All posts by David Lawson

Metro recently released a summary of community feedback on its proposal to move a short segment of routes 3 and 4 from James St to Yesler Wy.  As we’ve come to expect with proposals to change the oldest parts of Metro’s network, the feedback was deeply muddled.  Metro’s Magic 8-Ball said: “Reply Hazy, Try Again.”

Online survey respondents favored the change, 53 to 40 percent.  Most of the few people who contacted Metro by email or phone opposed the change.  Stakeholder organizations were split along geographic lines; First Hill Improvement Association and WHEEL (which operates a women’s shelter near 8th and James) opposed the change, while Yesler Terrace Community Council supported it.  Supporters cited better reliability and improved service to Yesler Terrace, while opponents concentrated on potential difficulties accessing services on James for seniors and people with limited mobility.

In keeping with this split feedback, Metro plans to study a variety of options using both James and Yesler.  The agency will study transit priority measures on James, to see if there is any way to speed up buses despite the very high volume of I-5 traffic.  Previous studies have found bus lanes on James infeasible because the volume of I-5 car traffic trying to use James would create gridlock on other streets (including 9th Avenue, which the current routes use), but Metro will have another look.  At the same time, the agency will continue designing trolley overhead and other infrastructure along the Yesler route.  Finally, the agency will look at putting another (presumably less frequent) route onto James to provide access while moving routes 3 and 4 to Yesler.

By its nature, this feedback process could not include any voice representing the over 5,000 net new residents (including about 1,100 low-income residents) who will come to Yesler Terrace once redevelopment ($) is complete.  Redevelopment will turn Yesler Terrace into one of the city’s densest areas, and no comparable development is proposed for the area around James Street.  Yesler Terrace and downtown are currently connected only by infrequent route 27, which is obviously insufficient to serve the new population.  As a regular route 3 rider, I think the combination of reliability improvements and Yesler Terrace redevelopment makes the move to Yesler the obvious best option for routes 3 and 4.  Community feedback regarding access to the James/5th and James/8th stops, though, may warrant moving a low-ridership coverage route (the 27?) to James to serve those stops, despite the delays for riders that will certainly result.

Yesterday, the City of Seattle published the final Environmental Impact Statement for its citywide Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) rezone proposal.  Citywide MHA is the key to the “Grand Bargain” at the center of the city’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA).  In a nutshell, Citywide MHA would upzone many of the more urban parts of Seattle, in exchange for requiring developers in the upzoned areas to build (or pay for) a modestly higher amount of affordable housing as part of their projects.

The city describes the key objective of Citywide MHA as “increasing housing and jobs near frequent transit.”  That’s a laudable goal, and absolutely necessary for the city’s continued growth.  Many of Seattle’s roads are at capacity and we don’t have room for more.  Geometry requires that further transportation capacity must come from transit, walking, or cycling.  People only use transit if it’s easily accessible to them.  Allowing more people to live near frequent transit will boost both transit ridership and total transportation capacity.  For that reason and also for the affordable units it will generate, Citywide MHA is a positive step that we should support.

But it doesn’t go nearly far enough.  We have the transit infrastructure to support much more housing than Citywide MHA anticipates, and thereby accommodate more of our new arrivals with less displacement of existing residents. Given the crisis of unaffordable housing prices in Seattle, we owe it to ourselves to do so.

Our transit infrastructure is much better than it was just three years ago, because city residents stepped to the plate.  Seventy percent of city voters approved Sound Transit 3. When King County voters rejected a 2014 bus service measure, Seattle voters plunged into the breach, decisively approving their own. Bus restructures accompanying Link light rail brought even more frequent transit. SDOT’s report on the first two years of Proposition 1 has an amazing map (at left) showing the improvement.  (We’ll have more to say about this Monday.)

And that’s not all. If funding allows, Metro wants to add yet more frequent corridors in connection with future Link openings. By 2040, Metro would blanket nearly the entire city in frequent service, as shown at right.

But Citywide MHA takes relatively little of this into account. A plan to “maximize housing and jobs near frequent transit” ought to upzone all along these frequent transit routes. Instead, the city’s interactive map shows lots of places directly on current or future frequent transit that remain stubbornly single-family. These areas ought to be upzoned too.

The case of Northeast Seattle is particularly instructive. A combination of a Link restructure and substantial city funding  created two amazing frequent corridors along Roosevelt Way (route 67) and 35th Ave NE (route 65).  These corridors now have buses running every 10 minutes, six days a week, and every 15 minutes until late at night.  But the map shows how little Citywide MHA changes along the corridors (highlighted in yellow).  There is barely any increased zoning, and lots of territory directly along the routes remains stubbornly single-family.  Frequent transit capacity will go to waste.

A look at the Citywide MHA map reveals many other corridors throughout the city that have similar potential. Corridors like route 36 along Beacon Av S, route 62 in View Ridge, and RapidRide C in Fauntleroy represent potential opportunities for people to live car-free. All frequent transit corridors should have much more color on the map. Even after Citywide MHA takes the first baby steps, the city should keep moving further, so we can make the most of our newly expanding frequent transit network.

A few weeks ago, Lizz reported that the union representing Metro bus drivers, mechanics, and service supervisors (among others) approved a new collective bargaining agreement with significant changes to work rules.  The most notable of these changes is that part-time Metro drivers can work on weekends.  In exchange, union negotiators secured two big concessions from Metro.  First, Metro accepted a lower ceiling on the number of part-time drivers, with the limit changing from 45 percent to 33 percent of all drivers.  Second, Metro agreed that no drivers, either full- or part-time, will have to work split shifts on weekends.  The changes will be effective in September 2018.

Far from being the arcane, inside-baseball news you might think, this is a major win-win for Metro and the union, and a big deal for Metro riders.  If implemented well by Metro, it could result in more service on the road for the same amount of money.  Depending on how drivers ultimately choose to pick their work under the new rules, it could also make driver recruitment easier—important in an era where Metro has been struggling to keep enough drivers to operate current service, let alone add significant service hours as funded by the City of Seattle and contemplated by Metro’s own Long-Range Plan.

To explain why this is such good news, we’ll have to dive into the murk of bus-driver work rules a bit, below the jump.

Continue reading “Will Metro’s New Union Contract Bring More Service?”

The south half of downtown, set on a steep hill, has always presented accessibility problems.  With elevation changes of as much as 50 feet per block, people with impaired mobility frequently have difficulty traveling even one block in the east-west direction.  For the transit network, this results in an intermodal transfer challenge: there is more than 100 feet of elevation gain in the four blocks between the Colman Dock ferry terminal and Metro’s Third Avenue transit spine.

Historically, Metro handled this challenge by having one or two north-end routes serve Colman Dock directly, laying over on Alaskan Way.  The routes climbed to Third Avenue via Yesler, providing accessible transfers to other service, before heading north.  But when waterfront construction began in earnest in 2012, Metro had to leave Alaskan Way.  Instead, it began using First Avenue, which is at nearly the same elevation as the upper level of Colman Dock and accessible from the dock via a safe, flat pedestrian bridge.  First route 16, and then route 62 starting last year, picked up on First and used Seneca to bridge the elevation gap between First and Third.

But now, Metro is again getting displaced, this time by Center City Connector construction along First.  On September 23, route 62 will begin using Third exclusively.  And this presents a significant problem for users who have difficulty making it up the hill.  During the day on weekdays, there is an accessible route from First to Third, using public elevators or escalators inside two downtown buildings.  But the accessible route is not available nights or weekends.  The only meaningful transit service that will now serve the vicinity of Colman Dock is route 12, a frequent east-west route using Madison and Marion Streets.

And it gets worse.  Route 12 doesn’t make the trip to Third easy, because it has no stop near Third.  Uphill stops are located on Marion at First, near the end of the Colman Dock bridge; at Second; and then on the far side of Fourth.  Given that the vast majority of transfer connections are on or under Third, this stop placement is perverse.  Mobility-impaired users making connections from Colman Dock benefit very little from having the 12 available, and other users transferring from buses on Third to the 12 have to walk unnecessarily far.

Fortunately, the problem should be easy to fix.  There is no physical obstacle to locating a stop on Marion at Third, next to the north side of the Central Building.  To maintain schedule and reasonable stop spacing, the stop at Second (which is actually less than a block from the stop at First) could be removed.

Metro and SDOT may be reluctant to fund this fix, despite its simplicity, because bus service on Marion is going away.  RapidRide G, the “Madison BRT” route on which SDOT will soon begin construction, will run eastbound along Spring rather than Marion.  From Spring, the new route will provide easy access to Third.  But RapidRide G will not begin service for two more years.  Mobility-impaired users are losing route 62 now, and deserve this easy, inexpensive accommodation in the meantime.

It wasn’t so long ago that Metro service changes arrived in the dead of night, accompanied mainly by dread about whether your favorite route would be on the chopping block.  But it’s amazing what a few years of explosive economic growth will do.  County Executive Dow Constantine trumpeted Metro’s service changes starting next Saturday, September 23 in a press release, which noted that this will be the sixth consecutive service change in which Metro adds new service.  Between Seattle voters’ approval of Proposition 1 and increased Metro revenues, Metro will be running the most service it’s ever run.

The headline news with this service change is the welcome replacement of the last three “Night Owl” routes with expanded late-night service on selected regular Metro routes.  But there are other good changes too, including some real frequency improvements and an encouraging number of well-thought-out “bug fixes.”  Learn more about what’s happening below the jump.

Continue reading “Metro Adds Service, Fixes Broken Stuff”

For many years, SDOT has sought to build an overpass separating cars, trucks, and buses on Lander Street in Sodo from crossing train traffic.  Last time we checked in, the project was included in the Move Seattle project list and had secured a $45 million federal grant, but was still $40 million short of full funding.  On Wednesday, the city announced that it achieved full funding, thanks to a combination of a $17 million lower cost estimate after final design, additional appropriations from the City Council, and an additional $10 million contribution from the Port of Seattle.  Construction is expected to begin next year, for completion in 2019.

The project has been controversial among local urbanists, because it is expensive and intended primarily for vehicular traffic, especially Port of Seattle truck traffic.  I think the concept of the overpass has more merit than is often acknowledged, because it would improve bus reliability and has the potential to make walking to transit safer.

The benefits to bus reliability already look promising.  Lander is the primary transit-accessible route between the West Seattle Bridge and Sodo destinations.  Today, it serves one major frequent bus route (5/21), one infrequent local route (50), and a few commuter routes.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that train crossings at Lander are responsible for a substantial portion of overall delays on routes 5 and 21, especially northbound route 5 service.  In its long-range plan, Metro expects to expand service on Lander further, upgrading the frequent Sodo-West Seattle route to RapidRide (while changing its routing) and adding a pair of routes that would provide frequent service to South Park and Tukwila.  A Lander overpass would improve reliability of all of these services substantially.

Continue reading “Lander Overpass Gets Full Funding, Needs Improvement”

On Wednesday, Sound Transit quietly released a draft of its Annual Report and 2017-2022 Transit Development Plan.  The TDP, which state law requires ST to complete each year, operates at a higher level than the Service Implementation Plans released in the fall.  While the TDP offers less granular detail about the agency’s plans than the SIP, it gives us a glimpse farther into the future.

This year’s plan doesn’t break any major news, but underscores how much work planners at ST and its partner agencies must do as the system expands.  During 2017 alone, ST is working on four separate planning processes, almost totally centered on bus service:

1. the ongoing SR 520 bus service restructure effort;
2. a plan to keep routes 550 and 554 moving once the dedicated bus roadway parallel to I-90 closes for East Link construction;
3. a plan to help ST Express buses navigate increased surface bus traffic once all buses leave the downtown tunnel in 2019; and
4. the start of the planning effort for the ST Express network that will operate once Lynnwood Link, East Link, and Federal Way Link open.

The last of these is a long-term effort that will continue from now until 2022, and will take place in cooperation with similar planning efforts by Metro and Community Transit.  We likely won’t see too much about it in this year’s SIP, but it will be major news as the early 2020s draw closer.

The TDP delivered a couple of other minor news items.  First, ST and BNSF remain on track to complete Positive Train Control hardware installation on the South Sounder line this year, with the technology becoming fully operational next year. PTC is a safety technology designed to prevent trains from entering already-occupied track segments even if an operator fails to observe a red light, and likely could have prevented several of the USA’s worst train accidents.  Second, ST continues to eschew fleet standardization for ST Express, with double-decker buses, commuter motor coaches, and articulated hybrid buses all slated to come on property within the next few years.  Buses that entered service in 2005 or earlier, including ST’s original order of hybrid buses, should be replaced in 2018-2019.

At last Thursday’s Growing Seattle candidate forum, moderator Erica C. Barnett asked the six participating mayoral candidates to perform a simple but revealing exercise: rank transit riders, pedestrians, cyclists, and car drivers in order of priority. The candidates’ answers varied widely. The answers of Jenny Durkan and Sen. Bob Hasegawa are notable, though, because they illustrate a common and fundamental blind spot about successful transit.  Let’s have a look:

Durkan:
1) Transit
2) Bikes
3) Cars
4) Pedestrians

Hasegawa:
1) Transit
2) Cars
3) Pedestrians
4) Bikes

Both candidates put transit on top. But neither seems to think walking deserves much attention. That is inherently contradictory.

Especially in the city, where very few riders drive to transit, almost every transit trip requires a walk on public streets. Very few riders are lucky enough to have a bus stop outside their door on both ends of their trip.  So every transit rider is also a pedestrian. And if the walk to or from a transit trip is impossible or unsafe, that transit trip doesn’t work well as a whole. Riders with poor pedestrian access are less likely to ride transit instead of driving, more likely to be unsatisfied with transit when they do ride, and more likely to suffer injury at the hands of car drivers.

For all those reasons, walking safety and comfort are an integral part of building a successful transit system. It makes no more sense to say “transit deserves more priority than walking” than it does to say “make the pizza better, but don’t worry about cheese quality.” Transit doesn’t really have priority over car drivers unless pedestrians do too. Ms. Durkan and Sen. Hasegawa would render many transit trips less workable, and undermine their own stated preferences for transit, by putting pedestrians at the back of the line.

Together, Metro routes 3 and 4 form a critical bus corridor connecting the Central District, First Hill hospitals (including Harborview), downtown, Belltown, and Seattle Center.  The segment between downtown and Cherry Hill is one of the highest-ridership parts of the Metro system, with standing-room-only buses running every 5 to 7 minutes during the day.  Unfortunately, it’s also one of the less reliable segments, almost entirely because of traffic delays on the short part of James St that the routes use.  That part of James includes a major interchange with I-5, and suffers from gridlock during most afternoon peak hours.

For years, Metro has studied moving routes 3 and 4 from James to much less congested Yesler Way, only between 3rd and 9th Avenues, to address the problem.  (Our own Bruce Nourish suggested the move in 2011, and Metro staff were already on it then.) The move wasn’t practical, though, until SDOT completed its Yesler Bridge Rehabilitation Project, after which the bridge will accommodate trolleybus overhead.  Now that SDOT’s project is nearing completion, Metro is formally proposing the move, and has provided a survey to complete.

Metro’s own analysis indicates that the move would save up to four minutes per trip during afternoon peak hours.  Notably, this is average saving per trip, which masks some much longer delays (to which I, a semi-regular route 3 rider, can testify).  Bruce’s chart below, based on historical Metro data, shows how much more consistent Yesler was in 2011—before recent increases in I-5 traffic.  The very worst trip on Yesler was more than six minutes quicker on average than the worst trip on James, and several other trips on Yesler had a similar advantage.  Today, the differences would even be greater, given higher volume on James.

Moving routes 3 and 4 to Yesler would be a huge benefit to Harborview, First Hill, and Central District afternoon commuters.  It would also substantially improve transit service to Yesler Terrace, which is expected to add around 5,000 residents (including over 1,000 net new low-income residents) and several employers within the next few years, but has only a half-hourly bus to downtown.  The move does have one downside, though.  The stretch of James Street that would lose service includes several of the steepest arterial blocks in the city, and access to some destinations along James could get more complicated.  Although only two stops would lose service, at 5th and 8th Avenues, each serves some major destinations.  The stop at 5th serves core King County and Seattle government buildings, including Seattle City Hall, King County Administration, and King County Jail.  The stop at 8th serves the Jefferson Terrace public housing complex, with about 350 residents, and Northwest Harvest’s Cherry Street Food Bank.  We have already heard objections to the move on the basis that the walks from 3rd or 9th Avenues to these destinations are too steep for some users to manage.

These objections are overblown, and do not justify subjecting the great majority of riders to long and unpredictable afternoon delays.  Most of the James Street destinations remain accessible.  Between them, the King County Courthouse and King County Administration buildings allow a flat, fully accessible passage from 3rd to 5th Avenues, which in turn allows access to the other government buildings along 5th.  There is also transit access to 5th and James along very frequent Sound Transit routes 512 and 545, with fully accessible connections in both the Westlake and International District areas.  Jefferson Terrace has an elevated, accessible entrance along Jefferson Street that provides easy access to 9th Avenue bus stops, which will continue to be served.  The only major destination of concern is the Northwest Harvest food bank.  It would be worthwhile for Metro to work with Northwest Harvest to determine how many food bank customers are unable to walk from 9th Avenue bus stops, and find a solution for those users (for example, a routing change for Solid Ground’s free circulator on days when the food bank is open).

If you use routes 3 and 4, we encourage you to take Metro’s survey and help Metro implement this time- and hassle-saving change.