Bruce Nourish grew up in rural England and suburban Phoenix, before discovering his love for cities and mass transit during two weekend visits to Portland and Seattle. His degree is in Physics, and he works as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google. Bruce's posts focus on publishing and visualizing King County Metro's data in order to discuss and advocate restructures of Seattle's bus network to be more efficient, cost-effective and reliable. He joined the blog in Summer 2011.
Commute: Bike or bus from Belltown to Fremont. Key Routes: 2, 7, 10, 13, 15, 16, 49, 70, Link.
Metro continues to take actions to expand ORCA use throughout the system and reduce cash payments. [This includes…] working with our regional transit partners to implement a regional ORCA day-pass demonstration beginning in April.
A multi-agency ORCA-based day-pass is probably the most requested fare product in the Puget Sound region, and for good reason. Today, interagency transfers are free with ORCA but (mostly) not with cash fare. An ORCA-based day-pass, if priced right, holds out the concurrent possibilities of improved comprehensibility for visitors, and good value for residents who plan to make several trips in a day. For people like me, who want buses to not suck, it’s another weapon in the war against time-consuming on-board cash payment, and easily-abused paper transfers.
The devil, however, is in the details, which Metro staff supplied to us last week.
As you saw, the ORCA agency partners are planning a six-month pilot/demo of a regional day pass later this year, hopefully beginning sometime this spring.
The day pass demonstration will target visitors using hotels and convention centers. But, because the regional day pass will be available at all our current sales outlets, anyone could load the product on their card. At the conclusion of the demo, the ORCA partners will assess how well the card was received and determine the future of the program depending on what we learn.
Q: What agencies will or could be included?
A: All ORCA agencies except WSF
Q: How much will it cost?
A: $9 sales price, $4 per trip value. Riders would use E-purse to supplement higher fares based on how much they plan to travel.
Q: What modes and fare zones will it cover?
A: Good for any trip up to the $4 per trip value.
Q: Is it a daily cap or a fare product you have to buy?
A: It is a pass product loaded on the card. Once tapped it is valid for that service day. Service days is 3 a.m. – 2:59 a.m.
Q: Will it be issued on a disposable ORCA or just added to the existing $5 ORCA?
A: Existing card. We do not have disposable card stock in the system
Tonight, from 4:30 to 7 PM at the Miller Park Community Center, SDOT is hosting an open house on the 23rd Ave corridor, a Complete Streets project that will remake 23rd Ave to improve mobility and safety for all road users. The project’s current primary elements include, in addition to repaving, a road diet (four lanes to three, except at major intersections), transit priority (bulbs/islands and signals), repaired and widened sidewalks, an adjacent neighborhood greenway, and some design work towards future trolleybus overhead.
23rd is the primary arterial for north-south travel in eastern Seattle, between Mount Baker Station and the future University of Washington Station. With no major transit investment slated for this corridor, the new 23rd Ave design’s success in accommodating buses will likely define north-south mobility in this part of the city for the foreseeable future; getting it right is essential. If this is a part of the city you care about, you should be there tonight to make your voice heard.
This afternoon, King County Executive Dow Constantine, backed by a majority of of the King County Council, formally proposed an ordinance which would ask King County voters for a 0.1% increase in sales tax, and a $60 annual vehicle license fee. The tax increase would be accompanied by a new non-cash low-income fare of $1.50 (for people with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty level), and a 25 cent increase in the adult fare.
The $130 million total expected revenue is broken down 60/40 between Metro and County Roads, effectively giving Metro $80 million per year* — just over the $75 million per year the agency has previously stated it will need to avoid the “bloodbath” 17% cut scenario. The tax would last up to ten years, unless renewed by voters; the package is expected to go before voters at the April 22nd election.
* Although by my calculations, 60% of $130 million is $78 million, which is a small but significant difference.
Stadler 2/6 DMU in Austin. Flikr user Paul Kimo McGregor.
A couple of months ago, Frank wrote a blurb about the Obama administration’s commitment to legalize European passenger train designs, which today are effectively prohibited by Federal Railroad Aministration regulations, by 2015. He chose an illustrating photograph which represents, I’m sure, exactly the kind of thing most Americans think when they hear “European train”, namely a picture of Spain’s AVE high-speed train between Barcelona and Madrid.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that photograph, or that thought: Europe’s high-speed rail services (AVE, TGV, Eurostar, etc.) are indeed wonderful! The FRA modifying its rules to legalize European train designs in the US could make American high-speed services faster, much cheaper to build, and more environmentally friendly, because American trains will no longer have to be built to a completely unique crashworthiness standard, girded with battleship-like quantities of steel. That’s a wonderful and long-overdue advance in itself, but I’m going to argue that cheaper high-speed trains are not the most exciting technology this rule change could unlock.
Europe’s high-speed trains are the icing on a tall cake of public transport, which begins, at a local level, with generally-excellent local bus service, rapid transit in medium to large cities, and extensive high-capacity subway and Metro systems in the biggest cities. At a larger scale, cities and large towns are connected by regional passenger rail lines that run all day and late into the evening, with coach services extending to smaller towns. Most of those regional lines will never carry enough people to justify the massive expense of high-speed rail, but they’re well used, and taken together, carry far more trips than the high speed lines.
The success of the high-speed lines could not happen without the connectivity provided by regional and local services, not to mention the higher-density, less-car-focused land uses they have facilitated for more than a century. These regional services make extensive use of a technology that, thanks to the FRA’s over-zealous regulation, had hitherto occupied only a niche role in American passenger railroading: the Diesel Multiple Unit train.
DMUs are diesel-powered versions of their cousins, Electric Multiple Units, of which American light rail vehicles are an example. Each carriage has its own propulsion system, and trains can be made up of as many or as few as are needed to meet demand. DMUs are typically slightly larger than a light rail car, and seat 100-200 people; the photo above is an example European DMU, a Stadler 2/6, on Austin’s Capital Metrorail Red Line. That design was previously only usable on track not shared with freight trains or other traditionally-constructed mainline passenger trains, but after 2015, it will be legal to operate it on shared track. This is a very big deal, because much of the existing urban and suburban rail trackage in the US has at least some freight or mainline traffic.
This rule change makes passenger rail financially viable and environmentally justifiable in markets where it would never be possible to fill up a full-size locomotive-hauled train; it allows trains to scale down. A local example of a market DMUs could serve post-2015 would be Sounder North, a commuter rail service that has struggled with low ridership, currently attracting (pp. 19 & 20) less than 125 riders per trip in the mornings, and 150 per trip in the evenings Sound Transit currently runs the shortest trains allowable under federal rules, a locomotive and two bi-level carriages, providing just under 300 seats, half of which go empty. A pair of Stadler 2/6s, with about 100 seats each, or a Stadler 2/8, a slightly larger DMU which seats about 170, could comfortably carry that load.
To get a sense of the economic and environmental cost of America’s overbuilt trains, let’s look at a simple number, the weight of the trains, taking Sounder North as an example. To a first order approximation, the environmental and economic cost of building and operating a vehicle (of a certain type of fuel) is proportional to the amount of metal that goes into it. A three-car Sounder North train weighs about 240 metric tons (50 t carriages, 120 t locomotive), while the Stadler 2/8 weighs 79 metric tons. So, roughly speaking, we could comfortably move Sounder North’s passenger load with a third of the fuel and materials we use today. This would do much to bring down Sounder North’s painfully high cost per boarding; to boot, a DMU train would almost certainly accelerate faster, ride more smoothly, and be quieter to the neighbors. DMUs on this line could be a huge win.
I should be clear that I’m not advocating that we build a nationwide passenger rail network of the kind found in Europe. In much of the interior of the country, the population is far too sparse to pull in significant intercity transit ridership, population centers are two far apart to allow trains to easily compete with flying, and half a century of freeway building has created a network much more direct than the railroads of the 1900s. What I am arguing is that in those places where regional density exists, DMUs could allow services to exist that otherwise wouldn’t, and that is potentially revolutionary. Later this month, I’ll have a detailed post on how we could apply this idea locally, but I’m sure readers will chime in with their ideas of where DMUs could be useful.
A few weeks ago, I attended SDOT’s open house on the proposed Westlake Cycletrack. While most of the public feedback has focused on safety and possible parking loss, transit is also part of the picture, and one of my items of feedback for SDOT was that the project should maintain or improve the speed and reliability of transit service, as Westlake is a major thoroughfare for bus riders to Fremont, Ballard and South Lake Union. I think there is an opportunity to combine improved bike connectivity at the south end of the proposed cycletrack with improved southbound bus service.
Riders at the south end of the off-street portion of the Westlake cycletrack (which will end roughly at Aloha) will need a safe, comfortable, and direct way to connect to bike lanes on 9th Ave, Valley St, and (once Mercer West is complete) a cycletrack to Seattle Center on Mercer St. Currently, there are no bicycle facilities on the street that could provide such a connection. Meanwhile, southbound buses on Westlake in the PM peak are regularly stuck in a southbound traffic jam on the same part of Westlake, caused by all the cars that want to turn onto Mercer to access I-5.
My idea is shown on the map to the right. The section of 9th Ave from where it splits from Westlake, down to Mercer, is wider than the rest of Westlake or 9th. With the removal of one lane of parking, the conversion of another lane of parking to a peak-period bus lane, and a bus-only signal at 9th & Valley, it would be possible to put in a southbound queue jump for buses on the west side of 9th, and a two-way, separated cycletrack on the east side of 9th.
While the queue jump would not completely eliminate transit delays in the PM peak, as traffic can back up to Aloha, it would probably allow each bus to spend one less signal cycle getting though Mercer — a significant time saving. Similarly, the cycletrack would not completely solve all the bike connectivity issues in this area, as there would be an awkward transition to the 9th Ave bike lanes, which, to fix, would probably require a complete rethinking of 9th Ave.
The loss of the current right-turn pocket at 9th & Valley would be mitigated with signs further north on Westlake directing eastbound traffic on Roy St (likely headed to northbound Dexter or Aurora) to use 8th Ave, which is uncongested, and provides good access to Roy St.
This section of Westlake/9th has needed improved bus and bike facilities for years, but construction on the Mercer East project meant the street space in this area was needed for temporary reroutes. Now that Mercer East is over, that road space should be put towards longer-term more optimal uses — transit and biking. The Westlake Cycletrack project provides a great opportunity to do so.
Zach’s summary and analysis of the Tier 2 alternatives arising from Sound Transit and Seattle’s Ballard HCT study is excellent, and if you’ve not read it yet, you should do so. There are some good ideas and some less-good ideas among the options, and I’m sure by now, our regulars will have thoroughly digested them, but in this post I’d like to point out one option that I was hoping would have made it into the final analysis but didn’t, a variant of Corridor C.
First, I’d like to explain my criteria for a sensible downtown Seattle rail line, beyond the obvious ones of being frequent, direct, reliable and focused on areas of high ridership potential:
It needs to be no worse than an existing express bus trip, including transfer time. Ballard’s express services are massively popular, but express service is expensive to operate, both in terms of operations (lots of deadheading) and capital (lots of buses that sit at the base twenty hours a day). Riders will revolt if we try to cut their service without offering them something at least as good. If we can cut the 15X, 17X, 18X and maybe the 28X in favor of better connecting services, that’s a shedload of buses we can reallocate to better all-day service at minimal cost.
It needs to be grade-separated south of Denny. Lots of people worry about the top speed of transit service, but it’s not very important for in-city services (say, typical trips of less than ten miles, stops about every half-mile), because even a fully grade-separated train spends much of its time accelerating or decelerating for stations; frequency and reliability matter most. Assuming any of these lines will be both very frequent and reasonably reliable, the most important factor to minimize trip time is to avoid extended periods of very low speeds, e.g. slogging at-grade through the city center.
To the first point. The current scheduled time from 15th/Market to 3rd/Pine on the 15X is 19-21 minutes inbound in the AM peak. Supposing train headways of 10 minutes (i.e. a five-minute transfer penalty) and a couple of minutes of added walking, we need Market to Pine travel times below 15 minutes if we’re going to build a rail line worth getting out of bed for. Option C currently fails that test — but I think it could be fixed through much smarter design, at a plausible cost.
Recently, a friend send me an excerpt of Metro’s rules for fare collection and enforcement for Rapid E:
I have some free advice for Metro management: this is insane, and the complexity and confusion it will create for your staff and passengers, and the discouragement from using ORCA, will vastly outweigh the whatever paltry benefit the zone fares could provide.
Here’s what’s actually going to happen in the real world:
Virtually everyone with an ORCA card will pay whatever fare happens to be associated with whatever reader they tap.
After a few weeks (or less) of flailing, fare enforcers and drivers will stop wasting their time trying to enforce these unworkable rules and just check that everyone (a) has paid something and (b) isn’t lighting up joints or drinking 40s in the back of the bus. (Let’s be real here, this is Aurora).
Real leadership from Metro would involve management acknowledging this reality, telling the King County Council that the current zone system is archaic and unworkable in this context, and that the council needs to do one of three things as part of the E Line deployment: abolish the zone fare system, make an exception for the E Line, or fund a truly smart transit card system complete system of off-board readers that can handle tap-on and tap-off seamlessly.
UPDATE: Clarified the “truly smart transit card system” remark. ORCA itself can handle tap-on tap-off, Metro’s deployment of it can’t. Apologies for the error. — Bruce
In my blurb yesterday, I mentioned a “Plan B”, whereby in the event that the state legislature fails to allow the people of King County to vote on a countywide MVET for maintaining county roads and Metro service, the county could use existing legal authority to refer an alternative revenue package to voters for those purposes. Staff and elected officials at King County have deflected most questions about any such plan, preferring (understandably) to focus their messaging on the legislature, but nevertheless, I think it’s worth transit advocates discussing the options in the open.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to pore over the text of the RCW to see what options are out there. In 2011, staff at the state legislature compiled an updated report describing every source of local-government revenue intended to fund land or sea transportation. The document is 22 pages long, and includes a summary table on the last two pages. The “Plan B” most people are referring to is the idea of forming a countywide Transportation Benefit District (or, perhaps, a TBD that includes a large subset of the county area, presumably the parts which enjoy fixed-route service), and referring some combination of a flat vehicle licensing fee and a TBD sales tax to voters, in lieu of an MVET.
The authority for doing this is discussed on document page 118 of this report. There are a raft of tax options available to TBDs, including property taxes and road tolling, but the only ones which appear to be workable, and which could provide sustainable levels of funding for bus operations, are the sales tax and VLFs. With a vote of the people, King County could levy a 0.2% sales tax and a $100 VLF for Metro and county routes, although the $100 VLF is subject to a “stacking” provision which limits the total TBD VLF to $100 in the event that a vehicle is registered in an area covered by multiple TBDs. I don’t know offhand how the revenue is allocated in that case.
Other sources of revenue I’ve batted around informally with county staff are the county gas tax (document page 119) and county HOV/commuter rail MVET (document page 115). I’ve been told that the county gas tax (which would only be available to address paving issues with county roads, not bus operations) would not raise enough money to be worth going to the ballot for, and the HOV/commuter rail authority is not available for bus operations. Notably, there appears to no way to pay for ongoing Metro operations with property tax, or any other progressive tax.
It’s here, and it’s a bloodbath: Metro has posted the initial proposal for the 600k cut scenario, which will begin to take effect next September, absent action from the state legislature to allow a local option MVET, or the King County going ahead with the “Plan B” option of forming a countywide Transportation Benefit District and levying an additional VLF and sales tax. The proposal also includes a separate block of cuts to West Seattle, arising from the failure of WSDOT to deliver the contractually-promised viaduct mitigation money, which will run out in June.
Public transport in Aberdeen, Washington. Flikr user gillfoto.
Two rural Washington counties will have a referendum on the ballot tomorrow, each asking voters to approve a sales tax increase to restore or begin lifeline fixed-route and dial-a-ride service. The financial and ridership numbers involved in these proposals are on a different scale to the Puget Sound metropolitan region, but the presence or lack of service will matter for people who live in these areas.
Local voters will probably have a chance to decide in November if they are willing to pay 4 cents on every $10 purchase to fund a new public transportation system in Okanogan County.
The proposed transit system would provide regular daily bus service linking Okanogan County communities, including three round trips on weekdays between Winthrop and Omak and two round trips between Winthrop and Pateros.
Okanogan county is roughly twice the size of King County (or about the size of Connecticut), and its population is about 41,000 (just over that of Ballard).
If you’re out celebrating this evening, and you need a cab ride home, the company offering Seattle’s first taxi-hailing app is running a promotion that may be of interest:
Flywheel wants to make sure Seattleites are safe tomorrow evening while enjoying all the Halloween festivities. Flywheel is offering free rides up to $20 for the first 300 Flywheel requests starting at 8pm tomorrow evening. […] This offer applies to all Flywheel users in the Seattle area – not just first timers!
Flywheel joins a competitive and sometimes controversial market of ride-sharing apps in US cities, which includes licensed town-car hires (Uber), unlicensed drivers working for donations (Sidecar, Lyft, UberX) and taxi-hailing services (Taxi Magic, Hailo). Flywheel cars will initially be provided by East Side for Hire:
Flywheel has initially partnered with Seattle’s leading transportation company, East Side for Hire, to launch their service in the area. They have equipped over 260 East Side for Hire cars and drivers with the Flywheel technology needed to respond to ride requests in Seattle and the surrounding areas including Bellevue, Burien, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kent, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Northgate, Redmond, SeaTac and Shoreline.
East Side for Hire maintains fleets similar to taxis, but instead of a meter, they offer customers flat rates calculated by pickup and drop-off zip code. The company has received superior ratings and is the most affordable option in the area, with a typical for-hire ride from downtown Seattle to the airport costing $29.
Affordable, safe, easy-to-use taxis are a part of car-free living, and Hailo worked well for me when I was recently in London. I’m glad to see more players move into the Seattle market.
Are you a bicyclist in Seattle who appreciates not being killed, or nearly killed, when you ride? I certainly am, and if you are too, you should turn up for the Westlake Cycletrack Open House, on Monday, from 5-7 PM, in the gym at B.F. Day elementary school. There will be a presentation at 5:30, followed by an open-house format for feedback. If you can’t attend the open house in person, you can email WCT@Seattle.gov instead.
Just as the principal way a useful transit network delivers mobility is by high-frequency, reliable, comprehensible service, a bike network needs to provide safety, comfort, and easy wayfinding if its appeal is to extend beyond dedicated, risk-tolerant bikers. Fully-separated cycletracks are how those features are provided on multi-lane arterials, and this cycletrack will be a big step towards making Seattle a city that is genuinely accessible to anyone on a bike. I can’t wait for it to open.
This week’s Stranger describes the struggles of Puget Sound Bike Share as it prepares to launch in 2014. Unlike Citibike in New York, or similar schemes in numerous other cities, PSBS has thus far failed to attract the private capital that its funding plan depends upon to launch with coverage of the core service area. From the Stranger:
“We’ve seen a lot of initial excitement with little follow-through,” says Holly Houser, director of PSBS, who’s been in talks with the region’s largest companies to sponsor the program since last fall. While Seattle Children’s Hospital has stepped in with a $500,000 donation, Houser says that companies like Amazon, Starbucks, Vulcan, Alaska Airlines, Capitol One, BECU, Cambia (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), and Microsoft have declined to sponsor PSBS… “It’s been really frustrating—especially dealing with Amazon,” adds Houser, because South Lake Union is destined to get bike-share stations around the Amazon campus regardless of the rest of the city. “It’s going to serve their employees,” Houser says, “but so far, they’re not willing to support it.”
First, I have to question the wisdom of publicly criticizing any potential major sponsor for choosing not to donate, and I fear this may make other potential sponsors wary of working with PSBS. (As an aside, I’d expect a fundraiser to know that Amazon has a history of complete disinterest in civic and charitable causes, and not to be surprised by this response.)
In a scene described as “insane”, an SFPD officer parks his cruiser in a bike lane and starts lecturing cyclists on why right-hook collisions are their fault.
SF Weekly on the Central Subway: “In San Francisco, you can ram through a logistically nightmarish transit project of questionable worth even as the estimated ridership and price tags cross each other headed in the wrong directions. But you’re not going to decorate it with the work of someone who [shot] a dog in the 1970s.”
Both arterial BRT and freeway-running buses in HOT lanes can be effective, but they serve different purposes, and broken promises of the latter have been used as a way to justify widening freeways.
On Wednesday, from 4-6PM, at Urban Oasis Cafe (1st Ave & Broad), the Seattle Department of Transportation is hosting an open house to obtain public feedback on the Uptown-Belltown Electric Transit Improvements. This proposal would do two things:
Add trolleybus wire on Denny to put the inbound Queen Anne trolleybuses on the same path as diesel coaches, speeding inbound trips by, on average, two minutes each.
Move the Denny & Warren stop a block and a half east, to a location with a better, wider sidewalk, where a higher-quality stop and shelter will be installed.
In addition, not shown on the map above, is that the current eastbound 8 stop at Denny & Broad will be deleted, which will give eastbound Route 8 an improved stop spacing in this area, and a corresponding speed boost.
This improvement complements another which SDOT and Metro have recent made in the vicinity, namely striping an outbound BAT lane and closing a bus stop on Broad Street. SDOT continues to study the possibility of a transit-actuated signal for outbound buses at 3rd & Denny, which would allow buses to avoid the Broad Street jog altogether.
I’ve reported on and cheered for this project from its incipience, making this perhaps the most-written-about three blocks of potential trolleybus wire on earth. Finally, about 15 months after I heard of the project, SDOT has a design ready to be taken to the public, with the improvements scheduled to be in place for the Spring 2014 service change. If you ride trolleybuses in Queen Anne or Belltown, you should show up to the open house to support this project.
Recently, I found out that SDOT and Metro are planning to install a bus bulb on the northwest corner of 15th Ave NW & Leary Way (outside Peddler Brewing), to make Routes 40 and 61 function more effectively for riders. I spoke to Bill Bryant, SDOT’s Transit Program Manager to get more details.
Tell me about what SDOT’s planning at 15th & Leary, and why?
SDOT and Metro jointly developed the plan to add a bus bulb at the new westbound bus stop as part of our ongoing efforts to identify and address transit needs. When Route 40 was designed and the stop was planned, SDOT and Metro suspected that it would become a significant transfer point and ridership generator, but wanted to verify that before investing time and money in improvements.
This location is a great example of where a bus bulb can provide multiple benefits. Bus bulbs or islands are most suitable for locations with full-time parking and one or more of the following conditions:
General purpose traffic occasionally or regularly delays buses trying to re-enter traffic.
Shelter(s) or other upgrades are needed.
Ridership is moderate to high.
Sidewalk/bus stop area is in poor condition.
Sidewalk/bus stop area is crowded.
Little prospect exists that there will be a future need for removal of street parking.
A Metro bus driver has non-life-threatening injuries after a shooting in downtown Seattle. 3rd Avenue is a mess, and will likely be for some time — use Link or avoid downtown if you can (tunnel buses are running on the surface, per Metro). If you’re in the area, let readers know in the comments what’s happening.
UPDATE: SPD Blotter has more details. Expected traffic impacts per SPD:
3 block radius on closures North, South,East and West of scene at 2nd and Seneca. Expect street closures for at least 8 hours.
Summer is the season for big Seattle Center events, and that means serious road congestion in the vicinity, and high demand on transit routes that provide access to the Center. A few Sundays ago, a friend of mine was returning from Pride, and attempted to use Route 8 to go east towards Capitol Hill. On Sundays, the 8 runs every 30 minutes, and on weekends, Metro always seems to assign 40′ standard coaches to the 8, rather than the 60′ articulated coaches seen during the week. Unsurprisingly, the bus was completely swamped, and most people gave up and started walking.
On event days, Metro habitually substitutes 60′ coaches for 40′ coaches on other diesel routes (e.g. 24, 32) which serve Seattle Center, but not the 8. While the substitution of 60′ coaches will not save a route that is totally overwhelmed by a brief spike in demand, it does significantly improve capacity at a cost that is slight compared to alternative options, such as running event shuttles or overload trips. Naturally, I wanted to know why Metro wasn’t operating 60′ coaches on the 8 during Pride weekend, and earlier this week, I got the answer.
On Wednesday, from 5-7PM at the Greenwood Public Library, the Seattle Department of Transportation is hosting an open house to discuss a set of proposed transit, pedestrian and bike improvements for the section of Greenwood between 85th St and 105th St. The proposal has changed significantly from its initial version, but mostly in good ways. If you’re a person who uses transit on Greenwood, you should be there to express support for these changes, which will make your bus faster and more reliable; alternatively, you can send comments to Christine Alar at SDOT.
The main part of the proposal is to close a number of substandard and overly-closely-spaced stops, and upgrade four of the remaining stops to be transit islands similar those found on Dexter, with benches, shelters, conduit for future real-time sign installation, and bike lanes flowing around the outside (concept diagram below). This is a major upgrade for those facilities, as most of this section of Greenwood lacks proper sidewalks, and some of the stops are little more than a post in a ditch.
