All posts by Martin H. Duke

We are hours from finishing up our general election endorsements. If there are races other than I-976, King County, and Seattle Council with strongly pro-transit candidates we should be paying attention to, please mention it in the comments.

• Stats show black riders receive every level of ST fare enforcement action ($) out of proportion to their fraction of ridership. See our previous coverage.
• Open house coming on Kent Station parking improvements.
• 130th St community meeting pushes for 2024 opening, considers upzones.
• Microsoft puts more money into the HSR study.
• Council formally approves ($) eliminating “environmental” appeals of density, transit, and bikes. Background here.
• Bellingham now looking at e-scooters.
• Bonfire of the Limebikes.
• Sound Transit working on improving its shaky real-time data.
• King County Council proposes full Metro electrification by 2035, ($) instead of 2040. But it’s aspirational, not a funded plan.
• Yancy/Andover Link alignment survives committee. The full board will decide on adding it to the EIS.
• Bill Radke asks Christof Spieler about Seattle Transit.
• In a good week for podcasts, Talking Headways talks to ST’s TOD team.
• Vancouver going red.
• Streetsblog’s Angie Schmitt will be in Ballard next Thursday.
• Missed this last week: The Seattle Times says to reject I-976

This is an open thread.

• A roundup of service changes in the outer counties.
• Columbia Street transit “pathway” is coming.
• Permit parking now at Kent and Federal Way TC.
• New construction pics from Northgate Link.
• Tomorrow is the last day to comment on the new Ballard and West Seattle options.
• Sound Transit hands out $40m in system access funds.
• Lessons from CAHSR.
• Problems with balkanized agencies, like Chicago. On the other hand, larger jurisdictions aren’t always willing to pay for transit.
• Donald Shoup is right. I’d add that virtually everything wrong with cities today comes down to parking.

This is an open thread.

• Sound Transit needs some Pierce County residents for its Citizen Oversight Panel.
• LimePod shuts down. More on this later.
• Part of the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center parking lot will close Oct. 19th for Link construction.
• Congratulations to Operator of the Year Neal Safrin.
• Connections to North Sounder just got better in Edmonds.
• Foot ferry ridership way up.
• Council stymies move to endorse second Montlake bascule bridge for transit.
• In the biggest news out of DC this week, AOC has a pro-density housing bill.
• Mr. Rogoff testifies in Washington.
• Metro needs applicants to the paratransit advisory committee.
• Danny Westneat is tired of voting on light rail ($); there are indeed many, many veto points for any project of consequence, except highway expansion.
• Metro rethinking service to Golden Gardens.
• Zoning the Ave.
• A deep dive on development at Northgate.
• A map of the streetcar system… circa 1896.
• Goodbye to the Amtrak dining car.
• Transit costs in New York are skyrocketing — and it’s not clear why.

This is an open thread.

The title says it all:

• ST suffers a setback ($) in its car tab court case; plaintiffs offer $125m settlement to Sound Transit.
• After a fluky spate of violence on Link last weekend, patrols increase and the shooting suspect is in custody.
• Amtrak must pay $17m to 3 derailment victims.
• Spokane’s new crosstown bus: Route 4.
• Jump is pulling out of Atlanta and San Diego.
• SF Central Subway completion slides two years to 2021.
• Texas HSR takes a step forward.

This is an open thread.

• Katie Wilson dreams of high-speed rail.
• SDOT abandons City Center Connector streetcar contract ($), claims to still be ready for 2026.
• “Baby Uber” sounds expensive but I bet there’s a market for it.
• Northgate ped bridge bids too high, SDOT rebidding.
• City ranking “indexes” are always problematic, but this one has Seattle public transit at #1.
• Alex Pedersen has some problematic past positions.
• Traffic citations declining ($). (!)
• Sound Transit hiring a community outreach manager.
• Foot ferry fever extends to Portland.
• PDX considers the worst kind of budget cuts — eliminating stations.
• The future is not retro. Let’s not confuse sustainability and abundant housing supply with nostalgia for cities and habits of the past.

This is an open thread.

• Sound Transit has a new plan to get rid of Rainier Valley surplus property, and wants your input.
• Free waterfront shuttle extended through October 31st.
• Yellow school buses also have a driver shortage, and a reliability problem ($). Bus lanes would help!
• ST officially finding a new name for University Street Station.
• Bill making bike lanes the default passes Council unanimously ($); Mayor promises to sign. Our story here.
• Ill-timed fare enforcement ($) from Sound Transit.
• Does Sodo zoning need a revision?
• Car tab lawsuit headed to the Supreme Court.
• New ST station art.
• A superblock on Capitol Hill?
• Here come the Amtrak derailment lawsuits.
• Clallam Transit considers eliminating ads to avoid lawsuits.
• Spokane developer blames downtown crime on transit, wants to move transit center underground.
• Portland makes walking harder.
• How transportation is biased against women.
• Study: moving from at-large to district council seats — as Seattle did a few years ago — results in less housing. Locally, our remaining at-large members are the most forceful advocates for more housing.
• The NYT looks at scooters in San Diego

This is an open thread.

• Tacoma now has a TOD Advisory Group ($).
• Lindblom deep-dives on engineering of the Link I-90 crossing ($).
• Everett starts downtown parking study.
• SDOT rolls out their latest bikeshare report. SBB summary is here.
• ST discounts ($) for Bel-Red affordable housing developers.
• Times reporters bring you a streetcar FAQ ($).
• Metro fare on snow days is now officially free. Original story here.
• 23rd Avenue project enters year 5 (!).
• Permit parking soon available at Tukwila Sounder and Link stations.
• ST formally approves Pierce BRT funding.
• Clear thinking about “microtransit” like Via.
• Hearing Examiner ruling means “Transportation Impact Fees” on developers may not happen this year.
• ST negotiations with Mercer Island drag on.
• DBT tolls start Nov. 9.
• Comment on imminent Monorail fare increases and ORCA acceptance.
• Inside Metro’s Transit Control Center.
• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: Vancouver widening sidewalks.
• Koch Brothers measure to kill Phoenix light rail loses badly.

This is an open thread.

• Concepts for U District Station access.
• Gunfight at the Renton Transit Center.
• Two way bikelanes correlated with more injuries.
• SDOT updates us on the long-lost scooter pilot.
• Red lanes finally going in on Rainier Ave.
• Artwork for South Link stations.
• Renton has plans for when the Transit Center moves out of downtown.
• Limebike batteries now catching fire — perhaps due to vandalism.
• A thoughful discussion about the future of bikeshare.
• Seattle Council may crack down on improperly parked bikes.
• A concise rundown of the Seattle Green New Deal.
• USDOT sends WSDOT $37.5m for new rail cars.
• Tacoma business owners unhappy about Link construction.
• Ever wanted to drive Caltrain? Now there’s a game for that.
• Josh Cohen’s deep dive into Via for Crosscut has numbers on ridership and cost per rider
• How the Mayor’s Seattle Squeeze point person spends his days

This is an open thread.

Pro-transit, pro-bike, pro-density voters might be forgiven for thinking their vote and their input don’t really matter. We vote like-minded candidates into office, we pass taxes to fund forward-thinking transportation projects, and we participate in developing master plans. And then, when it’s time to actually take the road space for buses or bikes, a few neighbors complain, or sue, and SDOT chickens out. A handful of well-resourced reactionaries hold a veto on progress.

One of the more egregious instances of this was the demise of the 35th Avenue NE bike lane. Inspired by this debacle, outgoing Councilmember Mike O’Brien is trying to pass legislation this fall to give these plans force of law. Anytime SDOT spends $1m or more on a street with a bike lane in the master plan, it has to build the bike lane or write a letter to the Council explaining why they didn’t. This is pretty much what our own David Lawson proposed back in March.

Lester Black reports that Mayor Durkan, often blamed for what happened on 35th, supports the rule. So here’s hoping that there’s one less veto point for safe and rapid transportation. What Seattle needs is not more great plans, but reform of the institutions that block progress.

• The engineer that put tracks on the I-90 bridge. It’s not necessarily great that Sound Transit had to commission groundbreaking engineering work, but the people involved should be proud of their achievement.
• Erica Barnett interprets the Seattle Council primary results.
• What can Sound Transit do to cut down on 9 Link crashes per year?
• Limepods a vector for crime?
• Seattle’s e-scooter pilot mysteriously slow to arrive.
• There is no problem with West Seattle buses ($) that can’t be solved immediately with adequate commitment to bus lanes.
• 8th Avenue protected bike lane opens.
• New water taxi terminal opens.
• Metro is just going to try different stuff to fix the West Seattle mess.
• Mayor Durkan, rhetorically, is on the side of the bus lane vigilantes.
• I’ve praised the virtues of elevated trains before, but Bill Savage did it better.
• Sumner wants a pedestrian bridge ($) for Sounder access.
• First Sound Transit came for the burger stands, and I said nothing. Now they’re coming for the produce markets — or at least some of the market’s parking.
• MVET lawsuit rolls on.
• Washington has the intention of building an intercity transit network, though it’s skeletal.
• Seattle considers amending its Comprehensive Plan.
• Kevin Desmond gets a nice pay bump in Vancouver. Portland, too.
• Vandals may have brought down sea-to-sky gondola.
• Rail projects are expensive but Uber’s losses are bigger.

This is an open thread.

Apparently fed up with rampant bus lane violations, an unidentified woman took the initiative last week and inspired equal parts of praise and outraged driver entitlement. She also inspired the Greenways movement to run a similar event Monday, which Heidi Groover covered ($).

Grasping the spirit of the moment, Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff called them “heroes“. The organs of Seattle city government definitely did not:

SPD spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said frustrated transit riders should channel their feelings into “more productive’ efforts like lobbying lawmakers to allow camera enforcement. Whitcomb said bus-lane enforcement is “a regular area of focus’ for traffic officers but stationing officers on crowded downtown streets during rush hour can worsen congestion.

The city establishment feels the pressure to fix the bus lane problem and does what they do best — deflect blame to Olympia. Lobbying may or may not make things better eventually, but the bravery this week improved some bus commutes immediately.

There is no transit performance metric quite like ridership. However, when any metric becomes the single point of evaluation, it can lead to bizarre conclusions.

Last month’s High Speed Rail study counted riders, and some readers couldn’t resist comparing the numbers to middling local transit routes. But it’s one thing to take riders between adjacent neighborhoods and another to deliver them 180 miles away.

A project’s cost, at a first approximation, is proportional to its length. Single-minded attention to cost per rider means never building a long-distance project at all, which is nonsensical. That’s not to say that passenger-miles is a perfect metric, either. It favors long-haul routes that are irrelevant to the spontaneous trips that enable urban living. But a comprehensive evaluation must consider both when the difference in spatial scales is this large.

Moreover, Seattle-area transit and HSR aren’t fiscally in tension with each other. A state subsidy to Puget Sound transit that actually moves the needle is inconceivable. Meanwhile, HSR could connect cities all around the state with the wealth centered in Seattle, at a time when it is increasingly hard to drive there. This aligns with Olympia’s traditional responsibility for intercity rail and bus, and offers a good value proposition to voters across the state.