All posts by Martin H. Duke

We’re late on this, but Seattlest contributor Brad took the recent Department of Licensing MVET goof to its logical conclusion and pointed out that there’s probably been a hiccup in sales tax collection as well, one that potentially dwarfs the $3 million involved in the MVET program.  Assuming his facts are right, it’s a good point, but one that probably doesn’t have a lot of practical implications.

The only thing I have to add is that there are 95,000 vehicle owners affected by the MVET, which is probably roughly the number of adults in the affected areas.  A 0.4% sales tax figures to cost the median adult about $55 a year and has been collected for 12 years.  That comes out to about $62 million, but that assumes that those relatively rural areas have the same median income as the area as a whole; assumes residents do no shopping in the district proper; and ignores inflation over the past decade.  I think it’s safe to say that the total impact is something substantially less than that figure, so loose talk about “hundreds of millions” is probably not correct.

Given these uncertainties, and other practical difficulties Brad himself points out, I don’t see a practical remedy as simple as that for MVET.  I think sloppy state agencies deserve scolding, as well as legislators who made the district boundary as complicated as possible.  But a figure in the low tens of millions of dollars is serious money, enough to do a freeway ramp or other practical project.  I’d rather use that money to build a project they participated in the vote for than attempt to reconstruct 12 years of purchase records.

But, of course, I would say that.

Photo, taken somewhere East of Sammamish, by Panoramio contributor franklin18136.

Lost in the general transit-palooza of the viaduct options is this little paragraph under surface/transit:

Examples of other surface street changes include new transit lanes on Madison, Stewart, Olive and Howell streets, among others, and converting Third Avenue to transit-only all day in downtown.

This is a big, big deal.  As the endless streetcar comment threads attest, transit in its own right-of-way is the difference between a miserable trip and one that beats driving.

In the longer run, this’ll make it a lot easier for people to take transit to the Capitol Hill light rail station, too.

If Third Avenue is to become a transit mall, surely there isn’t a need for four lanes.  Two in each direction and a center lane for passing should be adequate.  I’ll leave it to the urban design folks to dream up things to do with that space, though I imagine a separated bike lane is pretty high up on the list.

Assuming the Governor picks this option…

Second child born to a STB blogger, she was born Friday at 9am, 7 lbs, 12 oz.

She’ll never know a city without light rail.

Congrats, Andrew.

From President-Elect Obama’s weekly address today:

Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it . If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money .

Emphasis mine.  Good policy?  Sure.  But let’s just say that our 4 layers of local government and local-planning-by-ballot-measure may not hold up too well under these sorts of constraints.

No one tell the NIMBYs when the meetings are this time…

Image: Jon Lok, Seattle Times

UPDATE: It seems Brad at Seattlest made almost exactly the same point a few hours before I did.  Great minds think alike, I guess.

The latest issue of ST’s Regional Transit News includes a proposal to speed up the 554, and do a major re-route of the 555 and 556 between DT Bellevue and the Eastgate P&R.

The 554 would stop only on the HOV access ramp and continue on to Issaquah or Seattle, rather than circle around to the bays in front of the garage.  This would save five minutes each way, allowing more service along the corridor, while adding a 900 ft. walk for those that have to transfer.

As someone who will have to do that walk, but is also reasonably young and fit, I’m comfortable with a short walk to prevent torturous routing.  I don’t know where they’d get the money to do this, but it would be especially nice to duplicate or move the elevator in the SW corner of the garage to the Southeast corner, to allow easy access from the 142nd Ave bridge.

As for the 555 and 556, they’d travel via Bellevue Way and the South Bellevue Park and Ride.  This would  speed up the total trip time by about 5 minutes, in addition to improving connections between S. Bellevue P&R (a future light rail site?) and numerous other places.   I’m certainly excited that in 2020 there would be reasonably direct route from Eastgate and Issaquah to the station.

Between the two routes, the only stop that would go away is the Factoria stop on the 555, to be replaced by the one at S. Bellevue.  Keep in mind that each of these routes only goes in one direction during peak times.

The changes are expected to occur in June.