All posts by Adam Bejan Parast

Dan Bertolet has an interesting post up about the “fourth wave of planning”.

I have thought for a while that each generation of environmentalists is shaped in response to the differing environmental challenges of their time. While older generations of environmentalists were shaped by the back-to-the-land movement, one that believed in an essentially rural solution to environmental problems, young environmentalists are exactly the opposite, believing that dense cities are the primary solution to the problems we face.

Call it Vashion Island environmentalism vs Capitol Hill environmentalism. I find these underlying beliefs to be a helpful organizing structure when talking about density, tree preservation, parking requirements or other issues facing infill development. Dan’s post is a perfect example of these two ideas playing out.

Last year in Seattle, the Bullitt Foundation’s proposed Living Building was subjected to a costly legal challenge based on Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). Opponents argued that an environmental impact statement (EIS) should be required because the building would block views. Given that it’s on track to being one of the greenest commercial buildings ever constructed in the United States, and is also located in a dense, walkable, transit-rich neighborhood, the fact that environmental regulations could be exploited to oppose the project suggests something is amiss, to put it mildly.

Following on the heels of the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Washington’s SEPA was created during an era in which the planning culture was dominated by concerns over ecological degradation and responded with strict limits on growth -– planning’s so-called first wave. In the mid-1970s planning entered its second wave, focused on comprehensive planning and infrastructure, followed by a third wave defined by “smart growth” that began around the turn of the century and is still the prevailing approach today.

And now a fourth wave of planning is emerging, with a perspective that will hopefully put an end to perverse contradictions such as what happened with the Bullitt Foundation Living Building. The formative influences on planning’s fourth wave are the “new normal” economy, climate change, energy, food systems, and regional sustainable development.

Full post here.

• U-Link tunneling is complete.
• Big Oil pumping money into Eyman’s I-1185
• TCC looking for a Field Director.
• Eight free bus tickets coming soon.
• The ideal form for subways emerges.
• Flawed argument for European/DC style density over Manhattan style density.
• Seattle places 7th national for “bike score”.
• Seattle’s housing recovery on the horizon, but different than before.
• Stadium proponents tout transit access.
• A critique of UK’s transit privatization model.
• Google cars to the solution to all our transportation needs?
• Can the drop in employment over the recession explain the recent drop in VMT?
• Where Shoreline stands on Lynnwood Link (new name for North Corridor HCT).
• Seattle ST Board member oppose Northgate garage.
• NYC Bike Share has identified locations.
• Portland’s bike way evolution.

This is an open thread.

Today Puget Sound Sage released a new report on Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in the Rainier Valley. It  outlines changes seen in the Valley over the last decade, makes an environmental and social equity arguments for a greater emphasis on affordable housing and living wage jobs in TOD, enumerating racial justice principles for TOD,  and calls for urgent and aggressive actions and creation of tools necessary to achieve these principles. Tonight at 5:30 at the Filipino Community Center (5740 M.L. King Jr. Way South, Seattle, WA 98118) Puget Sound Sage will hold a panel discussion on their findings.

I have only had time to skim the document, but my first impress is that the report does a good job setting the context, honing in on specific problems of concern not usually focused on, and then proposing strategies to address these problems. Many of these strategies however, not surprisingly, require public money to get them off the ground as well as legislative changes on the regional and state level. I’m also very happy to see that the report is not a rebuke of TOD and development in the Valley, but rather in my reading, a call for TOD that more aggressively aims to benefit existing residents.

Below is a list of recommendations included in the executive summary. Continue reading “Report, Event: TOD that is Healthy, Green & Just”

• Inslee takes Mckenna and Kemper to task for attacking light rail.
• Positive feedback for WMATA, an oddity.
• May 14th Puget Sound Sage to releases report, hold panel discussion on how to ensure TOD is healthy, green and just in the Rainier Valley.
• Denver releases industry leading report on TOD and growing equitably. Seattle not that far behind with the Growing Transit Communities roughly a 1/3 of the way done.
• Downtown Target to open on July 29th, Capitol Hill residents have one less reason to go to Northgate.
• Vancouver’s TransLink long term planning and funding in disarray, sounds normal for a US city.
• Sunbreak details Seattle Subway, puts Amazon’s expansion plans in context.
• SLU is “family friendly”, not just for nerds and hip 20 somethings.
• More details of Amazon’s 3.3 million square feet expansion plans. Amazon not the only one with projects in the pipeline.
• 35th Ave NE half way through their interesting “Coffee Talk” lecture series. Place-making up next.
• Bauhaus buildings on Capitol Hill will be kept and integrated into new development.
• A few parts of Regulatory Reform look like they will make it through soon, other parts still up in the air.
• Using social media to define neighborhoods.
• Metro Matters: Moving Beyond the 42.
• The Renton Highlands gain national attention.
• ‘Ultimately, helmet laws save a few brains but destroy many hearts’.
• What is your bicycle style?
• Slideshow: Living in The New Metropolis

This is an open thread.

Sightline, a Seattle bases sustainability think tank, which does a lot of unique, data-backed research in the transportation field, and is looking for help this summer. I wanted to pass this along this internship announcement via UW’s Community, Environment and Planning (CEP)  tumblr account, since it’s probably perfect for someone in our readership. Also above is a shameless plug for CEP, which both Sherwin and I major in, and Sherwin has a cameo in. I would encourage our young readers to check out both.

Sightline seeks a motivated, organized, and self-starting data geek for a summer internship. You must be able to demonstrate strong academic credentials, meticulous attention to detail, excellent data analysis skills, experience with spreadsheet software, a passion for simplifying complex data into a clear and understandable story, and a commitment to a sustainable Northwest.The project:  Assist Sightline’s research team in compiling, analyzing, and interpreting data on traffic and transportation from the Pacific Northwest and beyond. After decades of steadily increasing car traffic, vehicle travel has stagnated – even as state and provincial governments are planning billions of dollars to rebuild and widen urban highways.  Our look at traffic figures suggests that the region simply doesn’t need—and can’t afford—these costly highway megaprojects.  We need a research intern to help compile and analyze traffic trends, demographic data, state budget reports, and other sources of information that help us tell the story about the changing demand for car travel, and our declining ability to pay for more and bigger roads.

This position is unpaid. Sightline’s interns commit to working at least 24 hours per week for at least 10 weeks during the summer. Interns are provided with office workspace, including a computer and email account, along with a bus pass.

To apply: Please email a cover letter, resume, and at least one example of analytical work to mieko@sightline.org by May 21. Sightline Institute encourages candidates from all socioeconomic, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds to apply.

• Flamboyant diatribe ignores the fundamentals of supply and demand, is factually incorrect and unnecessarily perpetuates stereotypes of people from Bellevue.
• Build a SPACE Center at Mt. Baker Station. Idea has some merit, but acronym makes it hard to take serious.
• VMT based transportation funding getting national attention. VMT has been dropping too though.
• Capitol Hill apartment “glut” starting to come online. Comment: “These high priced condos will only increase rents throughout the area.”
• Wallace properties actually does love Link.
• Bauhaus to be saved by developer. Another developer trying to take a different, less fraught approach (H/T Kathy).
• SDOT getting bicycle master plan updated input. Tell them where you want bicycle facilities with an new mapping tool.
• Seattle places 7th according to Walk Score new “Transit Score”. Jarrett Walker has problems with it.
• Metro looking for feedback on alternative service delivery methods, sets record for longest blog post title.
• Thomas St overpass opening in July.
• 10,000 Londoners cycle for safety.

This is an open thread.

Last Wednesday Sound Transit and the City of Bellevue held an open house to share some of the preliminary ideas they have come up with to reduce East Link construction costs through the city. Now that ST and the City are partners, both have a financial stake in the project, and thus more buy in as well as more critical attention about the cost of mitigation that the City previous pushed for.

The biggest cost saving ideas unsurprisingly had to do with the Downtown Bellevue station and tunnel. Four alternatives designs were presented at the open house. Continue reading “East Link Cost Savings Open House”

Last Thursday the Sound Transit board approved alignment and station locations to be included in the Draft Environment Impact Study (DEIS). Like East Link, Sound Transit has identified 3 different segments:

• Segment A – Northgate to NE 185th St
• Segment B – NE 185th to 212th St SW
• Segment C – 212th St SW to Lynnwood TC

Each Segment has several variations of station locations and guideway alignment. While ST2 initially identified four stations, five stations appears to be a possibility if the cost and ridership benefits of the stations outweighs the ridership lost due to the additional travel time and additional costs incurred by the station. Continue reading “NE 130th Added to North Corridor DEIS”

• Everyone loves Seattle. We all knew that already, but now it’s official.
• The who’s who of hipsterdom. Seattle is so over!
• Times Editorial Board – “A four-mile segment [of I-5] would open the next year, from Olive Way to Ravenna, and I would make my dad drive me on it several times. I loved freeways. When I grew up I wanted to build them.”
• Building mixed use for the housing, retail just a selling point.
• East Link cost savings open house tonight.
• North Corridor Link station at NE 130th a shoe in, expect fireworks over NE 175th and NE 185th at ST Board meeting today.
• DC Bikeshare already almost operationally profitable. Imagine milk run bus service with a farebox recovery of 97%!
• First Hill Streetcar, fun vs. utility… yes please!
• Future of Bauhaus uncertain, lots of community concern.
• Thesis on  DC height limits, how to grow and protect historic buildings.
• Mossback not as grumpy as usual, new nuanced opinion of growth and density.
• Mercer West cycle track in the works, key to high quality connection between Lake Union and Waterfront.
• A walkable Northgate? Go on a walking tour with Futurewise, Feet First and Cascade. RSVP here.
• Tax density, not all land uses are created equal.
• Why SR-520 draw span is opening more often.

This is an open thread.

On Thursday April 26th from 4pm to 7pm at Bellevue City Hall, Bellevue and Sound Transit will be co-hosting an open house to get feedback on the latests design and cost saving ideas. Press release below:

The City of Bellevue and Sound Transit will host a joint open house to share the latest design options and cost-saving ideas for the East Link light rail project, and to get feedback from the public.

The open house takes place from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday, April 26, at City Hall, 450 110^th Ave. N.E. Sound Transit, which is building East Link, and Bellevue, earlier this year launched a unique collaborative design process intended to reduce the city’s financial contribution for a downtown light rail tunnel, and lower overall project costs.

 Attendees can learn about concepts for the portion of the project in Bellevue. The goal is to review the merits of the ideas and learn from the public what other considerations need to be addressed as the concepts are developed. There will also be information about cost-saving ideas that were considered and rejected, the status of the project, and the latest schedule.

In November 2011, the city council signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Sound Transit. The agreement provides details about the project’s scope, schedule and budget, evaluation of cost-saving ideas for the six miles of light rail line in Bellevue, city contributions for a tunnel and design modifications to minimize impacts on neighborhoods.

For the past three months, Bellevue and Sound Transit have been involved in the collaborative design process, aiming toward final design of the light rail line and the six stations located inside the city’s boundary. East Link will run from Seattle, across Lake Washington on Interstate 90, through Bellevue to the Overlake Transit Center in Redmond.

After the public weighs in, the cost-saving concepts will undergo further design work based on recommendations from Bellevue and Sound Transit. The ideas potentially could be incorporated into the final design phase of the project.

Bellevue will continue to work closely with Sound Transit and there will be additional opportunities for public input as the project progresses. Before construction begins in 2015, Sound Transit must finalize the route design, stations, art installations, construction methods and mitigation. East Link is projected to begin service in 2023.

• What do the next 50-years hold, boldness or timidness.
• Our problems are not new, a message from the city council of 1962 to 2,012.
• Shared Walls, a loving history of Seattle’s apartments.
• Seattle’s TMP formally adopted.
• The SunBreak dives a bit deeper into OBA problems.
• Yesler Terrace redevelopment moves forward, but not a done deal till June at least.
• Romney’s anti-city, anti-poor attack on HUD.
• Metro and city agree to downtown circulator to offset impact of RFA elimination on poor, no commitment on speed and reliability mitigation for everyone else.
• Sound Transit purchase segment of BNSF corridor, gets 37-mile easement.
• First Hill Streetcar groundbreaking on April 23rd, 12:15 at Broadway and Boylston.
• How green are electric cars? Depends on how green the electricity is. Duh.
• Growth slows, especially the sunbelt and exurbs.
• Columbia River Crossing VMT, linear growth no more?
• Modeling bike-share use in DC, a better way to plan systems.
• 3-door buses, a physiologist’s take on why people use a certain door. Hmm. I’m not buying her reasoning.
• How oil impacts the development of a country. Hint, not well for democracy.

Don’t forget that tomorrow during lunch Jarrett Walker and Darrin Nordahl will be debating their opposing views of what transit needs to do to attract more riders. If you’re not able to make it to the lunch event, there will also be a debate at Town Hall tomorrow night as well starting at 7:30. Get tickets for that event here.

Personally I’m confused why this is even debatable as ferris wheels are fun but they don’t get you anywhere, just like driving isn’t fun, at least for most people, but can get you just about anywhere. Last time I checked most cities weren’t overrun with ferris wheels, if you get my drift. Regardless, it should be a fun a lively debate. Details below the jump. Continue reading “Reminder: Utility Vs Fun”

Seattle Bubble, a real-estate blog founded during the inflation of the housing bubble, has an interesting post showing how Seattle proper stacks up to the 100 largest cities in the US. While I don’t think you should really pay attention to the density related information, for reasons explained here, I found the other rankings interesting although not surprising. Out of the 100 largest cities in the US here is how Seattle stacks up.

• Population: #23
• Square Miles: #62
• Density: #15
• Household Size: #100
• % with Children: #97
• Home Ownership Rate: #69

Seattle has long had many demographic factors that favor smaller household sizes and low percentages of households with children, and this information completely jives with the data I reported on earlier showing that a majority of Seattle housing is multifamily already. My take away looking at just these two measures, household size and percent households with children, Seattle has the strongest trends that favor smaller apartment housing than just about every other major city. Go to Seattle Bubble to see all the data.

With concerns about gentrification growing over the last few years, several council members and city officials have been looking for examples of how other cities have dealt with and overc0me gentrification. What they have found, contrary to generally held urbanist belief, is that reducing demand for housing is the most effective way to combat rising rents and gentrification, not building more housing.

On a recent fact finding mission to both cities, council members and staff met with officials from Detroit and Baltimore to learn from the nation’s leaders in combating gentrification. While council and staff have not had time to formulate any potential policies or actions, I was able to speak to one of the officials who participated.

He said that ideas generally fell into the categories of crime, education, noise and pollution, and jobs. They found that the two cities shared many of the same solutions, which helps to validate the solutions and lent credence to the idea that they could be transferable to Seattle. Most of the solutions they saw were also very low cost, if not budget positive, for the City.

Continue reading “City Looks to Detroit, Baltimore for Solutions to Gentrification”

As Bruce wrote yesterday Metro will be holding its first public meeting related to elimination of the Ride Free Area (RFA) this Thursday from 4:00 -6:30 at Union Station.

Operational Problems of the DSTT

We have written fairly extensively on this operational impacts of this change. A study done by Metro shows that the operations in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT) would see significant and unacceptable negative speed and reliability impacts from elimination of the RFA. The report concluded that none of the operational improvements suggested can fully close the gap between the current peak usage and the reduced peak capacity.

Additional, travel time data I obtained from Metro shows that travel time speed and reliability in the tunnel has progressively deteriorated since it reopened for joint operation with Link in 2007. This trend has been most prevalent in PM peak hours, which will also be the most negatively impacted by a pay-as-you-enter fare policy. My purely personal experience indicates that speed and reliability have further deteriorated since this data was collected in Spring 2010.

The existing speed and reliability in the DSTT, in my opinion, is already too poor, and further deterioration is completely unacceptable for riders and is a waste of Metro and Sound Transit resources.

Continue reading “DSTT Should Use a Proof-Of-Payment Fare System”

While I’m obviously biased towards @SeaTransitBlog’s twitter feed, which is nearing the 4,000 follower mark and has lots of added value above and beyond just pushing our blog posts out, I wanted to share a list the top 25 twitter transportation sources according to ULI’s Urban Land Magazine. It’s is a great list, with lots of influential thinkers, organizations and national news sources. Of course you can always just look at who we’re following, which is a fairly distilled group of local and national tweeters.

View the whole list here.

Jessyn Farrell, former Executive Director of Transportation Choices Coalition (TCC), has just announced that she is running for the open 46th District Seat of the Washington State House. We’re always supportive of strong pro-transit elected down in Olympia, which Jessyn will no doubt be. Press release below.

Transportation and Environmental Leader Jessyn Farrell  

Running for 46^th Legislative District House Seat

Raised in 46^th and graduate of local public schools and UW, Farrell will focus on quality public K-12 and higher education, transportation and transit infrastructure, and protecting health care access for women and kids

SEATTLE— Transportation leader, attorney and environmental advocate Jessyn Farrell has announced that she will run for the State House of Representatives in the 46^th Legislative District, representing the neighborhoods of Northeast Seattle and cities of Lake Forest Park and Kenmore.

Farrell, a Democrat, grew up in the Lake City neighborhood and attended schools in Lake Forest Park and Shoreline.  She now lives near Children’s Hospital with her husband Tim and their two young children. She is the former Executive Director of Transportation Choices Coalition, a statewide non-profit that advocates for expanded bus, light rail and other transportation options. In addition, Farrell, 38, is an attorney specializing in mediation and environmental advocacy, and a former Seattle-based AmeriCorps volunteer.

Continue reading “Jessyn Farrell Running for 46th District House Seat”

Every transportation technology has both inherent and perceived strengths and weaknesses. With this in mind, and the talk about urban aerial trams and gondolas getting new attention in Seattle, both from long time blogger Matt Gangemi (Matt the Engineer) and two weeks ago from Matt Roewe at the City Builder happy hour, I wanted to start the discussion on STB by talking about the basics, strengths and weakness of aerial trams and gondolas. I’m not an expert on design or construction, but their characteristics can be defined along the same metrics as other modes of transit.

I see this as a critical starting point for any serious discussion about these technologies, because (let’s be honest) most people find the idea of urban aerial trams and gondolas far fetched.

I’ll start off with the basics about the technologies. First, while there are technical differences between aerial trams and gondolas*, the importance of these differences from a rider’s perspective comes down to two things, frequency and stations. There are differences in speed, but I’ll explain why this isn’t very important.  Continue reading “Aerial Trams and Gondolas”