All posts by John Jensen

Earlier this week, Bellevue City Councilmember Kevin Wallace presented a motion to appoint Aaron Laing to the city’s Planning Commission. This is a typical Wallace move, trying to advance an agenda against East Link without proper debate.

Laing was a Kemper/Wallace-backed city council candidate who lost to pro-East Link councilmember John Stokes. While the appointment was delayed a week, the B7 supporters on the council still have a majority and can stack the Planning Commission with members who aren’t friendly to transit-oriented development. The Seattle Times reports:

The dispute ended with the council deciding to wait a week before voting on Councilmember Kevin Wallace’s motion to appoint Aaron Laing, who lost to Stokes by 51 votes in a hand recount.

No one challenged the qualifications of Laing, a land-use attorney, who received campaign contributions from Wallace, his father, Bob Wallace, and Bellevue Square developer Kemper Freeman.

But Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who asked for the delay, said it appeared Wallace had circumvented standard appointment procedures in order to install a “hand-picked” candidate.

…

The city’s seven planning commissioners advise the City Council on land-use and development policy.

Council liaisons’ recommendations for appointments to boards and commissions are typically noncontroversial actions and accepted by the full council without debate. (The mayor, by law, makes the appointments, but by tradition the council is first asked to concur.)

On Tuesday, Balducci said Wallace departed from the usual procedure by closing the door to new applications before the announced Jan. 6 deadline, interviewing candidates in one-on-one phone conversations instead of inviting other evaluators to face-to-face interviews, and not providing the council with all candidates’ applications.

Balducci said Laing was “an excellent candidate.” But, she said, “It starts to look like maybe we waited for our preferred applicant to apply and then shut off the process, made a few phone calls and decided whom to appoint. That’s the appearance and that’s my concern.”

Stokes said he, too, was concerned about how planning commissioners are appointed. “They’re either to be appointed by the liaison with just a rubber stamp or we should have a process,” he said.

Wallace said Thursday he shortened and streamlined the evaluation process because city staff “were urging me to get it done. … As far as I knew, everything was according to Hoyle.”

Concerns expressed by council members Balducci, Stokes and John Chelminiak represented “circus-act ambush attacks,” Wallace said. Balducci’s motion to delay the appointment for a week passed 5-2, with Wallace and Jennifer Robertson voting no.

[UPDATE from Martin: Apparently we’re going to have to restore lost comments manually. It’ll take a while, but eventually most of your comments should reappear here, although timestamps and threading may be lost.]

Apparently Disqus isn’t quite ready for prime time on our blog, and was causing many people’s browsers to lock up. We’ve reverted back to WordPress comments.

We have switched our comments system over to Disqus, a third-party comments host that supports logging in with Facebook, Twitter, and other services. Users can still post “anonymously” with the name of their choosing.

Disqus brings some unique features to the table. For example, commenters can now have avatars to show their faces. My favorite feature is that commenters can “like” comments and commenters with a Disqus account will now be able to edit their comments after posting.

One change we’re making is that instead of comments nesting deeply, they will only be able to nest one level deep, like comments on your Facebook wall. The goal is to make it so conversations are easier to follow and we hope that the commenting culture changes slightly to create new threads rather than having a deep reply chain. We hope to simplify things without hurting the ability to have the hardcore, nerdy conversations that make our comments work so well.

With change, there will always be kinks to work out. Please give our new comments system a chance and let us know what you think in this thread.

Update: We made it so the default sort order ignores “likes.”

This is an open thread about tonight’s election results.

After a dramatic delay of many hours, the King County Council approved a $20 Congestion Reduction Charge and the rest of a compromise deal that announced was last Friday.

The 7-2 vote delays a deep bus service cut for two years, gives ride free bus tickets to residents in exchange for the $20 vehicle license fee, and ends the Downtown Seattle’s Ride Free Area in October of next year (more on the RFA).

The fee required a 6-vote supermajority to pass and will not go before voters. Republicans Reagan Dunn and Pete von Reichbauer voted against the proposal. Before the vote, rumors were swirling that Republicans Kathy Lambert and Jane Hague had turned their back on the deal, and the council was in recess for more than four hours and it seemed at times like other the Republican members had convinced Lambert and Hague to walk away.

The transit community pushed hard for the CRC, and seemed to be heard. “Your public testimony made a difference,” said Councilmember Bob Ferguson, who was on the fence earlier in the year.

For more on the deal, read Friday’s summary.

Update 7 pm: Republican Jane Hague announces that she supports the deal, seeming to indicate that the deal will pass after all. Republican Kathy Lambert seems on-board, too.

The deal that was announced last Friday to save Metro from 17% bus cuts while ending the Ride Free Area may be at risk, according to reports on PubliCola and Slog. Slog, in particular, has live updates that don’t sound too encouraging. Apparently, the council has been in recess for many hours while some council Republicans have tried to pressure other Republicans to walk away from the deal. (Transportation Choices Coalition is also live-tweeting the council meeting.)

Overall, the deal is a good one for progressives as well as those concerned with seeing government services operate more efficiently (nominally conservatives), but politics may trump policy.

King County Metro doesn’t think that eliminating the Ride Free Area in October 2012 will create delays.

“We tested this at several locations in downtown, including Third Avenue and it didn’t really create a serious problem,” Jim Jacobson, Deputy General Manager of Metro, said in an interview. “There are times when it creates problems, but that usually goes away after one signal cycle.” There will certainly be an increase in dwell times, Jacobson said, but there wasn’t much reason for alarm. “Two-thirds of people in the Ride Free Area have already paid a fare or have a pass,” so most riders won’t pay fare when entering the bus but will have to get used to boarding through the front.

Jacobson confirmed that “the tunnel will not be free” and he said that Metro has “simulated how this would work with increased dwell times.” One conclusion was that Metro could better stage buses before they enter the tunnel, to ensure that buses that stop in front of others enter the tunnel first. Another was that buses that are only dropping people off could pull as far forward as possible in the tunnel.

Another idea was that Sound Transit could improve its signaling system in the tunnel so that trains and buses could operate better in a shared environment. Metro and Sound Transit have clashed in the past over the shared operations in the tunnel, each agency saying the other is responsible for delays.

Metro plans to expand the enter through the front, exit through the back concept system-wide, with driver and consumer education campaigns to ensure a smooth flow. Most cities operate with systems like this, but for years different Metro drivers have had their own policies for the back door. It’s very encouraging that this change is planned.

There’s also good news on the revenue front. Based on surveys and other data, “the net effect of eliminating the RFA is on the order of $1.8 million a year,” Jacobson said. While none of that revenue is currently budgeted, “any dollar we have can be used to keep more service on the street longer than we could otherwise.”

Jacobson hopes that in the future, a day-pass will be offered by ORCA but said “we’re a long way from that.” A shame, that is, because a day-pass program would be perfect for casual riders and tourists, and the thing preventing its implementation is agency balkanization.

Correction: Readers have pointed out that Metro no longer sells day passes on the weekends. The story above has been edited.

The morning, King County Executive Dow Constantine held a press conference announcing that the County Council will adopt the $20 Congestion Relief Charge to prevent a 17% cut in bus services, PubliCola reports. The fee, which applies to annual vehicle registration, will not be sent to voters and will expire in two years because of limitations set by the state legislature. The adoption of this fee is undoubtedly a win for transit advocates, who fought hard to preserve service.

Two Republicans, Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert, will join five Democrats to approve the fee outright—their change of heart comes after negotiations to implement other Metro reforms.

The biggest change is the elimination of the Seattle’s Ride Free Area, slated for October 2012. As we’ve written before, this change may be good for the system but there must be mitigation to ensure that buses can still move through downtown. The Ride Free Area is supported by most social justice advocates, but the RFA has non-trivial costs: the pay-as-you-leave system on some routes but not others can confuse riders and Metro loses some revenue by not charging fares. The County estimates that it costs $2.8 million in lost fares to provide free service through downtown but that it only receives $400,000 from the city, or just 18% of the cost.

Eliminating the RFA has the potential to reduce fare evasion and disputes, and buses that leave downtown will now allow passengers to exit through all doors instead of forcing customers to exit through the front—which can be cumbersome in a congested bus. If the transition is handled well, it could represent a large improvement in system clarity.

There is reason to be concerned, however: if fares are charged in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, as the plan indicates, buses would further delay Link light rail. Buses along Third Avenue downtown could also face delays during rush hour unless there is a way to buy bus tickets before boarding or ORCA is heavily adopted. Disappointingly, there doesn’t seem to be any funding to provide systems to purchase bus fares before boarding, nor any incentives to increase ORCA usage.

More details on the full plan after the jump…

Continue reading “$20 CRC to Pass; Ride Free Area to be Eliminated”

This blog hosted a meetup Tuesday night and it was great to see some of our readers come out to say hello. Our guest speaker for the evening was Michael Taylor-Judd, perhaps the only person running for city council who is a regular reader and commenter!

Adam took a great panorama shot of the audience. It feels like you’re there, man.

Thanks to the Diller Room for hosting us free of charge. What did everyone think of the venue?

Hundreds of people volunteered their time last night to sign in or testify to the King County Council in Seattle, most of them in support of the Congestion Reduction Charge (CRC). The CRC is a two-year, $20 annual fee on car tab renewal and would prevent a 17% reduction in bus service that would fully cut many routes.

The Transportation, Economy and Environment Committee hearing may have had the attention of Seattle residents, but two committee members, Pete von Reichbauer and Jane Hague, were notably absent from last night’s meeting.

The line to testify took over a full block of downtown and looped around the King County Courthouse. County officials said that this was probably the biggest public comment in King County history. Nearly everyone spoke in favor of approving keeping current bus service, but a non-trivial contingent argued that instead of charging car owners a flat fee with the CRC, we should tax the rich and businesses. Ultimately, King County has no revenue authority from the state beyond the car tab fee to fund bus service, despite incorrect claims made by some who gave testimony.

I gave my own testimony around 9:45 pm after joining the line of people near 6 pm. I argued that a CRC measure sent to voters would enter a crowded ballot, cost progressive groups hundreds of thousands of dollars to campaign for, and needlessly put Metro’s future at risk. I urged the council to adopt the CRC by a 6-vote supermajority.

If you weren’t able to make it last night, please consider attending the next meeting in Burien or writing to the council. On July 25th, the council plans to ultimately decide whether to adopt the CRC by a supermajority, send the CRC to voters with 5 council votes, or cut bus service.