David is an attorney who lives in Madrona, works in downtown Seattle, and previously lived in several other Seattle neighborhoods, Kirkland, and Bellevue. He writes mostly about King County Metro and how to improve the regional bus network. David drove for Metro from 2000 to 2005, and loved the job. His regular commute is by foot or on the 2.
The Mayoral candidates line up for a photo-op. Photo by Oran Viriyincy.
As of last Friday evening, it was official: no fewer than twenty-one candidates formally filed for the 2017 City of Seattle mayoral primary. As usual, most of this unprecedented crop are unlikely, single-issue, or perennial candidates. But Mayor Ed Murray’s announcement that he won’t run for re-election in the wake of multiple accusations of sexual assault encouraged a bumper crop of serious and credible candidates to throw their hats in too. In that category (in alphabetical order) we would place former U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan, state Rep. Jessyn Farrell, state Sen. Bob Hasegawa, former Mayor Mike McGinn, activist Cary Moon, and attorney/organizer Nikkita Oliver.
Our focus on transit is obvious from our name, but we are also deeply passionate about land use and housing issues, as they are key both to creating a successful transit system and to retaining longtime residents while welcoming newcomers. This post is devoted to presenting the above six mayoral candidates’ positions on those two issues in their own public words, with only a bit of commentary. The campaign is in its early stages, and we will surely be hearing much more (for better or for worse) and doing interviews of our own. But even as of today the contrasts are informative. Hear out the candidates, below the jump.
The 27 at its proper stop, back in the day when David used to drive it. Photo by Steve Morgan.
You’re standing at 3rd and Union. You want to go to 23rd and Jackson, the commercial heart of the Central District. Or you want to go home, in the dense housing near Washington Middle School. What’s the quickest way to get there?
The answer is “Who knows?” And this common trip between major destinations may be Metro’s best example of bad network execution.
You might walk to the Benaroya Hall bus stop, to catch route 14 or 4. Both will get you there. But the 14 runs every 20 minutes, the 4 runs every half hour, and their schedules aren’t coordinated. So it’s reasonably likely that you will have to wait 20 minutes for a bus. Or you might walk to the IGA bus stop, where route 27 stops — but only every half hour, so your wait could be even longer.
When you want to go back downtown, the situation is even worse. Now you have three different bus stops you might want to use: westbound on Jackson for the 14, northbound on 23rd for the 4, or westbound on Yesler for the 27. You may have to wait 20-30 minutes at any of these bus stops, even though there are seven buses per hour between them. If you have a smartphone, and OneBusAway happens to be working, you can use it for help. But taking the bus shouldn’t require knowing three different routing options, having a smartphone, and being ready to run between stops a block or two from each other. .
This situation got worse with the recent Southeast Seattle restructure, as an unintended consequence of the very welcome frequency increase on route 124 to Georgetown and Tukwila. The explanation of how that happened is a bit wonky, but the consequences aren’t: route 27, which previously picked up at the same 3rd Avenue stops as route 14 and 4, moved to different stops, even though it serves many of the same places.
For routing consistency, Metro through-routed the newly frequent 124 with routes 24 and 33 to Magnolia, which share a common route all the way to the Magnolia Bridge, at most times of day. But during peak hour on weekdays, routes 24 and 33 together run much more often than route 124. So at peak hour only, Metro kept route 33 on its old through-route, with route 27.
But this created something Metro saw as a problem: route 33 trips would have dropped people off at different stops downtown, depending on whether they were continuing as route 27 or route 124. Metro’s Scott Gutierrez confirmed to me by email that Metro saw the potential confusion to both riders and drivers if route 33 trips had inconsistent drop-off stops as a worse problem than having route 27 pick up at different stops from routes 4 and 14. Metro didn’t address other through-route possibilities, such as through-routing peak-hour 33 trips with route 125, or returning to the former service pattern of partially through-routing peak-hour 33 trips with route 37.
I think Metro’s judgment about this was wrong. East Magnolia riders could adapt to one-block differences in their dropoff location. That is a less severe consequence than making the already confusing bus trip between downtown and the Central District even more obtuse.
In the long term, this is a prime opportunity for Metro to restructure service in a way that makes it obviously better, without many negative consequences. Metro’s proposed Metro Connects network gets most of the way there, deleting the S-shaped route 4, which is sparsely ridden south of Garfield High School, and putting the service hours into much more frequent and predictable service on better-used routes 3 and 14. For trips between the area around 23rd and Jackson and downtown, route 14 would become the obvious choice. For coverage reasons, Metro proposes to leave route 27 running infrequently on Yesler, although it would stop going downtown and serve First Hill and South Lake Union instead. Riders in the south Central District will also have a frequent and very fast trip to downtown available on Link light rail starting in 2023, by walking or taking route 48 to the new Judkins Park station a half-mile to the south.
In the meantime, though, Central District riders deserve better. Metro should restore route 27 to the same stops served by routes 14 and 4.
A part of the Metro Connects 2040 map with some dramatic expansion in coverage. Map by Metro.
We’ve devoted considerablecoverage to Metro Connects, the long-range plan that Metro first published in 2016 and the King County Council adopted in January. We’ve focused mainly on the massively expanded frequent network Metro envisions, with 26 RapidRide lines and frequent service slated to serve most King County residents. But the plan’s vision goes well beyond adding more frequency and red buses to the busiest parts of the network. Separately, Metro also hopes to expand service to lots of places (and people) that don’t have it today. That includes places that lost service in Metro’s multiple rounds of cuts, and also many places that have never seen a Metro bus.
We talk a lot about the frequency versus coverage tradeoff that’s inherent in designing transit networks. Maximize frequency (and therefore transfer feasibility) for the most riders, and you inevitably leave riders in less dense areas—including youth, seniors, and riders with disabilities—without needed service. But if you run buses to everywhere, there likely aren’t enough resources to provide enough frequency to make transfers easy. Without spontaneously usable transfers, transit for everyone is much less useful. Metro clearly hopes that it can marshal sufficient resources over the next two decades to avoid this tradeoff altogether, a dream which many transit advocates share. But until the past couple of years, when the region’s newfound wealth has enabled service expansions, that seemed like a fever mirage, not a plausible solution.
Sammamish, slated for major growth, gets a lot of new coverage. Map by Metro.
In 2013, I proposed a network that cut coverage service heavily to improve frequency and transfers for most riders. Many of Metro’s restructures have done the same thing. That choice of priorities is correct in a low-resource environment, but the result is unfortunate: coverage is less expansive than it was three decades ago, even as high-ridership routes have seen major improvements.
It’s nice to see Metro dream a bit more about expanding coverage. Land use changes and further development will be necessary to make most of Metro’s proposed routes work—but, for the most part, the new routes would be in places where municipalities are planning more development. We can hope that credible transit proposals from Metro will encourage developments that are transit- and walking-friendly, allowing for transportation options beyond cars.
Below the jump, a long list of areas that would see new coverage (either on conventional buses or alternative service) by 2040 under the Metro Connects plan. Again, this list is only new coverage — improvements to areas that already have service are not the subject of this post.
The Seattle Times wants your neighborhood arterial to look like this. Photo by Bruce Englehardt.
In recent years, the Seattle Times has published many editorials and columns skeptical of transit, or any transportation mode except private cars. STB hasn’t usually responded, because events have shown amply that every day the Times gets more out of step with citizens’ increasing desire for alternatives to sitting in traffic. And the Times gets credit for consistently excellent news coverage of transportation topics, led by ace reporter Mike Lindblom.
But the Times’s latest ($) finally warrants a response, because it distills so many myths and bad ideas about transportation into a few words. The idea is not to get into a fight with our local paper, but to explain why transit investment is the only way to free people from congestion. The Times’s core request — to provide so much capacity for car traffic that a complete closure of I-5 would have little effect on car travel times — is geometrically impossible. Worse, any attempt to make it happen would cause profoundly destructive consequences for the city and its residents. And the reasons (below the jump) show exactly why support for transit, not more car capacity, is the best way forward from our congestion woes.
This bus is clearly saving time by skipping a few stops, right? Photo by Bruce Englehardt.
King County Metro’s spring service change begins next Saturday, March 11. There are few major changes this time around, but quite a few incremental additions to service. Full service change information from Metro is here; the following are a few highlights.
Routes 3 and 4 to serve SPU
Route 4 revision (route 3 revision is similar). Map by King County Metro.
The sole major routing change affects the Queen Anne portion of routes 3 and 4. Both routes will follow a common routing in Queen Anne, serving Seattle Pacific University via 3 Ave W — a solution we have long favored. The new routing will provide a major improvement to SPU-downtown service frequency, and will allow connections to routes 31 and 32 to Fremont and the University District. The vestigial “tails” of both routes, on small neighborhood streets, will lose service. The new routing will be a very short walk for the few current riders using the route 3 tail, but some riders on the route 4 tail may have to walk a few extra blocks to reach service.
Although there will be just one route north of downtown, Metro is keeping both route numbers around for now. The decision could be revisited if Metro ever restructures away the redundant and expensive southern end of route 4, as it proposes to do by 2025 in the Metro Connects long-range plan (and also in earlier proposals). After such a restructure, the number 3 could be used south of downtown and the number 4 north of downtown, for much improved legibility and the flexibility to decouple the two parts if warranted.
More Service!
The best news in this service change is that Metro is adding a significant amount of additional service, both in the city (with some assistance from Seattle Proposition 1) and in the suburbs. The service additions are spot additions, with few all-day frequency improvements (although we understand that some of those are coming in September). The focus appears to be reducing overcrowding. Many of the additions are in northeast Seattle, as Metro continues working to address pain points from the U-Link restructure.
8 (15-minute service until 9 p.m., weekdays)
65 (15-minute service until 10 p.m., weekdays and Saturdays)
67 (15-minute service until 10 p.m., weekdays and Saturdays)
75 (15-minute service until 9 p.m., weekdays)
372 (15-minute service until 8 p.m., weekdays)
Routes with Sunday Frequency Improvements
8 (20-minute service)
372 (20-minute service, between U-District and Lake City only)
Grab Bag
As always, there are a few other miscellaneous changes.
The northernmost portion of Route 106 will become local, serving all stops between Mount Baker and the International District.
Route 241, and Metro-operated Sound Transit routes 550, 555, and 556, will change their routing to avoid going inside the South Bellevue P&R once the P&R is closes for East Link construction later in the spring.
A new Black Diamond-Enumclaw Community Shuttle will replace the part of DART Route 907 south of Black Diamond.
South King County commuter routes 121, 122, 123, 157, 158, 159, and 192 will no longer serve stops on Bell Street.
Third Avenue. That car, typically, is about to ignore a Do Not Enter sign. Photo by Zack Heistand.
It’s time to make Third Avenue into Seattle’s first transit mall. Tomorrow. Or, at least, late next year, once the remaining buses have to leave the downtown tunnel. The City of Seattle should ban all* non-transit motor vehicles from Third, 24/7. Banning cars completely would:
Increase the bus capacity of Third
Speed up bus travel
Allow more efficient bus stop positioning
Improve pedestrian and bike safety
Make enforcement easier
Inconvenience very few car drivers
The ban has been warranted for several years, but will become far more important with the brave new world of no tunnel buses.
While Link light rail gets all the glory and gaudy annual ridership increases, Third remains the city’s busiest transit corridor in both trips per day (3,000) and ridership (likely about 125,000). Yet, as Zach reported last month, Metro, Sound Transit, and the City are not yet considering improvements to Third in the One Center City plan. Instead, they are proposing improvements to less-used corridors, along with major bus restructures that would force transfers — in some cases, with no return benefit. Improving Third by banning cars could allow Metro and Sound Transit to avoid the worst of these forced-transfer plans, while also improving the commute for a large majority of the 47 percent. (No, Mitt, not that 47 percent — the 47 percent of downtown commuters that use transit.)
The agencies should include a transit-only Third as a core piece of One Center City, and should take advantage of it by running as many buses there as it can possibly handle. More details about why, after the jump.
Mobility from Ballard today and under Metro’s 2040 vision.
About nine months ago, Metro released a draft of its first Long Range Plan in quite some time. We were enthusiastic about the plan, which lays out a comprehensive vision for the Metro of the future, including network, Sound Transit integration, facilities, fleet, and capital improvements. We nerded out over some of the network planning ideas, and spent hours poring over the network maps, which show real imagination and are a revealing distillation of planners’ ideas for improvement throughout the county. More than anything else, we got excited about Metro’s isochrone maps, which show how far you would be able to get from a given point with ST3 and the LRP network in place. They paint a picture of timely car-free mobility throughout the city and even to many suburban areas, one which probably seems like a faraway dream to anyone who spends their afternoons stuck along Denny on the 8 or Dexter on the 62.
The King County Council has been considering the plan ever since, and Councilmembers apparently liked what they saw as much as we did. In its Monday meeting, the full Council adopted the plan unanimously, with only minor changes from the draft Metro released last April. The final documents include some welcome additional information about the assumptions behind the plan, including detailed data on how many residents of each area will be near frequent service; minute-level estimates of travel times between areas; and a breakout of expected cost per service hour for each of the four service types included in the network (RapidRide, frequent, express, and local). Network planning for integration with ST3 reflects some additional work by planners, with a significantly revised post-ST3 network in Magnolia and Ballard, and other smaller network changes throughout the area. We expect to provide additional coverage of Metro’s newest Ballard network vision in another post, as it has some new and interesting concepts we haven’t seen before.
As always, shepherding a mostly abstract, years-away long-range plan through the Council is an easier task than implementing specific service improvements with immediate winners and losers. Nevertheless, adoption of Metro Connects is a very welcome step, and the apparent lack of controversy is an encouraging sign for faster, easier transit service throughout the county that uses the considerable resources we are putting into ST3 as effectively as possible.
Route 106 at Rainier Beach Station. Photo by Oran Viriyincy.
It’s that time of year again! Metro and Sound Transit service changes begin Saturday, September 10. If you feel like this is earlier than past years, well, you’re right. The agencies have moved to biannual service changes, in mid-March and mid-September, replacing the previous late-September timing when there were three changes each year.
The big news is Metro’s Southeast Seattle restructure, which is essentially identical to to the final proposal Metro published in May, and the first midday Sounder service. Two weeks after the service change, Link’s Angle Lake Station will open. Changes beyond those headline items are limited to minor tweaks, mostly improving service in the area that went through major restructures in March. Details below the jump.
Zach informed us all last Thursday that the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) plans to make only minimal transit improvements in its proposed Fairview-Eastlake-Roosevelt “high-capacity transit” (HCT) corridor. SDOT’s proposed improvements would be limited to a few blocks of BAT lanes near downtown, queue jumps at just a few congested intersections, off-board payment, some signal priority, and electrification north of Campus Parkway. Nearly all of the route would remain in mixed car/bus traffic. There are no improvements to two intersections that cause major transit delays along the corridor today: Fairview/Mercer (in the northbound direction) and Eastlake/Lynn. In short, the project would amount to a through-route and electrification of today’s Metro routes 70 and 67, with only a few functional changes.
SDOT, this is not good enough, and it’s not HCT. Residents and workers in our burgeoning city deserve far better. You promised to make it better before last fall’s Move Seattle vote, and you know how to make it better.
This corridor has been on the City of Seattle’s radar since the original 2011 Transit Master Plan. Serving approximately 10,000 daily riders on today’s bus routes, the combined corridor would be one of the city’s highest-volume bus corridors, even before any growth. Ridership on its south half has been growing fast with increasing employment in South Lake Union. As Zach recounted, it has been proposed for streetcar service, BRT with end-to-end dedicated lanes, RapidRide, and then “RapidRide+” — all within the last five years. In the Move Seattle levy measure, approved by city voters last November, the corridor was to be one of seven new “RapidRide+” corridors. It has been a core project in every iteration of the city’s Transit Master Plan, and there has never been any real disagreement that most of it is worthy of substantial transit investment.
So why did SDOT devise such a limited concept plan? The corridor has many competing uses, and it appears that transit drew the shortest straw of all of them. Right-of-way is limited throughout the corridor, and SDOT had to balance transit with competing uses: general car traffic, street parking, and bicycle traffic. Different uses were prioritized in different sections of the project; bicycles took priority along Eastlake, while car parking and general traffic remained the highest priorities along Roosevelt. But the end result is that along nearly all of the corridor — with the sole exception of the short stretch between Republican Street and Stewart Street — transit took a back seat.
That is a decision that makes no numerical sense today, and will make even less sense in the future. Our resident and employee population are growing fast, while available right-of-way stays the same. Today, transit serves a large minority of trips in the corridor. Very close to 10,000 daily riders used routes 66, 67, and 70 combined before the March restructure of bus service in conjunction with U-Link. Preliminary indications are that ridership has risen after the restructure (as usual with restructures). Meanwhile, SDOT traffic flow data indicates that most portions of the corridor carry 13,000 to 20,000 daily car trips. This comparison is imperfect; not all car trips cover the entire corridor, and many duplicate other bus routes such as the 45 or 49. But it is more than enough to establish transit’s importance. And transit, as always in city centers with no room for more right of way, is the way to grow capacity. There is no way to stuff more general-purpose traffic into Roosevelt or Eastlake. The city’s ability to grow population and jobs relies in a very concrete way on transit being able to grow ridership. Transit should have taken first priority, not last.
Metro wants this bus to turn red and go to Children’s Hospital. Photo courtesy of Bruce Engelhardt.
This past Monday, Zach introduced STB riders to Metro’s new Long Range Plan. The plan sets forth an ambitious series of large-scale goals for Metro. Most prominently, it brings truly frequent service (15 minutes or better, daytime and early evenings) within a 10-minute walk of 70 percent of King County residents. While the plan is considerably more than a network planning vision, its centerpiece is a rough, high-level network proposal restructuring Metro service around Sound Transit’s regional projects and relying on an ambitious increase in service levels.
The proposal has two parts: a near-term “2025” vision designed around the funded projects from Sound Transit 2, and a longer-term “2040” vision that reflects King County projects included in Sound Transit’s ST3 draft plan. The 2040 vision would bring Metro from roughly 3.5m annual service hours today to about 6m. Metro emphasizes that neither vision “is a service change proposal” and that proposed routes in these visions need to go through much more analysis before they could become part of service changes. In other words, this is all very much Before Seattle Process.
Still, the plan provides insight into what Metro’s professional planners think would work given local jurisdictions’ long-term plans. Metro’s Chris O’Claire, one of the plan’s principal architects, emphasized to us in a briefing that Metro considered local comprehensive plans, growth expectations, and transit priorities, and that the plan reflected a cooperative process between Metro and lots of local and regional stakeholders. One pleasant surprise is a very heavy emphasis on frequent Link connectivity systemwide, resulting in a major shift toward east/west service in Seattle and South King County, and north/south service on the Eastside.
The 2040 plan changes literally every route in the Metro system to some extent, so there is no realistic way for us to cover all of the changes, no matter how deep we try to dive. Below is a grab bag of a few of the most interesting, and likely controversial, specifics I’ve found in the Seattle portion. A suburban installment, equally full of new ideas, will be coming later. Reach in, pick your candy, and comment after the jump.
