All posts by Martin H. Duke

Back during my first round of gripes about rider-unfriendly choices for the Connect2020 construction delays, I suggested that Sound Transit might have run trains more frequently outside the downtown transit tunnel. At the time, ST said that this would likely result in significant train bunching. After further discussions, they appear to have backed off this objection in favor of other ones, which readers can judge for themselves.

But first, let’s show how the right plan would minimize train bunching. While there is (infamously) no fixed schedule, the current operational model for Central Link trains is something like this:

• A 2-hour lecture on how Link is crossing Lake Washington.
• More Kitsap fast ferry trips. ($)
• Sightline breaks down all the housing bills this session.
• Record water taxi ridership.
• Once again, PSRC handing out federal transportation dollars.
• Judge dismisses some legal arguments ($) against I-976; other arguments, appeals still pending.
• The latest carsharing entry is “Envoy” – but you have to live in the right building.
• Art headed to Redmond Station.
• Seattle’s underground tunnels.
• At the high end, condos without parking may not be popular ($).
• High-tech reconstruction of the Amtrak derailment.
• I’m always intrigued by rural transit adventures.
• Lynnwood Station construction is happening! ($) And Star Lake.
• Comparing the transportation plans of Gov. Inslee and Sen. Steve Hobbs.
• The XFL Seattle Dragons get special Sounder trains too. Blake Shelton, also.
• Grays Harbor Transit wants to extend service to Olympia; you can comment.
• Victoria Clipper may take over the Anacortes-Sidney route.
• A look at Southwest Corridor MAX.
• Argh… plazas ($).

This is an open thread.

• Alex Pedersen sits down with Seattle Bike Blog.
• Derailment Amtrak engineer now suing them ($).
• A report on RapidRide J (Eastlake) with bike lanes. Meetings underway!
• A new county mobility framework sounds like a snooze but could result in big changes down the road.
• The USS renaming kerfuffle is not very important, but also was not well run.
• TriMet breaks ground on a BRT line.
• Lots of nationwide transit openings in 2020.
• Virginia has big passenger rail plan ($).
• A CAHSR audit.

This is an open thread.

Katherine Khashimova Long reports that badly needed housing projects are taking an average of 60% longer to permit than in 2014 ($), adding as much as seven months of pure bureaucracy.

The word “emergency” is used a lot in public discourse. Different parts of the political spectrum say we have them for the global climate, the national border, and for local households trying to find a home. But if the problem doesn’t warrant any change in existing priorities and procedures, it isn’t an emergency at all. By allowing this problem to get worse, Seattle leaders have let us know what they really think of the urgency of adding housing supply.

The article blames a botched software rollout and understaffing for the problem. Certainly, an administration where housing production was the #1 priority would have reverted to the old system and done whatever necessary to staff the office up.

But more than problems in executing the process, the problem is the process itself. On average, design review adds 89 days to the permitting process. What value are we getting out of this process? Has it made our housing stock more architecturally distinguished? Or has it enforced a sameness (excuse me, “protected neighborhood character”) by incentivizing architects to stick with what’s made it through review before?

• 2019 Washington State Ferries ridership down 3%.
• SDOT claims federal investigation will have no impact on RapidRide G. But originally supposed to open last year, now it’s supposed to be 2023.
• Rep. Nicole Macri (D – Capitol Hill) files legislation that would positively transform the region.
• It’s official: Union Street Symphony Station.
• USDOT sends $790m to Federal Way Link.
• ST Board comfortable with more or less the status quo on fare enforcement.
• Metro would need 11% more service to meet “baseline service targets,” much more money to fulfill the long range plan.
• Regular transit booster Sen. Marko Liias drops a bill to reform car tab valuations, without replacing ST revenue loss.
• Three new members on the CT board.
• Republicans try to shore up I-976 with legislation.
• Ballard/Interbay transportation planning meeting on Jan. 28th.
• Northgate ped bridge construction beginning next week ($)?
• Tacoma Link construction update.
• USDOT sends $53m to Spokane for its BRT line.
• The Economist special report ($) on housing prices.
• Skytrain stations are getting package delivery boxes.
• A good philosophy for people who work in transportation.

This is an open thread.

• Legal motions in the I-976 lawsuit.
• People don’t like the new Link announcement voice, designed to get your attention during Connect2020.
• All that home construction we’ve seen in Washington? It’s not nearly enough.
• “Symphony” narrowly wins the “rename University Street Station” survey.
• Dow Constantine appoints 4 ST Boardmembers; only change is Renton Councilmember Ed Prince for outgoing Redmond Mayor John Marchione.
• I-405 BRT has an online open house.
• Seattle seeking preapproved designs for backyard cottages.
• It’s almost time for a legislative session. A low-carbon fuel standard ($) is getting another shot. Rich Smith rounds up everything in play.
• Now there are scooters for people with disabilities.
• Skytrain sparking in the ice, also has some frozen door issues.
• Lime pulls its scooters from several Sun Belt cities.

This is an open thread.

• Metro hiring for tons of different jobs.
• State hero Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon trying to remove regulatory barriers to housing construction.
• Link headways slide from 12 minutes to “13-15“.
• When do we get to start using the Columbia St pathway?
• Just keep the center platform at Pioneer Square. It saves money, time, and is better for riders.
• ECB goes inside ST’s attempt to spin last year’s youth fare enforcement kerfuffle.
• The US is building a lot of rapid transit — but much less than other nations and not nearly enough.

This is an open thread.

• WSDOT looking at adding Spokane ($) to the HSR plan.
• USDOT is auditing SDOT’s usage of federal funds in several projects. It is a criminal inquiry.
• Bothell man arrested for joyriding in a stolen Sound Transit golf cart.
• Overlake TC bus stops have moved.
• Everett Transit facing a future of declining revenue, will consider merging with Community Transit ($).
• Seattle Council figures out its new committee assignments. Dan Strauss will chair Land Use & Neighborhoods and Alex Pedersen Transportation & Utilities.
• New stairs at Capitol Hill Station.
• More bike lockers at Link stations.
• In a classy move, Uber’s app now presents transit options.
• There’s polling going on for various possible King County transit tax measures.
• Job opening: help Amazon employees use transit more.
• Translink’s Kevin Desmond not afraid of ridehailing.

This is an open thread.

Geekwire reports that the carshare company will shut down across North America in February. Cars will start disappearing well before then.

This step is not surprising. Lime recently shut down their similar Limepod service. ShareNow itself is a merger from weakness of two previous competitors. Recent tinkering with the fee structure was a likely signal of operational problems. Only Zipcar, with a membership fee and slightly longer rental periods, remains.

Meanwhile, Limebike is using the December expiry of its permit to punt on the unprofitable winter season, coming back in the Spring when Seattle starts allowing electric scooters. If other cities’ experience is an indication, the scooters will dominate and the bikes will wind down. Only Jump remains as a bikeshare option this winter.

• Peter Rogoff gets an “excellent” (not “outstanding”) job evaluation ($).
• ECB checks in on Alex Pedersen’s first few weeks in office. Not great!
• Republicans want to gut the general fund to subsidize highways deferred by I-976.
• University Place Mayor Kent Keel is the new ST Board Chair. Dow Constantine vice-chair.
• Sound Transit open to cutting car tabs ($), but they want to make up the revenue hole.
• Northgate Pedestrian Bridge construction begins Jan. 13th.
• Bellevue reaches the limits of car capacity ($).
• Landslide south of Tacoma cancels Amtrak runs ($); Pt. Defiance Bypass would have avoided it. It’s incredible that there is still no firm plan to start using the new track.
• Limebike taking a strategic pause for the winter.
• There’s a $40 bus to Crystal Mountain.
• Gov. Inslee releases his 2020 transportation budget proposal.
• How ride-hail companies could be helpful to cities.

This is an open thread.

• A crowd in Renton gets to question some transit leaders. I wish we had a better canned answer for what cities can do to get better transit service given the service guidelines.
• More details on reduced Link service this winter.
• Someone had to say it: the deep-bore tunnel tolls aren’t high enough.
• Sounder vs. car in Edmonds.
• Now Kenmore and Kirkland get a rideshare pilot, but with volunteer drivers.
• I-976 precinct results ($) show it failed inside the Sound Transit district that was the core of the argument. But both Eyman and Pierce County will join the court case.
• More bike lockers for Link.
• ShareNow shutting down in February. More on this later.
• Official questions about ST fare enforcement disparities.
• WSDOT wins this round of the SR99 tunnel lawsuit.
• Two robberies at Renton Transit Center.
• Planning for a Vehicle-Miles Traveled (VMT) tax grinds on. Just raise the gas tax!
• Less federal bureaucracy when painting bus lanes red.
• But USDOT will audit some local projects more carefully ($).

This is an open thread.

If you’re reading this, there’s some year in which you became very interested in Puget Sound area transit services. For me, that year was 2006, and I found Jim Kershner’s Transit: The Story of Public Transportation in the Puget Sound Region to be a concise, readable, and richly illustrated overview of all that has gone before.

Unlike other books ($) in this genre, this work starts all the way at the beginning, with horse-drawn streetcars, and takes us to the ST3 vote and beyond.

Seattle’s streetcar system began as an amenity common to all modern cities, and entered a period of public ownership in 1919. The system ultimately collapsed due to poor fiscal judgment among city leaders, the apparent superiority of auto ownership at Seattle’s mid-century wealth and population level, and even competition from “jitneys” — the Uber and Lyft of their day. For a work targeted at transit fans, Kershner is admirably clear-eyed about the system’s weaknesses. Partially legitimate critiques of modern streetcars were doubly so for their poorly maintained, always-stuck-in-traffic forebears.

• Supremes uphold the stay on I-976; tax cut is off indefinitely. Cuts coming anyway.
• A report from the Delridge Station open house.
• Bus lane enforcement cameras are getting it done in NYC.
• Seattle rolls out rules for the e-scooter pilot.
• Metro has a survey on more water taxi routes.
• Roosevelt over 95% complete.
• Lynnwood approves large development near future station.
• A deadline for ST fare enforcement recommendations.
• Pierce County attempts to defend I-976 in court ($).
• Seattle lowering speed limits ($) after a bad year for traffic deaths.
• Portland adopts minimum parking requirements — for bikes.
• On the other hand, ODOT wants to reduce carbon emissions by speeding up cars.
• Sorry to see her step away from the Herald, but congrats Lizz ($)!

This is an open thread.

The latest round of Federal Way Link public meetings came with a website. There isn’t anything of interest in terms of station area design that Bruce didn’t cover in detail over two years ago.

Nevertheless, there’s new information about the artists that have been selected for each station. I’m of no use for art criticism, but the word “plaza” comes up far too much. Except where the environment is already quite dense, for plazas read “long walks where buildings should be”.

ST did itself no favors four years ago by publishing a map that exaggerated the turns and deviation necessary to mostly run down I-5. But in the end, there’s one station with a college nearby and in the heart of a very ambitious rezone; one unexciting freeway station with little around it; and one right in the core of Federal Way. If you’re super-bullish about the SR99 corridor’s potential, ST has forgone the possibility of more infill there. But otherwise, the stations are pretty well placed.

Anyway, ST wants your opinion on station names, so fill out the survey.

• If half of Limebikes are unrentable at any given time, that seems like a problem.
• ST kicking bikes out of the train between University St and Chinatown during the “Connect 2020” period of great crowding; also, 5 cents/hour bike lockers.
• In the wake of the Amtrak derailment report, ST sacks its chief safety officer ($). There were significant procedural violations.
• There’s a new book out ($) on the troubled early days of Sound Transit.
• Now that the I-5 lid people are talking seriously about putting big buildings on it instead of a park, I’m excited.
• Two residents allegedly attempt suicide-by-Sounder ($) in the same day.
• Republican calls for special session to pass I-976 into law if overturned in court.
• Permit parking at Lakewood Station.
• When it comes to cars, efficiency is bad.
• Tacoma does some rezoning. Federal Way has big plans for their station, too.
• Lizz writes about the interurban to Everett ($).
• WSDOT lists projects immediately deferred by I-976.
• ST measuring “shear wave velocity” in West Seattle.
• Jefferson Transit passes a budget.
• Geek out on the NYC Subway map.

This is an open thread.