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.
Transportation planners at the City of Bellevue have been working for several years on a comprehensive update to the city’s 2003 Transit Master Plan (TMP) and those efforts are likely to bear fruit on Monday when the Bellevue City Council votes on adopting the final product. We’ve covered the city’s ongoing work on the TMP a couple of times in these pages. In 2012, Sherwin described the process and gave readers a sneak peek into planners’ thinking. Last October, I covered the Transit Service Vision report, which is the piece of the overall plan that is focused on network planning. The new TMP goes well beyond network design, though, encompassing capital planning; political priorities for service improvement; a holistic approach to multimodal trip generation; and a realistic assessment of existing baseline conditions.
We are big fans of the thorough planning approach Bellevue is using in this process, and we hope other local jurisdictions will take some inspiration from it. Bellevue isn’t a place that has always been known for transit friendliness, but this work will make it a–arguably the–regional leader in transit planning. There is a remarkable amount of consensus in the City Council around the TMP, with even transit-skeptical members such as Deputy Mayor Kevin Wallace applauding most of the work and sounding friendly to some transit investment. Of course, it’s worth remembering that a master plan is not a budget, and that few of the improvements the TMP recommends are funded. Still, a cohesive vision is likely to make funding much easier in the future.
As next week’s council vote nears, we’ll have another post highlighting the capital improvements in the new TMP. Below the jump, we summarize the pieces of the new TMP, the priorities that have shaped it, and the reasons it’s a remarkable piece of work.
In-city Metro Routes 7 and 36. Photo by Zack Heistand.
Tomorrow at 5:30 p.m., the Seattle City Council — acting in its capacity as the Board of Directors of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD) — will hear public comment and consider a resolution, introduced by Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, that would implement Mayor Ed Murray’s “Plan D” to save most Metro service in the city of Seattle by using the STBD’s taxing authority.
As a refresher, the Rasmussen/Murray “Plan D” would impose a flat $60 vehicle license fee (VLF) and an 0.1% sales-tax increase within the City of Seattle, after a public vote to be held in November. These are the same taxes the defeated Proposition 1 would have imposed countywide through a separate TBD. The VLF would be permanent, while the sales tax increase would last for ten years, the maximum allowed under state law. The resolution requires the STBD to hold a hearing and introduce a resolution to phase out both taxes if the county acquires state or regional funding to replace them.
The plan would not prevent Metro’s September 2014 cuts or restore the service to be cut in September 2014. It would provide “comparable [service levels] to what was provided by Metro Transit following its September 2014 service changes,” with any additional money going to buy new service according to the Seattle Transit Master Plan and Metro’s service guidelines. Left open in the resolution’s wording is the important but politically difficult question of whether Metro would implement some or all of the restructures it planned for various parts of Seattle in February, June, and September 2015. We would argue that, given additional funding, the network changes proposed in most of those restructures — with the notable exceptions of the extreme West Seattle “chainsaw restructure” and the cuts to Beacon Hill service — would be an improvement over today’s service patterns for most riders. (Late edit: There’s nothing good in the proposed Magnolia restructure either.)
Another notable feature of the plan is that it would fund only routes with 80% or more of their stops in the City of Seattle. This would prevent the funding from restoring or enhancing certain routes which provide core service to Seattle neighborhoods, particularly in the south end, but also in the far north of the city. As it happens, none of the all-day routes in question (RapidRide E, 106, 107, 120, 124, 128, 131, 132, 345, 346, 347, 348, and 372) are currently planned to suffer meaningful cuts. It is unclear, however, how such routes would be treated in any service improvements if the taxes generate extra funding.
(Note: Edited to make clear that the Licata/Sawant plan retains the VLF.) The Rasmussen/Murray plan is competing with an alternative plan proposed by Councilmembers Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant. The Licata/Sawant plan would imposeretain the VLF, but replace the 0.1% sales tax increase with an employee hours tax (widely known as a “head tax”) of $18 per employee per year on employers and an increase in the commercial parking tax from 12.5% to 17.5% (sales tax, which is separate from this tax, is also imposed on commercial parking). Licata and Sawant argue that the taxes their plan would impose are far more progressive than the VLF and sales tax. They also claim the plan could forestall the September 2014 service cuts, although Metro has not said whether it would be able to restore the service in time, given that preparations for the September 2014 service change are well underway. Opponents, which include the UW and most of the heavy hitters in Seattle’s business community, charge that the “head tax” would slow job growth and that the parking tax increase would give Seattle the highest total tax on parking in the country. To date, no council members other than Licata and Sawant have indicated support for their plan. While it appears they will introduce the plan as an amendment to Murray’s resolution, they have not yet made legislative text public.
Metro Route 257 passes ST Express Route 510. Photo by Kris Leisten.
Yesterday, King County Executive Dow Constantine signed an executive order which is intended to improve cooperation between Metro and Sound Transit in a number of ways. In his capacity as chair of Sound Transit’s Board of Directors, Constantine will bring a motion before the Sound Transit Board intended to accomplish the same goal. In a briefing yesterday, Constantine spoke with several reporters, including both Adam Bejan Parast and me from STB, in a bit more depth about what he hopes to accomplish with the executive order and its companion motion. In a nutshell, he sees his two-year chairmanship of the ST Board as an opportunity to get Metro and Sound Transit cooperating more closely, in order (he hopes) to improve the effectiveness of regional transit spending and the transit customer experience. Constantine described the effort as focused on improving the process of cooperation, and refused for the most part to go into specifics about what actual service or aspects of the customer experience might be improved as a result.
The effort has several key components; three are worthy of particular note.
First, staff of both agencies will cooperate more closely in service planning for both bus and rail, particularly in an effort to maximize the value of investments in new rail and BRT corridors, reduce duplication, and free up other bus resources to serve corridors and areas not well served by rail and BRT. In this area, Constantine (along with Metro planning manager Victor Obeso and ST government relations staffer Rachel Smith, who both took part in the discussion) did name three places of particular interest for cooperative planning: 1) restructures around the upcoming UW Link opening in 2016; 2) Northgate Link, in 2021; and 3) a possible Mercer Island collection/transfer point for East Link, in 2023. Constantine singled out “how to use buses more effectively to get customers to trains” as an area of particular importance. He freely admitted that planning and execution of bus/train transfers along Central Link had been “bumpy,” and wants the agencies to do better with upcoming corridor openings.
Second, staff will look for other opportunities for closer coordination throughout their agencies. This was described very generally in both the executive order itself and the briefing. The executive order mentions “coordinated operations, maintenance, administration, transparency, and accountability measures.” It’s not clear what cooperation would be possible in operations or maintenance, areas where ST contracts all its work. In terms of administration and governance, Constantine emphasized the need to find a balance between cooperative effort and continued local control. He does not want to see a regional super-agency, and feels that each agency’s accountability to its local electorate and attention to local detail is important to providing good transit service. For instance, he does not want to change Metro’s service allocation guidelines. But he would like to see the agencies develop a cohesive regional vision, and “act as one” whenever possible.
Third, staff will look for ways to improve access to rider information tools such as schedules and trip planners. Constantine bemoaned the need to visit multiple agencies’ websites to find information about many trips (which will worsen in the future as more rail corridors open). He didn’t know exactly what tools might be developed, but wants staff of both agencies to study how to provide unified rider information.
During the media briefing, Constantine also spoke at some length about his view of transit policy in general. He sees increased investment in transit as the best strategy for increasing regional transportation capacity, seeing limited potential in expansion of the road network. He would like to see Metro service at a level 500,000 annual hours higher than today’s, even after the opening of ST’s rail corridors. His two key goals for transit are 1) to maximize the value obtained for each dollar of transit funding, and 2) to “optimize” the experience for transit customers. Unsurprisingly given the views he expressed in his letter to the King County Council rejecting its cuts-postponing ordinance, he is a proponent of service planning based on objective, measurable criteria, and is interested in developing new ways of evaluating transit performance and the value obtained from transit funding.
Option 2 between Post and 3rd (the interesting part). Map by Metro.
About one year ago, Metro selected Columbia Street, using a two-way alignment, as the pathway that southbound Highway 99 buses would use between the new Alaskan Way interchange and Third Avenue after completion of the Highway 99 project. Last week, Metro released a brief summary of a traffic study intended to help the agency and SDOT determine the best way to configure the new two-way Columbia.
Metro seriously considered three possibilities. Option 1 is a three-lane configuration with one transit-only lane in each direction and one general-purpose (GP) lane westbound, which would allow room for wider sidewalks along Columbia Street. Options 2 and 2B both use four-lane configurations with one transit-only lane in each direction and two GP lanes westbound, and sidewalks of the same width as today’s. Options 2 and 2B would also allow for dedicated GP turn lanes in certain spots, while Option 1 would not. The only difference between Options 2 and 2B is that Option 2 would allow general traffic to use the eastbound transit-only lane between First and Second, which would provide GP access to two parking lots without turning across the transit-only lane.
Metro determined that Option 1, with three lanes, would have an unacceptable impact on general traffic, largely because of the lack of space for dedicated turn lanes. Given the volume of traffic turning left from Columbia onto Second, this conclusion makes sense.
Metro also determined that Option 2, allowing general traffic between First and Second eastbound, would serve general traffic better than Option 2B. Conspicuously absent from the summary, though, is any discussion of whether buses would be delayed by cars waiting to turn right from the transit lane onto Second. Given the high volume of pedestrian traffic in the area during peak hours, and the need for turning car traffic to wait for pedestrians, an impact on eastbound bus traffic seems quite likely. I would have liked to see more specific discussion of Option 2’s potential effect on bus travel times, compared with Option 2B.
One other interesting note: the study assumed 40 buses per hour in each direction during peak hours, which is a bit odd, as today there are 47 outbound buses in this corridor during the busiest hour (4:30-5:30 p.m.), with demand for more. Consistently with the brief nature of the summary, there was no explanation for the difference.
Yesterday, the King County Council, in a long, tense meeting, passed Councilmember Rod Dembowski’s proposal to indefinitely delay all of Metro’s cuts except most of those scheduled for September 2014. Dembowski and four suburban councilmembers (Hague, Lambert, Dunn, von Reichbauer) voted in favor, while the remaining four councilmembers (Upthegrove, McDermott, Gossett, Phillips) voted against. The council also unanimously passed a companion motion by Councilmember Dembowski requesting that the Executive commission the second Metro performance audit in five years; set a higher farebox recovery target; and study further efficiency measures to reduce the amount of cuts needed. In approving Dembowski’s ordinance, the Council rejected a compromise amendment offered by the four No-voting members which would have left the scheduled cuts in place but allowed the executive to cancel or reduce most of them if revenue allowed.
Councilmember Dembowski’s ordinance did not add or specifically identify any revenue to pay for the service it sought to restore. It included Councilmember Kathy Lambert’s amendment arbitrarily saving six DART routes, five of which are quite poor performers, from the ax. For these and other reasons I detailed yesterday morning, Dembowski’s measure was highly unpopular among the STB staff.
Apparently we weren’t the only ones who disliked it. County Executive Dow Constantine, who did not issue a veto threat or otherwise show his hand before the Council’s vote, vetoed the bill less than one hour after the Council voted for it—about 20 minutes after the end of the Council meeting. The veto is the first of Constantine’s four-year tenure as county executive. In a blistering press release (where he likened the Dembowski ordinance to “a big check without enough money in the bank”) and an equally blunt letter to the Council he left very little doubt about where he stands on the issues at play. Both documents are well worth reading in their entirety, but some bits of language in the letter are too colorful to pass up (emphasis all mine):
[The Dembowski ordinance] is not responsible. It violates the Comprehensive Financial Management Policies adopted unanimously by the Council less than two months ago. Specifically, it spends future revenue that does not exist, and it draws upon one-time revenue to fund ongoing operations. Further, it violates King County Metro’s Council-adopted Strategic Plan by allocating service hours based on political considerations rather than data and established objective criteria. We’ve come far in our nationally recognized work to reform and modernize King County government and should not endanger this progress. …
We worked together to achieve meaningful reforms that will benefit the agency, and the public, through the discipline of continuous improvement, rather than resorting to such empty managerial platitudes as “budget-scrubbing” and “top-to-bottom” review. …
We can budget based on hope. Or we can budget based on reality. This ordinance commits us to spending money that we do not know to exist. …
Ordinance 2014-0210.2 violates the Transit Strategic Plan and service guidelines, and creates additional financial impacts that are not reconciled. This compromises the integrity of our regional planning process and sets a dangerous precedent.
As of this writing, Dembowski has not publicly commented on the veto. We will update this post if and when he does.
I share Constantine’s hope that his veto will encourage the Council to come back with a compromise ordinance that respects the integrity of the county planning process and doesn’t rely on funding the County doesn’t have.
The current King County Council. Picture by King County.
Since Proposition 1 failed in April, Metro and its riders have assumed that the King County Council would pass an ordinance implementing the four-part series of cuts Metro planning staff devised. On Tuesday, Councilmember Rod Dembowski threw a wrench into that plan. He and the three suburban members of the Council’s Transportation, Economy, and Environment (TrEE) Committee, over the objections of the committee’s three other Seattle members, approved an ordinance which would implement only most of the first (September 2014) round of cuts, canceling other cuts altogether for the moment. Councilmember Dembowski would not implement or propose any funding to pay for the restoration of service. (Our Frank Chiachiere spoke with Councilmember Dembowski about his proposed ordinance last week.)
The other four Seattle councilmembers, in response, proposed a compromise ordinance which would implement all four rounds of cuts, but give the County Executive flexibility to cancel or reduce the June 2015 and September 2015 cuts and to undo part or all of the February 2015 cuts if new funding is found. This response put the Council in the odd position of having “Democrats” propose cuts while “Republicans” (and Councilmember Dembowski) seek to delay them (yes, the Council is technically nonpartisan). But there is method to the Democrats’ seeming madness, and I strongly support their compromise proposal.
I’m usually a big fan of Councilmember Dembowski, who is my councilmember, and who has done top-notch work on many issues in a short time on the Council. But I think this proposal of his is misguided, even with an admirable goal. I argue that his proposal’s effect would not be to avoid cuts, but to undermine Metro’s newly professionalized planning process and its Service Guidelines, while cuts go forward. That would be a profoundly bad outcome for Metro, the county, and us riders, so I hope to see Councilmember Dembowski’s proposed ordinance defeated at today’s 1:30 p.m. Council meeting. Full argument below the jump.
Last week, just in time for Memorial Day, both Metro and Sound Transit published details of their upcoming service changes, which will begin Saturday, June 7. Both sets of changes are minor, with the only significant news being the start of Metro’s RapidRide F Line connecting Burien, Southcenter, and Renton.
The major Metro cuts scheduled to take effect as a result of Proposition 1’s failure do not start now. The first of four phases of cuts is scheduled for the service change beginning September 27, 2014, with more cuts to follow at all three service changes during 2015.
As Frank initially covered on Saturday, Sound Transit has released a slide deck summarizing a new study of possible high-capacity transit options in a large, roughly L-shaped area connecting downtown, West Seattle, White Center, Burien, Tukwila, and Renton. Sound Transit’s study doesn’t restrict itself to a single corridor, particularly in the West Seattle/White Center part of the study area. Instead, the agency presents a wide variety of options for HCT throughout the entire study area, parts of which could presumably be mixed and matched to form more refined options, just as SDOT and Sound Transit intended with the first public draft of their Ballard proposals (later refined).
Everything from slow, low-cost semi-BRT to long, extravagant light-rail tunnels is on the table, and the route between Burien and Seattle could serve Morgan Junction, South Park, or just about any neighborhood in between. To avoid duplicating Frank’s post, I won’t resummarize all of the options here—I’ll just reprint Sound Transit’s table, and add more specifics where needed below. (Please note that ST made a typo on Option A5 in this table — it is LRT, not BRT.)
Sound Transit’s summary of HCT options.
As could be expected in an area as confusing and topographically difficult to serve as this one, the options reveal competing, dramatically different ideas about the goals of major transit investments. And Sound Transit’s evaluations of each option, which are on the last page of the study presentation, tip the agency’s hand about which goals its planning process is designed to serve first. While it is wonderful that ST has finally given detailed study to an area it more or less ignored for many years, I would argue the agency is much too focused on new and speculative regional connections, and not focused enough on speeding up existing trips with extremely high demand. As a result, I think it didn’t put together the best combination from among its menu of options. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to mix-and-match our way to the best option. More below the jump.
Fall 2012 Restructure: Proposed Changes to Routes 2 & 12. Map by Metro.
My recent long-form post about restructures, which used the notorious “Bus 2” as an example, inspired renewed discussion of the Route 2 restructure itself. For those who have not followed the discussion, the restructure involves splitting Metro Route 2 and moving its First Hill routing from Seneca Street two blocks south to Madison Street. Downtown, under current proposals (including the restructure planned for February 2015 as a result of Proposition 1’s failure), the revised route would use the live-loop currently used by Route 12 along Madison and Marion. The restructure would speed up service to First Hill and consolidate two routes which run just two blocks apart, allowing buses to come more often for everyone.
Commenters who defended the current configuration raised familiar objections to the restructure. One of these objections has real merit. It is that the restructured downtown routing would not deliver riders to the part of downtown most of them want to reach, and at the same time make transfers to other service (including service to the rest of downtown) inconvenient and possibly dangerous for riders with mobility impairments.
The Center City Connector streetcar project, surprisingly enough, could provide a way for Metro to do the restructure while entirely solving this problem. Details after the jump.
Today, Metro released an updated service cuts proposal in very rough draft form, in response to unexpectedly strong economic growth which brought about a modest uptick in sales tax revenue. The updated proposal cuts 50,000 fewer annual hours, heading off 1.4% of the previously estimated 17% cuts. During a briefing which Metro provided to the Transportation, Economy, and Environment Committee of the King County Council, Councilmember Rod Dembowski aptly said of the new proposal: “instead of a Category 5 hurricane, we’ve got a Category 4-and-a-half hurricane.”
