Andrew M. Smith started the blog in April 2007, after he moved back to Seattle and discovered there was a campaign for light rail that year. Andrew grew up in Scotland, Capitol Hill and Wallingford, and has lived in Tokyo, where he discovered his love for transit and walkability, and San Francisco. Andrew stepped down from the blog in May 2009 but returned in February 2011.
I just purchased Daniel Pinkwater’s Big Orange Splot for my daughter (or for me, because in a sense, it’s all for me), and it got me thinking about zoning laws (watch the video if you’re not familiar with it). They’re a funny thing, zoning laws, in a way, because there’s really no logically consistent classical liberal argument against for zoning laws that doesn’t reduce to absurdity extremely quickly.
Los Angeles Magazine has a great feature on Donald Shoup and the high cost of parking and parking regulations. It starts with a hilarious tale of how the Los Angeles Philharmonic exists to pay for parking garage the city mandated in the concert hall:
Yet before an auditorium could be raised on K, a six-floor subterranean garage capable of holding 2,188 cars needed to be sunk below it at a cost of $110 million—money raised from county bonds. Parking spaces can be amazingly expensive to fabricate. In aboveground structures they cost as much as $40,000 apiece. Belowground, all that excavating and shoring may run a developer $140,000 per space. The debt on Disney Hall’s garage would have to be paid off for decades to come, and as it turned out, a minimum schedule of 128 annual shows would be enough to cover the bill. The figure “128” was even written into the L.A. Philharmonic’s lease. In 2003, Esa-Pekka Salonen opened Frank Gehry’s masterpiece to a packed house with Mahler’sResurrection, and in the years since, concertgoers—who lay out $9 to enter the garage—have steadily funded performances that exist to cover the true price of their parking.
Conditions at 10am. I tried to grab one at 8:45 am but the page was set to continually refresh.
Update: It seems people do not like the title of this post. Yes, it is true that this is still early days on the 520 bridge. However, I am sure congestion pricing does indeed work (see London, Stockholm, etc.). I’d welcome an argument that explains how the toll will not result in a reduction in congestion on the 520 bridge.
Substantially fewer drivers than normal crossed the 520 bridge this morning, while traffic on other major roads did not appear significantly worse than usual, according to transportation officials.
Ridership on buses across Lake Washington, however, appeared to be up.
…
Nearly 13,000 vehicles crossed the 520 bridge between 5 and 9 a.m., said Patty Michaud, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation. That’s about 30 percent lower than before tolling began. About 80 percent of them had state-issued Good to Go stickers that automatically pay tolling fees, she said.
Meanwhile, alternate routes like Interstate 90 and State Route 522 appeared in good shape during the early commute. Officials had expected rush hour on those roads to start earlier and end later.
So we’re getting a reduction in congestion and a (partially) free bridge to boot. It’s obviously too early to say this is a complete victory, but the theory is pretty obvious.
Tomorrow, Seattle’s Neighborhood Greenways is hosting a meet-up tomorrow at Mosaic Coffee House in Wallingford. The meet-up will feature Steve Durrant from Alta Design and Sally Bagshaw who will speak about post-Prop 1 funding opportunities for bicycles. For those interested, the details are below the fold. Continue reading “Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Meetup”
Thursday Sound Transit’s capital committee endorsed the I-5 light rail alignment for the North corridor transit project. The 3% engineering study completed last month showed when comparing the I-5 alignment to the SR-99 alignment, the I-5 alignment was quicker, cheaper and had more ridership. Next week, the full board will vote to move forward with the single alignment.
The Dexter Horton building in the foreground, with the skyscrapers in the background. Photo by Jason Brackins
I have two thoughts about density I’d like to share, both more responses than anything* to ideas that I hear and read repeated frequently. I have made both of these points a few times in round-about ways in various posts and in the comments, but I would like to write a first-class post about them this time. The first point is a response to the oft-repeated notion that tall buildings and density are essentially the same thing, and the second is a response to the idea that what’s good for developers is perforce good for density and/or urbanism. Both below the fold.
From ITO, here’s a map of all US traffic fatalities from 2001-2009 (I suggest full-screen view). The view above is centred on the Puget Sound Region, but you can explore the all 50 states if you’d like. Each dot represents a life lost, and there’s some data about the person. The data show an astonishing 326,251 deaths over that 9 year period, though thankfully traffic deaths have tailed off the last few years to around 33,000 from more than 40,000 per year in the the 20 years, and a peak of 50,000 per year 30 years ago.
One day before the nine-day closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct; King County Councilmember Joe McDermott challenged County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen to a race from West Seattle to Seattle City Hall. Each man used a different form of transit with McDermott riding the King County Water Taxi, Constantine riding a Metro bus, and Rasmussen riding his bike. Watch what ensues!
Federal Aid Highway money given to each state per dollar contributed. Source: GAO
From DC Streetsblog comes this picture showing all states are now net recipients of Federal Aid Highway Funding. “A significant amount of highway funding is no longer provided by highway users,” GAO stated in the report. More analysis here.
My favorite Science Fiction author, Neal Stephenson blames the attitude of the likes of Kemper Freeman and Tim Eyman for America’s “Great Stagnation“:
We’ve been talking about wind farms, tidal power, and solar power for decades. Some progress has been made in those areas, but energy is still all about oil. In my city, Seattle, a 35-year-old plan to run a light rail line across Lake Washington is now being blocked by a citizen initiative. Thwarted or endlessly delayed in its efforts to build things, the city plods ahead with a project to paint bicycle lanes on the pavement of thoroughfares.
The whole essay is worth reading, though not transit-related.
Want to know how the project team got here? Join us for an online panel discussion.
Via live streaming, the project team will discuss and answer questions about the federal Alternatives Analysis process, how early public comment was used to develop potential alternatives, and criteria used to evaluate potential alternatives. If you are interested in technical aspects of project development, this is for you!
Martin is correct that the media will likely spin a VLF defeat as a vote against taxes[1], but from the (normal, non-transit) people I talk to, the VLF’s largest problem isn’t that it’s a tax, but that it doesn’t do enough. Imagine if Obama had run on a campaign of “hope and a little bit of change”. “We’re not going to do all that much, just a little”. No one would be surprised a candidate with that slogan could not make it past an early primary. Why would we be surprised if the VLF whose slogan is essentially that goes down to defeat?
Martin also mentions that the $100 VLF[2] is all the state has given the city to work with for transportation, which is sadly true. I tried to make the point in my post the other day that Seattle should be more aggressive in getting taxing authority for transportation. I think there are a number of reasons to go for this approach, including Seattle’s unique transportation needs and its willingness to approve large projects.
Seattle has different transportation needs from other cities in the state, particularly when it comes to transit, walking and biking. As I said the other day, if the city doesn’t going after taxing authority we’ll never get the transportation systems we want. Even if we let Sound Transit do all the heavy lifting for rail transit, we’ll still have to wait decades to get the correct amount for Seattle, and voters in other parts of the Sound Transit district might decide they have the right amount of transit and stop approving new projects before we get to a place where Seattle’s needs are being met.
Seattle could build large projects if it wanted to. We know this because Sound Transit has managed to build Central Link, is currently building U-Link and will build North Link and the First Hill Streetcar with mostly funding from Seattle. Seattle on its own was able to build the SLU streetcar prototype, while not a big project, it showed that the city can build rail on its own. Similarly Portland, which is both smaller and less affluent than Seattle, has been able to build its streetcar with entirely in-city money. The funding capacity for more ambitious projects are here in the city limits. It’s just a matter of getting the authority from Olympia.
Seattle voters like large projects and usually approve them. I believe there is solid evidence that larger transit projects can be successful with Seattle. I hate to bring this up, but Seattle voted for the monorail project at least five times, and have voted for Sound Transit five times now as well. However, voters don’t really understand small projects, and while “a little money here or there” might make a number of small improvements, most people want large improvements and large ideas they can point to and imagine. I would not be surprised that ballot measure full of small transit projects would fail but a ballot measure to implement the entire Seattle Streetcar system would pass or a Second Avenue subway would pass.
Obviously, I think the VLF is a good idea and want the it to pass. I just wish our elected officials would be fighting with Olympia over our ability to build the projects we want. I’m sure if they did that would find the Seattle voters to be very willing to vote yes. It’s our duty to push our elected officials in the right direction to get what we want. Otherwise, they might here the wrong message and think we won’t pay for more transit.
[1] From experience in the ST2 fight, the media horse-race game is more annoying than meaningful. Roads and Transit going down was supposed to be a vote against transit, though transit passed on its own a year later.
Sound Transit is holding three meetings this month on scoping for the North Corridor of ST2. Here’s a webpage with more information. I am interested to go to at least one of these to see what people have to say.
Environmental scoping that builds on the AA will be conducted in October 2011. Public meetings will be held from 6:00 – 8:00 pm on the following dates:
Tuesday, October 11, 2011: Shoreline Conference Center, 18560 1st Ave NE, Shoreline
Tuesday, October 18, 2011: Ingraham High School, 1819 N 135th St, Seattle
For those like me, who are also interested in technical details of the project, Sound Transit hosting a lunch-time Tech Talk via the web on Friday.
Want to know how the project team got here? Join us for an online panel discussion. Via live streaming, the project team will discuss and answer questions about the federal Alternatives Analysis process, how early public comment was used to develop potential alternatives, and criteria used to evaluate potential alternatives. If you are interested in technical aspects of project development, this is for you!
Mike McGinn in 2009, photo by flickr user holy outlaw
In his 2012 budget, Mayor McGinn is proposing that $1.5 million be set aside for high capacity transit planning in the city. You can read more here about the corridors that will be studied if the funding is secured. The Mayor is asking you to perform the following steps if you support the project and want the city to perform the study (emphasis in the original):
If you want to help these projects become a reality:
1) Please attend the Tuesday, October 4th City Council budget hearing at City Hall and sign up to tell Council you support the $1.5 million for high capacity transit planning. Sign-in begins at 5pm, hearing begins at 5:30 pm.
2) Please email the City Council (addresses below) that you support the inclusion of $1.5 million for high capacity transit planning and that they should keep it in the budget.
3) If you have other lists or contacts or friends that support high capacity transit, please forward this information to them.
