All posts by Erica C. Barnett

[Clarification: the post states that carsharing vehicles have “the right to park…in any legal parking spot at no charge”. While users do not pay for street parking at the point of use, the city does charge a flat annual fee of $1,730 per vehicle, amounts are adjusted annually based upon actual usage, and such fees are built into member pricing. – Zach]

Back in 2013, when Daimler launched its Car2Go carsharing service in Seattle, I lamented the fact that the Car2Go service area (the boundaries where cars can be parked and left for the next customer) stopped short of serving West and Southeast Seattle—two areas with diverse populations and, tellingly, more lower-income people than the Central and North Seattle neighborhoods Car2Go did serve first. At the time, I expressed some incredulity that Car2Go considered neighborhoods like Mount Baker and Columbia City “new and developing areas,” which struck (and strikes) me as code for “places that aren’t mostly white yet.”

Car2Go eventually expanded its service, and in 2015, the city adopted legislation that increased the number of “free-floating car share” permits that also required all new carsharing services to expand their service areas to include the entire city within two years. The implication was clear: If the city is going to give your members the right to park your cars in any legal parking spot at no charge [see note above], you have to serve the entire city, even the parts that may be less white—and less lucrative.

BMW’s new ReachNow service launch shows the wisdom of that rule. ReachNow, which costs 49 cents a minute (to Car2Go’s $0.41), has an initial service area virtually identical to Car2Go’s, excluding all of West Seattle and Southeast Seattle and stopping just a couple of blocks south of I-90, at S Lander St.  ReachNow has two years to expand its service area to include the whole city.

Continue reading “ReachNow’s Launch Falls Short”

A Republican bill to eliminate two of the four express toll lanes on I-405; eliminate tolls in the evening and early morning hours; and get rid of all HOT lanes on 405 in two years if they fail to maintain a speed of 45 mph 90 percent of the time, has a single, somewhat surprising Democratic sponsor: Sen. Cyrus Habib (D-48), a Bellevue resident who also happens to be running for lieutenant governor.

Habib (who prefaced his email response, “I was wondering when I would be asked about that!”) says he’s backing the bill because his “district is directly affected, and so I decided it was important for me to have a seat at the table as we take a look at what works and doesn’t work with the current express tolling dynamic there.

“I likely wouldn’t vote for the bill in its current form, but I do think we need to revisit how the program is being implemented. I hear more about this from my constituents than any other issue,” Habib says.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Andy Hill (R-45) in the senate and Rep. Mark Harmsworth (R-11) in the house, was introduced in response to a rash of complaints by 405 drivers about the amount solo drivers must pay to use the HOV lanes (up to $10 at peak hours), and about the perception that the lanes haven’t reduced congestion on the freeway.

“[HOT lanes are] not working; anybody who drives that corridor will tell you that,” Hill told the Senate transportation committee at a hearing for the bill yesterday. “People are very, very upset. They are experiencing increased congestion, despite what any stats might say.”

About those stats: As Josh reported yesterday on PubliCola, according to data collected by WSDOT, travel times on 405 have gone down, on average, 14 minutes for express-lane users, and 7 minutes for general-purpose lane drivers, since the lanes opened last September. Much as Hill may scoff at “stats,” and much as his house cohort Helmsworth may have testified yesterday about the “thousands and thousands” of complaints he said he has personally read about traffic on 405, it’s always helpful to remember that the plural of anecdote is not data. And the data, if it’s correct, says the lanes are doing what they’re supposed to do.

However, Habib says his constituents complain about another impact of the tolls: They’re regressive. “The absence of light rail and inadequate state of bus rapid transit has made it, combined with the 520 toll, financially difficult for the working poor and students, who have the least flexibility and resources,” he says. Habib says he’d like to explore the idea of converting one of the two existing HOT lanes to HOV-transit lanes “to give the program a chance to first develop on one lane. Express tolling without increased transit is regressive.”

Of course, WSDOT’s original proposal was to give drivers two years to get used to the new HOV lanes; if the bill Habib has signed on to were to pass in any form (its path to a hearing and vote seems far shakier in the house), it would upend that schedule and render HOT lanes on 405 an incomplete experiment.

At a few minutes after eight on election night, November 3, Shafali Ranganathan, deputy director at Transportation Choices Coalition, was a bundle of nerves. Standing behind a pool table set up with computers and a projector in an upstairs room at the Belltown Pub, Ranganathan and about 100 supporters of Move Seattle, the biggest transportation levy in Seattle history, had their eyes glued to the screen at the back of the room, where TCC staffer Carla Chavez was updating the “results” page on King County Elections’ website every few seconds. 0.00. 0.00. 0.00.

TCC, and others who had worked for months on Move Seattle, considered the measure a tough sell, and many told me they expected to end the night several points in the red. As if to emphasize that point, many in the room had been in the process of getting loaded since earlier that afternoon. But Ranganathan was the quiet, focused center of the room, and when the results came in–57 to 43–the 5-foot-tall deputy director issued a surprisingly fierce roar of victory, then quickly composed herself and went off to face the cameras.

Another winner that night was Rob Johnson, TCC director, Ranganathan’s boss, and, as of next January, council member for Northeast Seattle’s District 4. After the election, I called Ranganathan one of the major victors that Tuesday night, not only because her group prevailed on Move Seattle (a victory that can only help the Sound Transit 3 ballot measure in 2016), but because the win solidified her position as the “heir apparent” to Johnson at TCC.

On November 12, TCC announced that Ranganathan would be the group’s new director. A few days later, I sat down with her to find out what the leadership change will mean for the group, how TCC plans to shift its focus in the future, and what it means when a mainstream transportation organization is run almost entirely by women and people of color.

Erica C. Barnett [ECB]: Rob has been at TCC for more than a decade, and has obviously made his imprint on the organization. How will the organization change under your leadership, in terms of strategy or mission?

Continue reading “New TCC Director: “For Our Movement to Succeed, We Need to Build Power.””

A few months back, I wrote, with much exasperation, about an irritating quirk of King County Metro policy I dubbed the “Shoreline Rule”–the requirement that, without exception, all Metro riders who want to contest a transit infraction drive or, more likely, take the bus all the way to King County District Court in Shoreline. I ended up paying a $124 fine for a ticket I believed should have been a warning, because I didn’t want to take a day off work and because I had the money and privilege to do so. Many others, of course, aren’t so fortunate.

Had I chosen to take the bus to Shoreline, Metro’s Trip Planner tells me the trip would have taken me about an hour and a half on four buses each way. For King County Council member Dave Upthegrove, the trip time from the bus stop a block from his house in Des Moines to Shoreline remains unknown–because, he says, “When I entered my home address and Shoreline District Court into Trip Planner, I got an error message that said, ‘Cannot compute due to more than three hours in transit.’

“I’m not that far out” in King County,” Upthegrove continues. “Imagine all the people in Auburn and Covington. You get out there and it’s a fairly transit-dependent population. The people who can’t pay their bus fare can’t rely on the bus.”

This week, Upthegrove introduced a motion that will amend the Shoreline Rule, eventually, to allow juvenile violators to go to court in Burien, instead of schlepping to Shoreline. According to King County Council staff, 72 percent of juvenile violations occur in South Seattle or South King County, so the Burien relocation makes sense. (Upthegrove’s legislation also recommended ending the practice of treating fare evasion and failure to pay tickets as a criminal infraction; adults can still be charged with a misdemeanor for failure to pay or show up in court.) If the county executive’s office develops the legislation and the council passes it on schedule, the Shoreline Rule, for the 200 or so kids who receive fare evasion tickets each year, will be history sometime in 2016. 

Continue reading “Say Goodbye (Sort of) to the Shoreline Rule”

If you still aren’t registered to vote, it’s not too late, but you’ll need to hustle–today is the last day to register to vote in the November 3 election.

It’s a great time to get involved by voting in your local elections. In Seattle, this is the first outing for district elections, which means all nine council seats are up for grabs. The critically important Move Seattle ballot measure, which would add seven new RapidRide routes, implement the Bicycle Master Plan, partially fund the deferred Graham Street light rail station and the Northgate pedestrian bridge, and build sidewalks across the city, is on the ballot. So is Initiative 122, which would change the way we fund elections by funding “democracy vouchers” for every citizen to donate real money to the candidates of their choice, and place new restrictions on campaign donations. And Tim Eyman’s latest power grab, Initiative 1366, is waiting for your “no” vote.

In other words, what are you waiting for? Go out, register, and weigh in on the local issues and candidates on the ballot in Seattle and other local elections. And once you’re registered, check out our endorsements for Seattle races, suburban races, and local transit measures. Ballots must be postmarked or delivered to an official drop box or van by 8pm on Tuesday, November 3.

As we reported this morning, Tuesday night the King County Council TrEE Committee and chair Rod Dembowski will host the only public hearing outside of work hours on a proposed Metro transit restructure that could dramatically increase access to frequent transit service in Northeast Seattle and Capitol Hill. The restructure is a set of significant (and controversial) bus service changes that would kick in when the U Link light rail station opens in 2016.

Dembowski has suggested making no changes to the system until Northgate Link opens in 2021, an option that would miss the opportunity to profoundly improve mobility in Northeast Seattle and update a bus network that provides infrequent, daytime-only rides between just two locations, downtown and the University of Washington. 

Unfortunately, those most likely to advocate for improvements to the network are also the least able to attend tomorrow’s hearing. Per Dembowski, the hearing is being held at the Mountaineers Club out in Magnuson Park– a venue that’s about as transit-inaccessible as Seattle gets. It is true that, as Dembowski, noted during a burst of defensive tweets on Friday, three bus lines–the 30, 74, and 75–stop in front of the Mountaineers. However, those lines stop running from downtown to Sand Point around 6:30, and only the 75 (which runs every half-hour) will be running when the meeting lets out some time after 9. According to Metro’s trip planner, my own ride to Sand Point would take 75 minutes, and my trip back home would be 90 minutes. I’m quite sure that for those who don’t rely on transit (such as, well, Dembowski) the trip will be significantly shorter.

This matters because if transit riders don’t show up in sufficient numbers tomorrow, Dembowski and his allies on the council will have fodder to go back to Metro and say the public opposes the changes.

I asked Dembowski–who also suggested that people who can’t make the hours-long round trip to testify simply comment online instead–why he chose such a remote location. He claimed he tried to line up other venues–including Roosevelt High School, whose staff was on strike when the council was scheduling the hearing, as well as the University and Ravenna Community Centers–but couldn’t find a place big enough to accommodate what he anticipates will be a crowd of hundreds. And, he said, this is a special discretionary committee meeting that he didn’t have to schedule in the first place.

“The only reason this meeting is happening is that I wanted to make sure we met in the community for a nighttime meeting. I was open to more than one hearing, but to get the council members together in the time frame Metro wants is tough,” Dembowski said.

“If you could find a better spot I’d do another meeting. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it’s pretty good–it’s a block off the Burke-Gilman Trail for thaose that are going to bike, it’s on a major arterial, it’s easy to find. Not everyone is 25 years old and really mobile.”

Dembowski also defended his comment that people who couldn’t make the meeting should just comment online. Denying that council members are swayed any more by public, in-person testimony than impersonal emails from faceless constituents, Dembowski said that, if anything, online commenters “have more power” because they reach all nine council members, who will all vote on the final proposal.”I want to take all of the views into consideration and not be swayed by the loudest voices,” Dembowski said.

The location of tomorrow’s #ULink meeting is an avoidable mistake at best, an act of intentional exclusion at worst. pic.twitter.com/U0iyl9qIov

— Seattle Transit Blog (@SeaTransitBlog) October 5, 2015

Incidentally, on Monday afternoon, Metro announced it was adding bus trips and a shuttle to get transit riders to and from the meeting. I have a call out to Metro spokesman Jeff Switzer to find out if this is the first time Metro has extended service to provide access to a particular public meeting.

If you live in Seattle, I strongly encourage you to show up and listen or comment at tonight’s city council hearing on the Housing Affordability and Livability Committee’s recommendations, which have come under attack from single-family protectionists. Tonight’s public hearing will help the council decide which of the 65 recommendations to set in motion. It will take turnout, support, and continued pressure from urbanists like you and me to ensure they make the right decision and keep the most critical elements of HALA intact.

Iterations of the term “urbanist” have been hotly debated recently (I prefer “reality-based urbanist” myself), but the bottom line is that we all want to ensure that everyone in Seattle–not just wealthy single-family homeowners, not just Amazonian imports, not just those who got here first, but everyone–can live in safe, affordable housing in the city.

This fight is critical, because the council is under tremendous pressure to abandon the very recommendations that will have the most positive impact on affordability. Mayor Ed Murray and several key council members have already abandoned a major, symbolically important HALA recommendation, which would have allowed a greater diversity of housing types (such as duplexes and townhomes) in the 65 percent of Seattle’s land mass that’s currently reserved exclusively for detached single-family homes. Murray, along with council president Tim Burgess and council land-use committee chair Mike O’Brien, walked back their support for that recommendation after angry property owners and neighborhood activists flooded city inboxes with letters of protest and crowded council meetings to voice their complaints about the changes.

I believe that most of the city supports the principles behind the HALA proposals, even if they aren’t familiar with the details, for one simple reason: they provide more affordable housing. Mandatory inclusionary zoning, which would require developers to build affordable housing on site in exchange for the right to build more densely, combined with a new linkage fee on commercial development, would provide 6,000 units of set-aside affordable housing. Other key measures in HALA would expand the boundaries of urban villages to reflect current and future walkability and transit access, increasing supply and limiting the growth of housing costs (which is true no matter how much some progressives insist that supply and demand does not exist).

The opposition to HALA, which has described population growth as a cancer and have suggested single-family homeowners and neighborhood activists should “take back Seattle,” is organized, motivated, and can turn out plenty of people with the means and time to attend midday hearings when most of us are working. Nighttime meetings like this are an ideal opportunity for HALA supporters to show that we, too, deserve a voice at City Hall and in the future of our city.

Image via Division Ave blog.

Last week, after residents in his new council district protested a new live-work development in Ballard, city council member Mike O’Brien took the unusual step of slipping a new design review mandate into an otherwise standard-issue omnibus cleanup bill. The change O’Brien made would require design review–a process that can add more than a year to a project timeline–when the combined development proposals on two adjacent lots exceed the maximum for a single lot according to the city’s design review standards. In low-rise zones, which is where the change is targeted, that means that two adjacent lots under development can’t exceed eight units total. That design-review trigger applies even if two adjacent lots are being developed by different builders; more than eight, and you’re looking at an automatic, time-consuming design review.

The amendment, which O’Brien acknowledges was unorthodox, was intended to address developments like the controversial townhouses going in at 71st and Division in Ballard, where six live/work units will replace a single-family home that sat astride two historic lots; in that case, the developer took advantage of an old lot line that hadn’t been used in decades to build three units per lot.

But the change will have sweeping implications for development potential on smaller lots across the city. O’Brien says the new requirement is “intended to address instances where a developer in a low-rise or neighborhood commercial zone will break a project up into a couple of different projects to avoid going through design review.” O’Brien acknowledges that the city already has plans to overhaul the design review process next year, but says that in the meantime, “we’re going to continue to set rules that are going to allow more and more people to live in Seattle, but there’s got to be an expectation that when we set those rules, they are going to be followed.”

Bruce Harrell, who proposed an unsuccessful amendment stripping the design review changes from the omnibus bill, said at last week’s meeting that although “Council Member O’Brien and the [Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability] committee had some good intentions in mind to protect neighbors from developers circumventing the system and using what could be called loopholes and that kind of thing … I just think it’s a little dangerous to do a one-off in the omnibus legislation,” especially when the HALA committee already plans to take up design review next year.

Continue reading “O’Brien Amendment Sidesteps HALA to Add Months to Small Projects”

This is the second in a two-part series. Part 1 is available here.

Seattle Transit Blog interviewed 18 of the 47 candidates running for Seattle City Council in the seven newly created council districts and two citywide seats before making our endorsements last week. The Board chose candidates who were most closely aligned with its core principles, which include support for thoughtful transit investment, spending on key bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, density and transit-oriented development, and concentration of resources into high-quality corridors. They also gave points to candidates who shared our skepticism of taxes on development and policy that promotes auto-oriented lifestyles. They did not interview candidates who they knew did not share these values, or in their view didn’t have a genuine chance to win, because they didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.

But what if the endorsement doesn’t tell you enough about why they endorsed a certain candidate, supported another more tepidly, or declined to back some candidates with generally progressive values? As I participated in the interviews as an advisor to the Board, I’m posting a few outtakes from our interviews to help guide you in your voting decision, or just entertain you if you’ve already voted and want to confirm you done right.

District 5 

Sandy Brown

On Move Seattle’s funding for sidewalks

There’s less than five percent of our sidewalk needs that are met in Move Seattle. If that’s what we’re going to do for the next nine years, then it’s disappointing. We’ve got to find solutions that include pedestrian infrastructure. We need sidewalks in Broadview. We need sidewalks in Haller Lake. We need sidewalks in North Maple Leaf. We need sidewalks in Lake City. And we’re still a long way from that.

There is a mixed backing for sidewalks in Seattle–that’s one reason I have felt that [a local improvement district] program [Ed: A hyperlocal tax to pay for sidewalks] could be good. We may not get them in every single street, but they should be included in arterials for our master plan.

On the density proposals in HALA

I think [the upzones] will be very unpopular with traditional Seattle, but it’s the way we have to go. If we set up Seattle in such way that every person gets a couple of parking spots per residence, then they’re going to believe they need to drive those cars everywhere. The idea that we could emphasize transit but then still make it easy and inexpensive to have a car–it doesn’t make sense. We don’t want to coerce people into transit, but we have to help people get used to the idea that transit is now the basic way to get around in Seattle. That’s what our future is.

In my district, there’s a multifamily building that’s going in on Fremont Avenue in north Greenlake with no parking. The neighbors are up in arms, but it’s only three blocks from the E Line. Now, the challenge is there isn’t a great grocery store for about eight blocks from there. We have to make sure that there are necessities that are within walking or biking distance, and that’s not always the case.

Mercedes Elizalde (endorsed)

On why transit service should precede anticipated density

Continue reading “Council Endorsement Outtakes, Part 2”

Seattle Transit Blog interviewed 18 of the 47 candidates running for Seattle City Council in the seven newly created council districts and two citywide seats before making our endorsements last week. The Board chose candidates who were most closely aligned with its core principles, which include support for thoughtful transit investment, spending on key bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, density and transit-oriented development, and concentration of resources into high-quality corridors. They also gave points to candidates who shared our skepticism of taxes on development and policy that promotes auto-oriented lifestyles. They did not interview candidates who they knew did not share these values, or in their view didn’t have a genuine chance to win, because they didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.

But what if the endorsement doesn’t tell you enough about why they endorsed a certain candidate, supported another more tepidly, or declined to back some candidates with generally progressive values? As I participated in the interviews as an advisor to the Board, I’m posting a few outtakes from our interviews to help guide you in your voting decision, or just entertain you if you’ve already voted and want to confirm you done right.

District 1 (West Seattle)

Brianna Thomas

On her top priorities for funding bus service under last year’s Seattle Proposition 1

In this order, I’ve got to go: Congestion at peak hours. I live in West Seattle. There is one way in, there is one way out, so that’s got to be the first thing I tackle. And then after that, it would have to be just in-district mobility. We’ve got the 22 bus route, which is my bus route [and] the bane of my existence. It comes once an hour, it stops at 8:17 or something ridiculous, and it’s at the bottom of a giant hill. So this is the bus route that I am most invested in. Then, after that the 37 down around Alki. … I would like a bus that goes across the West Seattle Bridge to Beacon Hill. And this is completely selfish, because I have a godbaby over there and it takes me forever to get to his cute face.

On parking minimums

I’m content with rolling them back as long as we’ve got matching infrastructure to go with it in a timely, and I do mean timely, manner.

Next to my apartment building, there are 28 units going in with seven parking spots, and everyone is just like, there’s no way only a quarter of these people are going to have cars. It’s impossible. In District 1, like in South Park, for instance, you’ve kind of got to have a car to get to the grocery store, your job, the bank, the post office. Until we pump up the jam on providing services to these pockets of neighborhoods, it’s impossible to make the argument not to have a car.

Continue reading “Council Endorsement Outtakes Part 1”