A worker inspects a reaction frame inside a pontoon. Credit: Sound Transit
Sound Transit announced on Wednesday that construction crews are nearly done with their work retrofitting the I-90 bridge for East Link. Crews have worked for more than a year to post-tension the bridge’s pontoons.
ST reinforced the bridge to help it carry the load of Link’s tracks, overhead lines, and vehicles. The retrofit also improves the integrity of the bridge in heavy wind and an attendant storm surge, the likes of which sank the eastbound span in 1990.
All the Lake Washington floating bridges use a system of tensioned steel cables to hold the span in place. Construction crews installed additional cables in the pontoons of the I-90 span. The cables, which crews stressed and winched, pull the pontoons closer together, which creates greater load bearing capacity. Altogether, according to Sound Transit’s Zach Ambrose, “crews installed and stressed 1,080,000 feet of steel strand and applied 41,000 pounds of pressure.”
Steel cable and the frame that anchors it. Credit: Sound Transit
Giant steel structures, called reaction frames, anchor the new cables at both ends. They absorb the force from winching the steel cables, and whatever event that might stress the structure. Each of the ten reaction frames weigh about 17,500 pounds.
The structural work is finished. Crews are removing equipment from the pontoons and grouting the housing of the cables, to prevent water corrosion. After that work is done, construction of the guideway can start.
“Sound Transit has the financial strength,” Rogoff said, “to withstand increased project costs, or lower than anticipated federal funding or tax revenues, or a recession, but a combination of any two or more of these factors would put considerable stress on the agency’s ability to deliver projects on schedule.”
Sound Transit can’t make any difference in a competitive labor market, or the increasing cost of real estate, or prevent a recession, but it is able to exercise control over design, alignment, and the like:
“We have already discussed that, first and foremost, controlling our work to reduce project costs will be critical for delivering our projects,” Rogoff said. “This includes the discipline to not expand the scope of projects.”
Meanwhile, the federal funding picture is completely opaque. The Trump administration, like most Republican administrations, is hostile to transit projects. Trump transportation officials are doing their best to kill off projects that were thought to have the go ahead. In Albuquerque, for example, local officials constructed a BRT line under the assumption that they had $75 million in Federal Transit Authority (FTA) funds on the way. As of July 18, the administration hadn’t ponied up.
On Thursday, August 2, the Sound Transit Board’s Executive Committee approved a plan to power Link almost entirely from renewable energy resources, as part of a program ST developed with regional governments and Puget Sound Energy (PSE.)
By July 2019, Sound Transit will lower its emissions by 71 percent, with renewable energy generated by a new wind farm, which will come online that month. In 2021, PSE will finish construction on a new solar array in central Washington which will allow Link to operate on 100 percent renewable energy. Systemwide, 96 percent of Sound Transit’s energy will be generated by renewables.
The contract also locks in Sound Transit’s PSE electricity rates at agreed levels for the next ten years, which could save the agency some operations cost. Sound Transit staff said that they intend to negotiate similar green energy deals with relevant utilities as the Link system expands.
The 4 percent of the energy that is not renewable will be purchased on the open energy market.Utilities use fossil fuel capacity when renewable generation is not possible or is suboptimal, or when demand exceeds renewable capacity. Solar plants can’t generate at night, for example, and wind plants can’t generate if air is stagnant.
The program is part of PSE’s Green Direct initiative, which the utility developed at the behest of regional governments and major corporate partners. According to King County Executive and ST board member Dow Constantine, the ST move is part of a larger regional push to cut carbon emissions.
“King County’s signing on to [Green Direct] reduced and is reducing our climate impact, our carbon emissions, by 20 percent,” Constantine said. “These are not really incremental steps—these are big steps forward.”
“In committing to creating electric, high capacity rail, our conversion to an all electric bus system, and our insistence that our vendor provide us with the kind of power we want, we are changing the [energy] market.”
This post has been updated to reflect the fact that Link itself will be powered entirely by renewables, while Sound Transit’s overall energy supply will be 96 percent renewable.
On Thursday, August 3, Sound Transit staff briefed the ST board’s Executive Committee on the agency’s goals for two TOD projects near the Capitol Hill Link station.
Both projects will feature ground floor retail and affordable housing, and will build to the maximum density that their zoning allows. The First Hill site, near the intersection of Broadway and Madison, is zoned to allow for up to 13 stories in construction. The second site, which ST will procure through a land swap with Seattle Central College, will allow for seven stories.
First Hill site
According to Sarah Lovell, ST’s TOD Planning Manager, the First Hill site will have:
A minimum of 12 stories
At least 250 housing units
Affordable housing standards
At least 80 percent of units occupied by residents at or below 80 percent AMI
The buildingwide average income at or below 60 percent AMI
At least 80 units at or below 30 percent AMI
At least 8 percent of units will have 2+ bedrooms, for families
4000 square feet of active storefront
Meets Washington State Evergreen Standard
Minimal auto-oriented design features
Sound Transit is in the late stages of negotiations with Bellweather Housing and Plymouth Housing Group. Staff hope to present the board with final contracts in August or September. ST does not plan to spend any funds on the project.
Pike/Pine site
The Pike/Pine site is midway up the block on the left. Credit: Gordon Werner
Lovell also briefed the Executive Committee on a more complicated project to be built on Broadway between Pike and Pine. The site is in a historic auto repair shop (the Eldrige Tire Building) between Neighbours and a mixed use building with Rite Aid on the ground floor.
According to Lovell, this project will have:
At least 7 floors, though with MHA it could have 8
Target 78 housing units
100 percent of residents earning 60 percent AMI or below
23 percent of units 2+ bedrooms, for families
At least 4,500 square feet of commercial space
Meets the Evergreen Standard
Restoration and inclusion of the Eldrige Tire facade
Lovell said that the income requirements will be locked in for 40 to 50 years, as part of a covenant typical to most private affordable housing developments. ST plans to work with Capitol Hill Housing to develop the project.
Sound Transit doesn’t yet own the plot. It will acquire the land through a swap with Seattle Central College, which currently owns the building. SCC will gain access to a lot on the west side of Broadway, next to the SCC portal to the Capitol Hill Link station.
According to Lovell, SCC intends to develop that project into its own mixed commercial and affordable housing TOD project. So, in a sense, Sound Transit will incubate two affordable housing developments when it makes the land swap later this year.
On Monday, the Seattle City Council voted in favor of two major expansions of public bike infrastructure, though one is a nonbinding resolution, and does not carry the force of law.
The meaningful vote authorizes the expansion of dockless bike share to a potential 20,000 vehicles, provided SDOT develops a bikeshare parking enforcement regime and improves the pedestrian experience of people with disabilities.
The other vote, a unanimously approved nonbinding resolution, is a rebuke towards SDOT for not building downtown’s bike network fast enough for the council’s liking. (We’ll have more information on that issue later.)
The council moved to allow SDOT to expand dockless bike share to at least 20,000 bikes, spread among up to 4 companies. Companies could pay up to $250,000 in fees to the city (one current provider, Ofo recently announced that it would be exiting the Seattle market due to the new fee structure).
Some critics of bikeshare have argued, with scant evidence, that poorly parked bikes aren’t just a nuisance or eyesore, but rather that they’re bad for business or other civic virtues.
More importantly, several blind and vision-impaired Seattle residents pointed out that unpredictably parked bikes are dangerous for them—and encouraged the construction of the basic bike network to keep bikers off sidewalks.
“Blind, disabled, and all other pedestrians are being severely impacted by the bicycles that are littered on the sidewalks that we try to walk on,” says Marci Carpenter, president of the Washington chapter of the National Federation of the Blind.
“There needs to be direct parking enforcement and management of the right of way. I support the basic bike network because the more cyclists feel comfortable riding in bike lanes on the streets, the less likely they are to run into us on the sidewalks.
In response to the comments and lobbying of Carpenter and other people with disabilities, Councilmembers Lisa Herbold and Mike O’Brien added unanimously approved amendments to the bike share ordinance. Herbold’s amendment will allow bikeshare contractors to add 1,000 additional bikes to their fleet if they make major investments in vehicles that can serve people with disabilities, and O’Brien’s mandates parking enforcement.
We’ll report on the bike parking enforcement program when more information becomes available.
The fate of the Center City Connector (CCC) is still undecided, but Mayor Jenny Durkan may have tipped her hand towards canceling the project.
A release sent out by Durkan’s office last week explained why the mayor’s decision has been delayed. An analysis of the project by consulting firm KPMG has yet to be completed, despite an initial deadline for delivery in late June. The release follows a similarly skeptical note written by Councilmember Lisa Herbold, a longtime CCC critic, in her weekly constituent letter.
“In August, it is hoped that KPMG will finalize their report to provide their independent analysis of the project,” the release said. The mayor will presumably make a final decision at that point. The release also suggests that the mayor could reopen the yearslong Center City Connector project design phase that selected a streetcar in the first place:
“Mayor Durkan believes we need better transit options along First Avenue and is committed to transit mobility and connectivity in this critical corridor. She has also asked SDOT to evaluate additional mobility alternatives in order to understand the transportation benefits that would accrue from either a streetcar or an alternative mode of transit.”
The release raised several critiques of the streetcar project, most notably about the size and operability of the tram vehicles that SDOT intends to procure for the project.
The mayor’s office wrote in a release that the much delayed, still unseen audit of the project by consulting firm KPMG “was much more complex than initially expected” as it required “the review of thousands of estimates, design materials and correspondence.”
At the same time, the release says that “concurrently with KPMG’s review, the Durkan Administration has also learned that the streetcar vehicles procured for the C3 are heavier, longer and wider than the existing SLU and First Hill streetcars.”
A low floor tram in service in Helsinki. Credit: LHOON.
However, the size of the vehicles is easily explained: they’re low floor vehicles designed to help people with disabilities load. That feature makes vehicles them inherently heavier than the vehicles currently on the streetcar network; the vehicles are increasingly common rolling stock for tram systems across the world. The release also raises the question of whether the vehicles have the correct gauge. As best as anyone can tell from the contracts SDOT executed for the vehicles, the vehicles should fit the track.
SDOT’s Director of Transit and Mobility, Andrew Glass Hastings, declined to comment on the mayor’s concerns.
Downtown groups who supported the mayor during her election campaign, like the Downtown Seattle Association and Alliance for Pioneer Square, are growing increasingly restive over the delayed project.
Transit and streetcar advocates have said that the concerns raised in the release are overblown. They argue that the questions about vehicle size are routine concerns that are typically addressed in the engineering phase of construction, and that the mayor is essentially engaging in concern trolling.
“A connected streetcar network remains a critical investment for our center city—which in the last year alone absorbed 20% of all business district development in the United States and continues to absorb the lion’s share of Seattle’s new residents,” said Don Blakeney, the Downtown Seattle Association’s VP of advocacy.
“We’ve heard concerns from the Mayor about streetcar hardware and project costs. These are issues that call out for engineering solutions and not shelving the streetcar altogether. As a part of a coalition of community leaders, we remain committed to helping the Mayor find solutions to get this critical connection completed.”
Guideway for the Angle Lake extension under construction in 2014. Credit: Atomic Taco
Sound Transit staff will inform the agency’s board today that the Federal Way Link extension’s official cost estimate will increase from $2.088 billion to $2.549 billion. The notice comes a year after the agency announced similar budgeting problems for the Lynnwood Link extension.
According to Sound Transit spokesperson Scott Thompson, the Federal Way cost increase is driven by the same issues that drove up Lynnwood’s budget. The Puget Sound region’s gobsmacking real estate market has increased the price of land acquisition. Right of way, stations, and parking garages are all much more expensive than the agency’s 2015-16 cost estimates predicted.
Construction is similarly pricey, as the development boom has created a hypercompetitive contracting bid market, especially for technically sophisticated projects like light rail. According to construction firm RLB, the U.S. average for construction costs increased from 2017 to 2018. Seattle had one of the highest local cost increases, trailing only Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles among major markets.
Cost reduction and mitigation
Fortunately, ST was able to reduce the Lynnwood cost increases by $200 million to $500 million. Cost cutting measures included removing down escalators, changing the concrete used to build stations and guideways, and shrinking platforms. Similar mitigation could presumably happen for the Federal Way project.
ST will also introduce a new cost cutting method: combining the design and build contracts for Federal Way into a single bid. According to Thompson, ST is confident that the new bid method will reduce costs, but said it was too premature to say how much money the new bidding process will save.
If current real estate and construction trends continue, more cost increase announcements are likely to follow.
Correction: The Lynnwood project’s cost increase was decreased by $200 million, not to $200 million.
Several of the world’s largest oil companies have committed nearly a million dollars to defeating Washington Initiative 1631, which would institute a carbon emission fee on the state’s largest polluters in order to fund affordable housing and green energy projects.
Two “against” campaigns have been organized to oppose I-1631. One was organized by the Association of Washington Business (AWB), and the other was created by the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA). The WSPA is an oil industry group whose membership includes Exxon, Shell, Andeavor, and BP.
According to the latest campaign finance filings with the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), two campaigns will spend at least $992,006.19 to defeat I-1631. The vast majority of that spending–$916,974.88–comes from out of state oil producers. The campaign will probably raise more money. Initiative campaigns can raise funds until election day, and there is no cap on contributions for PACs working on initiative votes.
Five multinational oil companies have pledged to contribute the following to the oil industry’s campaign:
$396,031.40, BP
$201,186.54, Phillips 66
$162,827.17, Andeavor
$60,067.84, Chevron
$56,826.50, Shell
The AWB campaign is, so far, much smaller than the WSPA campaign. The Washington lobbying group has only raised $14,500 so far. Washington businesses and trade groups have spent or pledged $75,031.31 across both “against” campaigns. Washington-based donors include a trade group for general contractors and a Tacoma oil refinery.
The railroad stations and 4th Avenue viaduct from above. Credit: Bruce Englehardt
On Monday, the Sound Transit West Seattle and Ballard Link stakeholder advisory group, which includes transit advocates, prominent community members, and business and labor leaders, moved further along the process of selecting alignments and station locations for the West Seattle and Ballard light rail lines.
The advisory group will eventually pass recommendations to a subcommittee of the Sound Transit board, which in turn will recommend the ultimate preferred alternative to the board as a whole.
A breakout group at work. Credit: Peter Johnson
In breakout sessions conducted over pad thai, the advisory group discussed the alignment and station locations of the new West Seattle line’s Sodo station. The advisory group also discussed the location of the new Chinatown/ID station, which will have far-reaching impacts on the future of the light rail system.
The Chinatown station, and the segment of the new line closest to it, was the subject of intense discussion, with good reason. It’s the centerpiece of the project, and it could have the most disruptive construction impacts of any Link project so far.
Tough choices for Chinatown/ID station and alignment
Concept map of the alignments. Credit: Sound Transit
The future Chinatown station is one of the most critical elements of the new Link line. It will be the southern terminus of the new downtown tunnel, the site of hundreds of thousands of intra-Link transfers every day, and the light rail network’s busiest multimodal hub, with connections to Sounder, Amtrak, public and private buses, and the Seattle streetcar.
The station and alignment’s siting and design will have permanent impact on Link’s capacity, headways, and expansion potential. Sound Transit is committed to making the Chinatown station a central transfer hub, so it has to be built adjacent to the existing Chinatown/International District Link stop next to Union Station.
Construction in Chinatown and Pioneer Square is complicated. Much of the area is infilled tideland, which would liquefy during an earthquake. Liquefaction aside, the loose soil requires deep foundations for newer construction, and would force Sound Transit to make a deep bore tunnel even deeper than in most areas of the city.
Plus, many of the buildings in the area are built on pilings, since the neighborhoods are the city’s oldest. Those pilings could be obstacles for any alignment, and might not be replaceable with a new foundation. Demolition isn’t a way out of that problem: a large slice of the area—and King Street and Union Station themselves—are historic landmarks, or in historic districts.
4th Avenue vs. 5th Avenue
Sound Transit’s “representative alignment” is under 5th Avenue, with a station perpendicular to King and Jackson streets and parallel to the current Chinatown/ID station. During the first round of outreach with the Chinatown and Pioneer Square neighborhoods, there was strong demand for siting the line and station on 4th Avenue, or under Union Station. Continue reading “Link Advisory Group Reviews Chinatown, Sodo, Water Crossing Issues”
