All posts by John Jensen

From the excellent Lindblom piece in last week’s Times about the Union’s contract negotiations with King County Metro:

[Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587 president Paul] Bachtel said Metro isn’t like United Airlines, which needed wage concessions to stay in business. “They [drivers] don’t expect to give up wages, benefits, working conditions, when the transit agency could cut some of its services, and not take away pay.”

It should be noted that the issue really up for discussion isn’t outright wage cuts, but rather keeping minimum “cost-of-living” raises of 3% even when there is nearly no inflation, nor meaningful movement of the consumer price index, due to the recession. In other words, it’s expected that the cost-of-living will not increase much in coming years but the union president wants so-called “cost-of-living” increases — automatic pay raises — while tax revenues remain flat. It’s the union’s right to ask, but certainly the county has an obligation to get a good deal for the public. That’s balance is reflected in the spirit of the quote above: the ATU is asking for pay increases at the high cost of reduced bus service.

It’s about here in the discussion where we would usually choose our loyalties based on the question “Are bus drivers overpaid?” Or, are they paid too little? I don’t like to answer such leading questions, but a first answer has to be, “compared to what?” Do we look at peer agencies? Do we ask ourselves what a living wage is? And does a “living wage” include a house and a stay-at-home spouse? Or is renting an apartment still “living?” Those are complicated questions that no one, including me, is suited to answer for any other. I’m unprepared to make a value judgment about who “deserves” what pay. Most of us know, of course, that pay is earned; its first-order approximation is probably opportunity cost [1].

Continued after the jump…

Continue reading “Transit Union President: Cut Bus Service for Driver Pay”

A small technical note: we’ve switched our comments systems to WordPress’ default threaded comments system, after a long time of using a plug-in.

We’re experimenting with the exact look of the comments, as well as the depth of threading we want to support. The goals are to make comments easier to follow and read.

Any suggestions in the comments are welcome.

Edit: Commenter may have to refresh the comments page a few times to see the appropriate styling.

A car made an illegal left hand turn and collided with a light rail train this morning, Sound Transit spokesperson Bruce Gray said.

The accident occured at the intersection of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd and Othello St at around 11 am. The scene was cleared and normal service resumed  by 11:35, Gray said.

No major injuries have been reported.

Matt over at Orphan Road poses some questions about Seattle’s plans to show the available number of parking spots outside of downtown parking garages:

1. Would knowing the number of stalls available in a parking lot get you off the street any faster?
2. If E-Park does work, would you expect the number of cars in Seattle to increase due to experiencing less congestion (i.e. induced demand)?
3. If the answer to #2 is “yes”, is encouraging driving ok in this circumstance? Why?

I’ll attempt some non-authoritative guesses to advance a conversation.

Continued beyond the jump…

Continue reading “Downtown Parking & Driver Costs”

The voters of urban Thurston County rallied last night behind a measure on the ballot to save Intercity Transit’s bus service, according to Thurston County’s early election returns.

Yes – 18,242 – 64%
No – 10,442 – 36%

The measure, which seems likely to easily pass even once all votes are counted, raises Intercity Transit’s sales tax rake from 0.6% to 0.8%. Without this revenue increase, service would have been cut, we wrote last month:

The revenue predicament of Intercity Transit should by now be familiar. Tax revenues are down about 13% from 2007 levels. The agency has already cut some nonessential programs and raised fares, and is now facing a 9% cut in February 2011 and a further 14% in 2012.

The state’s limit on sales tax authority for transit agencies is 0.9%, providing room for an additional increase if even more service is desired by future voters. King County Metro, facing its own shortfall in coming years, is already at that limit.

The relationship between the Seattle City Council and Mayor McGinn doesn’t seem to be improving, and that could mean bad news for light rail supporters. McGinn promised to put a light rail measure on the ballot within two years of being elected — the most logical choice now being November 2011.

The revenue options available to McGinn have only shrunk in recent months as the SR-99 deep-bore tunnel, the crumbling waterfront seawall, and the SDOT funding shortfall have moved a variety of sources near their limits — or will in the near future. The city council is planning to soon create a Transportation Benefit District, according to PubliCola, to help fill SDOT’s shortfall.

A TBD would allow the council to raise serious revenue, with voter approval, through a high vehicle license fee, a property tax increase, a sales-tax increase, or even (unlikely) tolls on local arterials. But the Times notes that the city council — who would have to move any light rail measure to the ballot — is skeptical:

There doesn’t seem to be much fervor on the City Council to seek a near-term vote on light rail, in a time when basic services are threatened by recession and budget cuts, according to Councilman Nick Licata. “I think it’s been pushed back, and I don’t see the public necessarily supporting it, once they know what the costs are,” he said.

Councilman Tom Rasmussen, chairman of the transportation committee, is equally sour on trying a light rail tax anytime soon, even though he lives in West Seattle.

“We don’t even have light rail to the U District yet, and to Roosevelt,” he said, referring to Sound Transit lines due in the early 2020s. King County Metro’s RapidRide bus service, due in 2012 for Ballard and West Seattle, is more productive for those neighborhoods in the near term, he said. He suspects that a westside rail study would sit on the shelf for years.

Rasmussen and four other councilmembers are up for re-election next year.

In another political setback, the council’s transportation committee voted to approve initial funding for an updated transit master plan only after stipulating that the city must study high-capacity transit corridors in a mode neutral way, not picking light rail from the beginning. Though this decision is prudent, the council also added another delay mechanism: the second phase of funding for the master plan will only come after the council signs off on the first phase in January of next year.

The transit master plan must be delivered within a year, according to SDOT spokesman Richard Sheridan, if the council doesn’t delay it again. By the end of March, 2011, SDOT expects to be “heavily into modal analysis” which would include identified corridors, recommended modes, preliminary cost estimates, and a “menu of revenue options,” according to Tony Mazzella, who is the project lead for the master plan. It’s important to note that the transit master plan will not specifically favor one mode or one corridor, and may recommend bus rapid transit or rapid streetcar, or another mode, instead of light rail. My intuition is that light rail is the only mode with the capacity though the biggest corridors in the city.

For a 2011 measure to get on the ballot, there clearly needs to be more political momentum to get through a skeptical council. But if the council remains disinterested and local revenue sources continue to dry up, a local ballot measure might never come up to vote. Sound Transit doesn’t have revenue authority to build new light rail lines — beyond what was approved in ST2 — until the 2030’s. Even if the state legislature changes that, a local spur would certainly break ground much sooner.

Earlier today, Sherwin pointed out that a noted letter-to-the-editor author who fumes about East Link has blatantly lied in his letters. Among other claims, Mr. Hirt said that the “majority of” Bellevue residents “voted against” funding East Link. Sherwin pointed out that the districts that encompass Bellevue overwhelmingly supported light rail, and showed a graphic depicting the wide majority of precincts in Bellevue supporting Sound Transit 2.

Still, some commenters wanted exact numbers for Bellevue’s support. We’re here to serve: according to the 2008 precinct numbers provided by King County, 56% (28,901) of those who voted on ST2 in Bellevue moved to approve the package that included East Link, while just 44% (22,887) voted to reject it. 5,205 voters in Bellevue were happy with others making the choice for them, and chose not to vote one way or the other on ST2.

And there’s your data-driven fact check that the Seattle Times and the Bellevue Reporter were unwilling to do before publishing Mr. Hirt’s letters.

A quick reminder that the Transportation Choices Coalition fundraiser we mentioned earlier this week is happening tomorrow. What’s TCC?

For those of you who don’t know, TCC is a nonprofit that shares this blog’s values. Unlike STB, they do the things that really require full-time employees: lobbying Olympia and providing a pro-rail, pro-transit, pro-density voice on various government commissions and task forces.

I’ll be there, along with a few other bloggers.

Update: We just got word that Congressman Jay Inslee and King County Executive Dow Constantine will be in attendance. Inslee is rumored to run for governor in 2012, so it’ll be interesting to hear his thoughts on public transit.

Federal Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has hinted the Obama administration may be warming to tolling highways as a way to raise revenue for the federal highway trust fund. That trust fund also pays for transit projects.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said a combination of current-level gas tax receipts, road and bridge tolling and President Obama’s proposed infrastructure fund could offer a way to fund a long-term federal infrastructure program without new taxes.

Appearing before a heavily attended conference in Washington, D.C., of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, LaHood vowed “raising the gas tax is not an option” to increase money available for federal transport spending.

Unfortunately, LaHood still reflects the Obama administration’s view that a gas tax increase is off-the-table. When even the hard-hitting editorialists at USA TODAY, one might wonder how far out-of-touch the administration is on gas taxes.

However, a stronger federal stance on tolling as a source of revenue would be welcome. Tolling represents one of the few ways to actually reduce congestion and ration access to roadways, and would encourage government to invest in transit alternatives.

Hat tip to the excellent Federal Transportation Issues blog that WSDOT runs.

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend lost my ORCA card that had about $20 in fare on it. No big deal, I thought, and ordered a replacement online. Going to the website and reporting my card as lost was easy. In a few easy steps, I paid a $5 replacement fee, my card was deactivated, and my new card was in the mail.

When my new card arrived, I was reminded of some of ORCA’s successes. The printed materials and the card itself are very well designed. Everything in the envelope is internally consistent and it’s clear there was some work put into the brand of ORCA and ensuring its ease of use. In other words, the physical aspects of ORCA feel thoughtful.

Few would call ORCA website thoughtful, though. On the technical side, the site suffers from rendering problems in modern browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox as well as their mobile cousins that run on many smartphones. On the design side, doing something like setting up the auto-load functionality for your card isn’t accomplished by clicking a button and filling out details, but rather clicking a button and then finding a link in a long-winded paragraph of text.

The expectation that people are unoccupied enough to read paragraphs of dry transit-speak is poor design and is a poor compliment to the good printed materials in the ORCA universe. Good design is knowing that people don’t read anything. This kludge may be an explanation as to why adoption of the useful auto-load technology represents less than 1% of registered cards, according to data from the ORCA Quarterly Program Management Report.

Like any other person, I wasn’t unoccupied enough to read the wall of text when reporting my card lost, so I expected my replacement card to pay for my bus the next morning. Oops: “please allow 8 to 10 days processing time for your funds to be transferred from your lost card to your new card.” I don’t know how it is possible to do something that’s so technically easy so slowly.

While the card is pretty and the system works pretty well, sometimes I can’t help but feel the ORCA project was half-designed and half-engineered.