All posts by David Lawson

[Update from Martin 4:10pm: Section 319 specifically prohibits Sound Transit, if it enacts new MVET, from receiving any state grants except for “transit coordination grants.”]

Today, the state Senate made public the details of the “compromise” transportation proposal agreed to by transportation committee leaders in the state House and Senate.  The public documents include proposed bill text, project lists, and a balance sheet. We understand that both houses will vote on this proposed compromise tomorrow.

STB staff are still reviewing the documents and determining exactly what they mean for Seattle-area transit, but there are a few important highlights from the proposed revenue bill, ESSB 5987:

• Sound Transit gets authority to ask voters for a basket of new taxes that would raise approximately $15 billion for ST3 projects (Sections 318-321).
• However, up to $518 million of the new ST3 taxes would be diverted to the general fund (Section 422).  This exactly matches a sales tax break that would be given to WSDOT under SSB 5990, so it is effectively a transfer from ST to WSDOT.
• ST must contribute $20 million over five years to affordable housing, and must give developers of affordable housing the first opportunity to bid on 80% of its surplus property, including property acquired for ST1 and ST2 (Section 329).
• The Snohomish County Public Transportation Benefit Area gets authority to ask voters for an additional .3% sales tax, which would support Community Transit (Section 312).
• Cities or counties may absorb, and take on the powers of, transportation benefit districts (TBDs) that have identical boundaries (Sections 301-308).
• TBDs get authority to impose $40 to $50, up from $20, of the maximum $100 vehicle license fee without a public vote (Sections 309-311).

On the one hand, this package gets ST3 all of its requested authority, and could also help fund Community Transit.  On the other hand, this package contains numerous policy provisions which are hard to swallow, and (as always in Washington) proceeds full speed ahead with highway projects while requiring transit projects to submit to yet another public vote.

Last November, the state Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) fined Metro for failing to provide adequate restrooms for bus drivers.  The fine reflected longstanding problems along a number of Metro routes.  Famously, Metro seemed incapable of ensuring the basic cleanliness of a portable serving eight buses an hour, at the Othello Station end of routes 36 and 50.  But that was only one of many issues.

Metro acknowledged the problem in its response to L&I, and came up with an abatement plan that included a list of routes needing help.  Some routes were addressed by paying 24-hour businesses near route ends to allow drivers access.  But many other routes do not have such businesses near their ends.  Starting this Saturday, three routes are changing to give drivers easier restroom access.  More routes will see changes over time.

Most important to riders will be changes to routes 245 and 246 in Bellevue.  There is no restroom at the Factoria end of route 245 or the Clyde Hill end of route 246.  Both routes will be revised to give drivers time to use a restroom in the middle of the route: Eastgate P&R for the 245, and Bellevue Transit center for the 246.  This means that riders from the affected end of the route will have to wait through a layover, or transfer to another bus, if they want to ride past the designated restroom point.

For route 246, a 30-minute coverage route that uses small buses, this isn’t a big deal.  Very few Clyde Hill riders ride past Bellevue Transit Center, and the change comes with a sweetener in the form of a very useful extension of the route to Yarrow Point Station.

But for route 245, the change is bigger news.  Route 245, with 15-minute frequency, is a core service on the Eastside.  It’s the major crosstown route outside of downtown Bellevue, connecting Factoria, Eastgate, Bellevue College, Crossroads, Microsoft, and Kirkland. (Think of it as the “48 of the Eastside.” ) Plenty of riders originate in Factoria and ride past Eastgate, and all of them will now have to wait or transfer at Eastgate on every trip (except a few late at night).

Metro’s Jeff Switzer reassured me that this is an interim solution.  But, even in the interim, it creates a major slowdown for a lot of riders.  If this sort of solution is extended to some of the even busier core routes on Metro’s list, such as the 11, 48, or 128, many more riders would be affected.  Choice riders are not going to put up, and should not put up, with a 10- to 20-minute delay of service in the middle of their routes.  Given the severity of the rider impact, it is probably worth cutting service at the margins to fund real solutions.

In some cases, Metro might be able to build small, standalone permanent comfort stations with running water, such as those that exist at the ends of a number of Seattle routes today.  For example, it appears there is room for such a comfort station to be built near the Factoria terminal of route 245.  In other cases, Metro might be able to extend or change routing so that riders are covered without delay.  (Old route 65 in Lake City was a good example of this sort of routing: buses served north Lake City, then doubled back to Fred Meyer without passengers to provide drivers with restroom access.)

The other change is to cut route 73’s “tail” on 20th Ave NE.  Buses will lay over behind the Jackson Park QFC, together with route 65.  This is not a major change for most riders, given that the “tail” largely overlaps with the main routing on 15th Ave NE.

I want to emphasize that I do not support just keeping things the way they are.  Drivers need reliable access to clean, well-maintained restrooms at both ends of all but the shortest routes.  But forcing passengers on busy core routes to wait through long layovers, like Metro will do on route 245, is not the right way to provide that access.

It’s Metro and Sound Transit service change time again!  But this service change will be more fun than most for Seattle riders, because Metro will be adding the first of two rounds of new service funded by Seattle Prop 1.  The changes will start on Saturday, June 6.

In addition to the new service in Seattle, there are a few other changes of interest at Metro.  Most importantly, there will be long-term disruption in the Central District as SDOT begins its 23rd Ave rebuilding project.  Route 4 will be temporarily truncated at Garfield High School on weekdays, and there will be major reroutes of routes 8 and 48.  Also, there are new contracted “alternative service” routes in Mercer Island and Burien, and revisions to service patterns in Jackson Park, Factoria, and Clyde Hill.  Details below the jump.

Continue reading “Metro to Add Service Starting June 6”

On Tuesday, Metro presented its new “Alternative 3” U-Link restructure proposal, and we reported on it.  This post is different: it’s an opinion piece about the changes I, personally, would like to see in the final proposal.  Some of these requests are easy, some are a bit harder, and the big one is a reach.  But I hope Metro’s hard-working planners will consider all of them.  (And, as everyone should, I will provide feedback to Metro through the normal channels as well as this post.)

Easy Wins:

1. Keep the 271/45 through route.
2. Move the 255 out of the tunnel.
3. Move the 373 in the U-District to match the new 73.
4. Send the 9 to Group Health.

Slightly Harder:

1. Increase evening frequency on the 8.
2. Move the 271 so it can serve Evergreen Point.

The Big Reach: Restructure Capitol Hill (again), in a way that should be easier to implement and easier for riders to understand.

Details below the jump.

Continue reading “How Metro Should Revise “Alternative 3””

(Metro’s “Ted Talks” about each subarea are available on Metro’s website.)

In March, Metro released two alternative proposals for the service change that will take place in March 2016, at roughly the same time Sound Transit’s University Link opens.   We spent a lot of time covering (and mostly praising) “Alternative 1,” an ambitious restructure of service in Capitol Hill, northeast Seattle, and across SR-520.  “Alternative 2” was strictly a minimum change proposal.  As planned, Metro has now developed a single new proposal, based on feedback it received on Alternatives 1 and 2.  This proposal will be subject to one more round of feedback, after which Metro will send a final proposal to the King County Council for adoption.

The new proposal can be summarized like this:

• In Northeast Seattle, Alternative 1 was adopted almost entirely, with only minor changes.
• In Capitol Hill, Metro got negative feedback on both alternatives, and this proposal is substantially different from either of them.
• Across SR-520, Alternative 2 was adopted—that is, almost nothing will change.

We should emphasize that, unlike either Alternative 1 or Alternative 2, this proposal includes funding from Seattle Proposition 1.  The service levels in this proposal are the service levels riders can actually expect to see in March 2016.

We remain as enthusiastic as always about the Northeast Seattle restructure, which will bring 15-minute service to a startling number of new corridors and create several new connections.  The Capitol Hill restructure is a “minimum pain” change for everyone but Montlake residents—but it’s also “minimum gain,” with several opportunities missed to increase frequency and connect riders to Link.  With three regular SR 520 riders on staff, we are quite disappointed by the abandonment of any change along SR 520.

Details below the jump.  And, as with our earlier coverage, many thanks to Zach Shaner for serving on Metro’s Sounding Board and providing much assistance with these posts.

Continue reading “Metro Releases Next U-Link Restructure Draft”

What a difference a year makes.  Less than a year, actually.

We spent last summer reporting on the dramatic, high-stakes conflict between Metro, County Executive Dow Constantine, and a faction of the County Council led by Councilmember Rod Dembowski over whether Metro would need to carry through the four increasingly painful rounds of service cuts it planned following the failure of King County Proposition 1.  In the end, of course, Metro made only the first of the four rounds of cuts, under protest that canceling the other cuts made its financial future uncertain.

The growing economy, and possibly fading memories, have apparently eliminated the uncertainty.  It looks like Councilmember Dembowski’s gamble ended up paying off.

In November, Seattle voters passed Proposition 1, using city funds to restore (and then some) the cut service hours within the city.  Late last Friday, the other shoe dropped: Metro announced a new investment in service hours, using its own funds.  Almost all of these service improvements come from the county’s own revenue, and the county cites a laundry list of sources: low diesel prices, higher-than-expected sales tax receipts, and new state grants.  The new investment will add 69,000 service hours, which, combined with Prop 1, essentially makes up for the September cuts.

The catch: all of these Metro improvements are to service not covered by Prop 1.  More below the jump.

Continue reading “Metro to Add (Mostly) Suburban Service”

On March 31st, King County Metro held a Visioning Workshop to kick off its new long-range planning process.  The process will supplement Metro’s current 2011-2021 Strategic Plan with a new long-range plan, to be presented in draft form in spring 2016 and adopted by the King County Council in late 2016.  The launch party was a transit geek’s extravaganza: it featured breakout sessions for riders and citizens to talk with Metro personnel about what they want from the transit system, as well a “visioning” panel with transit eminence Jarrett Walker, Seattle civic leader Rebecca Saldaña, and UW transportation planning professor Mark Hallenbeck.

Because of scheduling conflicts, I was unable to attend the event itself, which was very well attended and garnered consistently positive reports from attendees (at least those who talked to us).  However, Metro invited STB staff to a media Q&A session immediately before the event, which I was able to make.  At the session, Metro deputy general manager Victor Obeso and Walker offered an interesting, frank, and informative discussion of the long-range planning process. A few highlights of that discussion follow below the jump.

Continue reading “Metro Talks Long-Range Planning”

Note: This is the last (and, mercifully, shortest) in a series of four posts describing the details of Metro’s proposed “Alternative 1″ restructure, which would take effect at the same time as the planned early 2016 opening of Sound Transit’s University Link.  “Alternative 1″ is the more ambitious of Metro’s two U-Link proposals.  Our overview of both proposals, and our short description of the minimum-change “Alternative 2,” is here.  Although these posts are under my byline, they owe a huge amount to the hard work of the entire STB staff, and especially Zach Shaner.

With the major structural changes proposed in Metro’s “Alternative 1” U-Link restructure for the bus networks in three separate parts of town, it’s easy to overlook a few interesting details outside of the areas most affected.  But Alternative 1 would have some beneficial effects on the network serving downtown and nearby employment centers, which shouldn’t be overlooked.  Fittingly given its astonishing growth, South Lake Union would see some of the biggest benefits, while both Uptown and Downtown would get a new connection or two.

SLU-Wallingford-Green Lake: Route 16.  Metro would change route 16 to use Dexter through SLU rather than Aurora (as well as other major changes described in our Northeast Seattle post).  This would provide a new frequent connection from SLU to the center of Wallingford and East Green Lake, replacing the infrequent connection to the periphery of these areas on current route 26.

First Hill-SLU-North Seattle (peak only): Routes 64 and 66.  Both routes 64 and 66 would be revised as pictured at left, to serve an entirely new common routing that would create a new connection between SLU and North Seattle.  The routes would meet (and alternate for 10-minute frequency) at Green Lake P&R, and head to SLU via I-5 and the Mercer St exit.  From SLU, they would continue to First Hill on a straight shot using Fairview and Boren Aves.  This routing would work wonderfully in the morning, but might present a few reliability problems in the afternoon as Boren can become congested approaching Olive and Howell Sts.  Nevertheless, the quick connection between SLU and Green Lake P&R is likely worth the occasional delay.  At Green Lake P&R, these routes would also connect with frequent routes 45 (now 48N) and 67, serving many North Seattle neighborhoods. It seems to me, though, that Metro is missing an opportunity to make this connection even more useful by not making the same change to First Hill route 303.

Uptown-SLU-UDistrict-Eastside (peak only): Route 311.  As fully described in our SR-520 post, Route 311 would create a new 10-minute peak-hour, peak-direction connection between Woodinville, Kingsgate, SR-520 transfer stations, UW Station, the U-District, SLU, and Uptown.  While we wonder about speed for Eastside riders,  this will be a wonderfully fast trip to either SLU or Uptown for U-District riders, and will make possible a wide variety of new SLU-Eastside connections with same-stop transfers.

Route 8 Improvements.  The Denny Mess is still there, but the 8 should get a bit better anyway.  First, frequency would improve to 10 minutes weekdays and 15 minutes nights and Sundays.  Second, the route would be revised to terminate in Madison Park, rather than continuing on the long trek through the Central District and Rainier Valley.  The shorter routing should strongly improve reliability westbound, even if eastbound reliability remains a subject best left unspoken.

Route 70 Improvements.  Route 70, now a very heavily used core service through SLU, would gain 10-minute frequency during most of peak hour and begin running nights and Sundays in place of the notoriously overloaded and unreliable route 71/72/73 locals.  This is a change that will likely happen no matter what, as Seattle intended to fund it with Prop 1 money before Metro proposed to fund it through Alternative 1.

Note: This is the third in a series of four posts describing the details of Metro’s proposed “Alternative 1″ restructure, which would take effect at the same time as the planned March 2016 opening of Sound Transit’s University Link.  “Alternative 1″ is the more ambitious of Metro’s two U-Link proposals.  Our overview of both proposals, and our short description of the minimum-change “Alternative 2,” is here.  Although these posts are under my byline, they owe a huge amount to the hard work of the entire STB staff, and especially Zach Shaner.

While Alternative 1 brings significant change everywhere it reaches, its effects are most dramatic in the greater SR-520 corridor.  Almost every Metro and Sound Transit route that currently crosses the Evergreen Point Bridge would see some change, and a significant portion of commuters and off-peak riders alike will end up with new routines.

The vision is compelling: to serve a large array of commuter destinations on each side, with enough peak-hour frequency that lots of cross-lake commutes that are painful today become easy.  Most connections will involve same-stop transfers or Link transfers with very short waits.  Given the extremely peak-centric (although bidirectional) nature of cross-lake ridership, focusing first on the peak network makes sense.  But, more than any other part of the restructure, making this vision actually work will require excellent execution by both Metro and Sound Transit.  And the Alternative 1 proposal offers mixed signals in that respect.  Some aspects of it are compelling right now; others may require refinement if the agencies are to maximize SR 520’s potential.  More below the jump.

Continue reading “Alternative 1: SR-520 Cross-Lake Service”

Note: This is the second in a series of four posts describing the details of Metro’s proposed “Alternative 1” restructure, which would take effect at the same time as the planned March 2016 opening of Sound Transit’s University Link.  “Alternative 1” is the more ambitious of Metro’s two U-Link proposals.  Our overview of both proposals, and our short description of the minimum-change “Alternative 2,” is here.  Although these posts are under my byline, they owe a huge amount to the hard work of the entire STB staff, and especially Zach Shaner.

As in Northeast Seattle, Alternative 1 in Capitol Hill and First Hill focuses on creating a grid of very frequent routes, and making transfers between those routes much easier than they are today.  Capitol Hill, with its high density and ridership, would feature several major bus routes with 10-minute service.  Most Capitol Hill routes will allow for easy transfers to U-Link at Capitol Hill Station (“CHS”).  Many other popular trips will involve transfers between two 10-minute bus routes.  To achieve these high frequencies, a number of one-seat bus rides to downtown and the U-District would disappear.

As we’ve noted in other posts, these high frequencies are before improvements funded by Seattle’s Proposition 1, so some frequencies are likely to be even better than indicated by Metro.

The Capitol Hill Alternative 1 proposal is also notable for what it does not contain.  Metro decided not to restructure service in the Central District, or in South Seattle corridors (such as the route 36/60 corridor or Rainier Avenue South) served by routes that also serve CHS or UW Station.  We understand that including all of these corridors would have made the scope of the restructure difficult for Metro planning staff to manage, and likely increased the political difficulty of implementing any restructure plan.  Metro has not forgotten about these corridors; we can still expect to see further Central District and south-end restructure proposals in the future.

The following are the major frequent corridors in Alternative 1 south of the Ship Canal; for each one, we describe the service it’s replacing as well.

Route 8: 10 minutes.  Alternative 1 splits current Route 8 into two routes, 8 and 38 (discussed below).  Revised route 8 would get 10-minute frequency, while route 38 would get 15-minute frequency.  The revised 8 would be identical to today from Uptown to Madison Valley, but instead of turning south on MLK it would continue on Madison to Madison Park. Unfortunately, there are no changes to Denny Way, so the 8 would still be unreliable and prone to bunching eastbound in the afternoon.  Westbound, reliability should improve significantly as a result of the split and the improved frequency.

Route 8 would entirely replace the deleted route 11 along Madison, and represent a dramatic frequency improvement in Madison Park. Madison Park and Madison Valley customers traveling downtown would need to transfer to Link at CHS, but would usually have a faster trip than current route 11 despite the transfer.  In exchange, riders in those areas would enjoy new connections to SLU and Uptown.

Route 8 would also replace the east/west portion of route 43.  Customers traveling from John Street to the U-District would need to transfer to Link at CHS or to route 48, which would have 10-minute frequency, at 23rd and John.  Customers traveling from Summit to downtown would need to use route 47, which (Metro has unofficially reassured us) will continue to operate after the restructure through Seattle Prop 1 funding.

Route 48: 10 minutes.  The south half of Route 48 would be unchanged south of the Ship Canal, but receive a welcome and overdue improvement to 10-minute frequency.  (North of the Ship Canal, it would be through-routed with revised route 67 to Roosevelt and Northgate, instead of the current north half of the 48, which would become new route 45.)

Route 48 would replace the north/south part of route 43.  Riders between Montlake and Capitol Hill would transfer to 10-minute route 8 at 23rd and John.  Riders between Montlake and downtown would use route 48 and transfer to Link at UW Station, which would provide a faster trip in almost all cases despite the backtrack and the time spent transferring.  (This fact is a real indictment of current route 43, which west of Broadway often has an average speed slower than walking.)

Continue reading “Alternative 1: Capitol Hill and First Hill”