All posts by Bruce Nourish

Unsurprisingly, regional and national transportation news has been dominated since Monday by the tragic Amtrak 501 derailment. Because many of our readers are following the news of that accident via traditional or social media, and every outlet is working with the same (small) set of facts, I elected not to try and summarize all the 501 coverage, but to focus on other things that happened this week. STB’s reporting and commentary will continue in other posts.

If, nonetheless, you have room in your brain for one more 501 story, make it this KNKX interview with All Aboard Washington’s Lloyd Flem, who knew two of the deceased, Zack Willhoite and Jim Hamre, through their transit advocacy. “I can say with clarity, on behalf of both men […] that we do not believe the future of transportation is an infinite amount of pavement so everybody can drive alone, all the time, everywhere.” Words to live by.

The roundup:

• NE 65th St plans move ahead with reduced sidewalks, lack of crossings.
• Airports are losing money ($) as ride-hailing services grow.
• Support bike lanes along the Roosevelt RapidRide.
• Rep. Macri wants rent control.
• Salt Lake City’s new transit master plan.
• There’s an incipient apartment shortage in Spokane.
• The physical scars of the old Mercer Mess are starting to fade.
• How high should SR 99 tolls ($) go?
• Here’s how Metro Transit decides whether your bus is on time ($). David Gutman’s doing great work on the Metro beat.
• Washington’s I-405 express tolls should rise past $10 ($) to keep traffic moving. Yep.
• Hikers raved about King County’s new trailhead shuttle, but now it needs more users ($).
• Five transit agency execs (including Rogoff) rank funding shortfalls, Positive Train Control challenges among chief concerns.
• Seattle Bike Blog has concerns with the 65th St redesign.
• Erica discusses anecdata in the AirBNB debate.
• Under new leadership, Capitol Hill Community Council aims to build on its unusually progressive legacy.
• Head of Washington State Ferries has plans for hybrid-electric ferries.
• Adding lanes doesn’t reduce congestion. So what is TxDOT doing?
• Ellensburg proves no town is too small for top-notch bikeways.
• A deep dive into a value-added real-estate portfolio.
• World’s steepest funicular rail line to open in Switzerland, I’m jealous.
• Living cheek by gill in modern cities is possible — but it isn’t easy.
• Philly makes moves to reopen Franklin Square ghost station.
• Vera Katz, former Portland mayor, dies at 84, Jarrett has thoughts.
• Elon Musk has feelings on transit.
• Luas Cross City service expects 10m extra passenger trips a year.
• State of U.S. rental market: Rich get more options, poor suffer affordability crisis.
• Could wealthy neighbors kill Seattle’s plan to build affordable housing in Magnolia (again)? The quoted comments of Magnolia residents are disgusting, and the effectiveness of their obstructionism is at the root of our housing crisis, but I would be more enthused for this housing project if it weren’t in one of the hardest places in Seattle to serve effectively with transit.
• Where a “home for everyone” collides with “not in my neighborhood.” Oregonian Editorial Board goes into bat for more housing.
• Decade since recession: Thriving cities leave others behind.
• Sound Transit okays bus-on-shoulder on I-5 in Lynnwood.
• These bikes were made for Seattle, in which Knute Berger — surprising me, at least — comes out as an enthusiastic utility cycling advocate.
• Seattle’s bike-share pilot program ends this month, but the bikes are staying.
• Erica: The real surprise in Durkan’s staffing announcement was who wasn’t mentioned.
• Times Op-Ed for HALA: Neighborhood coalition threatens to make Seattle less affordable ($). A Times reader responds, denouncing Ballard as a “town-house ghetto“.
• Shenzhen goes all in on electric buses.
• Capitol Hill Seattle interviews outgoing Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce leader Sierra Hansen. Notably, she discusses why the North Broadway streetcar extension lost the support of the business community. Alas, it was for a bad reason (loss of parking and loading zones) rather than any good reasons (e.g. the mixed-traffic alignment has unimpressive ridership numbers and suffers most of the same problems as our buses.)

This is an open thread.

Amtrak Cascades #501 south from Seattle derailed this morning, while crossing over I-5 in the vicinity of Mounts Road, west of Dupont. There are at least three casualties, many injuries, and some carriages are a total loss. Our thoughts are with survivors, and the families of everyone on board. No root cause has been established, although there are no grade crossings on this section of the line.

I-5 will likely be closed for hours, so avoid freeway travel in this area and expect major disruptions.

Seattle Times is actively covering this disaster.

Update 10:28: “Per the Pierce County Sheriff, if you had a loved one on Amtrak Cascades 501, there is a family reunification center now at the Dupont City Hall. Please go there, NOT to the scene. The Amtrak number to call if you have family members on the train is 1-800-523-9101.”

Update 2:02 PM: Statement from WSDOT

Update 12/19 9:47 AM: New York Times: “The National Transportation Safety Board said at a Monday night briefing that the train had been traveling more than twice the speed limit before it derailed, or at 80 miles per hour instead of the allowable 30 m.p.h.”

Also, a detailed summary from Sandy Johnston at the Itinerant Urbanist discussing PTC, Amtrak, and much more.

Update 12/19 11:02 AM: Zack Willhoite, Pierce Transit employee and frequent STB contributor (MrZ) and Jim Hamre of All Aboard Washington, died in the accident.  Our thoughts are with their families and the communities they helped to build.

• New York gives pedestrians a head start ($) at key intersections.
• New York City’s Comptroller describes a bus system in crisis ($). Classic NYC finger-pointing ensues. Civic and business leaders describe a subway system and transit agency in crisis ($). Read Ben Kabak’s take (and visit London) if you want to get really depressed.
• It fell to Albuquerque to open the first ITDP Gold BRT line in the US. Jarrett Walker discusses.
• More Jarrett, what it means for a transit agency to listen.
• TransLink pilots double-decker buses in Richmond.
• Chariot looks to roll out commuter van service in Q1.
• The city of Zhuzhou is testing an autonomous, rubber-tired tram.
• Envisioning an I-5 lid in the U-District.
• Olympia looks to forestall a missing-middle housing crisis by liberalizing small-lot development. Bravo to the city, and to Olympians for People-Oriented Places for being organized and having smart things to say.
• Vancouver already has a full-blown crisis, and they’re discussing some radical ideas to address it. (Interesting tangent: the Vancouver Special. Perhaps in twenty years, we’ll call the auto-court townhouse four-pack ($) the Seattle Special.)
• London’s Mayor reveals plans to ban the construction of new car parking spaces.
• Nearly three decades of fighting and still no agreement ($) on Seattle’s Burke-Gilman missing link.
• Doug at the Urbanist read the MHA rezone appeal filed by the inaptly-named “Seattle Coalition for Affordability, Livability, and Equity,” so you wouldn’t have to.
• Can private buses solve the Bay Area’s commute woes? They won’t, but they’re still a net positive to the transportation system.
• LA timidly proposes more walkable density in the area around five Expo Line stations. Local council member promptly denounces the plan, saying “his district ‘simply cannot support’ more density without improvements to streets and other public infrastructure.” Newsflash: you can never build enough infrastructure to satisfy the NIMBY concern trolls.
• There’s a hipster Best Western coming to Capitol Hill.
• Portland’s Southwest Corridor is lined with at-risk NOAHs.
• Minneapolis’s Southwest Corridor is lined with historic Great Northern retaining walls.
• TNT gives a slightly ambivalent welcome to the Point Defiance Bypass, but an unambivalent smack down to the outgoing passenger hut.
• Portland City Council endorses congestion charging for Portland-area freeways.
• Curbs are the riparian zones of our cities.
• Anchorage will test a Proterra electric bus this winter.

This is an open thread.

• Wenatchee’s Link Transit charging ($) ahead with electric buses.
• Wenatchee’s local governments shake the money ($) tree for a third bridge into the city, which would include a new transit center.
• Rounding out this Wenatchee transpo news extravaganza: Link Transit looking to raise taxes ($) for better service.
• Spokane approves plans for two mixed-use towers overlooking Spokane Falls.
• Despite investments in light rail, the percentage of jobs accessible by transit in Minneapolis has fallen ($).
• Minneapolis writer calls for ($) a renewed focus on a continuous, walkable, eclectic urban fabric. I’m a fan.
• Two new articles Arlington Transportation Partners: Kicking the Drive-alone Habit, and Business Buy-in.
• Jeff Wood interviews Benjamin De La Pena, SDOT’s Deputy Director for Policy, Planning, Mobility, and Right of Way, on his excellent podcast, Talking Headways, which you should subscribe to and support on Patreon.
• Despite talk of halting Seattle’s First Avenue streetcar, work moves ahead on the $177M ($) line.
• Truck driver crashes into self-driving bus on its first revenue trip in Las Vegas.
• Curbed writes up Seattle’s proposed MHA requirements.
• Transit is called out as part of Dow’s third term agenda.
• The Urbanist interviews AGH on what’s next for Seattle’s TBD.
• Another 150 six-figure ($) engineering jobs coming to Belltown.
• Seattle will tax short-term rentals. Additional regs to follow.
• Self-driving trucks may be closer than they appear ($). I, for one, welcome our new lorry overlords.
• Bellevue plans to pilot a game-changing downtown bike lane, as soon as May.
• While ST builds suburban garages at over $120k per space, Plymouth is building affordable housing on First Hill for under $300k per unit.
• The Urbanist has some takes on the election.
• “If a building has unused parking stalls, we shouldn’t block them from renting those spaces out to someone who needs a place to keep their vehicle.” It’s amazing how long some obvious ideas have been illegal.
• 6 homes for sale along Metro route 60.
• “We still have policies that represent a Leave it to Beaver era and we need to catch up.” ?.
• Chicago transit advocates call for city action to reverse bus ridership declines.
• The Westlake multi-use path is busy and multi-use ($); everyone should pay attention and be courteous.
• Spokane council member floats plan to incentivize higher and better use of downtown surface parking lots.

This is an open thread.

• Denver RTD cuts weekend frequency on two suburban lines to 30 minutes. Examples like this should, but probably won’t, preclude the argument that rail services are uniquely immune to cuts, in the face of low ridership and fiscal constraints.
• car2go replaces ($) its Smart Cars with Benz sedans. They’ll be harder to park on Capitol Hill, but you’ll look like a baller when you step out.
• Times’s David Gutman discusses ($) transpo issues in the 45th race. It’s pretty well reported, unlike the Joe O’Sullivan hack job from last week.
• Brooklyn’s Prospect Park goes car-free forever in the new year.
• The Urbanist surveys some of the best architecture Seattle has to offer.
• Skanska plans apartment tower on Fourth Avenue in Belltown. This project will “have a particular focus on the retail and ground-floor experience in this location;” I hope their architects look at the retail layout in Via6 down the street.
• LA Times ed board likes Metro’s proposed mini-transit service.
• North Broadway extension, and the highly desirable bike infrastructure that would have come with it, appear to be dead.
• Submit comments in favor of ADUs.
• If you don’t like paying ST’s car tabs you can go buy ($) yourself a three-ton truck.
• Incoming Floridians ($).
• Schedule tweaks for the Bremerton fast ferry. Two mid-day runs begin Nov. 13th.
• San Antonio is a dangerous place to be a pedestrian.
• BC Transit hiring.
• A single, coordinated access system helped house ($) many of Houston’s chronically homeless.
• SeaTac airport raises their TNC charge by $1 ($) per trip. Maybe this will let them design a passenger pickup area that’s not a total s***show.
• Times op-ed proposes ($) a cross-sound car tunnel. That’s obviously nuts, but the PPP model of funding infrastructure seems to work very well in Europe and Scandinavia, and I would love to know why it never seems to happen in the US.
• Five ways to tackle Melbourne’s worsening peak-hour traffic.
• When the Mayor also drives for Uber.
• The TNT doesn’t get in to great detail, but both candidates in the Tacoma mayoral race seem to want better transit, while exhibiting substantive differences in how to accomplish that.

This is an open thread.

The MV Suquamish, photo by SounderBruce

• 23rd Ave corridor Vision Zero work to continue in 2018.
• SeaSub goes in to bat for the CCC. Next City summarizes the debate.
• Mercer Island and Sound Transit finalize settlement agreement ($). Paraphrasing slightly, the settlement “does not address access to I-90 for single occupant vehicles at the Island Crest Way westbound on-ramp […] but does include funds for key community-identified priorities, including traffic and safety enhancements, last mile solutions, parking and bus-rail integration.”
• A couple of reactions to the Madrona Ventures autonomous vehicle hype.
• Auburn eyes old lumber store site for Sound Transit’s second parking monstrosity.
• New Mexico commuter rail ridership is in a long-term slump.
• With faster buses, de Blasio promises to ease life in a ‘tough city’.
• NYT Style section pens an obit ($) for some of the worst ’60s era urban freeways.
• How to rezone Seattle’s single-family neighborhoods. Yes, please.
• Two state senate republicans drop a hit piece ($) on Sound Transit.
• WSF commissions ($) a new Olympic-class ferry, the Suquamish.
• Maybe Bellingham’s ex-industrial waterfront will finally, actually get redeveloped.
• The Times asked readers where they wanted more all-way walks and got an earful ($). The Barnes Dance does need to be deployed pretty selectively.
• Anchorage’s revised bus system went live on Monday. Jarrett discusses the process.
• Contributors to the #MeToo movement describe an epidemic ($) of sexual harassment and assault on transit.
• One more ride around the block on the ol’ Monorail taxing authority.
• Spokane’s new bus bulbs on Sprague are making buses faster and more reliable.
• Seattle likely to study downtown congestion charging ($).
• Seattle one of 12 cities to promise zero-emission streets by 2030, and buy only zero-emission buses after 2025.
• London levies ($) an extra congestion charge for old, smoggy diesel cars.
• American commuters fail miserably as last-mile mobility. While the author is not wrong, the original sin here is post-war zoning and the built environment it has given us; last mile problems are mostly a symptom.
• SDoT seeks input on Key Arena / SLU area mobility plan.
• Mayor of North Vancouver wants train line to downtown Vancouver, around Burrard Inlet.
• Sydney will be divided into three Sydneys, for shorter commutes.
• Pierce County hiring an Executive Director of Planning and Community Development.

This is an open thread.

https://flic.kr/p/zNDgM

• Portland for Everyone has an in-depth piece on an “anti-McMansion compromise” rezoning currently before their city council. It’s thoughtful and well written, and it makes me sad that our political leaders ran headlong away from a much more timid duplex proposal, at the first sign of NIMBY homeowner backlash.
• Portland sets priorities for how to spend $258 million affordable housing bond.
• Architects Newspaper discusses the history and context of proposed improvements to Freeway Park.
• Concerns over 14-story development project in the International District erupt at community meeting.
• PSRC is updating their regional growth center strategy and the Urbanist goes deep.
• Yes, SDOT is still working on 35th Ave SW.
• Auburn deciding where they should ask ST to build their next parking monstrosity.
• Cubed Seattle compares what you can get for $1,300 in this town. I like the LQA studio.
• San Diego’s regional transit agency gets vote-weighting reform that should shift the balance of power to urban areas.
• The Times wants to know ($) where you’d put more all-way walk intersections.
• Spokane Valley is no Seattle, but it’s maturing away from its surburban roots. Maybe they’ll stop reelecting Matt Shea? We can only hope.
• Spokane considering a historic-preservation ordinance; it is to be hoped it won’t take away from housing capacity.
• Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment is running an interesting survey on disaster resilience; transit and transportation are explicitly things you can flag as a concern.
• Nashville contemplating a downtown tunnel for their light rail line.
• Drivers exhibit racial bias in obeying marked crosswalks, and rampantly ignore unmarked crosswalks.
• Some guy in a pickup truck almost ran over STB contributor David Seater.
• Meanwhile, autonomous cars are getting hit by human drivers because they actually obey traffic rules and drive defensively.
• The next mayor will need to be a traffic cop. Classic Doug MacDonald: articulate, exasperated, and generally right.
• The Atlantic asks three Seattle folks how to get more people to ride transit.
• SDOT pushes back on the #GivePedsTheGreen campaign with the a pair of disheartening, condescending blog posts that conflate and confuse the campaign’s primary demand.
• Citylab has a pair of great pieces: Obesity Thrives in the Suburbs and How Transit Use Could Rise in Rural America.
• Michael Goldman at the Urbanist has a four point plan for making Seattle housing affordable. I’d rate the ideas, respectively, as: great; great; meh; and right in principle, but not yet politically plausible.
• WSDOT considers closing a dangerous I-90 on-ramp in Spokane. Good job, WSDOT.
• The Spokane Regional Transportation Council is performing an update to their Horizon 2040 plan, and taking public comments. Reading the current draft, it appears to be the usual schizophrenic mix: pages of prose extolling the importance of demand management, cost-effective multi-modal investments, transit, biking and walking; coupled with a long list of planned highway and arterial capacity projects which will accomplish exactly the opposite of what the Council claims to want.
• Road runoff kills Coho as they return to spawn in their natal creeks; die-off rates are proportional to traffic volume, “tire dust” is one possible culprit.
• The North Broadway streetcar extension seems close to dead.
• Seattle Weekly tries to tease out the underlying difference between Grant and Mosqueda on housing policy.
• “Cities like San Francisco and Seattle … should pay more attention to who can afford to work in their schools.”
• Ex-Metro GM Desmond is leading TransLink onwards and upwards.
• Downtown Tacoma is blowin’ up.
• Light-rail over I-90 bridge wins Popular Science award.

This is an open thread.

• Seattle tops nation in new apartments — and they’re expensive ($) and full of millennials.
• NY MTA refurbishes subway cars with fewer seats, more preschool wallpaper; at least one of those seems like an improvement.
• Crown Hill pedestrian overpass to stay, but people on wheels will still get a crosswalk.
• Alon Levy tells DC and WMATA how they can make their buses better.
• C-TRAN and WSDOT experimenting with shoulder-running on SR 14 I-205.
• There was a brief window where car-free households grew as a fraction of the population, but it’s over now.
• Probably not a coincidence, we’re also in the middle of the worst spike in traffic deaths since the ’60s.
• The price of parking on Capitol Hill is being further adjusted to align with demand.
• Another terrifying report on the seismic risks of Seattle’s Unreinforced Masonry Buildings.
• Crossroads, the most interesting part of Bellevue.
• A disused gas station in the U-District will soon be a 24-story, 229 unit tower.
• Federal judge says driver’s union can advertise on Spokane buses.
• LA Metro is writing up an RFP for a microtransit service: smaller than 40′ buses, bigger than a car, intended for lower-density areas.
• Denver’s Colfax Ave slated for decent-looking BRT. It’s about time RTD built an urban line that’s not in a freeway trench.
• Downtown Spokane’s abandoned Ridpath Hotel is being renovated into mostly-affordable apartments.
• Tacoma getting a major new mixed-use development across from the Seven Seas taproom.
• HeraldNet sums up the Senate Republican’s nothing burger: Hearings fail to find Sound Transit duped lawmakers, voters.
• I’m in awe of both the analytical chops and amount of free time these Boston transit nerds have demonstrated.

This is an open thread.

A couple of months ago, I blurbed a survey for King County Metro’s Community Connections project, which was seeking input from people who work in Seattle’s SODO district, a mostly-industrial and commercial area immediately south of downtown. I noticed that the SODO Connections project seemed very focused on alternative service — i.e. not fixed route bus service — and I had some questions about that. Here are my questions and the answers I was given; I have some comments at the end.

Seattle Transit Blog: One of the approaches mentioned on the page — flexible-route service — is typically used in low-density suburban or rural environments, which don’t look much like SODO. The other — on-demand ridesharing — seems already to be covered by a thriving private market.

Scott Gutierrez, King County Metro: These are just some of the options Metro has developed as part of the Community Connections program. Our main program website has information on the kinds of services we’ve developed so far as well as current pilot locations.

We’re still early in our outreach process for the SODO project, so we have not yet determined what specific services we will pilot there. Based on the results of our outreach, we might propose something similar to services we developed in other communities, or we might come up with a transportation pilot that is completely new to Metro.

STB: What’s the niche Metro is trying to fill with these alternative service methods?

Metro: Community Connections focuses on partnering with communities to meet unique transportation needs that fixed-route transit isn’t able to serve. When the City of Seattle applied for this Community Connections project in SODO, they described gaps in the neighborhood as follows:

• SODO is a significant employment center, including the highest concentration of manufacturing and industrial jobs in the city. The drive alone rate for employees in SODO (66%) is far higher than the rate in Downtown which lies immediately to the north.
• Employees who travel to the target area have schedules that do not correspond with when transit service is running/frequent (e.g. during the weekend, or early in the morning/late and night).
• A lack of east-west mobility options exists in the neighborhood.
• A difficult pedestrian environment combined with diffuse destinations makes accessing the existing transit service difficult

Before we determine what specific niche we can best serve, we need to better understand these transportation gaps and barriers that exist for workers in SODO. The information above, and feedback from a stakeholder group, informed the survey we are asking people to take. Results of this survey will help our stakeholder group to articulate a set of transportation needs for our Community Connections pilot to address. Those articulated needs in turn will inform our solution design.

More interview and commentary after the jump

Continue reading “SODO Connections Project Focuses on Alternative Service”