20 Replies to “Sunday Movie: US vs European Zoning”
Could the legislature not allowing the sake of 75?year bonds be the best thing ever if ST is now forced to seriously consider reworking west Seattle, the 2nd tunnel, and Ballard?
Having so cavalierly treated Balducci’s tequest to study ditching the 2nd tunnel, I feel the board was hoping for the bonding Hail Mary from the legislature so that they wouldn’t have to make hard decisions.
Now they are forced to!
Hopefully they truly do reexamine how to build this thing, instead of just chopping it short and deferring to an ST 4 which may never come.
We’ll get more information soon at what ST is willing to do. I’ll be at Wednesday’s board retreat and I’ll report if anything new or clear preference trends come up. The board meeting is a week from Thursday (March 26) so we may get decisions or more trends then.
My impression is the board still thinks it can fund everything at least to the MOS level, so it’s not ready to consider larger modifications like abandoning DSTT2. I don’t think the 75-year bonds were as big an issue as you make out: it was just a way to reduce its monthly repayment rate. So it’s most likely ST will continue full steam ahead until/if it’s forced to downscale because of lack of money to sign more construction contracts.
The off-ramp ST has prepared for consideration in what we’ve seen so far: is minimal operational segments (MOS): Ballard Link to Smith Cove (not Ballard), Everett Link to Paine Field (not Everett station), 2 Line terminus at Ash Way (not Mariner). If its smaller cost-cutting measures are insufficient (cheaper Duwamish bridge, unspecified Westlake2 station changes, deferring another station or two, eliminating some mezzanines (some STBers would cheer), no Avalon station, one Denny-SLU station instead of two) and eliminating down escalators or both up/down escalators (boo!), it may resort to MOSes.
Note 1 to ST and Seattle: I oppose any Seattle taxes to backfill Ballard/West Seattle Link. Ballard/DSTT2 has gotten so passenger-hostile with long downtown transfer walks, and the threats of no CID station in the middle of the village andand a Ballard 14th station, and West Seattle Link has so little benefit, that I’d rather see them canceled than spend Seattle money or 75-year bonds on them. That Seattle money would be better used for more Metro bus frequency, bus-priority lanes, RapidRide upgrades, etc.
Note 2 to ST: A consolidated Denny-SLU station must be close to Denny for transfers to the 8 and Denny Triangle destinations. The worst would be only an Aurora/Henderson station: that’s the least walkable from both SLU and Denny Way/Denny Triangle locations.
Note 3 to ST: Keep the down escalators. Some people can’t use stairs, and there can be a bottleneck at elevators. If you’re going to build a station, build it right.
On the 2 Line opening day, how many of you plan on making the entire Redmond to Lynnwood trip? Or, will you just ride the new segment, IDC to South Bellevue? Or, just ride to the stations with celebration activities?
I hope to see some good photos from the event. Usually, on new alignment opening days, the Operator will leave their driver cab/passenger compartment window shade open. That could make for some good photo opportunities.
I’m going to some of the stations between Symphony and Downtown Redmond. I’ll see westside service during my regular weekly trips.
Coincidentally, I went to Lynnwood yesterday, near the train station. There are a lot of new, large (but short) apartment buildings near I5/Link, but they forgot to make anything walkable. Very wide (and thus loud) streets, long distances between crosswalks, long waits for walk signals. It reminds me of how Bellevue has gotten so much denser, but is still so hostile to pedestrians (as opposed to how Redmond has been doing it).
I think I’m just going to check out Judkins Park Station for a bit and then head downtown.
World Cup update: Iran has requested to move its matches to Mexico. They are currently scheduled to play Egypt here and two matches at SoFi Stadium.
How many remaining events are in Seattle?
Also, is “Seattle Stadium” a temporary name for the World Cup? Or a permanent rename of Lumen Field? And what is SoFi stadium?
Seattle Stadium is hosting three other group stage matches and two knockout matches. The stadium name is temporary, for the World Cup, because FIFA said so.
SoFi Stadium is where the LA Chargers and Rams play, in Inglewood. Nevertheless, it will temporarily be branded as Los Angeles Stadium.
A stadium with a corporate-sponsored name cannot use that name during the World Cup, unless said sponsor is one of FIFA’s official sponsors (Coca-Cola, Hyundai, Budweiser, McDonald’s, and maybe one or two others). Lumen isn’t a FIFA sponsor, so the stadium will have to physically remove the “Lumen Field” signage from its facades and replace it with temporary “Seattle Stadium” signage. Once the Cup is over, the “Lumen Field” signage and name will return to the stadium. (The Olympics are the same way; Vancouver’s hockey arena, then named “GM Place”, had to be renamed “Canada Hockey Place” during the 2010 games.)
Had Husky Stadium hosted the Cup, it could have kept the “Husky Stadium” name for the tournament. It would have had just to remove the “Alaska Airlines” part of its official name, “Alaska Airlines Field at Husky Stadium”, from reference materials and the facades.
Here’s a recent blog post I found “Put real experts in charge of transit” about differences in transit agency boards in the Asia and Europe vs the United States. In the agencies the author looked at, the Asian and European boards had more members with engineering expertise and project management experience while US boards had more elected officials and community advocates.
I would have liked to see a wider survey of agencies and maybe a more granular breakdown of expertise/experience, but the difference is likely part of the reason the United States is so bad at building and running transit.
There’s a larger difference in the national or statewide approach.
What makes upgrades so effective in Vancouver, Germany, and other European, Asian, and Latin American cities is the state government starts with a transit best-practice vision: what will upgrade the highest-volume corridors the most, and give everybody 15-minute full-time service no matter where they are or whether they’re on a rail line or not, and make transit a desirable first choice, and maximize ridership and minimize car use. They give the transit/transportation agency a mandate to do that.
And they fully support the agency in doing it: sufficient funding, standing up to NIMBYs, streamlining regulations. The public is widely supportive of it because it has brought major non-car mobility benefits and the design will obviously maximize it and be relevant to the most people’s trips, and the public understands more about economic resilience and climate sustainability: they aren’t being fed false propaganda against it as much.
Along with this goes walkable station areas: neighborhood retail, medium-density housing, mixed use or at least adjacent buildings, walkable institution/mall/stadium access from stations.
In Pugetopolis we’re seeing something different: suburban political entities putting their thumb on the scale to get Link to them (Tacoma, Everett, Redmond, Issaquah), pushing stations to freeways away from the pedestrian concentrations, refusing to upzone Vancouver-like villages at all stations, eliminating down escalators, ignoring long train-to-train transfers, refusing to maximize transit-priority lanes to keep GP/parking lanes, refusing to dedicate sufficient resources for a comprehensive local+regional network that goes everywhere frequently at all times, building questionable projects (West Seattle Link, DSTT2), ignoring better alternatives (Westlake-First Hill axis, more stations between Westlake and Northgate), etc. This all is what makes the system here suck more.
The Sound Transit board is composed almost entirely of local elected officials. I wonder: is this legally required, or is it just a convention?
The county executives are automatically on the board, and they appoint the others from city officials. There’s probably a rule that the mayor of the largest city in each subarea has to be on the board. The largest city is obvious for Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, and Renton. In South King, I’m not sure if Kent is always on the board.
I believe they have to be elected politicians, but it’s just convention to select a mayor. If there was a very passionate/influential city councilmember, I think they could be appointed in lieu of a mayor or county councilmember.
Metro has 2 line crews out today working on the new trolley wire on Madison. The crews were working between Broadway and 12th Ave. Pretty unlikely that the wire will be ready for the March 28 service change.
Metro March paper service change brochure and scheduled are on buses.
We’ll have an article on the service change this Saturday, and it starts the following Saturday.
Boo, the brochure has no routes list. It just says to pick up new timetables or check the website or phone. But it does say it in several languages. Since I’m a language fan and monitor the languages used for universal announcements in an area, here they are:
English, Spanish. Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Amharic or Thai, unknown, and Arabic.
The unknown language has words like isbeddelka, wuzyu, doonnaa. What language has double letters like that? I’ve been wondering that for a while.
Could the legislature not allowing the sake of 75?year bonds be the best thing ever if ST is now forced to seriously consider reworking west Seattle, the 2nd tunnel, and Ballard?
Having so cavalierly treated Balducci’s tequest to study ditching the 2nd tunnel, I feel the board was hoping for the bonding Hail Mary from the legislature so that they wouldn’t have to make hard decisions.
Now they are forced to!
Hopefully they truly do reexamine how to build this thing, instead of just chopping it short and deferring to an ST 4 which may never come.
We’ll get more information soon at what ST is willing to do. I’ll be at Wednesday’s board retreat and I’ll report if anything new or clear preference trends come up. The board meeting is a week from Thursday (March 26) so we may get decisions or more trends then.
My impression is the board still thinks it can fund everything at least to the MOS level, so it’s not ready to consider larger modifications like abandoning DSTT2. I don’t think the 75-year bonds were as big an issue as you make out: it was just a way to reduce its monthly repayment rate. So it’s most likely ST will continue full steam ahead until/if it’s forced to downscale because of lack of money to sign more construction contracts.
The off-ramp ST has prepared for consideration in what we’ve seen so far: is minimal operational segments (MOS): Ballard Link to Smith Cove (not Ballard), Everett Link to Paine Field (not Everett station), 2 Line terminus at Ash Way (not Mariner). If its smaller cost-cutting measures are insufficient (cheaper Duwamish bridge, unspecified Westlake2 station changes, deferring another station or two, eliminating some mezzanines (some STBers would cheer), no Avalon station, one Denny-SLU station instead of two) and eliminating down escalators or both up/down escalators (boo!), it may resort to MOSes.
Note 1 to ST and Seattle: I oppose any Seattle taxes to backfill Ballard/West Seattle Link. Ballard/DSTT2 has gotten so passenger-hostile with long downtown transfer walks, and the threats of no CID station in the middle of the village andand a Ballard 14th station, and West Seattle Link has so little benefit, that I’d rather see them canceled than spend Seattle money or 75-year bonds on them. That Seattle money would be better used for more Metro bus frequency, bus-priority lanes, RapidRide upgrades, etc.
Note 2 to ST: A consolidated Denny-SLU station must be close to Denny for transfers to the 8 and Denny Triangle destinations. The worst would be only an Aurora/Henderson station: that’s the least walkable from both SLU and Denny Way/Denny Triangle locations.
Note 3 to ST: Keep the down escalators. Some people can’t use stairs, and there can be a bottleneck at elevators. If you’re going to build a station, build it right.
On the 2 Line opening day, how many of you plan on making the entire Redmond to Lynnwood trip? Or, will you just ride the new segment, IDC to South Bellevue? Or, just ride to the stations with celebration activities?
I hope to see some good photos from the event. Usually, on new alignment opening days, the Operator will leave their driver cab/passenger compartment window shade open. That could make for some good photo opportunities.
I’m going to some of the stations between Symphony and Downtown Redmond. I’ll see westside service during my regular weekly trips.
Coincidentally, I went to Lynnwood yesterday, near the train station. There are a lot of new, large (but short) apartment buildings near I5/Link, but they forgot to make anything walkable. Very wide (and thus loud) streets, long distances between crosswalks, long waits for walk signals. It reminds me of how Bellevue has gotten so much denser, but is still so hostile to pedestrians (as opposed to how Redmond has been doing it).
I think I’m just going to check out Judkins Park Station for a bit and then head downtown.
World Cup update: Iran has requested to move its matches to Mexico. They are currently scheduled to play Egypt here and two matches at SoFi Stadium.
How many remaining events are in Seattle?
Also, is “Seattle Stadium” a temporary name for the World Cup? Or a permanent rename of Lumen Field? And what is SoFi stadium?
Seattle Stadium is hosting three other group stage matches and two knockout matches. The stadium name is temporary, for the World Cup, because FIFA said so.
SoFi Stadium is where the LA Chargers and Rams play, in Inglewood. Nevertheless, it will temporarily be branded as Los Angeles Stadium.
A stadium with a corporate-sponsored name cannot use that name during the World Cup, unless said sponsor is one of FIFA’s official sponsors (Coca-Cola, Hyundai, Budweiser, McDonald’s, and maybe one or two others). Lumen isn’t a FIFA sponsor, so the stadium will have to physically remove the “Lumen Field” signage from its facades and replace it with temporary “Seattle Stadium” signage. Once the Cup is over, the “Lumen Field” signage and name will return to the stadium. (The Olympics are the same way; Vancouver’s hockey arena, then named “GM Place”, had to be renamed “Canada Hockey Place” during the 2010 games.)
Had Husky Stadium hosted the Cup, it could have kept the “Husky Stadium” name for the tournament. It would have had just to remove the “Alaska Airlines” part of its official name, “Alaska Airlines Field at Husky Stadium”, from reference materials and the facades.
Here’s a recent blog post I found “Put real experts in charge of transit” about differences in transit agency boards in the Asia and Europe vs the United States. In the agencies the author looked at, the Asian and European boards had more members with engineering expertise and project management experience while US boards had more elected officials and community advocates.
I would have liked to see a wider survey of agencies and maybe a more granular breakdown of expertise/experience, but the difference is likely part of the reason the United States is so bad at building and running transit.
There’s a larger difference in the national or statewide approach.
What makes upgrades so effective in Vancouver, Germany, and other European, Asian, and Latin American cities is the state government starts with a transit best-practice vision: what will upgrade the highest-volume corridors the most, and give everybody 15-minute full-time service no matter where they are or whether they’re on a rail line or not, and make transit a desirable first choice, and maximize ridership and minimize car use. They give the transit/transportation agency a mandate to do that.
And they fully support the agency in doing it: sufficient funding, standing up to NIMBYs, streamlining regulations. The public is widely supportive of it because it has brought major non-car mobility benefits and the design will obviously maximize it and be relevant to the most people’s trips, and the public understands more about economic resilience and climate sustainability: they aren’t being fed false propaganda against it as much.
Along with this goes walkable station areas: neighborhood retail, medium-density housing, mixed use or at least adjacent buildings, walkable institution/mall/stadium access from stations.
In Pugetopolis we’re seeing something different: suburban political entities putting their thumb on the scale to get Link to them (Tacoma, Everett, Redmond, Issaquah), pushing stations to freeways away from the pedestrian concentrations, refusing to upzone Vancouver-like villages at all stations, eliminating down escalators, ignoring long train-to-train transfers, refusing to maximize transit-priority lanes to keep GP/parking lanes, refusing to dedicate sufficient resources for a comprehensive local+regional network that goes everywhere frequently at all times, building questionable projects (West Seattle Link, DSTT2), ignoring better alternatives (Westlake-First Hill axis, more stations between Westlake and Northgate), etc. This all is what makes the system here suck more.
The Sound Transit board is composed almost entirely of local elected officials. I wonder: is this legally required, or is it just a convention?
The county executives are automatically on the board, and they appoint the others from city officials. There’s probably a rule that the mayor of the largest city in each subarea has to be on the board. The largest city is obvious for Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, and Renton. In South King, I’m not sure if Kent is always on the board.
I believe they have to be elected politicians, but it’s just convention to select a mayor. If there was a very passionate/influential city councilmember, I think they could be appointed in lieu of a mayor or county councilmember.
Metro has 2 line crews out today working on the new trolley wire on Madison. The crews were working between Broadway and 12th Ave. Pretty unlikely that the wire will be ready for the March 28 service change.
Not exactly Seattle but nearby and I thought the people of this blog would be interested in this video about Pacific Transit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiBx60OYXRk
Metro March paper service change brochure and scheduled are on buses.
We’ll have an article on the service change this Saturday, and it starts the following Saturday.
Boo, the brochure has no routes list. It just says to pick up new timetables or check the website or phone. But it does say it in several languages. Since I’m a language fan and monitor the languages used for universal announcements in an area, here they are:
English, Spanish. Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Amharic or Thai, unknown, and Arabic.
The unknown language has words like isbeddelka, wuzyu, doonnaa. What language has double letters like that? I’ve been wondering that for a while.
It appears to be Somali but I’m not sure.
https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OIRA/Minutes031114kingCoTopLangs.pdf
It’s probably Somali, as that’s one of King County’s priority languages for materials.