All posts by Frank Chiachiere

From the mayor’s office:

Seattle (July 27, 2022) – Today, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced that he will appoint Greg Spotts to be the next Director of the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), pending confirmation by the Seattle City Council.

…

Spotts currently serves as the Executive Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer at the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services, which oversees 1,500 staff positions, an annual budget of $230 million, and a capital program of more than $350 million. He has led the delivery of over $600 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects as well as efforts to make Los Angeles more walkable, bikeable, transit-friendly and sustainable. 

Coverage: Seattle Times, The Urbanist

The Seattle Times rightly asks why Seattle has been so eager to get a station at 130th but so reluctant to add zoning capacity

Vancouver’s 16km SkyLink extension to Surrey to open in 2028, cost $4B

Related: Translink’s ridership is at a remarkable 72% of pre-Covid levels

SDOT rolls out a safety campaign to try and slow down drivers. 🤔

Seattle City Council selects a preferred alignment for WSBLE, punts on many of the thorniest questions

CityLab looks at Luxembourg’s free transit program. The pandemic makes it hard to say for sure, but it doesn’t seem to have done much to get people out of their cars.

Yes, this is an open thread.

• Seattle Transportation Plan is seeking input; “one plan to rule them all,” instead of the modal plans of years past
• So is the Seattle Comprehensive Plan (land use & zoning)
• The Urbanist: speeding up Route 36
• SDOT: Bus lanes going in (finally!) on Rainier Ave.
• Seattle Times: Amtrak service to B.C. is coming back sooner than expected
• Speaking of our neighbors to the north, Vancouver’s TransLink is making a big investment in Bus Rapid Transit

• Seattle Times‘ Mike Lindblom has a long dive into light rail crashes on MLK. It’s too in-depth to summarize but well worth reading.
• Meanwhile, Times Columnist Naomi Ishaka argues for more gates in the Rainier Valley to protect pedestrians
• U-PASS is now fully-subsidized for all UW employees. Good on TRU for organizing around this effort
• The Urbanist: Sound Transit opening back up the idea of skipping Paine Field to get to Everett on time
• PubliCola: Josh Feit looks at ways to get small employers on board with transit passes

• Denver and Los Angeles are cancelling freeways
• The Seattle DOT would like your comments on the new city-wide transportation plan
• Visit the online hub to learn more
• Also from SDOT: West Seattle Bridge re-opens in September
• The Urbanist covers Aurora Avenue’s safety and bus project
• Metro: NE 43rd St re-opens to transit on June 25
• Also: Metro is going to implement free youth fares, thanks to state funding
• Seattle Bike Blog: Leafline vision is 900 miles of trails in WA state
• The Seattle Times: more concrete cracks discovered on East Link project

Sound Transit:

Timm is currently CEO of Greater Richmond Transit Company, where her more than 400 employees operate successful regional bus routes serving the Richmond, Virginia area. Timm is known as a highly collaborative leader who forges strong relationships with community groups and partners, and for building an agency culture focused on dedication to public service and equity. 

From 2016 through 2019 Timm served as Chief Development Officer for WeGo Public Transit in Nashville, Tennessee. Her efforts included directing development activities and agency staff across functions including engineering, outreach, customer care, planning, grants, marketing, communications, service quality and Innovation. She oversaw the implementation of major regional capital projects associated with the more than $6 billion nMotion Strategy that the Nashville region adopted in 2016.

We wish her the best of luck.

• New Eastrail bridge breaks ground next to future Wilburton station. Could open before East Link?
• Capitol Hill Seattle: Seattle city council moving back to some in-person meetings
• West Seattle bridge closer to re-opening in “mid-2022”
• The Atlantic: Jerusalem Demsas takes on the NIMBY-population-growther nexus
• Seattle Times: Gene Balk crunches the data and Seattle is [slightly] losing population
• The Urbanist is launching a letter-writing campaign to try and fix Link’s escalator woes. Write yours here.

Ryan Packer, The Urbanist:

SDOT says that the first phase of this transit lane could save riders on the Route 7 one minute per trip, but that the full extension could save riders 6 minutes during times of highest congestion on Rainier Avenue. That could translate to as many as 141 cumulative hours saved per day, given the ridership of that highly used bus route. Even as the pandemic and work-from-home measures have temporarily sapped ridership across much of the bus network, ridership on Route 7 has remained high due to prevalence of transit-dependent households and essential workers along the route, Metro reports.

A comprehensive overview of the state of Rainier Avenue in 2022 in the context of some much-needed bus priority work. Route 7 (and/or RapidRide R) is exactly the kind of route that will continue to have robust, all-day ridership post-COVID.

This is a side note, but it seems that SDOT has done everyone a disservice in keeping a zombie protected bike lane in the aging bike master plan for MLK (south of Mount Baker) and Rainier (north of Mount Baker). Given the traffic volumes on those corridors, its unlikely we’ll see bike lanes on MLK or Rainier any time soon. SDOT won’t radically reduce car capacity without air cover from City Hall, and the current administration and transportation chair are unlikely to provide it.

That said, there absolutely can and should be a flat, safe direct bike route through the Rainier Valley and we shouldn’t be playing bikes vs. buses hunger games all the time. How might we repurpose all that surface parking, for example, before new development fills it in? The city ought to commit to a real study with some viable options — even ones that require a capital investment — add one to the next Move Seattle Levy so we have something to get people excited about besides (say) replacing bridges in Magnolia.

• King County Metro and Parks: Trailhead Direct starts May 28.
• Seattle is kicking off the new comprehensive plan with a website and survey. If you are interested in zoning reform, direct your energy there.
• Amtrak delays Seattle-Vancouver return until “late 2022” due to staffing
• The Urbanist: new Sound Transit real-time arrival screens delayed until the fall
• Interesting data from DC Metro: buses are back to 88% of pre-pandemic levels, trains just 35%
• US Traffic fatalities up 10.5% in 2021. It’s not a COVID thing, it’s an America thing.

King County Metro:

The current ORCA website will be permanently shut down at 11:59 p.m. tonight, Thursday, May 12, and will transition to the new site on May 16.  Customers can still add cash to their cards at vending machines, customer service locations and participating retailers.

In order to transition to the new ORCA system, fares will not be collected between 3 a.m. Saturday, May 14, and 2:59 a.m. Monday, May 16, on most area transit systems.

Ride your heart out.

Ethan Bergerson, SDOT blog:

After careful review, we selected three scooter companies to receive operation permits for 2022–2023: Lime, LINK (by Superpedestrian), and Bird. In addition to scooters, riders continue to have the option of renting shared bicycles from Lime and Veo.

In addition to welcoming back Lime and LINK (by Superpedestrian), we are excited to welcome Bird. Bird operates in over 400 cities and has a demonstrated commitment to safety and sustainability. They will bring their newest third generation of scooters to Seattle, which offers a safer ride and longer battery life than their earlier models.

It wasn’t that long ago that bike share seemed to be on the way out in favor of scooters.

Mike Lindblom, The Seattle Times:

Above all, the position “requires incredible soft skills,” the search firm, CPS-HR of Sacramento, heard from staff and interest groups. “Most often, we heard about the need to listen,” a report said.

While relevant to any top executive, the feedback reflects worries by the board about reliving Rogoff’s first year, when colleagues complained to the human resources department about his abrasive manner. Rogoff apologized, narrowly escaped being fired, and completed executive coaching.

“I think it’s a great callout. A leader does need to have soft skills and we certainly need that in a CEO,” said board Chair Kent Keel, a council member from University Place near Tacoma. Keel mentioned a distinction between hard-charging “East Coast” and a subtler “West Coast” public agency culture.

Are we building consensus or are we building public transit?

Soft skills are fine, if what Keel means balancing stakeholder interests while building useful and usable transit projects. If he means the Seattle Process on steroids, that’s deeply concerning. The primary goal is to provide excellent and useful transit, not simply appease the squeakiest wheels, who often times don’t actually care about great rider experiences.

There is simply no transit agency in America attempting to build anything as ambitious as ST3 (arguably excepting Los Angeles?). The agency probably needs to look overseas, to Europe or Asia, where complicated transit projects actually get built in a reasonable frame for a reasonable budget.

• KUOW: Why are condos in Seattle so expensive?
• New York magazine: Who’s Afraid of the Subway?
• Publcola and The Urbanist discuss Sound Transit’s new fare enforcement policy
• The Urbanist also has a preview of the first phase of ORCA dropping on May 16
• SDOT: Levy to Move Seattle Q1 progress report
• Next City: the Bay Area is finally making progress on fare integration

The New York Times recently ran an excellent feature on Portland’s efforts to curb emissions while still building highways:

But despite Portland’s efforts, the number of cars and trucks on its roads has kept rising as the city and its suburbs have grown — along with tailpipe pollution that is warming the planet. While Portland has set ambitious climate goals, the city is not on track to meet its targets, largely because emissions from transportation remain stubbornly high.

Now the city faces a fresh challenge: To deal with traffic jams, state officials want to expand several major highways around Portland. Critics say that will only increase pollution from cars and trucks at a time when emissions need to fall, and fast.

The overall contours will be quite familiar to Seattle residents, but the chart comparing Portland and Seattle-area emissions per capita is quite an eye-popper.

Finishing on the server moves from last week. Apologies for any downtime!

Update: maintenance complete.

The ROI on bus lanes is remarkable:

Another benefit of the lanes is a more consistent trip time for riders. Travel-time variability decreased by up to 26% northbound and 55% southbound, according to the data. And the lanes appear to have encouraged more people to take the bus, with ridership increasing 13% in the first week the Bus Rapid Transit lanes were in service, a pattern that has remained consistent in the following weeks, Tumlin said.

No guarantees that ST staff will read your incisive 1500-word comment on STB, unfortunately, so you might want to share it with them directly. Re-read Seattle Subway’s post and the comments below if you want to refresh your memory.

We’re migrating to a new server and comments may not post on Wednesday 4/27 and possibly into Thursday 4/28.

Erica has an excellent overview of Metro’s latest report on the possibility:

In a recent report on the future of Metro’s fare system, the agency outlined its plans for smoothing the transition to eliminating cash fares, which—according to Metro—will make boarding faster, ease conflicts between riders and drivers, and eliminate the need to periodically repair Metro’s 1,509 on-board fareboxes, which are a decades-old model that is no longer being produced. Replacing fareboxes with new ones that accommodate cash payments would cost around $29 million, Metro estimates—a substantial cost for a system that is still recovering from the pandemic. Cash riders also have to pay a second fare to transfer to Sound Transit trains and buses, a problem that will only become more acute as Metro terminates more routes at light rail stations.

The flip side is access: many people simply don’t have ORCA cards. It would be impossible to even contemplate until next-gen ORCA is more widespread. Getting ORCA cards into more pockets is always a good thing, and if this facilitates wider distribution of ORCA LIFT and other similar low-income programs, all the better.

MyORCA.com:

Beginning in May 2022, the new myORCA mobile app and website will make paying for transit rides in the Puget Sound region faster and easier.

Later in 2022, we’re adding more retail locations where you can buy and reload ORCA cards and launching a new card design.

MyORCA replaces the aging orcacard.com and orcacard.biz sites, which was never really usable on mobile phones (and barely usable on desktops). It will include exciting new features like instant fare uploading. There will be a virtual open house on May 4 to learn more.

It’s the first milestone for the next-generation ORCA system. Previous coverage of next-generation ORCA here and here.