All posts by Martin H. Duke

This was taken on January 3rd. It’s nice to see the architecture of these freeway stations progress in some way.

Every now and then there’s second guessing of the decision to route Central Link through the Rainier Valley instead of a more direct route to the airport down East Marginal Way. The idea is that a faster trip to Seatac would boost ridership, and more importantly, make South Link a better competitor with existing freeway express buses.

I have three basic objections to this line of argument:

1. Ridership and Federal Funding. Station boarding data shows that about half of Link trips begin or end in the Rainier Valley. It’s true that some people would board in Georgetown or along Boeing Field, but it’s obviously a much smaller market and anecdotal Route 124 performance* doesn’t suggest robust demand. Cut ridership by a little less than half, and it threatens federal funding and offends basic cost/benefit considerations. Furthermore, bus transfer opportunities from South County are almost by definition riders brought from buses, which FTA formulas frown upon. And of course, North subarea savings couldn’t have been used to extend the line further south.
2. Low Development Potential. The idea of an MLK alignment is that there is a lot of development potential to join existing reasonably dense neighborhoods on either side.** The East Marginal Way walkshed is fundamentally limited by an airfield on one side and a river on the other. Furthermore, Seattle has shown no interest in rezoning these areas from industrial, and the economics of redevelopment are fundamentally limited by environmental contamination issues. The big employer, Boeing, has tons of free parking on their campus there.
3. It’s not a Commuter Line. Ignoring the Rainier Valley to increase speed on South Link is a direct sacrifice of all-day ridership to provide better connection between distant homes and jobs.  Although it makes sense to serve work trips wherever possible, optimizing it for commutes gives you commuter rail. Light rail and subways are about providing high-capacity all-day connectivity. Sometimes you have the money to do both through grade separation, as is the case with North Link. That wasn’t the case here. I would rather run express buses to Federal Way forever than skip good, close-in markets for rail.

Next: the outlook for constructing a bypass in the future.

* How about some spring 2010 performance data, Metro?

** The fact that Metro has done a poor job of connecting those neighborhoods to Link is aggravating, but fixable and an issue wherever you put it.

They’re cracking down:

Beginning Jan. 15, parking guidelines will be emphasized for vehicles parked:

• Over 24 hours
• In emergency lanes, “no parking” and loading zones
• In ADA-designated spaces, where a vehicle is not marked by a state-issued disabled parking placard or license plate
• In more than one parking space
• In a manner blocking other vehicles and/or pedestrian pathways

Sound Transit will provide a one-week grace period for transit lot users. Between Jan. 15 and Jan. 22, warning notices will be given to vehicle owners who park outside the guidelines. Starting Sunday, Jan. 23, cars that either exceed the 24-hour limit or fail to observe other regulations may be immediately towed.

This is probably improvement on the status quo. If spending thousands of public dollars on a parking spot that delivers 2 boardings per day is a shaky investment, a spot used as airport parking for 7 days is even worse.

Still, a much more elegant solution is to simply charge for parking in high-demand lots. If it’s valuable for someone to park in a Sound Transit lot for an extended period, then so be it, but let them pay for it.

Furthermore, properly priced* paid parking generates revenue for transit agencies; encourages carpools, ped, bus, and bike access to transit centers; and provides customers with a reasonably high certainty that there will be a few spaces available at any time of day.

For example: suppose I live a half mile from a Sounder station. I’m a bit lazy, it’s raining, etc., so it’s easier to just drive. Charge me a couple of bucks to park, however, and that small incentive may tip me into walking, freeing up the spot for someone who has no attractive alternative. Instant ridership!

* Meaning, priced just high enough so that there are a few spaces available throughout the day. If fears that “no one will park there” are accurate, then you’re doing it wrong. At a lot usually filled to 60% capacity, the proper price is $0 (or to sell off some of the lot).

As a self-appointed tunnel argument policeman I’ll point out some problems with this Eli Sanders post:

Because the question keeps coming up: Couldn’t we use those billions of dollars for something else right now?

The simple answer: Yes. We could definitely use those billions for something else right now. The list of needs, from social services to other transportation projects, is endless. But to re-appropriate those tunnel billions for something else you’d first have to remove them from of the place where they’re being held.

First of all:

There’s $2.4 billion in state funds allocated for building the downtown tunnel, but that giant hunk of money is cobbled together from a bunch of different sources: $339.8 million in federal funds (can’t re-appropriate those); $247.4 million in other state transportation funds (which could only be re-appropriated by an act of the legislature).

I made this mistake at first too, but a lot of that $247.4m is gas tax money, just not from the 2003 or 2005 gas tax increases. The rest is vehicle license fees and so on. There’s no way Sanders should have known that, as I found out in a private tweet from Mike Lindblom.

Onward!

If you can get a constitutional amendment passed, then next you grab $700 million to $1 billion from the tunnel project’s pile of gas tax cash and leave the rest. It will be needed for tearing down the existing Alaskan Way Viaduct and implementing the I-5 improvements / surface transit option.

For the record, the DBT is $4.0 billion without transit improvements, surface/transit/I-5 is $3.5 billion. So the difference $500m or $700m if the state decides to keep its promises. However, in a surface/transit option the $400m in tolling money evaporates, so we’re down to the low hundreds of millions.

Lastly, a constitutional amendment is just about the most painful way to go about this kind of change. Much more direct is replacement of most of the gas tax with repeal of the sales tax exemption for gasoline. This subsidy amounts to $500m a year from the state (p.291) and $156m a year from local governments, including by my calculation about $28m from Metro. Some of this sales tax revenue would flow directly to transit agencies, and much of the rest to unrestricted funds with no constitutional requirement for highway building. That’s the equivalent of one U-Link every 3 years.

The Yes on Prop 1 campaign is fighting to increase the sales tax dedicated to Pierce Transit from 0.6% to 0.9%, in line with what Metro and Community Transit collect and the maximum allowed under state law. This would restore revenues in absolute terms to pre-recession levels and avert a 35% cut in service, which would strip the system down to low-frequency runs on major routes and not much else.

Their kickoff meeting is tonight from 6pm to 8pm in Tacoma. Be there. I’m out of town but I believe Zach will find his way there.

The vote is February 8th. Register if you haven’t already, because ballots go out on January 21st.

• Seattle plans market-based parking rates by 2012. About time.
• Times has goofy editorial proposing that Metro not sell advertising at all. ECB rightfully destroys it.
• Seattle Nightlife Initiative thinks creatively about improving late night transportation options.
• Update on D to M Sounder extension.
• New bike safety legislation, idiotic headline.
• Kill a bicyclist, get community service. Fail to show up for that, go to jail.
• Tacoma also launching a bike/ped safety campaign.
• CT had a rough snowstorm last week.
• I’m not sure I agree, but here’s a smart critique of the fare system.
• Just like Pierce Transit, Jefferson Transit will ask voters for a sales tax increase of 0.3 points on February 8th.
• No one’s stepping up to actually get legislation started to repeal the infamous cost overruns position. Somebody is the sucker here.
• Another no pants Link ride coming on Sunday.
• A history of the phrase “war on cars”. BTW, driving is subsidized.

This is an open thread.

Erica C. Barnett complains a bit about escalating Metro fares (and pass prices) but, in the mark of a good piece, keeps perspective and recognizes tradeoffs:

Eighty-one bucks is a lot for me… Even as agencies are making service more expensive, they’re reducing its quality and frequency.

Riding the bus is still a great deal compared to owning a car… With prices that high, I’ll take a $9 monthly fare increase over car ownership any day…

The problem with ever-higher fares, of course, is that fare increases are a known disincentive to riding the bus (as are cuts to service). At some point, you get a drop-off in ridership, creating a vicious cycle: Fewer riders means less fare revenue means cuts to routes means fewer riders, and so on. The solution, instead of raising the regressive general sales tax even higher, is to create sustainable, long-term options to fund transit, something groups like the Transportation Choices Coalition plan to push for next session in Olympia.**

Of course, there is some revenue-maximizing fare level. My suspicion is, based on the political pressures at play, that we are well below that level, at least with certain types of service.

But really, I want to take this occasion to remind anyone in a position of influence at an employer that there are low-cost ways to help out your transit-riding employees. First, transit expenditures can be deducted from paychecks pre-tax, up to $230 per month, at no cost to the employer aside from the paperwork.

Secondly, if your workforce largely uses transit, cutting pay and replacing those dollars with a transit subsidy has positive tax benefits. Not only is the pay no longer subject to payroll or income taxes, but the subsidy itself is also tax-deductible to the employer.

The Sunday Times had what I thought was a reasonably fair portrait of the McGinn administration’s first year. In my view, an ideal mayor is both right on the substantive policy merits, and able to cajole the Council and State, through love or fear, into supporting his agenda.

On the first point, I think anyone that thinks Seattle’s transit, pedestrian, and bicycle agenda should be a higher priority than the free flow of cars has to be happy with policy coming out of the Mayor’s office.

On the other hand, just about everyone would agree that it’s the latter point where he needs to improve. Still, I have to object to one aspect of media analysis of this problem, well illustrated by this Times blurb about the seawall:

[The Mayor made a seawall] announcement that clumsily excluded Council members. The perceived slight hurt the new mayor-council relationship. The council struck back by punting a sea-wall ballot measure all the way into 2011.

Bad on the Mayor for not optimizing his council relations, but the Seattle City Council is not a collection of inanimate objects; they are actual humans with moral agency.  If they postpone an important safety measure mostly because the Mayor failed to show them proper deference, that’s a damning indictment of the Council.

Many differences between Council and Mayor have legitimate policy and interest group roots, and that’s entirely proper. To the extent that this is about who’s showing enough respect, both sides should grow up.

And that goes for Olympia too.

You may have gone on vacation, but STB didn’t. Highlights since just before Christmas:

• ST whittles down the choices for North Link.
• A detailed look at not sending buses up I-5.
• Ridership numbers.
• Metro reroutes thanks to viaduct work.
• Security on Metro buses.
• Oran brings his graphic design skillz to critique the new Link schedules.
• Seattle agrees on transit, but not on how much to accommodate cars.
• TOD in Redmond.
• How to take transit to go skiing.
• Adam gets ST to add Link service in only 29 minutes. And they call me powerful!*

* not really.

Tee hee.