for YouTube. The solution is to change the software to something that scales, so that it can handle millions of simultaneous requests.
When a city adds people, each one requires an incremental amount of housing, food, electricity, etc. Cities have accommodated this forever. But when each person has a car and drives it everywhere, they need exponentially more land for the car:
1. A parking space the size of a living room.
2. A second parking space at work. (Or at a P&R.)
3. Half a space (aggregate average) at third-place destinations.
4. A half-space in front of these to get the car in/out of the space.
5. A 2-car lane space on the roads they travel. (One bus takes the space of 2-3 cars, but carries 25-50 people at half-load, compared to the cars’ 2-6.)
6. Gas stations, car-repair shops, police patrols.
The argument is that this total space is excessive. The alternative is walking-first, transit/bikes-second, taxis-third, cars-fourth strategy. This would allow essential cars, bulky loads, and some discretionary car use. It would need way fewer lanes, and smaller parking lots. You’d need a serious bump-up in transit so that more people would find it convenient and use it.
“When a city adds people, each one requires an incremental amount of housing, food, electricity, etc. Cities have accommodated this forever. But when each person has a car and drives it everywhere, they need exponentially more land for the car:”
Mike, I am not arguing supply. I am arguing demand for driving has gone down with WFH, and this has relieved much of the congestion on the roads that was really peak only. I am not arguing for building more roads except 405 which WSDOT began pre-pandemic because that demographic cannot use transit or WFH, must drive, and population growth south along 167 has boomed but so much of their work is in the wealthier areas north. I am also arguing we need to cut transit due to lower ridership depending on routes.
Whether a car scales is an individual decision by anyone who owns a car. Basic economics will tell you that when driving does not “scale”, which as I noted in a prior post has many different factors, a person with a car will opt for a different mode, sometimes Uber, sometimes transit, sometimes no trip.
Pre-pandemic, before WFH, certain trips did not scale to certain places if you could not afford the parking (after all, I commuted by car to downtown Seattle for 32 years, even before downtown went downhill). Some rode transit then, some found other jobs closer to home, some carpooled.
As I noted to asdf2, it isn’t that traffic congestion is zero today, it is just that for the vast majority of trips, including peak trips, cars do scale compared to the benefits and deficits of the alternatives due to lower congestion. So folks drive for more trips, but make fewer trips overall because they don’t drive to and from work.
Obviously there is the space for parking and roads today because they exist. Getting rid of cars, which won’t happen, won’t get rid of the infrastructure. If as some predict — although so far the numbers don’t show it — another 1 million residents move here over the next 20 year maybe more will take transit or WFH or just choose to not take trips because their car does not scale due to congestion or live closer to their work although that congestion will be along a few freeways.
But we are not there yet, and were not really there in 2019 before WFH except for some very specific peak trips to downtown Seattle that is dead now. In 2019 90% of trips were still by car despite congestion, so obviously drivers felt the alternatives were worse than the congestion, which is really what scaling means to them.
How ironic that the most congested trip that scaled the worst is a trip that so few take today. An urbanist should see that as a good thing, if tax revenue and retail vibrancy were not an issue.
You don’t own a car. You are an urbanist with a hatred of cars. But you can only decide whether a car scales for a trip for you, not someone else, and probably everyone in this entire region will have a more generous definition of scaling when considering all the factors than you will. People will almost always make the decision that is best for them, and you should trust them.
Thank you, I am glad that you don’t mind my nit-picking :)
Most of what I would say to your additional explanations is covered in my reply to Ross, below, in particular in terms of “scaling” in technology as well as my split between “efficiency” and non-linear investment requirements, which you also touch on.
I will further quibble with one point of what you added. The way SOVs scale is not “exponential” in the way this term is typically used, in that two SOVs do not require 2^x as much space as one SOV does (for some value of x > 1). Nothing you have elaborated on below suggests that. Certainly there is a “multiplier” effect, e.g. 2 vehicles might need k * 2 square meters of space, for some fixed value of k. But that is still a linear increase (with potentially high coefficient k). At some point, the investment in infrastructure would indeed need to be scaled non-linearly, as I commented below.
Those are important points and it is great to see them outlined, but “exponential” growth is something very different – it is the reason we went from having no recorded COVID cases one day to hospitals being overwhelmed in a few weeks, back in 2020.
“Cars don’t scale means there is inadequate road space or inadequate parking for the number of cars in use.”
Exactly Mike. The person who makes that determination is the person with the car, when compared to the alternatives like transit or Uber or WFH or no trip or going someplace else. “Scale” for them is a relative term, with congestion vs. the benefits and deficits of the alternatives to driving.
WFH reduced the number of trips during peak congestion, and other times of the day. Even in 2019 90% of all trips were by car so folks felt cars scaled. Today they feel cars scale even more because there is less congestion (adequate road space) which is why transit ridership is down.
It could be future population growth will change this although so far this future population growth has not shown up. It could also be that more folks move to WFH, or simply decide to stay at home more, so the number of trips — demand — goes down, despite supply (road capacity) staying the same.
I get the feeling you would like to be the person to decide whether cars scale. But you are an urbanist who doesn’t own a car and hates cars so you don’t get to make that decision, except for yourself. The region’s car owners get to make that decision, because each one has to decide based on all the factors in their life whether driving scales for them for each trip. At the same time they don’t get to decide which mode scales for you, nor do they want to.
You have to admit it is ironic that the one trip pre-pandemic that did not scale because of congestion and expensive parking was the peak commute to downtown Seattle, and today that is one of the deadest trips with the best congestion scaling except no one wants to make it. There is scaling in action. People found alternatives, and except for the lost retail and tax revenue that is a good thing for a Seattle urbanist: way fewer cars downtown.
@Anonymouse
In some cases is actually quadratic not linear. If the space used was linear we wouldn’t be talking about traffic issues.
When everyone only lived say 5/10 miles away from downtown you don’t need that many freeway lanes to reach it. But as the suburbs get built farther and farther away those people now need to travel 20 miles to reach their destination. And since they need to drive through the original freeway that segment must be doubled to handle the traffic (assuming everyone is single occupant). Once you get the 40 miles you have to build even more lanes not just for the extension but also for all the previous segments. Of course it’s not actually possible to quadruple the downtown segments which is why there’s always traffic there if there’s no tolling/incentive to carpool or use transit.
Regarding parking it is not quite as bad as quadratic, and was also fine in the beginning. The problem is the insistence that every building provide for peak levels for parking rather than not sharing at all.*.This led to every building being built further and further apart basically forcing everyone to drive and also park.
Though parking construction costs itself also get quadratic in costs as you want more people. Surface level lots are the cheapest, then elevated garage, then underground. (In relation to being close to one’s destination) sure you can build a massive surface lot but then one ends up walking forever. This again also pushes retail further out so it can find cheap surface lots to satisfy parking minimums
*this is why you rarely never see a small business by itself and it’s usually in a strip mall/plaza as it can share parking.
WL: I kind of see what you mean, but the number of people (vehicles) also increases as things get built farther out.
I think your argument is that if we measure a linear increase in traveled distance, that actually corresponds to a quadratic increase in area? But that is not what I am measuring – I am simply measuring the number of cars. If the number of cars triples, for example, why do you need 3^2 = 9 times the number of lanes?
It is entirely possible that I am misunderstanding the whole point, so please set me on the right freeway here. Preferably one without any cars as I don’t own one, myself :)
@Anonymouse
Sure I’ll use a simplified model imagine there’s downtown; 10 miles; town A; 10 miles; town B; 10 miles; town C; 10 miles; town D. All towns have the same amount of commuters to downtown (let’s just say 4000) and of course only driving no walking or biking and definitely no building housing near to the jobs (lol).
For town A to reach downtown with one lane of 10 miles let’s say from 7 am to 9am that will allow 4000 cars to reach downtown (2000 cars per lane per hour) For town B you’ll need to not only build the lane from A to B but also expand the freeway from A to downtown to allow 8000 cars to reach downtown. So rather than just 20 miles in total it’s actually 10 + 20 = 30 miles.
For town C, same thing occurs, beyond just the extension from B to C you’ll need to expand another lane from Downtown all the way to B. So now it’s 10 + 20 + 30 = 60 miles. For town D it’s 100 miles.
Of course it is slightly different in real life as it’s actually a 2d problem but the same quadratic issue occurs. And actually you have even more people (as the area of the circle increases) the farther from the city. There also might be some edge cities/ office parks created in the suburbs / reverse commuting once traffic is bad enough etc… but all of these other bandage solutions have already been tried in Los Angeles/Houston.
Now if we are talking about local traffic, like let’s say someone from home going to lunch (assuming people don’t drive farther), then yes that is linear, it’s why there’s typically less traffic on the weekends. Unless if everyone has the same idea and all drive to the same beach/brunch place. But in practice typically new suburbs are less dense and so all the destinations are farther away.
By “exponential” I mean the total land area increases far faster than the people. If we take a European approach, each person adds a modest amount of land for their multifamily unit and the shops/work/recreation they go to. The city still has a relatively small footprint, or satellite cities can be added. The US approach takes three or four times the space, and everything between the cities is low-density sprawl.
“The region’s car owners get to make that decision, because each one has to decide based on all the factors in their life whether driving scales for them for each trip.”
No, the entire city/metropolitan area decides how much car capacity to accommodate. Cars have huge negative externalities that drivers are imposing on everybody else — much more than any other form of transportation — so everybody impacted should have a say. Even if most people have cars, those who drive the most impose externalities on those who drive only occasionally.
Society has structured our parking and roads to hide the costs from the driver. thus making it appear free or low-cost. Everybody pays for parking at stores except the current driver. All transportation modes are subsidized so that everyone can travel, but we should subsidize the more efficient ones (transit, bikes) and leave the least-efficient one (cars) to market-rate.
“No, the entire city/metropolitan area decides how much car capacity to accommodate. Cars have huge negative externalities that drivers are imposing on everybody else — much more than any other form of transportation — so everybody impacted should have a say. Even if most people have cars, those who drive the most impose externalities on those who drive only occasionally.”
How does a city or region decide how much car capacity to accommodate Mike? If you are talking politics, as many have noted on this blog before, if 90% of trips are by car and in this region 90% own cars (81% in Seattle including UW students) politics and budgets are going to favor cars. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wa-highways-aging-ferries-get-big-slice-of-13-5b-transportation-plan/
If you want people to drive less incentivize them to drive less, like WFH, although WFH is devastating urbanism. Downtown Seattle really needed all those moneyed commuters driving to work every day. Now they don’t.
WL,
Okay, I think I see what you mean. But you are still framing it differently from me, in that I am talking about increasing the number of cars (say tripling it) within the same geographic boundaries. As you also noted, in that case it is linear (regardless of whether those trips are “local” or otherwise). In your example, if we increased the number of cars everywhere from 4000 to 12000, the number of lanes everywhere would triple.
The point you make is certainly valid, though, yes – capacity requirements are not distributed uniformly, and so the cost in certain regions will be higher than in others. I am not disputing that. That changes the economic tradeoffs – i.e. it is simply infeasible to build 100 lanes through downtown Houston or LA, as you noted – but it is not because to triple the number of cars would require building 900 lanes – it is simply that even in the linear case the cost is too high.
Thank you for explaining, though, I think that it was worth getting us on the same page :)
“How does a city or region decide how much car capacity to accommodate Mike?”
It’s a judgment call, so a political decision. In Vancouver most people have cars but the city still has a high-quality transit network because they prioritize it. In Surrey there are a couple BRT lines with center transit lanes on large arterials, built in the 2010s. All over the suburbs are frequent or semi-frequent feeders to Skytrain stations, going all the way out to almost the US border. So they focus more on spending on transit infrastructure, and less on car infrastructure. We don’t have anything like their bus frequency or BRT.
There are a lot of meanings of the term “scale”, so I guess I can understand why people are confused with this use of the term. I am not talking about fish scales, musical scales, or the scale you get on to measure your weight. This use of the word “scale” comes from economics, and is basically short for “economies of scale”. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale:
In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables an increase in scale. At the basis of economies of scale, there may be technical, statistical, organizational or related factors to the degree of market control. This is just a partial description of the concept.
So basically, in economics, something “scales” when the cost to produce the unit goes down as you produce more. Microsoft is a great example of this. The cost of a floppy disk was minimal compared to the software on it (e. g. DOS). Most of the cost was for the engineering — the software on the disk. So as demand grew, the business scaled extremely well, and lots of people got very wealthy.
There are also diseconomies of scale, which are essentially the opposite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale).
The same basic idea applies to transportation. Quite often, public transportation “scales” in the sense that the cost per user goes down — and the quality of service to the user goes up — as you have more users. See https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/04/25/the-age-of-the-park-and-ride-is-over/#comment-910053.
But transit doesn’t always scale. A good example is Sounder South. Normally, this would scale quite well. If we owned the tracks, it would be fairly cheap to add trains. As you add riders, the costs go up, but it become more popular. Thus the cost *per rider* can actually go down. Unfortunately, that is not the case with Sounder. Because we lease the tracks from BNSF, the cost is not limited to operating the trains while maintaining the trains and tracks. We have to pay them to run the trains. The more we run them, the more they charge *per train*. BNSF charges more and more because it gets increasing difficult to juggle their trains around our trains, as use goes up. At the same time, commuter rail tends to be less elastic. In other words, you do get more riders as you increase frequency, but not at the same rate you would inside the city. So it really doesn’t scale very well at all. In fact, it is quite likely it is an example of a diseconomy of scale.
With that out of the way, let me comment on few things that were written:
Cars don’t scale means there is inadequate road space or inadequate parking for the number of cars in use.
Not quite. At best you can say that cars scale until you have inadequate road space, or or inadequate parking for the number of cars in use. Then they don’t.
Scaling has everything to do with how you handle increase in demand. In the case of automobile infrastructure, car use does scale, until it reaches a certain point. A two-lane highway can handle an increasing number of cars until you get congestion. Then drivers are worse off. Building automobile infrastructure typically *does not* scale. If you add lanes, the cost per driver is very high, and the benefit to the rider relatively low. The same thing is true of parking. A parking lot scales until it gets full. Adding spaces is often very expensive, and way more per driver. The cost of many of the parking garages are extremely expensive. For example, the current estimate for the new Kent lot is $278,000 for each of the 420 net new stalls. I have no idea what it cost to build the original lot, but I would bet it was much, much cheaper. But Kent is not alone. Sumner and Auburn are in the same boat. These are massive diseconomies of scale.
This is really the heart of the argument. It is quite possible that demand for transportation will increase over time. But building massive parking structures is a poor way to handle this increased demand, as either it isn’t necessary, or they are huge diseconomies of scale.
In both transit and SOV transportation, you have discontinuities in “scaling” in your definition, where capacity is reached. In the case of transit, discontinuities may be relatively “cheap” in terms of one-time fixed costs (add more vehicles) but expensive in maintenance cost (pay additional operators), or “expensive” in fixed costs (building rail out because there is enough demand to move away from road-based vehicles). The same is true of SOV transportation, though adding capacity is often more like building rail.
This is all orthogonal to your point about “efficiency” – that, when amortized, the cost per user when capacity is maxed out (i.e. right before a discontinuity is required to add capacity) is much lower with transit than with SOVs.
Furthermore, it is important to note that yes, transit can “scale”, in the way you are defining it, but it may not be “efficient” to use at a particular time (e.g. building rail from Kirkland to Issaquah), because utilization is low, relative to the infrastructure cost. Thus we start discussing not just the theoretical aspects of scale vs. effectiveness but also the practical aspects, such as the sunk cost of using existing infrastructure until it maxes out, the timing of building new infrastructure, etc. It is not a “one size fits all”, and you yourself have proposed different scaling methods with different trade-offs in different situations, so I know that you know this.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with your conclusions overall, but wanted to reframe the terminology a little because I think it is important to note the distinctions.
One final point: you left out one definition of “scale” which I think is also useful in the context of this discussion. In infrastructure building (whether in tech or otherwise), it is often said that a system is being “scaled” to meet expected demand or increase its coverage. For example, Amazon might scale its compute infrastructure by building out 10 new datacenters to meet expected demand in its Cloud business. That is not implying that adding 10 new datacenters will allow it to serve 100x more customers than it is now (which is what your microeconomics definition suggests); it is only so that it can handle 10x what any one of the existing datacenters can already handle, thus allowing it to increase its customer size. I believe that this definition aligns a little more closely to the way I, and others (perhaps even DT), use the term. Think of it as being roughly synonymous with “build out”.
You may accuse me of playing games of semantics by belaboring these points as much as I do, and I will plead guilty as charged, because semantics are essential in being understood and making strong, persuasive arguments :)
“Incorporating large P&Rs with major capital projects has been the de-facto expansion strategy of Sound Transit. In the pre-COVID mind of the transit advocate, P&Rs were a necessary evil: they dissuade transit-oriented development and exacerbate sprawl but can carry a transit project through an election. ”
The great irony is that the ST2 extensions will greatly increase the number of park-and-ride spaces beyond those that exist at Link stations today. East Link, Lynnwood Link, Federsl Way link and Downtown Redmond Link all add lots of parking — and they are all in various stages of construction if not already open..
ST3 adds some Link parking, but I think it’s less that ST2 as far as Link is concerned. Of course, ST3 also includes Sounder garages that seem likely to be unused.
So, outside of tabling Sounder garages, it seems that there isn’t much that ST can do to shift course.
The new parking garage at the Lynnwood TC opened on April 17th. All parking will now be directed to the garage so that ST can move forward on its plans for the altering the surface parking area.
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/new-lynnwood-station-garage-to-open-parking
So, outside of tabling Sounder garages, it seems that there isn’t much that ST can do to shift course.
Good point, but I would also add the bus-based parking garages. This includes those for the Stride Line, but also North Sammamish (https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/nspr-july-11-public-meeting-presentation.pdf). I have no idea the total amount, but my guess is ST3 includes a huge amount of money for parking. https://seattletransitblog.com/2020/04/21/how-much-is-too-much-for-a-transit-parking-garage/
North Sammamish has already been indefinitely deferred.
A lot of parking has been indefinitely deferred. All of the Stride parking, for example. I am not sure about Link parking, or Sounder parking though. In some cases they have finished up, or are almost done, making it impossible to abandon or even delay the parking. I am not sure which projects are still planned, and which ones aren’t. A complete rundown would be nice.
Parking is <5% of the capital costs within ST3, which seems reasonable for a station access technology intended to serve a small fraction of incremental riders.
Are you sure about that? It has been fairly difficult to find cost breakdowns on various projects. Often the parking is lumped together with station costs, or even BRT costs. I did find some reports though:
Stride:
Total Cost: $2,152,000; Parking: $361,000 (parking is about 17%).
I can’t find details on the Sounder improvements, but the initial cost was supposed to be around a billion dollars. Parking is now slated to be around 400 million. Some of that is increasing costs, but my guess is parking takes up over a third of the cost.
But again, there are also a bunch of stations, with a bunch of new parking garages. All of this adds up.
Good point, it is a much higher share for the non-Link modes. Was thinking across all the modes.
Tacomee, brutal article on commercial property on the front page of the Wall St. Journal today.
Vacancy rates (office space with no lease) just hit 12.9%, exceeding the peak during the 2008 financial crisis, which is the highest figure since the CoStar began tracking vacancy rates in 2020. As leases roll off the vacancy rate is certain to rise, depending in part on the city. For those with leases occupancy rates are down 12% which means tenants that do renew will need less space.
Building values are being reset which is hitting pension funds and asset managers pretty hard because they are big investors in these projects and account for around 38% of the median U.S. Bank holdings and 9% of pension funds.
According to UBS, 500,000 retail stores will close in the U.S. over the next five years.
The last secular shift in the economy like this in U.S. cities was in the 1960’s and 1970’s when fax machines, highways and cheap long distance allowed factories and offices to move from big cities to cheaper places. During this time some owners of urban properties in the Bronx set fire to their properties as they were wiped out and hoped for the insurance. It took urban cities until the 1990’s to recover.
I think this is what is keeping Harrell up at night, and why he is so reluctant to pledge any city money for WSBLE or ST.
I agree with you the pandemic and shutdowns have created a kind of cocoon mentality, especially in the younger generations. We eat lunch at our office and cook and drink at home much more, communicate by text, and make fewer trips for shorter distances.
I don’t think life is any worse — I never really liked commuting to Seattle during peak hours and towards the end it became a crummy place to walk around — but just different. The key will be where the tax revenue is reallocated. In the past folks left the city to live, but had to return during the day to work when so much tax revenue is allocated. Now they WFH or in their little suburban towns.
CoStar has been doing its office survey since 2000, not 2020.
Went to see friends in Oakland (the neighborhood in Tacoma, not Cali) and honestly that place has never looked better. Allstar Burgers, the Loak Toung Thai , Tipsy Tomato Lounge… a couple of new places even! And this is one of most rundown forgotten ‘hoods in T-town. It’s because people are leaving the neighborhood less and spending more money in local places… which tilt towards cheaper ethnic food and beer. Before the pandemic much of that money went downtown or out of Tacoma. Long live Oakland-Madrona pride!
The #52 is the Pierce Transit bus that runs though here… not that many on this blog understand or care about the Tacoma backwater… but better bus service would be nice.
OT but Agree! Meaning to find some excuse to check out tipsy tomato. Also Melon seed is solid for froyo.
Unfortunately, the 52 is one of those transit center to transit center runs. I have no reason to go to TCC (though I’m sure many do) and if I go to the mall, it’s usually the38th ave side. And not frequent enough to be usable to the desperate, students, or desperate students.
STB has always pushed for better Tacoma bus service. It should be at least as frequent as South King County. It’s a city and suburbs with a rural level of transit. The reason it doesn’t have better transit is so hard to get a Pierce Transit levy passed because of the anti-tax people east of Tacoma and Lakewood.
Think a city or maybe tri-city (Tacoma, Lakewood… Fife? Parkland?) level transit agency would be more successful?
Tacoma/Lakewood would cover the area that most consistently votes yes to transit. Pierce Transit has already contracted to exclude the no-voting Sumner and Bonney Lake area. The area in between (Puyallup, maybe Spanaway) is in between. I have my doubts about Spanaway. Are Parkland and Spanaway part of Tacoma? Maybe Tacoma and Lakewood should set up a transit benefit district overlay like Seattle has for additional frequency. I think PT itself is a TBD, so it would be a TBD on top of a TBD, but that may be OK.
One thing Pierce Transit does well is a grid — several crosstown routes that don’t go downtown. So the routes are in the right place more or less, it just needs 2-3 times more frequency to be useful. PT has a good long-range plan, and implementing the four or so BRT lines it has identified would help significantly.
Re Fife, the 500 (Pacific Highway local to Federal Way) is the highest-ridership route. I’ve ridden it a couple times. The last time, a Saturday afternoon eastbound), it had a modest number of riders, and some got on/off at the casinos. They looked working-class so I assumed they work at the businesses there. I don’t know how Five votes on transit measures.
Parkland and Spanaway are not in Tacoma. They unincorporated, but more urban unincorporated, by virtue of their proximity to State Route 7, I would guess. They got built up because they were accessible. Stream 1 will serve them.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/planned-light-rail-areas-big-backers-of-sound-transit-3/
Fife was borderline. The more residential section looks like the voted yes. The more industrial was more pink.
Just fyi….
Pierce Transit is a PTBA (Public Transportation Benefit Area) just like Community Transit, and not a TBD (Transportation Benefit District). It’s authorized under RCW 36.57A whereas TBD’s fall under RCW 36.73. I know it’s easy to get them confused. :)
Tacoma has been growing and gentrifying for a while now. Like a lot of cities — especially those on the West Coast — the pandemic will be seen as just a blip in time. People watching Fox News and betting against San Fransisco are fools. The streets of San Fransisco will never be as rough as when Karl Malden and a young Micheal Douglas played cops on TV. The same is true of Tacoma. Tacoma is likely as big as it has ever been, even if a few people left during the pandemic. It has added about 70,000 people in the 50 years. It added 20,000 from 2010 to 2020. It is thriving.
But transit remains a tough challenge. Tacoma has great bones. Anyone who likes cities will say they like Tacoma. But Tacoma doesn’t have a lot of density. It is surprisingly low, really. Worse yet, Pierce County sprawls like crazy. From an employment standpoint, it is somewhat strong-centered (with greater downtown Tacoma employing plenty of people) but it also has lots of sprawling employment centers. Puyallup, Fife, Lakewood, you name it. JBLM, of course, has a major impact. The Seattle VA (Puget Sound Health Care System) may not be in the most convenient place in Seattle, but it is still in Seattle. American Lake is well outside Tacoma. There is plenty more where that comes from. The north end of Pierce County is partly a suburb of Seattle. If it was merely a suburb of Tacoma it wouldn’t have many people. But because of Seattle, it has just enough density to force Pierce County to serve it, while not enough to be a good value.
The combination of government decisions, Seattle sprawl and fewer industrial jobs on the waterfront has reduced the relative influence of Tacoma in Pierce County. The result is a lot of the county being very challenging to serve with transit, even though the main city is doing quite well. Sound Transit is helping in some ways, hurting in others. Pumping money into the 1 is a great idea, even if the detour to the Tacoma Dome is the opposite of what they should be doing. The streetcar is silly (and way too expensive) but it at least it is focused around the center of town. Tacoma Dome Link is stupid.
Like a lot of cities, the best way forward is to grow yourself out of it. Tacoma needs to do whatever it takes to attract and keep businesses there. You could make the case that both Tacoma Link and Tacoma Dome Link are symbolic — a clear indication from the city that Tacoma is ready to embrace the new century. Sure, I guess. If that is what it takes, then kudos to Tacoma leadership. Because from a practical standpoint, none of it means sh**. Express buses (and Sounder) to Seattle and the Pierce County buses mean a lot more. The key is to make Tacoma even more the center of Pierce County than it already is. From what I can tell, Tacoma is definitely on the right track. The UW campus helps, as does Multicare (which is located right smack dab in the center of town). If I was the mayor of Tacoma, I would kiss the feet of the CEO every day — whatever it takes to keep those folks there. I would also be quite pleased with what Ruston has done, and look to as a model for a handful of neighborhoods around town. I’m not saying Tacoma should embrace the “urban village”/”trickle or firehouse” approach, but a little of the firehouse (beyond just Ruston) would probably be good. If Tacoma allowed more missing middle it would be a great, especially since this type of development tends to be more middle class (in keeping with the historic nature of Tacoma). All of this would improve transit far more than Tacoma Dome Link, as what Tacoma really needs is to run the buses more often.
Of course Tacoma could follow the same path as Seattle, and supplement the county with extra transit spending. Given everything else that is going on, and the fact that Tacoma doesn’t dominate transit in the county the way that Seattle does, that might be challenging. I would try and grow first, then address the fairly weak transit system.
“Pumping money into the 1 is a great idea, even if the detour to the Tacoma Dome is the opposite of what they should be doing.”
It’s important to connect to regional transit. A five-block gap between Tacoma Dome Station and Pierce’s first BRT line is wrong, and would deter ridership.
What they should have done… should do if they aren’t going to truly go downtown, is eliminate the Portland station, Casino be damned, and drop the terminus at 25th and Pacific. Probably same price, and vastly more useful. With a much better potential TOD footprint.
Cam, how would you get across I-710, at grade? If it’s aerial, it has to be a pretty high station.
I haven’t looked at station designs at the Dome. Since T-Link and Sounder are at-grade, I guess I assumed they would bring Link down too. But you are right, I’m sure they build some hard to access expensive cathedral in the sky.
I’d probably just steal T Link ROW to get under 705, since Noone will ride T Link where real Link is. Though not sure how quickly it can drop.
It would make Sounder transfers a bit harder though, and you would need to build some bus infrastructure. Fortunately that corner is a wasteland begging to be redeveloped.
Personally I would just knock I-705 down. It’s a useless highway creating a massive barrier between downtown and its burgeoning waterfront. It allows the money in N Tacoma to bypass downtown. It’s a main reason why parts of downtown are so dead and businesses struggle.
I actually can’t find any station designs at the Dome. All I can find is frustrating clips promising an opening in 7 years that will take you to the Mariners. Instead 12 years, and it will take you the Juvenile Detention Center. Almost and good.
Is it planned to be elevated?
Yes, it is currently planned to be elevated, which is infuriating. Defeats the whole reason of running light rail. Both stations in Tacoma city limits should be at grade.
https://tdlink.participate.online/
https://oohsr522brt2020.blob.core.windows.net/media/Default/map/TacomaDomeZoomInMapEnglish.pdf
Note all of the options are marked ‘elevated’
Also, I don’t see why they can’t have a “Tacoma Dome” station that is at/east of D street, and then a Pacific Ave station that is at/west of Pacific. That’s still ~0.3 mile spacing, totally reasonable for a urban stop spacing and reasonable for an end of line spacing. If one station is immediately east of D and the other station is immediate west of Pacific, the walkshed overlap isn’t terrible, and both stations meet distinct needs – one serves the Amtrack/Sounder station and the neighborhood east of I710, and one serves Pacific Ave and the neighborhood west of I710.
Whether or not Link extends towards Tacoma Mall as currently planned, I would like to see 26th street option and run at grade, at least west of G. They should be able to fully close 26th between D & F for the at-grade station, like how Links runs along Spring Blvd and then the road just ends when the station starts west of 132nd.
Totally agree. At-grade.
The city has been literally giving land away just up the hill from Pacific near there, to try and get a bunch of housing, retail, restaurants and a grocery store built. It would be a huge draw, if those big housing developments could walk to Link. It could easily add 20% to what they could charge for rents. Gotta think like ST. They are really a real estate support agency, based on recent actions.
It’s I-705, btw. It’s confusing because it is perpendicular to I-5, which you usually think of as a N-S highway, but it’s E-W when passing through the east half of Tacoma.
The I-710 was my mistake. I didn’t look at a map.
Worse, it was a really dumb error. With three seconds f thought, I should have realized that any three-digit Interstate stub (first digit “odd”) ending in “10” would be somewhere between Santa Monica and Jacksonville, not in Tacoma……
Egg. Face.
Daniel, as a young person, I would say I recognize the “cocoon mentality,” and I have some fears about the social environment it is creating.
I’m at the age in which I am seeing people younger than me become adults, which probably is making me be more critical of “the youth” than I used to be. It worries me that there is no expectation or allowance for any sort of spontaneous interaction, unless it happens within the confines of social media. Social media is terrible for mental health.
Work commuting sucked, and with that I agree with you. In favor of working in person, it did give a person a reason to actually be in the physical world for a time.
My girlfriend loves work from home. She would have had to commute 80 minutes each day to go to her office when 90% of her meetings are over phone or Zoom anyway. She finds no desire to go to the office, not even to see her co-workers.
I am not constructed as such, and so work from home, I feel, has drained my energy and my work productivity. At the same time, I was commuting about 2 hours a day before the pandemic (and that was driving), because I couldn’t afford to live near my job. I appreciate the time and flexibility remote work has given me. But I still want to go into the office fairly often – just wish I didn’t have to waste so much time doing so.
I used to live in a small city in South Carolina. I could get to work in about 8 minutes. But I had to live in South Carolina, which has definite downsides.
All I want is the ability to live in a reasonably-priced area where I could get to work in, let’s say, 30 minutes, maybe see a band I like without having to drive two hours, and maybe walk to the grocery store. I have a feeling that is a lot of what my generation wants – before they have kids, at least.
Social media is the only safe place for young people to convene anyone without old cranks yelling at them for just existing based on my experience with American youth and working with them. If the older generation wants to moan about the youth being lazy and antisocial. I’d be pointing to the fact that we have gone on a decades long anti youth crusade since the start of the suburban experiment of the 50s. We’ve built a car dependent hellscape for our youth that has basically kept then inside their own home and no where else. American Children can’t go to mall anymore because people are scared of “hooligans and gangs” despite that claim being a load of bs when you look at it under a microscope. American children can’t play in the front yards or on their streets because of both nosy neighbors who have nothing better to do with their own life than complain to CPS for a nothingburger of a problem. Despite the fact that they could just act like a normal human being for once and just ask the kids what they’re doing and be nice to them and help their neighbor by keeping an eye on them. Alongside we are building the worst kinds of suburbs for children to grow up in. If I was to raise children, it’d be in Europe than North America for how much children can actually be independent there and is viewed as a cultural norm. Because Europe has walkable neighborhoods, traffic calming, “eyes on the street” design, and allows for socialization amongst the youth outside the home.
To me the youth aren’t the problem it’s the older generations who have absolutely lost the plot in their heads and have developed a sense of paranoia about children and child safety. Despite how much they talk about keeping kids safe, they’ve reaped what they’ve sown in building a country that is hostile to children being children and just existing for that matter.
The youth are just bystanders to a nation’s ills and its drive for car centric design.
Exactly. As in teen in Tokyo, a city of 32 million, my teen felt safer and more able to be independent than any of the 5 places he’s lived in the US. Even after we carefully chose those locations to mitigate the worst of the US, and came as close to giving him a free range life as US mores and laws would allow.
He was able to dissappear on his own for days.
He wants desperately to go back.
Good points, food for thought.
Excellent article. I can only be hopeful that transit operators will eventually realize that prioritizing all-day service connecting people to places they want to go (nearby neighborhoods and neighboring cities), rather catering to commuters going where they don’t want to go (an office 30-60 minutes away), is the way to prove a viable alternative to car ownership to more people.
For example, I’m attending a one-day conference in Tacoma next week. I could take the 594, but it’s using the exact same infrastructure that I will use carpooling with a coworker. Also, the bus is the only vehicle that actually sticks to the speed limit in the carpool lane, so even on the open Interstate, it’s objectively worse than driving. I don’t need Park & Rides at Sounder stations – I need Sounder to average 80 mph so it makes business sense for me to buy a ticket, instead of borrowing the company truck.
The way I like to think of it in a way that doesn’t devolve into endless arguments about parking vs. TOD is that you need to distinguish between improvements that provide tangible benefits to users regardless of the number of users vs. improvements that simply increase capacity, but benefit nobody if that capacity is not needed.
For example, running a train more often does increase capacity, but it also benefits all riders, regardless of the need for capacity. Whereas, running longer trains falls into the category of pure capacity, and nothing else.
I’m the world of driving, the former category might include new highways, ramps, or even traffic lights; the latter category, adding more lanes to existing highways.
In the case of park and rides, creating a small park and ride goes in the former category. It adds a new place you can drive to to catch a bus or train, a benefit that is still useful, even if overall utilization is low. Whereas, choosing a giant parking garage over a small surface lot, that falls into the category of pure capacity. Unless the number of people who want to park there actually does exceed the capacity of a surface lot, nobody – park and ride drivers included – benefits from that garage.
Now, this doesn’t mean that “pure capacity” improvements are always bad; when that capacity is actually needed, it can be essential. But, any “pure capacity” improvement, you’d better be really sure that capacity is needed before you build, otherwise, you’ve spent a ton of money, all for nothing. Whereas, something that improves mobility for all users, whether the capacity of provides is needed or not, these types of improvements are easier to justify when future usage is more uncertain.
And, given what I’m seeing, I do not see a good justification post pandemic that the capacity of 1500-stall parking garages at Link stations or sounder stations at a cost of over $100,000 per stall, is necessary. As it is, every one of the transit parking garages in Eastgate and Issaquah are about to become white elephants.
Longer trains over more frequent shorter trains still provide improved benefits, just not necessarily to those riding the train. With a finite number of operators available, more train frequency comes at the expense of some bus routes.
This debate may be more than hypothetical when Lynnwood Link is the next segment to open. ST feels some pressure to move up 5-minute all-day headway merely to keep a “promise” that it never made. When ST falls short of these “promises”, the only people who seem to care are ST opponents, while the people who finally get the service are overjoyed to get it.
As in … but ST promised us a train coming every 5 minutes by the time Lynnwood Link opened … Well actually they promised that when East Link opened, and it is not open yet, and, hey, I’m overjoyed to be able to ride the train to Shoreline now! … But ST lied, so they should stop building and we should stop given them tax revenue … Oh, I still want to be able to ride it to Federal Way, Marymoor, Ballard, and the Alaska Junction, just like we voted for …. But they can’t be trusted! … Um, they got the job done … Years late, so they should have never been given the money to get it done, and I personally don’t believe the train should go anywhere but [fill-in-the-blank-for-your-favorite-neighborhood-near-you] … Yes, and you lost the election, so get over it…. But they are taking too long … Yeah, and you didn’t want it built in the first place, so stop concern trolling over how long it takes.
That is a good way to look at it asdf2. Some capacity improvements only improve capacity. Other capacity improvements have other benefits. It is not all or nothing, either. For example, consider the 99 B-Line in Vancouver. Prior to the pandemic, it had about 56,000 riders a day — the highest ridership of a bus in North America. The ridership per mile is also likely the highest in North America. Converting it to a streetcar is quite reasonable. This would help a lot with capacity. But it wouldn’t make it any faster. Whatever side benefits from converting to a streetcar would be fairly minor. In contrast, once they convert it to mass transit (SkyTrain) the benefits will be huge. Not only will there be a lot less crowding, but it will run faster. It will connect better to the rest of the system as well — serving as extension of a line, instead of forcing transfers. It is better for riders, in a number of different ways.
For what it’s worth, my biggest complaint with the longer trains is not that ST wanted them, it is the cost. Adding longer trains is dirt cheap — they wanted to build longer platforms. Both Seattle and Tacoma didn’t need them. This means that if you boarded a ten-car train in Tacoma and are getting off in Seattle (where most Tacoma riders are headed) it makes sense to board in the back. With open gangways, those who board in other stations would simply walk back there if they want more space. At worst you have to walk back up front if you get off before Seattle. This is commuter rail, for heaven’s sake. You really only need a long platform in Seattle (if that). Even if there is crowding, spending a huge amount of money on bigger platforms in all the other stations is a huge waste of money. It is almost like ST went looking for ways to spend money, instead of trying to solve the various problems in a cost effective manner.
“And, given what I’m seeing, I do not see a good justification post pandemic that the capacity of 1500-stall parking garages at Link stations or sounder stations at a cost of over $100,000 per stall, is necessary. As it is, every one of the transit parking garages in Eastgate and Issaquah are about to become white elephants.”
I agree with you asdf2 on this point, although it suggests a lot of transit itself will become white elephants on the eastside over time because empty park and ride simply reflect empty buses (and in the future empty trains). I agree pausing new park and rides makes sense, and soon we will need to have a tough discussion about cutting coverage and frequency on these suburban routes.
However, ST is telling eastside cities STILL that East Link will have 43,000 to 52,000 riders/day, and when East Link opens in several years those park and rides will once again be packed, so packed feeder buses will be necessary to access East Link stations. ST just built a very expensive roundabout on MI designed to serve a large number of feeder buses when the eastside transit restructure cut the intensity of the bus intercept in half, so we are getting all these mixed messages: what our eyes tell us, and what ST tells us, although we have learned to trust our eyes over ST.
Right now, I don’t think anyone is thinking about redeveloping or removing the park and rides. No one is really thinking about transit on the eastside at all. Post pandemic there are just other issues to focus on.
To the extent ST’s rules would require the park and ride be converted into affordable housing that will be contentious right there. If suddenly a surface or one-story park and ride was converted into a tall and dense multi-family structure that would be contentious. If zoning changes are necessary that would be VERY contentious, so why would a council want that fight? If the park and rides are sold to market developers who can somehow get financing and build very expensive housing and make a fat profit after a rezone that is not good optics and the kind of thing that gets councilmembers not reelected.
Some have argued pre-pandemic that even a packed park and ride was a poor use of the property although a park and ride at least is 100% TRANSIT ORIENTED development, and so far no one has come up with a better and less expensive way to provide first/last mile access to these peak riders including micro transit. Today some argue empty park and rides are a poor use of the property because they are not really “transit oriented” because no one is using them although the alternatives have no transit orientation at all, which is a better argument to me.
The point I try to make is if the citizens think the new development would be a worse impact to their neighborhood than the park and ride, even though empty, they don’t want it. Not everyone thinks huge multi-family housing projects are something they want in their neighborhood, certainly affordable projects, or are necessary, and those are the folks who live next to the park and ride.
If housing is the goal there are thousands of vacant lots or lots with one story structures on them on the eastside zoned for all kinds of housing that are not next to transit. So build there. Lots next to stations or stops should at least have some transit orientation to them, even park and rides although some hate cars, not just more housing when we are entering a housing glut and every city has already met its 2044 GMPC housing growth targets.
There are far more ways to access a station than to drive to it. There’s reverse commuters from Seattle, there’s pickup and dropoff in either Uber or private car, there’s walking/TOD, there’s biking, there’s connecting buses. No particular mode may seem all that big in and of itself, but they add up.
For what it’s worth, I don’t have a problem with *some* parking at south Bellevue station, and pickup/drop-off zones at every Link station should be a no brainer, as they will get a lot of use relative to the small amount of space they take up. The issue is with spending an extra $10 million to increase the potential number of daily park and ride riders by just 100.
In any case, once the train is built, the cost to operate it is not much different than running a bus. So, as long as it gets more ridership than the 249 – which it absolutely will – running the train is worth it. Similarly, there’s no reason not to keep the existing overbuilt park and rides open – the cost of doing so is very low, so why not.
I’m migrating some peripheral topics to a new open thread. They’ll be up in a few minutes.
Speaking of the age of P&R’s being over … Hubbard Homestead Park in Northgate made the local news today because of a growing tent encampment, but the park name didn’t ring a bell with me. It’s right behind Target and Best Buy. Then I remembered, that’s where the Northgate P&R used to be.
The Northgate P&R was there for decades. When Seattle wanted to convert it to a park, they bought it; Metro used the funds to lease stalls in the garages near the NTC of Lorig and Penny’s. The lot was full most weekdays. It was served by routes 307 and 41. Seattle controlled spillover parking on nearby streets with a two-hour limit. The lot and service was part of the Blue Streak project.
Transits are smart not to publicize this info anymore, for it would be negative PR. This was somewhat true before – I pointed KCM in the direction of quite a few churches that were along peak bus routes that they secured parking lease agreements with long before the pandemic. It’s a “win win” for both parties.
It’s worth asking what can be done to allow some existing large-scale park and ride garages to get some use, even if for purposes not originally intended.
For example, the Angle Lake garage would make a great long term parking area for the airport, as riding Link one stop for a shuttle would save so much time over waiting for a shuttle bus that gets stuck in traffic. Eastgate park and ride could be used by Bellevue College. Other parking garages at random transit centers by the highway could be sold to developers of adjacent properties for less than what building a parking garage on their own of equivalent size would cost. Or, simply offered for free in exchange for a certain number of the adjacent housing units being below-market rent. People should get creative.
How many of the use cases you are suggesting are allowed by the ST charter? If they are not allowed, what would it take for them to be allowed?
I’d first figure out what the market rate is for parking, which is currently allowed by ST charter. Once the West Coast catches up to the rest of the world in return to work, we can see what the market rate is for a full garage, and then determine if it’s to spin off a garage for an alternative use or not.
The eastside park and rides are so far off it really depends on the future of transit and travel whether it makes sense to build them,although the subarea has the money for them and they were promised in ST 3. They have only been paused because of the debt ceiling for WSBLE, and at some point WSBLE will likely need to be scaled way back. I have to imagine the rapid increase in the estimated cost for WSBLE will put a lot of pressure on all ST Link projects due to the debt ceiling.
My guess is Metro is experimenting with micro transit in Sammamish and a few other areas because:
1. To see if it is more cost effective than building park and rides, at least up front.
2. Micro transit is much easier to scale up or down to meet demand, although if demand is very strong that is going to create significant operational costs.
3. Even pre- pandemic when park and rides were full there was not a good or equitable way to generate revenue from park and rides. Charging for a park and ride made the cost of parking + transit (especially now that employers are not providing Orca cards) the same as driving to work and parking when parking was scarce back then. It would be like charging for a feeder bus and Link separately.
4. Metro sees micro transit as the future based on the explosion in Uber miles driven and wants to try and get up to speed, although with union drivers, mechanics, the cost of the vehicle and gas, I don’t see how any governmental agency like Metro can be competitive with Uber, and how Metro gets that app on people’s phones. My guess is today in this region around 70% of folks have an Uber/Lyft app. on their phone and maybe 1% have any kind of Metro app.
5. If Metro or KC want this swing voter to vote for future transit levies they have to have something to sell, rather than postponing park and rides indefinitely.
Right now the park and rides are not an issue because so very few are using the park and rides. If low use continues after East Link opens then that is an entirely new set of problems to deal with, and IMO the more likely scenario.
If I were Metro or ST I would prefer to go back to the days when estimates of 43,000 to 52,000 riders/day on East Link were not laughable and park and rides were so packed they could charge for them and would need an army of feeder buses than today when new park and rides probably will never be needed because no one is using existing park and rides and won’t when East Link opens.
So AJ’s argument (expressed elsewhere) is that park and rides were included to appeal to those that rarely took transit. They could see themselves occasionally driving to the lot, and taking the train to a game, for example. If they worked downtown, they would do that every day. But typical outings would be by car. In this sense, very expensive park and ride lots were a terrible value, but they could convince a public ignorant of transit that it was worth it.
Now you are suggesting the same thing with microtransit. It too is a terrible value, but perhaps we can convince an ignorant public that it is good, because it is new. Of course the fundamentals aren’t actually new, but it just seems new. Ultimately, it is a bad idea: https://humantransit.org/2018/02/is-microtransit-a-sensible-transit-investment.html/mircrotransit-flow-chart-02092018#lightbox/0/
Offering up failed solutions seems rather cynical, but yeah, I could see that. My guess is microtransit will last a few years, then collapse. Eventually people realizes it is a bad value, and scrap it. At best it will find a few places where they should just add fixed-route, fixed-time transit.
“My guess is microtransit will last a few years, then collapse. Eventually people realizes it is a bad value, and scrap it. At best it will find a few places where they should just add fixed-route, fixed-time transit.”
Ross, I agree. If the park and rides are empty there is likely little demand for micro-transit. It won’t be “people” who abandon Metro micro-transit (after all, I think it is free), it will be Metro. In either case, Uber will continue to explode in miles driven, among this same demographic. But I agree public micro-transit won’t be able to compete with Uber, and will have low ridership, and so be a bad value in the customers’ eyes. Basically all transit, certainly Metro with an 80% subsidy, is “bad value” unless society determines it is a necessary good, although I would argue coverage and frequency need to better reflect ridership and farebox recovery per route. Don’t even get me started on “value” when it comes to Link.
“Now you are suggesting the same thing with microtransit. It too is a terrible value, but perhaps we can convince an ignorant public that it is good, because it is new. Of course the fundamentals aren’t actually new, but it just seems new.”
If by “you” you are referring to Metro than yes Metro is experimenting with micro-transit. I don’t think the public is “ignorant”. You can’t convince the public a bad service is good, even if free. I just don’t think they are riding transit, at least on the eastside, so park and rides are empty and micro-transit probably won’t have great demand, and since it is government managed will be slow and poor service, which ironically might make it sustainable. But Uber will continue to thrive providing the exact same service at a higher price but lower cost per mile driven. There is the conundrum.
“So AJ’s argument (expressed elsewhere) is that park and rides were included to appeal to those that rarely took transit.”
I don’t know if that is what AJ meant, but the park and rides pre-pandemic were packed by daily work commuters, mostly to downtown Seattle. They now WFH, so now the park and rides are empty, and those folks drive for their non-work trips. That is the fundamental issue transit is dealing with. In fact, a real issue pre-pandemic was the occasional transit rider to a medical appointment or other need could never get a spot after 7 am. because they were filled by daily work commuters. Game day transit is better delivered with dedicated shuttle buses although most use a park and ride like on MI.
“Now you are suggesting the same thing with microtransit. It too is a terrible value”.
It depends on what you mean by “value”, and what the options are. All transit is heavily subsidized and so theoretically a terrible value. The question is whether micro-transit costs LESS than a park and ride, at least the upfront capital costs, IF first/last mile access will be necessary. It isn’t productive to argue that park and rides or micro-transit are poor values compared to no first/last mile access when ordinary Metro buses cannot serve neighborhoods like in my city. It would be like me arguing no metro bus service is a greater value than any bus service that has an 80% subsidy rate.
If I had to guess, which I did in my first post, why Metro is trotting out micro-transit to an area as disinterested in transit and as difficult to serve with first/last mile access except park and rides like Sammamish it is trying to see if micro-transit can provide a better and cheaper first/last mile access than a new park and ride, Metro sees the future written on the wall when it comes to micro-transit because its direct competitor Uber is exploding in miles driven, and not unlike ST continuing Sounder S. with a 11% to 13% farebox recovery rate because TDLE is so delayed this is a way to sooth the eastside over their projects being “extended” so Seattle can build a truly white elephant at $20 billion, WSBLE.
But yes, I agree Metro micro-transit will fail because eastsiders are not riding transit and it will provide service so much worse than Uber folks will either drive for their trip (certainly folks in Sammamish) or take Uber and pay for the Uber like they do today. But the cost of the failed experiment will be small, much less than a large new park and ride which ironically will be back on the table once micro-transit fails.
“Metro sees micro transit as the future based on the explosion in Uber miles driven and wants to try and get up to speed,”
More delusions. Metro has slightly expanded and rebranded its Metro Flex program, but it still covers only an infinitestimal fraction of the county. There has been no sign of replacing its entire fleet of medium- and low-risership routes with Flex. High-ridership routes, of course, can’t be converted, because it would take too many cars and too much lane space. (See the “cars don’t scale” argument.)
“Metro sees micro transit as the future based on the explosion in Uber miles driven and wants to try and get up to speed,”
“More delusions.”
https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/mobility-innovation-hub/microtransit/
Looks like a lot of transit agencies are delusional. And these are not driverless yet.
“According to a market estimation, roughly 4.2 billion rides were taken using ridesharing services in the U.S. in 2018.”
https://www.statista.com/topics/4919/lyft/ Seattle alone in 2017 had 94 million miles driven by Uber.
Obviously micro-transit is popular, even when market rate, and will continue to grow. Those 4.2 billion miles are mostly at the expense of public transit. So public transit needs to pay attention or it will go the way of the taxi.
Mass public transit has some very difficult hurdles today: safety, first/last mile access, discretionary riders, door to door trip, time of trip, ability to carry things, and if more than one rider costs comparable to public transit. And the stigma of the bus among so many young who have these apps on their phone. Businesses and agencies that don’t respect their competition and study their deficits tend to fail.
Personally, I don’t see how a public agency with union contracts and cost structures can compete in a field like ride sharing with Uber/Lyft with almost unlimited drivers who bear the cost of the driver and vehicle and a fantastic app. and user experience, unless driverless technology comes soon. But still it will be much better for an agency like Metro to simply contract with Uber for micro-transit and focus buses on runs that are packed or very long.
I am going to repeat what I said on this blog several months ago. Buy Uber stock. I think the number of Uber miles will double in the next five years and most public micro-transit projects like Metro will fail, and in the end those agencies will contract with Uber because in fact it is cheaper first/last mile access than a park and ride no one is using and provides the poor with the same service as the rich.
I could be wrong, except about the doubling of Uber miles and buying Uber stock.
You can’t convince the public a bad service is good, even if free.
You clearly have no future in marketing.
Look, the wayside is littered by ideas — and even companies — that thought they had a hot new thing, but ultimately they failed. The same thing will happen with microtransit. Eventually the agencies realize it is a huge waste of money. Sure, some people like it — because you are essentially giving them free taxi service. But overall it is a terrible value. It is better for a handful, worse for most. But for now — since it is new — people aren’t really analyzing the costs. This is all considered an experiment. Eventually though, they will look at the costs — and the fact that when it is actually reasonably popular there is a really long wait — and then figure out that it just isn’t a good value, as the experts said all along.
I view micro transit more as an equity gesture than a serious transit mode. And if I’m right, it’s here to stay.
Ross, I said I agree Metro micro-transit will fail, even though free, because the service for the customer will be poor when most of these kinds of trips are spontaneous but the app and service won’t be. The only “person” who can end it is Metro, and whether that is due to low use or cost per rider mile (considering every Metro mile is 80% subsidized) is up to Metro. All the customers can decide to do is whether to use it, and I think Metro will have a very difficult time even getting these folks to know the service exists let alone add the app.
At the same time private micro-transit like Uber, in the exact same areas, will continue to grow rapidly. People LIKE micro-transit. When you write, “Look, the wayside is littered by ideas — and even companies — that thought they had a hot new thing, but ultimately they failed. The same thing will happen with microtransit” you are talking about Metro, not Uber. Amazon thought it had a hot new thing too.
When the Metro micro-transit fails, and IF transit ridership on the eastside recovers enough, then those park and rides in ST 3 will be back on the table because you and others on this blog never come up with an alternative first/last mile access for these eastside areas.
AJ made a point that is being overlooked by some on this blog: those eastside park and rides were included in ST 3 because ST believed (correctly) they were needed to pass ST 3, and the local cities thought they were needed, because you can’t ride transit you can’t get to. It would like me arguing Metro should eliminate feeder buses to Link in Seattle, without offering an alternate first/last mile access.
If transit ridership, especially commuting to Seattle, were at pre-pandemic levels eastsiders would be demanding those park and rides now. But since they are not riding transit, they don’t really care. If they never return to transit, which I think is the most likely outcome, then I don’t know what the subarea does about the park and rides, because nearly every form of transit on the eastside has very difficult first/last mile access, except park and rides. Probably the best solution at that point would be to return the ST tax revenue to the cities or citizens if they are not riding transit.
“I don’t see how a public agency with union contracts and cost structures can compete”
If you replace union jobs with non-union, the pay goes down significantly (that’s the supposed advantage), but then the cost of housing becomes a burden and can put people in unstable situations. or they have to work 80 hours a week at two jobs to make ends meet. The result is they’re at greater risk of needing social subsidies or potentially becoming homeless. If you’re trying to eliminate the impact of having a large number of homeless people and keep others from needing food and housing assistance, trying to eradicate union jobs is counter-productive.
Uber costs two or three times a transit fare. It’s not something everybody can do for all their trips.
VIA and similar companies that operate microtransit see public agencies as a way of scamming venture capital from the public sector rather than trying to set up their Ponzi scheme on the publicly traded markets.
As best as I can tell, Uber has never paid any dividends, ever. Sure, that could change with self-driving cars, but then any taxi company will be able to compete.
And driving is still extremely expensive. You still need all that lane to store the cars, they take up many times the lane space as buses, and they’ll still get stuck in traffic.
It just seems like an expensive way of moving tax money from citizens to only a few wealthy individuals.
The string touches on micro transit. RossB has a reasonable approach. In experimenting with micro transit, Metro may be mistaken; it did end two versions of Ride2. It has small vehicles, an operator with pay, deviations, and even with strong back room computing power, cannot attract very many riders per hour. Micro transit uses drivers from the gig economy.
In the 90s, during the Seattle comp plan process, Gary Lawrence, Planning, and Gary Zarker, SDOT, dreamed of a layer of transit with little vans connecting to buses at urban village hubs. They actually had an experiment in Ballard, termed LINC, local initiative for neighborhood circulation. This third level of transit was not affordable. The Ballard route attracted very few riders. It is really aimed at walk trips.
Micro transit may make sense when it used for coverage where there is no fixed route service or where it is limited to helping Access provide same day service. Metro is getting better at micro transit but it may never be cost-effective. There are many other ways to use scarce service subsidy.
“P&Rs … can carry a transit project through an election.” And why is that so? I posit that is because P&Rs can have a high number of unique annual users. P&Rs are very bad at delivering a high number of total annual riders in a cost effective manner, but that’s a different metric than total unique visitors. There are a large amount of people for whom transit is useful only a few times a year (attend a large event, go to the doctor, etc.) and often parking is the best way for those people to access good transit. These riders can be a tiny share of daily ridership but a large share of the voting public.
Total unique riders is an important metric to consider, alongside total ridership, as illustrated by this silly example: what is better, an all day bus that gets used once by 20 different people, or the same bus that a single person uses 20 times a day
I’m very unconcerned about future investments in parking by the region. P&R garages are a niche tool that merit a correspondingly small amount of investment. There is a small amount of the total addressable ridership market that is best served by a public (but preferably paid) parking near frequency transit, so it is reasonable that a public agency that does Not have its sole goal as maximizing ridership will choose to invest a tiny fraction of future capital spending on this part of its station access toolkit.
I posit that is because P&Rs can have a high number of unique annual users. P&Rs are very bad at delivering a high number of total annual riders in a cost effective manner, but that’s a different metric than total unique visitors. There are a large amount of people for whom transit is useful only a few times a year (attend a large event, go to the doctor, etc.) and often parking is the best way for those people to access good transit. These riders can be a tiny share of daily ridership but a large share of the voting public.
That makes sense. It reminds me of what Jarrett Walker wrote about airports:
Everyone wants to believe in transit to the airport, because they might ride it a few times a year.
I see the same thing with park and ride lots*. Riders see themselves driving to a lot, and taking the train (or bus) downtown, to an event. It is a very auto-centric attitude. It basically appeals to people who rarely (if ever) take transit. The same thing happens when they focus on traffic. It is a way to appeal to those who have no interest in transit, but expect to drive everywhere.
In my opinion, this sort of approach is ultimately a bad idea. You end up spending a lot of money on very few riders. All projects (including park and ride lots) should be judged on their overall merits. Does it increase transit modal share? Does it save transit riders time? Does it ultimately lead to a better city? And of course, is it the best value for those goals.
Otherwise, you end up with a system that is just not cost effective. You might get a few votes from people who rarely (if ever) use it, but that doesn’t make the city better. Eventually you run out of money, and people continue to drive. The network isn’t nearly as good as it should be, which makes it worse for everyone.
People often write about “TOD” like it means a few apartments next to a train station. That is a very limited way of looking at the idea. The term should really apply to an entire region. It is common for people to live in a neighborhood — in part — because getting around is easier with public transportation. There are other factors, of course, but it is a consideration. If the network is good, then more people are attracted to it, and development follows. Lake City doesn’t have a lot going for it (compared to most of Seattle) but it does have very good bus service. As a result, new apartments keep getting built. But if the network is poor — because we spent way too much money trying to attract a few occasional riders — then sprawling development (with its easy parking) becomes more attractive.
This is probably another example for why the ST system was bound to fail. It included areas that have very little interest in transit. These areas are very expensive to serve, while also often underfunded. There was an attempt to leapfrog the usual transition, and build massively expensive systems that even the most optimistic estimates suggest won’t serve many people. It was backwards. The mass transit system should have started within Seattle, and grown outward. Eventually it would connect to the suburbs, but only after serving the far more cost effective places in the city. By asking the very large, multi-county agency to come up with a plan, it isn’t too surprising that we ended up with a system that is really not cost effective, as it tries very hard to appeal to those who rarely (if very) ride transit. Of course with better political leadership this could be avoided, but most of the board either doesn’t understand how transit works, or they aren’t interested.
“Lake City doesn’t have a lot going for it (compared to most of Seattle) but it does have very good bus service. As a result, new apartments keep getting built.”
Are you sure that that is the reason, and not because zoning allows it, or because the land is cheaper than other (more wealthy) parts of the city, or because there are large enough lots available, etc.?
I generally agree with your point – that just jumped out at me as a weird assumption to make. Ravenna has better transit than Lake City but there are a lot fewer apartments built there. Roosevelt does have both, to be fair – but again, I think it’s more a matter of zoning than anything else.
I’m reminded that park-and-ride is sometimes perceived as preventing neighborhood parking intrusion. In some cases, there are informal places where people park cars near high frequency transit because their homes are not convenient to high frequency transit.
A case in point is in the MLK corridor. Route 50 is infrequent. People that live closer to Lake Washington know that — and often are willing to live there because they have a car.
Seattle and ST chose to not provide parking at Link. So, every day there are people who park in nearby residential streets to use Link but not have to wait for Route 50. This upsets neighbors. Seattle rolled out neighborhood parking permits, but people are savvy and will look for the unregulated streets. Sometimes they will pay to park at private lots and use employer-paid transit passes because it’s cheaper than driving Downtown.
This practice is perhaps more common when the trip is incidental — like a doctors appointment or a lunch meeting. It’s also more common for an evening sporting event or performance because bus service later in the evening is pretty lousy, and neighborhood parking monitoring usually stops at 6 pm so a two hour spot after 4 will not be ticketed. .
I’m reminded that park-and-ride is sometimes perceived as preventing neighborhood parking intrusion. In some cases, there are informal places where people park cars near high frequency transit because their homes are not convenient to high frequency transit.
Yes, absolutely. The thing is, often building the park and ride lot doesn’t solve the problem. It can actually make things worse. For example, this particular sign has confused some of the neighbors: https://goo.gl/maps/u9RvDAwc9nYSic39A. Four hour parking? Why? There hasn’t been a parking problem there for a long time. But if you go back far enough, there was. Back in the day, there was a big park and ride lot across 5th. The 41 served it. So people would drive to that lot, and then after running out of spaces, would then park in the neighborhood. So the city panned that practice.
What really changed things for the neighborhood was when they closed the parking lot, and improved service on the 41 (and other buses). It just didn’t make sense to drive there. You might as well catch the bus closer to your house (or catch some other bus headed downtown). It doesn’t mean there isn’t some de-facto park and ride use, but it is way down. This is really the best approach when small park and ride lots fill up (and that park and ride lot was not small). Focus on the network — improve the system. You still might end up with some people driving and parking in the neighborhood, but fewer, and it is a lot more spread out.
> I’m reminded that park-and-ride is sometimes perceived as preventing neighborhood parking intrusion. In some cases, there are informal places where people park cars near high frequency transit because their homes are not convenient to high frequency transit.
I do wonder if there is a better way to share and allocate parking both on the street and in parking lots rather than always imposing such high parking minimums for peak time (talking in general for American cities not just Seattle).
> Seattle and ST chose to not provide parking at Link. So, every day there are people who park in nearby residential streets to use Link but not have to wait for Route 50.
I mean it is just impossible to build that much parking for the number of people who want to use it. Though in general this is a similar problem with even small businesses and shopping plazas on how exactly to ‘share’ parking. This is why there’s high parking minimums that were imposed in Los Angeles/Atlanta/etc…
There are some examples for instance we have church parking lots used for park and rides or for instance Amazon’s offices parking garages are free past 4pm. But in general these all seem one-off negotiations. It’d be interesting to see if there could be a more concerted/city-wide implementation of sharing parking. Of course there is the solution to charge for all curb space parking, but I find that too abrupt and politically hard.
“The thing is, often building the park and ride lot doesn’t solve the problem. ”
I agree that it doesn’t make parking intrusion go away. It may make it worse as someone may drive to a lot and discover that it’s full. They won’t return home so they’ll keep driving or they will park on a neighborhood street.
I’ve seen areas in other regions have this problem. A good example is Glen Park BART in San Francisco. Even with frequent bus routes, there are still people who park 6-10 blocks from the station and walk to the train. Had they chosen a frequent bus ride initially, they would make better time during that one way trip. But because they already have their car they look to park instead.
Another factor is that Muni cuts back frequency at 6:30 and even just staying Downtown for cocktails or a dinner can turn the trip home into one with long waits. It may be faster in the morning but not returning at 8 pm because there may be a long wait for a bus.
How about the huuuge garages at transit bases dorcoperator parking??
Conveniently timed, there is a short article in the Everett Herald today about a new park&ride near Highway 9 in the (I believe unincorporated) Cathcart area of Snohomish county.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/county-clears-permit-hurdle-for-cathcart-park-and-ride/
If you Google D.R. Horton, the developer, you will see they are on a tear buying up land in SnoCo — often from cities and the county — almost all of it green space to develop into housing.
http://www.snoho.com/html/stories_2021/05192021_county_selling_wooded_area_near_glacier_peak_hs.html
http://snoho.com/html/stories_2021/03242021_walsh_hills_lawsuit.html
https://snohomishcountywa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/52839/I-446-McCormick-Tom—SSHI-Horton-v-City-of-Olympia-WA-Ct-App-2013-PDF
https://www.zillow.com/community/kestrel-ridge/29834510_plid/
https://news.theregistryps.com/d-r-horton-purchases-13-acres-in-bothell-for-23-5mm/
https://www.drhorton.com/washington/greater-seattle/snohomish/remington-ranch/floor-plans/bad2
Yes, D.R. Horton is one of the big builders working in unincorporated SnoCo and some of the towns on the East side of the county (Lake Stevens, etc.) I’ve seen a number of subdivisions built up by them over the years.
This has been in the works for some time. As a SnoCo resident, I have followed this off and on for over five years now. If you want more details, here’s a good jumping off point.
https://snohomishcountywa.gov/3944/Cathcart-South-Property-2018