All posts by Martin H. Duke

• Your ORCA beep has changed.
  
• Peter Rogoff in line for a $16,000 bonus ($).
• Columbia River Crossing meetings try to get over hard feelings from Washington Republicans’ irresponsibility. Jay Inslee wants light rail on the new bridge.
  
• Judge sets back Burke-Gilman “missing Link” yet again; apparently environmental impact statements are also meant to assess if any business might possibly be hurt, anywhere. Just scrap the whole law and start with a new EIS that actually focuses on the environment.
• New Lime ridership numbers.
• Positive Train Control work still on schedule for a spring return to the Point Defiance Bypass. With unfortunate timing, a Cascades derailment yields no injuries, a year after the last one. It will take years for train service to recover from that tragedy.
  
• The war on pedestrians.
• Meet Mike Lindblom. Some of the anecdotes are really precious.
  
• If California messes up their HSR project, it will be very bad for America.

This is an open thread.

On Dec. 10th Sen. Guy Palumbo (D – Maltby/Bothell) prefiled a bill to end the High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes on I-405. Although most transportation experts would line up to slay this bill, its passage — which is not likely — may actually be a good outcome for transit.

The bill doesn’t return the highway to the old, clogged status quo of one HOV-2 lane.  Instead, the unwidened stretch north of NE 160th St would be HOV-3. The recently expanded segment between Bothell and Bellevue would change to one lane of HOV-3 and one of HOV-2.

The current configuration is HOV-3 during peak hours and HOV-2 at other times, plus anyone willing to pay the toll.

• Fort Lawton affordable housing push rumbles on ($).
• Renton ahead of Seattle on the backyard cottage front.
• Seattle booming, not adding cars.
• 3 finalists for SDOT director
• Mountlake Terrace planning its station area.
• The scooter ban is indefensible.
• Seattle Central College doesn’t want to build any more parking.
• Geofencing 3rd Ave.
• ST has a new executive.
• All your questions about SR99, answered ($)
• Hot East Link pics.
• UW Master Plan finally approved.
• Tacoma still studying a fast ferry to Seattle ($).
• Gov. Inslee announces his climate plan, without a carbon tax.
• Spokane mulls fees on Uber and Lyft.
• New housing is not reducing affordable housing stock.
• Portland land-use proposal may hit the sweet spot.
• TriMet trying out double-deckers.
• Luxembourg tries free transit.
• Trump turns the TIGER program into another road fund.

This is an open thread.

Last month, alert readers noticed that ST’s quarterly ridership report showed a steep jump in cost per boarding.

With boardings up a bit and the number of trips essentially flat, this implied an alarming increase in ST’s unit costs. The good news is that a big chunk of this is a mere accounting illusion. The medium news is that some of it is one-time expenses. The bad news is that some of it is an increase in unit costs going forward.

From Boston, STB’s frenemy emeritus, d.p., shares this twitter observation:

@danjryan @kptrease @MikeLindblom @fchi Now that the midterms are over and it feels safe to focus on (still important) minutiae again, I wanted to send you all this astounding comparison I noticed.

Both of these maps show 3400-foot walks. pic.twitter.com/FtS0oSpuBj

— porcyk (@porcyk) November 19, 2018

One can quibble about hills, and placement of the dots. But he’s right that someone that tried to say that Convention Place serves Capitol Hill, or Avalon Station served the Junction, would rightly draw ridicule.

The development map d.p. attaches shows that “new Ballard” isn’t actually east of “old Ballard,” but instead to the north. A 14th station is simply farther away — not at the heart of coming density that will dwarf the existing old buildings.

Continue reading “Ballard is Big, but Link Might Miss it Entirely”

• Single-family zoning is indefensible.
• Massive city report ($) goes into extraordinary detail about why.
• Council Candidate Shaun Scott reacts properly.
• SDOT delivered 4% (!) of its 2018 bike lane plan.
• Taking LimePods on a test drive.
• Mayor thinks scooters are too dangerous, auto carnage is just dandy.
• Private transit center near Expedia.
• Driver Nathan Vass tries being nice.
• Let’s ban cars from the streetcar tracks.
• Kitsap buying more boats.
• Durkan hires consultant to represent Seattle to ST; the connection seems a bit cozy, but I’d most like to know the city’s agenda.
• This Link security encounter sure sounds like profiling.
• Cynicism about capital projects is easy to understand ($): when the economy is bad, they can’t deliver because revenues are down. When it’s good, it’s because costs have spiraled.
• Prospects for congestion pricing.
• A new use for bikeshare.
• “Talent wants transit.”
• How we use the land area of the United States. Spoiler alert: it’s mostly cows.

This is an open thread.

• Metro testing electric buses with 140-mile range.
• Between 80 and 91 low-cost housing units ($) coming to Lower Queen Anne.
• Seattle Transportation Budget: done.
• Rich Smith continues his quest for Light Rail signage that is comprehensible to humans.
• Apply for an opening on ST’s Citizen Oversight Panel.
• Trailhead Direct, now done for the year, served 10,000 round trips in 2018.
• Shaun Scott’s city council candidacy sounds promising on STB issues.
• WSDOT has a draft project list for the next three years, and is looking for public comment.
• Scooters and bikes complimentary in Portland?
• King County ponders Metro’s future business model.
• Bike lane implementation slipping on all fronts.
• Citywide street parking rates ($) recalibrated — RPZ permits make some of these problems unsolvable.
• Sally Bagshaw is done after this term. We will miss her.
• Everett rezones.
• Closing the UW Laundry facility not good for its employees, but may lead to a denser use right next to Mt. Baker Station.
• Car hits pedestrian ($) under Angle Lake Station.
• TriMet going nuts on new parking.
• San Francisco may axe parking requirements altogether.
• This American transit atlas looks interesting.
• Trade war making projects more expensive ($).

This is an open thread.

• FTA awards $1.2 billion to Lynnwood Link. More on this next week.
• Metro operations will briefly pause Friday to commemorate the 1998 Aurora Bridge crash.
• Seattle tries grassroots pedestrian improvements where sidewalks will never come.
• Hilltop Tacoma Link extension breaks ground.
• Seattle budget maneuvers take some money from Safe Routes to School.
• Mudslide science ($).
• There’s a way for Uber and Lyft to detract from transit, and a way for them to make transit better. Seattle has a unique opportunity to pick one next year.
• Broad Seattle upzone clears some nuisance lawsuits ($)
• Three great things that happened in the Northwest in 2018.
• Study suggests streetcar investments have some positive impact on new construction.
• A review of bikeshare in Cascadia.
• Portland throwing $36m at new bus and bike lanes.
• With the CRC sytmied, Portland is also considering a ferry to Vancouver.

This is an open thread. Happy Thanksgiving!

Sound Transit’s latest batch of options for Ballard and West Seattle kills off many variants, but controversies remain. The options are grouped into three concepts, although ST is free to choose bits from each alternative. All we have is maps, but that won’t stop us from having a detailed look.

The “representative alignment,” which voters approved in 2016, remains in play. It’s a pretty good alignment if you don’t mind elevated track, with stations on both ends in the sky. There are nits to pick. Alaska Junction station points west, which doesn’t help a future extension to Burien. Delridge is a bit far north, putting more industrial land in the walkshed and lengthening the bus ride for most people. Midtown is under 5th rather than 6th, reducing the combined system walkshed. The new Westlake is under 6th, worsening the transfer with the existing one.

Continue reading “ST3 Level 3 Alternatives”