All posts by STB Editorial Board

Sound Transit 3 is the biggest investment in pedestrian mobility the Pacific Northwest has seen since the coming of the railroads in the 1890s. Like what that generation built, the capital projects we’ve committed to build will be around for decades. We can’t know with certainty what the future holds, but for reasons of both climate and mobility, it seems clear that our city’s future will need to involve more high-quality electric transit. It’s therefore essential that we build the core of ST3 so as to maximize its future utilization and value.

The current ST plan involves constructing a new tunnel from the International District to Uptown, constructing an elevated line onward to Ballard, and connecting the existing Rainier Valley line into this new tunnel. The Rainier Valley line is the only line slated to use the new tunnel (West Seattle Link and East Link will feed the current downtown tunnel), and the Rainier Valley Line’s surface-running section constrains it to a best-case headway of six minutes. The ultimate capacity of a rail tunnel depends on several factors, but a typical modern tunnel should easily be able to accommodate headways of three or four minutes.

If the new ST3 downtown tunnel is built without provision for an additional future line, there’s a real risk it will be permanently underutilized, moving ten trains per hour rather than the twenty or thirty it could — or at least, it would require major, disruptive engineering work to fix. Fortunately, making provision for future lines need not be expensive, as we show in Oran’s illustration above. A “stacked” station design with a pre-made bellmouth, as used by LA Metro at their Wilshire/Vermont station, requires slightly more excavation but allows for a new rail connection at minimal cost and disruption to ongoing service.

More after the jump.

Continue reading “ST3 Must be Built for the Future”

When we last left Lynnwood link, the light rail extension was $500M over budget. Now, per Mike Lindblom in the Seattle Times, that number has dropped to $300M:

By nipping here and tucking there, a Sound Transit manager says his team located $200 million in potential savings to ease a budget crisis in the Northgate-to-Lynnwood light-rail extension.

No major features such as stations or park-and-ride garages were slashed in the latest proposals, which include about 100 changes along the 8.5-mile corridor, said Rod Kempkes, executive project director for Lynnwood Link.

His team negotiated so-called “value-engineering” ideas with suburban staff and mayors since summer, when the voter-approved $2.4 billion cost estimate soared to $2.9 billion.

Even assuming the trimming works, there’s a roughly $300 million gap, which could wind up plunging taxpayers deeper into debt. A preliminary finance update is expected soon.

To fully close the $300M gap, there’s really only one option: defer the 3 proposed parking garages. The garages cost as much as $212M in total, or $88,000 per stall, an order of magnitude more than any of the other cost savings proposed.

To recap, Shoreline’s two stations (145th and 185th) are set to get 500-space garages. Lynnwood’s current 1,400-space surface lot would be replaced with a 1,400-space garage plus 500 surface spots. That makes for a net gain of 1,500 spots across the three stations (Here are all the parking lots planned for the full ST3 build out), or 2,400 total.

We understand that free parking (like free anything) is politically popular. Lynnwood link will run through cities that in many places lack sidewalks, let alone bike lanes or frequent East-west buses, making non-motorized access a challenge. For many residents, especially those who have never experienced the freedom of living within walking distance of rail transit, park-and-ride is the only way they can conceive of using the system.

Spending on parking now is a zero-sum decision. The cost overruns in Lynnwood have already delayed the Link extension by six months while a portion of the budget gap is closed. Every dollar in a Lynnwood garage delays the extension to Paine Field and Everett. At a minimum, we believe parking for a small fraction of future Link users deserves to go to the back of the line in Snohomish County funding priorities.

Continue reading “To Bring Lynnwood Link Back Within Budget, Defer the Parking Garages”

These are Seattle Transit Blog’s endorsements for the November 7, 2017 elections outside Seattle. In Seattle, we endorsed Cary Moon for Mayor; and Teresa Mosqueda and Lorena González for City Council.

As always, we choose candidates entirely based on their positions and record on transit and land use.
.

45th Legislative District, Senate: Manka Dhingra supports the continued expansion of the regional transit network. Her opponent, Republican party operative Jinyoung Lee Englund, is focused on “skyrocketing car tabs” and familiar but ill-defined promises to reduce traffic congestion. Lee Englund is likely to continue the current Senate majority’s attacks on Sound Transit if elected.

King County Executive: Dow Constantine has a long list of accomplishments, including ST3, ORCA LIFT, the multi-agency U-Link restructure, the end of Metro’s 40/40/20 rule that kept it from rolling out new service in Seattle, getting ST into the transit-oriented development and affordable housing business, and the list goes on. Constantine’s opponent is running to oppose East Link.

Continue reading “STB Endorsements Beyond Seattle for November 7”

Although the stated transit and land use policy differences in the Seattle mayor’s race are small, we believe that urban planner Cary Moon has the stronger commitment to transit priority, bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and adding all types of housing stock to serve all who would like to live in Seattle.

Much more than allied organizations, Seattle Transit Blog’s endorsement emphasizes a strong track record of improvements, rather than policy statements, for transit and denser land use. Admittedly, for both candidates the record is rather thin. To make things even more difficult, they have broadly similar policy proposals. But when Cary Moon has participated in public life, it has been to struggle against the primacy of the automobile and create more inclusive communities.

Both candidates broadly support the HALA plan currently in motion. Both also want to pursue duplexes, townhouses, and accessory dwelling units in our single family zones, which would correct the most glaring deficiency in the plan. There isn’t much to go on, but their biographies suggest that Moon is more committed to this outcome, which will require a willingness to offend significant constituencies. The Seattle Times endorsement of Durkan says it quite well:

“It’s unclear how much Durkan would disrupt the status quo on housing and traffic.”

On transit, the outlines of future investment are established: Sound Transit 3 and the Move Seattle plan. Luckily for us, both candidates broadly support these plans. The real question is implementation: in the thousand conflicts that will arise between high-quality transit, safe bike infrastructure, and maximizing car throughput and storage, what will win? Again, Cary Moon’s history of fighting for the first two, her training as an urban planning professional, and the signals sent by the respective endorsers of each candidate suggest an answer. Again, the Times:

As mayor, Moon would accelerate the city’s transit planning. She says Seattle’s streets are too “convenient” for drivers and more must be done to persuade people to ride buses or bicycles.

As people concerned that driver “convenience” is killing pedestrians and bicyclists, and blocking the rapid flow of buses, we couldn’t agree more.

…

STB is also endorsing Teresa Mosqueda for Position 8 and Lorena González for position 9 on the Seattle City Council, as we did in the primary.

Mosqueda earned the support of urbanists by pushing back against calls to require 25% mandatory “affordable housing” set-asides in new developments — a number that has stalled housing construction in San Francisco. She understands that the right number is different for each development. She will neither give away too much to neighborhood associations that have been at odds with renters (of which she happens to be one), nor to developers. Her opponent, Jon Grant, was on the HALA committee and was the one dissenter from the final list of 65 tactics to grow the housing supply.

González waltzed into office with her support of HALA, and once again is running against a neighborhood activist, this time Pat Murakami. Murakami was part of a group of individuals who filed petitions to hold up upzones around various Link stations. If you haven’t used your democracy vouchers yet, González has not maxed out on her spending limit (while Mosqueda and Grant have).

The STB Editorial Board currently consists of Martin H. Duke, Dan Ryan, and Brent White.

These are Seattle Transit Blog’s endorsements for the August 1, 2017 primary elections outside Seattle. The primary is only relevant in races with more than two candidates, so we restrict our attention to those. As always, we choose candidates entirely based on their positions and record on transit and land use.

45th Legislative District, Senate: Manka Dhingra supports the continued expansion of the regional transit network. Her main opponent, Republican party operative Jinyoung Lee Englund, is focused on “skyrocketing car tabs” and familiar but ill-defined promises to reduce traffic congestion. Lee Englund is likely to continue the current Senate majority’s attacks on Sound Transit if elected.

King County Executive: Dow Constantine.

It would take several pages to list all of Constantine’s accomplishments, and we would still have missed most of them. But just to be brief: ST3, ORCA LIFT, the multi-agency U-Link restructure, the end of Metro’s 40/40/20 rule that kept it from rolling out new service in Seattle, getting ST into the transit-oriented development and affordable housing business, … and the list goes on.

Constantine has no serious opposition, but we would be remiss in not honoring one of the most effective public servants King County has ever had.

Auburn Mayor: Nancy Backus is running for re-election. Sound Transit, Burlington Northern & Santa Fe, and the City of Auburn have been working together to build a third track in the BN&SF right-of-way (on which Sounder runs) through Auburn. Auburn and other regional commuters should be grateful Auburn has a leader at the helm who rolled out the red carpet for a third track instead of blocking it with red tape. Her main opponent is opposed to ST3.

Kirkland City Council, Position 7: Jon Pascal.

Pascal, having been appointed to the Council one year ago, is now running for a full-term. Pascal previously served a total of fourteen years on the city’s Transportation and Planning Commission. In private life, Pascal is a principal of a transportation planning company. He has been a leader on transit issues while on Council. Among his opponents, the more credible is Uzma Butte, who laudably advocates for more affordable housing and transit-oriented development. That’s welcome in increasingly unaffordable Kirkland, but we’re not sure any of the candidates would materially accelerate market-rate development. With complex transportation and transit implementations ahead, Pascal’s knowledge and experience will serve the city better.

Redmond City Council, Position 7: Jeralee Anderson emphasizes making Redmond safer and more accessible for pedestrians, bicycles and transit. Andersen is the co-founder of a company that works with government and private industry on green transportation projects. In sharp contrast, Jason Antonelli, her main opponent, has focused on auto traffic issues, viewing bike and pedestrian improvements as a distraction from faster car commute times. Predictably, he also opposed ST3 and has complained Downtown Redmond’s bike lanes and street grid repairs are not moving cars more quickly through city streets. Roy Captain, while less adamant than Antonelli, also puts too high a priority on “protecting” neighborhoods outside downtown and moving auto traffic.