This week, King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles introduced legislation to eliminate Metro fares whenever Metro activates the Emergency Snow Network. It’s early in the process and there is no cost estimate at this time (press release here).

This legislation continues the process of chipping away at the fare structure without taking the financial hit of eliminating fares entirely. Much like New Year’s Eve, snow days are an especially good day to eliminate barriers to using the system, and are rare enough to make the cost negligible. Transit is likely to welcome many newcomers that will be clumsy with a fare, and reducing car use helps avoid total system collapse. As Kohl-Welles told The Stranger, it can also be a matter of life and death, as people struggle to get out of the cold.

• Metro adds shuttle vans to Link stations, early review is positive.
• Washington’s clean energy bill makes at least one wonk happy.
• The use of urban space for golf courses is questionable, but it’s subsidized too?
• City’s congestion pricing report has disappeared into a “black hole” ($) after delivery to the Mayor.
• Lizz Giordano takes the bus to Paine Field ($)
• Lynnwood link will cut down some trees, but plant a whole lot more.
• Protecting bike lanes works.
• A little victory for Spokane Transit.
• The challenges of development in Rainier Beach
• Seattle’s resistance to scooters is making us a bit of an outlier.
• Fundamental reasons Uber and Lyft aren’t natural last-mile providers.

This is an open thread.

Graham Johnson’s KIRO report on ST3 cost escalation was notable for its literate discussion of inflation adjustment:

Sound Transit says the estimate in ST3 was $5.8 billion in 2014 dollars, which the agency considers equivalent to $6.8 billion in 2018 dollars. The newest estimate is $7.5 billion in 2018 dollars.

First of all, good for both ST and Johnson that they took the care to compute and report this. Although the real increases here are indeed a story, revising an estimate from 2014 to 2018 dollars is no news at all. That context is usually sorely lacking in stories about increasing costs.

Our comment thread had a spirited discussion as to what inflation measure the estimate used. ST’s Scott Thompson verified for STB that they used “Construction Cost Index for construction estimates, Right of Way index for real estate, and the Consumer Price Index for soft costs.” This seems reasonable enough. But there are at least three different ways one can deflate rising costs, and they serve different purposes.

• More reserved parking at Edmonds and Mukilteo Stations.
• Sound Transit says it would cost $1.3 billion to site a maintenance facility on the Midway landfill site; Kent disagrees, so we’ll have dueling consultants.
• Commercial flights begin ($) from Paine Field. PSRC looking for a third airport location capacity analysis of current airports.
• Third Avenue bus boarding about to get easier.
• JUMP bikes now city-wide, slightly more expensive — but still cheaper than Lime.
• The pro-transit News Tribune Editorial Board is upset ($) that Pierce County skipped its turn to chair the Sound Transit board.
• Washington State Ferries in maintenance-geddon.
• ST grinding rails through the Rainier Valley most weeknights this month.
• Scott Kubly is leaving Lime.
• Bellevue tunnel pics
• Car-free vacations around Washington.
• Alon Levy on America’s high rail construction costs. Warning: mined stations (like the ones in ST3 can get really expensive)
• Related: notes from the WSDOT HSR advisory group meeting
• 5th/6th Transit Pathway under construction.
• 10% of Phoenix (!) is parking.

This is an open thread.

• Fast Ferries “exceeding expectations”
• Kent digging in on saving Dick’s.
• A very smart summary of the current state of the MHA legislation. Juarez, Gonzalez, and Mosqueda are the ones unambiguously standing up for maximizing the number of people that get to live in Seattle.
• Relatedly, fourplexes reduce displacement.
• Permit parking ($) may be coming to the Tacoma Dome.
• Fife Mayor joins the ST Board.
• What your representative thinks about a Green New Deal that would fund oodles of High Speed Rail. But a good critique is that it doesn’t address land use.
• Herbold going hard after the Center City Connector.
• Mudede shares basic transit etiquette tips.
• New California Governor wants to stop California HSR after the first segment. Here are some mistakes California made.
• TransitCenter looks at the national trend of declining ridership.

This is an open thread.

We haven’t had a meetup in a very long while. Please join us for an evening of mingling and camaraderie at the Big Time Brewery in the University District, March 4th, 6pm.

There is no cost, and it is open to all ages. However, please be gracious and don’t show up if you’re unwilling to purchase a meal or some drinks from our hosts.

An RSVP in the comment thread would be appreciated.

Metro just announced that the ESN is wrapping up at 4am on February 13th. Buses are not returning to normal service, but instead the “snow routes” indicated on many individual route schedules.

Metro expects to operate about 90% of its routes tomorrow. We’ll update here as details emerge. Sign up for route alerts to see what’s happening with your particular bus, but expect delays, and for OneBusAway data to be garbage.

Rob Gannon says “If weather and road conditions allow, our target is to return to full service on Friday.”

UPDATE 7pm: Metro has more details:

Seven routes will have all trips canceled on Wednesday, Feb. 13: 71, 78, 200, 237, 268, 308, 309.

Thirteen routes will have some trips canceled on Wednesday, Feb. 13: 9, 29, 37, 125, 201/204, 208, 224, 243/244, 316, 330, and ST 540.

All Metro morning and afternoon peak commute routes will experience some level of reduced service: an estimated 3 out of every 4 buses will be in service as we work to ramp up service, respond to road conditions and repair our fleet and recover.

Riders: To find out if your particular trip is canceled on Wednesday, text your stop ID to 62550 or check Next Departures on the Puget Sound Trip Planner or its app.

• Rich Smith is right: Logan Bowers is likeable.
• Fort Lawton housing plan may finally move forward.
• A bunch of people started biking when car capacity dropped. Transit, too.
• SDOT will stop finding excuses to not protect pedestrians.
• Mayor Durkan may no longer vocally oppose the Center City Connector, but there are still rail skeptics on the Council.
• “Robust public outreach” coming in Kent O&M Facility kerfuffle.
• Now Federal Way fighting a maintenance base… for some not-so-glamorous current land uses.
• Washington HSR grinding forward, still far from a real plan.
• Lyft not behaving well in Portland.
• San Jose might pay The Boring Company to connect SJC to BART.

The junction of the I-405 and SR522 Stride BRT lines will be frustratingly close to the University of Washington – Bothell (UWB) and Cascadia College joint campus, close enough for a tempting diversion but too far to actually be convenient.

Universities are good all-day transit demand generators, but too many campuses in the area were placed with only cars in mind. One of these is UWB, which lies just off an arterial and across a swamp from I-405. BRT, always constrained by where the major roadways are, can never be efficient for both through riders and those with business on campus.

SR522 buses must take a detour to provide front-door service to campus, though a half-mile walk from Beardslee Blvd isn’t insurmountable for most. For I-405 buses, the nearest interchange is almost a full mile away.

The Seattle Times published results of an extensive public poll ($) on local transportation issues this week. It asked hundreds of adults in households with registered voters, in both Seattle proper and King County, what they thought about where we are and what we need to do. The results suggest that King County deserve a little more credit than many give them on core questions relating to transit, but are not yet with us on all issues. The wild popularity of measures mired in endless controversy shows the extent to which Seattle politicians have allowed a few extremists to hijack the process.

First, a warning: the report freely admits that the survey over-sampled homeowners, who conventional wisdom suggests are more conservative on these issues. The Times posted the full, “topline” results, but not answers sliced among various demographic groups. These sample segments would be quite small with large margins of error. While some may seize the excuse to not challenge their preconceptions, even given the skew there are things to learn:

• SDOT improves SLU streetcar reliability.
• Stadium Station office complex gets approval.
• Gov. Inslee insists that the Columbia River Crossing will include light rail.
• Pictures of Roosevelt Station ($).
• ECB discusses the pile of upzone amendments, from all districts, that water down the change. This is disappointing, especially from councilmembers not running again, but we’ll see which amendments are theater and which people will actually fight for.
• Microsoft pledges $500m for affordable housing ($), wants sensible policy changes.
• Council wants apartment developers to nudge their tenants ($) to not drive everywhere.
• Kent trying to keep a light rail maintenance facility away from their planned TOD hub.
• Mountlake Terrace comes up with more parking ($) during Link construction.
• Not many helmets with bikeshare, but also not many injuries.
• WSDOT hiring a bike/ped planner.
• Profiling ST’s Ron Lewis.
• It doesn’t take money to drastically shorten commutes, it just takes willpower.

Many people are experimenting with different options today. Please share your experiences below to let others know what is, or isn’t, working.

WSDOT has a Seattle area freeway traffic map. SDOT has a traffic map that covers many more arterials.

• JUMP expands service area, adds bikes.
• As I predicted in a few venues, 10 years of viaduct and deep-bore tunnel events haven’t changed any preconceived opinions ($).
• Much like guns, fewer and fewer people own more and more of the cars.
• Sodo offramp 4th Avenue bus lane went in Saturday.
• Temporary Seattle Squeeze reroutes will not be in the data feed, so those riders looking for real-time data are SOL.
• The Seattle Council is finally discussing ($) widespread upzones.
• WSF has a long-range plan.
• Mountlake Terrace will discuss its station area on Tuesday.
• Bruce Harrell is done.
• More apartments for downtown Auburn.
• Early planning for Jackson Park Station.
• Another mudslide — this time in BC, blocking Amtrak but not Sounder.
• Link construction details on Mercer Island.
• Michael George running for Sally Bagshaw’s seat.
• Tales from a VMT guinea pig.
• It’s not election season, so the ST Editorial Board is letting its sensible minority expound non-reactionary opinions ($).

Frank and I will do a mailbag for our next podcast, taping soon. Put your questions in the comments below. The usual rules apply.