All posts by Ben Schiendelman

Bertha is broken. Seals around the machine’s main bearing are damaged, meaning muck is inside the bearing, causing heat and damage. At minimum, it will take several months to repair the seals, and possibly replace the bearing. Governor Inslee has even been asked whether it’s “time to pull the plug”. I propose a thought experiment – if we were to cut our losses and stop now, carefully avoiding the sunk cost fallacy, what could the money left over do to meet our mobility needs in the corridor?

First, let’s consider the high risk of failure. There’s been no indication so far as to the cause of the seal damage, or whether it might happen again. This matches WSDOT’s unwillingness to discuss risk or plan adequate contingency, as we’ve seen throughout the project.

An anonymous source on the project has told us that despite comments by WSDOT, the repair will not be possible from behind the machine, only from the surface. If true, and without a clear plan for preventing the problem again, this raises a serious question – what happens if this happens again under a building, and at greater depth?

Let’s say that to avoid this eventuality, we stopped now. The state has spent about $2 billion of their $2.8 billion limit, assuming no overruns (cough). The Port of Seattle funding, separately, is intended for viaduct teardown and surface street construction. So what would that $800 million, assuming we could spend it on anything, get us?

1. Reconnecting the street grid in South Lake Union. Part of the reason people have to use the viaduct in the first place is that Denny and Mercer are such a mess. Allowing that traffic to load balance across several more streets would make the entire grid more performant, at about 20,000 daily inbound/outbound trips to the 99 corridor. That’s $50 million.
2. The Center City Connector. Increasing transit ridership downtown reduces demand on north-south streets, adding 30,000 daily trips. That’s ~$110 million, but is eligible for $30 million in federal funds.
3. RapidRide bus priority projects. The Transit Master Plan identifies a lot of small capital improvements to give RapidRide priority, and there’s a good Metro analysis of what could improve RR. Altogether, the C and D lines could pick up 15,000 new riders for only about $10 million, $5 million of which could be federal.

Continue reading “What Could $800 Million Do?”

With University Link coming online in about two years, Sound Transit’s fare enforcement needs are about to increase considerably. Sound Transit has asked the legislature for a simple bill to save them (and you) money enforcing fares, and it could use our support.

Today, law enforcement has access to a system that allows them to issue citations on the spot. Sound Transit fare enforcement officers (FEOs) can’t do that.

Right now, when an FEO on Link finds someone who hasn’t paid, they first photograph the person’s ID. At the end of a shift, each FEO has to spend almost three hours doing the paperwork to send all the data they collected to a district court. Finally, the court processes them and attempts service on the people identified. This is a mess – it wastes hours every day, and the rate of returned service is very high.

Sound Transit wants to streamline this process. If FEOs have the tools to issue citations at the time of enforcement and avoid the court process, the agency thinks it won’t have to hire any more FEOs for University Link.

Sound Transit first requested permission from the state patrol to use the same system as law enforcement, but were told that fare enforcement would have to *be* law enforcement to use it.

Eventually, the district court requested a simple bill to save both governments money and create a standard citation for Sound Transit fare enforcement to issue in the field. The House bill (HB 2111) passed with bipartisan support, as it not only helps Sound Transit but also increases farebox recovery and generally makes government a little more efficient. Now the Senate companion, SB 5961, is stalled in Transportation, where an apparent failure of two district courts to communicate with each other led to incorrect testimony in opposition. Seriously.

This is a worthwhile way to save us all a little money. What we’re asking is that you call your Senator and say “please ask your friends on Senate Transportation to move SB 5961 ASAP.” Because this is embarrassing.

On California High Speed Rail Blog, Robert Cruickshank (who also writes guest posts here) writes about a California ballot initiative to replace HSR with… hyperloop.

In August, I made the prediction that the hyperloop proposal, which appeared at a pivotal moment in CA’s HSR project, would be in effect attack on HSR: “The hyperloop idea will peel off some of CAHSR’s support, putting HSR at more risk…”

Generally, publicly sourced alternatives to any infrastructure project are a strategy to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt (or FUD). We see this whenever light rail comes to the ballot – a group of otherwise anti-transit activists will propose bus rapid transit that we don’t seem to hear about either before or after the rail campaign.

My hope is that this pattern helps transit supporters identify this behavior when it happens and helps us prevent this type of attack on transit from getting traction in the future.

This morning, KUOW has a piece on Broadway construction, but with bad data and huge omissions, it reads like a hit piece against transit. The opening sets the tone:

For most of us, years of light rail construction on Broadway has been a traffic headache.

There’s nothing provided to support this assertion but the basic point that there are now fewer lanes where there were previously more. In most rechannelizations, traffic flow is improved. The article goes on to imply that there’s some question about whether the Capitol Hill station will be a “people magnet”:

Once finished, the idea is for the light rail station to be a people magnet for businesses along Broadway.

This is ridiculous on its face; the station will have several thousand daily users, who will walk by the surrounding businesses on their way to the station. Of course, it’s in question whether those thousands of people will drive business, but it’s assumed that a handful of parking places are more valuable:

But the waves of construction – the station, a streetcar and a bike lane – will have disrupted parking on the street for about three years.

Yes, because a few parking places is worth more than a streetcar, a bike lane, and a subway. Combined. The rest of the article is a list of complaints from businesses, including one that could have used some fact-checking:

“No need to drive when the station is open, but it’s still three years from now? I have to find out the way to survive that long.”

First, University Link opens in two years, not three. Second, the streetcar, which will bring thousands of people per day, opens in a matter of months. Not mentioning either of these things is lazy reporting. KUOW can, and usually does, do better.

Edit: I noted U-Link would open in two years, but construction on Broadway for U-Link will probably be done in 12-18 months, as a lot of the last year is systems testing. The title of the KUOW piece, claiming “three more years” of construction, is completely false.

Last week, when Sound Transit and SDOT presented the options for Downtown to Ballard, only one option truly fits into a vision of a completely connected city; a city where transit is just as good as owning a car, if not better; a sustainable, resilient, forward-thinking city. That option is D – the subway option. Today is the last day to get your comments in supporting it.

It serves the most people, both today and tomorrow.

When Seattle adopted its urban village strategy, it committed to growing in urban centers and urban villages. Because Fremont and Ballard are both hub urban villages rather than just residential urban villages, they’re expected to grow faster than the rest of the city’s urban villages already. The subway option is the only option that serves every urban village between downtown and Ballard – and the only grade separated option that serves both the Ballard and Fremont hubs.

Rewarding neighborhoods that have accepted growth in urban villages also tells people across the city that they, too, have a path to getting transit. Providing this positive feedback will help engage people in planning for growth so that their neighborhood comes next!

Making the higher investment in a core line today also means that when we add on to both ends, we make transit competitive for many more trips. Whatever route the line takes northward, the more urban village nodes it connects them to, the more people will choose to use it. The fact that it does so at such high speed also means even the stations built farther away will have more impact. Remember, this isn’t just about Ballard – it’s about going a lot farther.

It’s exciting and commands attention – what we’ll need to win.

Remember 2011’s Proposition 1? It failed – not because it wasn’t full of good stuff, not because of any cost or benefit, but because it had no major project to make people excited. What people are voting for has a far greater impact on their vote than how much it costs.

This doesn’t just matter for the vote itself – when more people see themselves using a system, more demand funding for it in Olympia, more people volunteer for the campaign, and more people get engaged to fight for the next extension. And that gives us another reason the subway option is by far the best choice:

It puts transit on the offensive in Olympia.

Our region has twice voted decisively to spend many billions of local dollars on transit, and we asked for nothing from the state transportation budget. Municipalities don’t step up like that to fund highway projects, they ask the state to do it for them. Rather than fund Sound Transit 3 by ourselves, we should demand a state match for transit projects, just like most states provide to their transit systems – and with the Metro hostage well on its way to being rescued, we may soon have the leverage to win state funding.

Every transit agency in the state benefits from this frame – Vancouver needs light rail, even Spokane has considered a streetcar, and we desperately need a real statewide passenger rail network as an alternative to continued highway expansion. As Greyhound reduces services, intercity connections outside the Amtrak Cascades corridor are becoming an ever-higher priority as well, and local bus networks are all underfunded.

It supports West Seattle, and the rest of the city and region.

Planning from the end of this line to West Seattle and Burien is currently under way, along with many other corridors (see page 11), and we’ll likely see options for those corridors come out in the next few months. Picking the subway option for Ballard now will result in the highest ridership for any continuation of the line to West Seattle, making rail to West Seattle more competitive and likely to be funded in ST3.

Overall, the more transit we have planned and prepared to fund in Puget Sound, the stronger our ask in Olympia, and the higher the compromise position will be for the authority and funding we need. WSDOT does this well – they put projects on the map years ahead of time, building support and a sense of inevitability that helps them get funded. Sound Transit will only benefit from doing the same, so let’s help them. Please support the subway option – option D – in Sound Transit’s online tool.

We’ve written recently about Sound Transit’s update to their Long Range Plan (LRP). This list of potential projects is what Sound Transit draws from when developing future ballot measures. It can contain projects that range from completely designed and shovel ready to opportunities for study.

Sound Transit has framed their current outreach as serving two needs – updating the LRP, and prioritizing projects for Sound Transit 3. These are different goals. The largest projects likely to be in ST3 are already in the LRP – completing Link’s first spine, potentially expanding Sounder and Tacoma Link make up the bulk of an ST2-sized measure.

Most of the comments I’ve seen people make focus on influencing those projects that are already in the LRP. That’s a solid goal, but it leaves a hole in our advocacy. Just as Sound Transit 2 contained the corridor studies now under way toward Sound Transit 3, Sound Transit 3 will need to contain study work for potential projects in Sound Transit 4 – and Sound Transit 3 projects will need to be designed to accommodate those potential expansions.

Given the advocacy I know has already taken place and the corridors that already exist in the LRP, there are two things I think we need to be sure to add to the LRP for study:

First, a third north-south corridor through Seattle. However we serve downtown to Ballard and West Seattle, a huge swath of the city will still be between the two lines. A new Ballard line won’t serve the Greenwood or 99 corridors, but we’re seeing growth in both, and that will only continue. A West Seattle line can’t serve California, 35th, and Delridge at the same time, much less Georgetown and South Park.

The key here is that any new tunnel in downtown Seattle (as is being considered as part of the Downtown-West Seattle study already) should be designed to carry two lines, not just one, without having to shut down for future reconstruction.

Second, a Sand Point alternative to connect Kirkland to our regional system. Right now, shortsightedly, the Ballard-UW-Kirkland planning focuses exclusively on using SR-520. I wrote about this more than three years ago, and from that post, I’m resurrecting the image above, which shows alternatives considered by a study designed to push rail compatibility on 520.

Using 520 to get from UW to Kirkland would be some 50% longer than Sand Point, costing more and dramatically increasing travel time. Plus, with Children’s Hospital expanding, a Sand Point alternative wouldn’t just serve thousands more people, it would serve tens of thousands more jobs.

Considering the massive political hurdles to building through UW campus again, retrofitting 520 and giving Olympia another hostage, and trying to build new infrastructure in Montlake and Medina, it might even be cheaper to build a new bridge/tunnel/whatever than to build all that extra mileage. We should be studying it, not precluding it before we balance the options.

On Thursday, the Senate Transportation Committee held a ‘work session’ in order to receive public comments on their proposed transportation package. I took the trip down, along with several other STB readers. So first, thanks very much to Jon, Alex, Allison, and Mark for joining me!

There isn’t much actual news. Elected officials from all over the state came on Thursday to ask for highway expansion, and while some of them asked for transit authority, I didn’t hear any of them ask the Senate to start funding transit directly, nor did I hear any testimony at all for passenger rail. There were individuals and organizations saying the package was a non-starter, but they were far too few.

There’s no way to know right now what’s going to happen, but with King County preparing to go to ballot with a Vehicle License Fee or sales tax package to save Metro, they’re no longer reliant on the legislature passing a package. If the package does pass the Senate, it’ll do so with enough Republican support that it may pass the House, so my hope is that the package is killed before it leaves the Senate.

For most people, context completely disappears when an issue drags on this long, so this also seems like a good time for a recap:

Continue reading “Possibilities in Olympia”

Last night, Sound Transit had the first of six open houses asking residents of the district: What do you want to see from Sound Transit next?

Sound Transit staff and Mayor McGinn both spoke about how this process works, and the mayor pointed out that getting a Sound Transit expansion package will also require legislative work – advocacy from us in Olympia. I wish there had been more people – between ST staff and the mayor, the presentation was the most complete explanation of how Sound Transit operates that I’ve heard yet.

The rest of the event was time for Sound Transit and consultant staff to talk to attendees about what they wanted, collect comments, and generally answer questions, much like most public meetings. They did some cool stuff, taking video of people answering questions, and working on a time-lapse of a big map on which attendees can put colored dots where they want transit.

There were a lot of good meeting materials – an overview from top to bottom of why Sound Transit exists, what it does, and how it plans. I haven’t found PDFs of the boards Sound Transit had up, but they have a very clear web page about the process.

Turnout last night was low. I think it’s difficult for people – even transit advocates – to really understand the steps an agency has to go through before funding and building a project, and so going to a “long range plan open house” doesn’t seem that exciting to many. The people who did show up were a cross-section of the most experienced and involved advocates in Seattle, there just weren’t many new faces. I hope to see that improve at the other events!

I think we’ve written about Sound Transit’s overall process before, but I’ve heard some specific misconceptions recently, so rather than a big explanation of how we get to ST3 and ST4, I just want to make a few points:

Continue reading “Sound Transit Long Range Plan Open House”

This weekend, I received leaked details of a massive, $12 billion highway package from an anonymous source in the legislature. Even worse than the last package we saw, it reduces bike/ped funding further, and adds new highway projects, including a massive JBLM interchange that likely includes widening I-5, and dozens of other highway expansions. This package includes funding for the west end of 520 – partly a positive, but it completely funds the project, making tolling I-90 unnecessary. Avoiding tolling on highways is a poor choice for both congestion and sprawl.

Tomorrow, the legislature will begin debating this new package (unofficially of course, as ‘debate’ doesn’t start until a session does, but it does start tomorrow), and they’ll almost definitely soon enter a fourth special session to consider it.

To protect my source, I can’t post the documents, but here’s a screenshot of much of the highway expansion component (click to expand). This package would cause significant increases in CO2, congestion, and sprawl, and offer a bare minimum of transit options. In the long run, driving sprawl like this also dramatically increases the cost to provide transit options.

While VLF or sales tax at the county level, or a property tax at the city level, aren’t ideal ways to preserve Metro service, they’re better than megahighway projects across the state. If the legislature were funding Sound Transit 3 along with this, it might be a different story, but they are not. This is much, much worse than the Roads and Transit package local voters soundly trounced in 2007. It’s our job to urge our legislators to vote against it.

This is an open thread!