All posts by Zach Shaner

I’ve always been drawn to geopolitical oddities.  Humans frequently draw straight, arbitrary lines and the terrain makes a mockery of it, such as Minnesota’s Northwest Angle or the Kentucky Bend.  Other examples, such as the bizarre Dutch town of Baarle-Nassau, are so anachronistic that you can almost imagine medieval barons drunkenly gambling away their various land holdings parcel by parcel.

Washington is home to one of the stranger examples in the United States, Point Roberts, a ‘practical exclave’ on the tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula just south of the Vancouver suburb of Delta.  Jutting just past the 49th parallel makes it part of the United States, one of (I believe) only two settlements in the western U.S. accessible by land only via Canada (the other is the tiny hamlet of Hyder, Alaska).

Point Roberts also makes a great day trip or short overnight visit, and it’s easily accessible via transit.  When I lived in Vancouver BC I visited twice, each time spending a lazy half-day circumnavigating the peninsula on foot.

The easiest way to get to Point Roberts car-free from Seattle is as follows:

• Take the first Quick Coach of the day from the Seattle Center Best Western (200 Taylor Ave North) to Bridgeport Station on the Canada Line.  The trip takes 3 hours and costs $51 round-trip.
• Transfer to TransLink Route 601 (map) to South Delta.  The ride takes 50 minutes and costs $3.75.
• From the corner of 54th St and 2nd Ave, walk 3/4 of a mile to the border crossing.  Present your passport and be on your way.
• Either stay overnight, or catch the last Quick Coach back to Seattle.

The transit connections are easy.  TransLink #601 runs every half hour 7 days per week until 10pm, and the border crossing is open 24/7/365.  Anchoring your trip at Bridgeport Station also gives you the option to explore Vancouver’s rail transit with ease.  Taking Amtrak Cascades is also possible for longer stays but will take roughly twice as long and require three transfers to reach Point Roberts (Amtrak–>SkyTrain–>Canada Line–>601).

Land use here is very similar to the San Juan Islands;  thick (and brushy) second-growth forests, pockets of old growth, quiet and narrow roads, scattered homes of widely varying quality, a small grocery store, and a high-end marina on the southwestern tip.  A leisurely 3-mile walk will bring you to the steep cliffs of Lily Point, where on clear days you will have expansive views of Boundary Bay and Mt Baker.  Hike down from the bluff to the beach at low tide and you may spot Purple Sea Stars, and you’ll have a chance to see the pilings remaining in the beach from the old Alaska Packers Cannery.  By no means a wilderness adventure, Point Roberts is merely a chance see American gas priced in litres, to set foot in an accident of geography, to pass through a comically excessive border patrol checkpoint, and to walk a few miles on quiet roads for the sheer pleasure of it.

Previous Transit Hikes:

Shaw Island and Friday Harbor

Wallace Falls

Deception Pass/Whidbey Island Loop

Sound Transit just released its Q4 2011 Ridership Report, an encouraging trinity of big ridership gains, increased punctuality, and reduced (though still high) costs.

ST Express:  Ridership is up 13% on weekdays and 10% overall, with average weekday boardings of 48,094.  Strong growth on Snohomish County routes is likely due both to ST absorbing riders affected by cuts at Community Transit and the completion of Mountlake Terrace Transit center in March 2011.  Ridership is up 20% on #510, 28% on #511, 44% on #513, 20% on #532, and 7% on #535.  Other routes saw healthy increases of 4-15%, the only exceptions being ridership losses on #560 (-10%) and #566 (-11%).  Cost per boarding declined from $7.48 to $7.04.  On-time performance increased from 87% to 88%.

Sounder:  South Sounder ridership is up an impressive 22%, and North Sounder is up 15% (though it must be noted that 22% of total North Sounder boardings were on Special Event service).  Overall weekday ridership is up 27%, with average weekday boardings again exceeding 10,000.  Cost per boarding declined from $13.74 to $12.71, with an on-time performance of 97%.

Central Link:  Ridership is up by 12%, with average weekday boardings of 24,070, though ridership is still 24% below budgeted estimates.  Cost per boarding declined from $6.78 to $6.29, and on-time performance improved dramatically, from 81% to 87%.

Tacoma Link:  Ridership is up by 20%, on-time performance is 99.9%, and cost per boarding declined from $3.93 to $3.59.

The Fall 2012 Service Change does many good things, which Bruce has covered in exhaustive detail. But I wanted to draw particular attention to the effects of the proposed service changes on the Central District. Though I support the changes to Route 2 (and as a former Madrona resident I have credibility on the issue), and though I have long supported the elimination of Route 4, the newest service change proposals radically underserve the commercial hub of the Central District at 23rd/Jackson.

In short,  with the reduced peak frequency on the 14S and the (overdue) elimination of Route 4, riders on Jackson east of 14th will have only half-hourly service to both the International District and downtown. Furthermore, by moving the 27 to Spring/Seneca, the 14 will become the only decent east-west grid connection between Jefferson (Route 3) and I-90.   I drew up a quick map to visualize the changes:

More after the jump.

Continue reading “The Central District Deserves Better”

The First Hill Streetcar will be built.  Its alignment has been approved by the City Council, the interlocal agreement between Sound Transit and Seattle is secure, and construction begins next month. I’m personally quite excited to ride it from Capitol Hill to Little Saigon/Chinatown to get cheaper produce than I can get at QFC.

But let’s be clear, the First Hill Streetcar is an expensive investment (transit planning as consolation prize) that will do very little for mobility in central Seattle.  In its current configuration – and in the absence of money to connect the line through downtown – much more mobility could be purchased through trolleybus investment.  As a staunch rail advocate this is a difficult thing for me to say, but comparing modal choice across origin-destination pairs makes it abundantly clear that the streetcar loses in most cases to existing bus service.

Let me unpack this a bit…more after the jump.

Continue reading “Who Will Ride the First Hill Streetcar?”

President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper have announced a sweeping new security agreement.  The agreement will expand the NEXUS program, increase the number of American security officials working in Canada, and dramatically streamline border procedures to improve the throughput of cargo.

Relevant to STB is that this agreement will end the duplicative border inspection for southbound Cascades trains.  By the end of 2012, all customs and immigration will take place in Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station.  This will save 10-25 minutes per trip and harmonize northbound and southbound running times to 4 hours.  Mike Lindblom has the full scoop.

I definitely cheer the streamlining of rail (and air) service, and indeed also to improving trade (some estimate that up to 1% of Canadian GDP is lost to bureaucratic redundancy at the border).  But these efficiencies were only possible via a Canadian capitulation to American security standards and policies, which in a post-Patriot Act era are already excessively heavy handed.  Far more information will be shared between the two governments, the practical result of which is far greater American access to information on Canadian citizens.  I am quite sympathetic to the fears – of eroded national sovereignty and lost civil liberties – that many of my Canadian friends have expressed.

In Seattle we tend to like alliterative self-effacement.  Since we already have the Mercer Mess, let’s talk a little about the Denny Dilemma (disaster? debacle? despair?)  Pick your favorite ‘D’.

***
Route 8 provides critically important mobility.  A rare non-CBD/crosstown trunk route in central Seattle, it connects Uptown, Cascade/SLU, Capitol Hill, Madison Valley, the Central District, and the Rainier Valley.  Especially on its east-west segment, perhaps no route better exemplifies our city’s stated goal of connecting dense urban villages.

The 8 is also one of our least reliable routes, frequently subject to severe delays and bunching, a problem especially severe eastbound in the PM peak. Though Route 8 is a local route its reliability problems are almost entirely due to I-5.  I-5’s construction cut off Capitol Hill from Cascade and Uptown, funneling all traffic onto Denny, whereas in the downtown core the grid was better preserved via Madison, Seneca, Pike, Pine, and Olive.  If topography and local access problems weren’t enough, the only ramp onto I-5 southbound between Mercer St and Spring St is at Yale Ave, a two-block length section of street that serves exclusively to queue cars seeking to get from Denny to I-5 southbound.  Backups routinely stretch over a mile, all the way back to Seattle Center.  Eastbound #8s that depart their Lower Queen Anne terminus on time can be up to 30 minutes late reaching Capitol Hill, just over a mile east!

In an era of austerity, fixing Route 8 is no easy task. Denny is very narrow – limited to 2 lanes in each direction except for a turning lane at Fairview Ave – and there is very little room to widen it.  HOV/BAT lanes would reduce general-purpose vehicle capacity (slightly more than) 50%, and they would do little for transit anyway as eastbound Route 8 must stay in the I-5 access lane in order to serve its stops at Dexter, Westlake, Fairview, and Stewart.   So what can we do with a severe problem and very little money to fix it?

A simple and cheap idea after the jump… Continue reading “The Denny Dilemma”

As expected after very heavy rainfall, the first mudslide of the rainy season occurred this morning at 7am near Edmonds.  Sounder North service for Wednesday is cancelled.  Per BNSF’s 48-hour rule, Amtrak Cascades trains 510 and 517 will be cancelled through Friday morning at least, trains 513 and 516 will be truncated to Seattle, and the Empire Builder (trains 7, 8) will turn at Everett.  In all cases there will be bus replacement service offered.

With the rain yet to abate, expect more mudslides in the coming days.  Sounder North is still scheduled to run on Saturday for the Apple Cup, but there’s a good chance of additional mudslides canceling that as well.

In 2014, the Panama Canal will double its capacity, adding a third shipping lane and dredging its channels to 60′.  The primary effect of this will be to make East Coast ports significantly more attractive to Asian shipping interests, most of whom currently call at prominent West Coast ports (Long Beach, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver, Prince Rupert, etc…) for intermodal transfer to the midwest and east by rail.  Despite our highly successful shift toward services and technology, a robust industrial base remains key to a healthy Cascadian economy, and a significant drop in freight rail traffic would cause significant harm.

To remain competitive, our regional governments (the British Columbia Legislative Assembly, the legislatures of Oregon and Washington, and to a lesser extent, the Idaho legislature) should recognize the urgent need to partner on major rail investments in the next legislative cycle.  Washington has the most urgent needs, and the proposed investments are expensive.

Back in 2006, the Washington State Transportation Commission released the Washington State Rail Investment Plan, identifying major chokepoints and necessary improvements (see image above).  It is worth noting that the mainline between Seattle and Portland is significantly less congested than the cross-Cascades routes:  Seattle-Portland was just over 50% capacity, Portland-Spokane (BNSF) and Portland-Boise (UP) were both at 90-100% capacity, while Everett-Wenatchee (through the Cascade tunnel) was 22% over practical capacity.    The report laid out two alternatives (reproduced below): Alternative A would have added capacity for 24 additional trains per day and cost $350 million, primarily by crown-cutting the Stampede Pass tunnel to allow for double-stacked trains.  Alternative B would have added capacity for 75 additional trains per day for approximately $2.0 billion, constructing a new Stampede tunnel, allowing 20-minute headways between Auburn and Ellensburg, and allowing two trains in the Cascade Tunnel at the same time, among many other improvements.

Despite continuing austerity at the state level, it is very likely that a major transportation package will be forthcoming in the next session, and I sincerely hope that we can simultaneously identify a new and sustainable source for transit funding while securing the investments necessary to sustain our industrial base.

Of course, such investments would bring welcome new opportunities for passenger service as well.  For instance, a daytime round-trip train between Seattle and Spokane would take 6.5 hours on a Talgo, be immune to seasonal disruptions in the Midwest, and do much to bridge the cultural Cascade Curtain.  New cross-Cascades passenger service could piggyback on freight investment for very little additional cost, especially considering the fact that we will have surplus trainsets until after the Point Defiance Bypass is complete in 2017.  Considering that air service between Seattle and Spokane is being reduced in January, now may be the time to look at additional rail.

Amtrak Cascades service between Seattle and Portland has been canceled until Thursday October 6th due to an early season mudslide at Titlow Beach near the Tacoma Narrows.  Buses will transport passengers between Seattle and Portland.

• Trains 501, 506 and 508 are canceled.
• Trains 500, 504, 507, and 509 will continue to run between Eugene and Portland.
• Trains 510, 513, 516, and 517 will continue to run between Seattle and Vancouver BC.
• Trains 11 and 14, the Coast Starlight, will run Portland-Los Angeles.

WSDOT recently received an additional $31 million for mudslide mitigation and weather-related track improvements, and with another La Niña likely let’s hope the funds are quickly put to use.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, freight service resumed on the other mainline track 30 minutes after the mudslide.  The 48-hour rule – declaring an automatic passenger moratorium in the event of mudslides – is far too rigid.  WSDOT, Amtrak, and BNSF need to institute a case-by-case procedure for track closure flexible enough to handle diverse situations while maximizing passenger train availability.

The recent string of high-profile cycling fatalities has been really dispiriting. Seattle is killing people on bikes at the rate of 1 per month, and we seem more interested in discussing the behavioral problems of people driving and cycling rather than addressing the structural problem, the underlying safety of our transportation network. Given the fallibility of human behavior and the assurance of operator errors, we would be wise to reduce structural risk rather than rely on educational campaigns. I was a vehicular cycling advocate myself until a near-miss last December removed cockiness from my advocacy equation. (I landed on my head after a 20mph, over-the-handlebars crash on River Road in Puyallup, escaping with ‘only’ a cervical spine sprain and permanent neck pain.)

Rather than emphasize the vehicular status of bicycles and make a point of accommodating them on all streets, we should recognize that, wherever possible, separated facilities benefit us all. Even as a daily bike commuter I recognize the general incompatibility of non-motorized and motorized modes (including transit!) at anything approaching arterial speeds. In collisions below 25 mph the odds of survival are much higher. Why in the world would I want to ride on a 35 or 45 mph street if I had reasonable alternatives? Yes, we still need traffic calming measures throughout the city, but the need for separated uses persists.

When our government installs bicycle facilities, it implicitly vouches for the general safety of their use. In my opinion, in Seattle we dangerously overemphasize the need to accommodate bicycles on arterials. Many of our bike lanes (hello 2nd Ave!) leave people unnecessarily susceptible to injury and death at the hands of both cars and transit. I bike through Madrona and the Central District every morning, and for my own safety I rarely use 23rd, MLK, Cherry, and/or Union, streets that our Bicycle Master Plan seeks to emphasize. Rather, low traffic streets work perfectly well and with a bit of repaving could be optimized as safe bicycle boulevards. In my case, I’d happily trade Union for Marion, MLK for 27th, and 23rd for 19th/20th. Other substitutions could be King instead of Jackson, Federal instead of 10th, and many others.

Vancouver BC does this very well. While justly famous for its separated cycle tracks downtown on Burrard, Hornby, and Dunsmuir, I am more impressed by Vancouver’s western neighborhoods. Take a look at Vancouver’s official bicycle map (full PDF):

Between Cambie St. and UBC, the main east-west arterials for cars and transit are 4th, Broadway (9th), 16th, King Edward (25th), 33rd, 41st, and 49th. Looking at the official bicycling map you’d hardly know it! Bicycles are directed instead to use 3rd, 8th, 10th, Nanton (29th), 37th, and 45th. Bikes don’t ride in high traffic, and they rarely interact with transit except to cross north-south arterials. The same pattern holds for north-south streets.

In Seattle we may lack many things, but we have an abundance of quiet, low-traffic streets directly adjacent to our busiest arterials. We should put them to better use and save a few lives.

Event Notice: On September 22nd several grassroots community groups advocating for neighborhood greenways (aka bike boulevards) are hosting a presentation at the UW with Mark Lear and  Greg Raisman who are experts on the subject. Facebook event here.

Last weekend Hurricane Irene caused an unprecedented shutdown of Metro New York’s transit (including all air travel, MTA, NJT, LIRR, Metro-North, and Amtrak). Given the assurance of wind damage to catenary wire, the probability of toppled trains on exposed elevated alignments, and the assurance of flooding – it takes all-day pumps just to keep New York’s subways from flooding every day – a shutdown was the only prudent course of action. New York was fortunate both that Irene was weaker than expected and that a large-scale evacuation was mostly unnecessary. Though there were very vulnerable spaces, such as Lower Manhattan and the Rockaways, relative safety could be had simply by traveling to the wild uplands of, say, midtown Manhattan. The New York Times deserves much credit for featuring transit news and advice prominently throughout the storm, but most other communities spoke only to drivers’ needs.

Much more after the jump…

Where New York was fortunate, the New Orleans of Hurricane Katrina was infamously unfortunate. Its 100,000 transit-dependent people (27% of New Orleans households!) were ordered to evacuate of their own accord, with no provision or direction on how to do so. Famous aerial shots depicted hundreds of flooded and ruined buses, while maxed-out contraflow highways made ‘evacuation’ on I-10 a sub-5 mph crawl. Those stuck in New Orleans in the first few days after Katrina endured conditions rivaled only by the poorest nations on earth, and they starkly revealed the fundamentally unjust result of a society built around personal cars. When I lived in Britain, more than once my colleagues marveled that a society could order an evacuation with such hand-waving as, “Y’all better get out!”

I’d like this post and the comments to be a discussion of how transit can best contribute to disaster planning, both here and elsewhere. Though Katrina showed us the worst of both individualism (traffic, looting, etc..) and government ineptitude (FEMA, etc…), it is clear to me that societies owe each other the means to collectively evacuate themselves irrespective of economic class, and that those choosing to be carless should be provided a means of evacuation.

There are significant barriers to transit-based evacuations. Trains, though they have the highest capacity, are generally more vulnerable than highway infrastructure, as their rights-of-way were usually carved out along lowlands and waterways in 19th century. Bus evacuations are much more likely but have their own problems, such as storage of personal effects (people generally evacuate with lots of stuff) and the role of paid labor vs. volunteer driving and all the attendant liability issues there.
But perhaps the most difficult problems are trust and chaos. In disasters survivalism instinctively appears. Social contracts can quickly dissolve, leading to self-defeating self interest, textbook examples of how game theory explains disaster sociology. The urge toward self-reliance is very alluring; there is no other time I would want to be less beholden to government than when its failure to deliver could mean my death.

Hurricanes give lots of warning, a luxury our quake and volcano-prone region wouldn’t have. A major Rainier eruption could bury our rails and make the valleys impassable.  A major quake on the Seattle Fault would damage or destroy up to 80 of our bridges and up to 1,000 of our old masonry buildings. In a major disaster, then, our region should plan less for evacuation and more towards preemptive preparedness and adaptation. But the structural question – our collective responsibility in disasters – is one we need to rehearse over and over until we know exactly what we owe each other.

(For further reading, check out the 2008 report by the Transportation Research Board (TRB), or for those of you who don’t like reading 300+ pages, here’s a simple but well-written article by Michael Schwartz, an academic who has made disaster transit a central research theme of his.)

All Aboard Washington has the scoop:

We’ve just received word that Canadian Minister for Public Safety, Vic Toews, announced in a CBC interview this morning, “Upon careful review of the business case and despite some significant financial constraints, the Canada Border Services Agency has decided that it will continue to provide publicly funded border clearance service to Amtrak’s second daily train.”

This is great news. Even after discounting the effects of the 2010 Olympics and the addition of the 2nd train, ridership has been growing faster to/from Vancouver BC than any other destination, up 24% in 2011 over 2010. Though capacity constraints are well-known and there is not much room for growth, it is encouraging to see the service being well-utilized.

Though Canada has perhaps the least rail-friendly federal government in the rich world, the staffing challenges presented by arrivals spaced 11 hours apart are not insignificant, and I hope in the coming years that Amtrak, WSDOT, BC, and Ottawa will work creatively to streamline service and clearance procedures so that these issues are minimized. Even rail advocates should recognize that the cost of CBSA services at Pacific Central station is a steep C$1,500/day. (Interestingly, until yesterday seats on trains 513/516 beyond October 1st were going for $83 each way, more than double the fare on 510/517. The fare has since returned to the standard $38.  Was Amtrak briefly considering passing the border fee onto passengers?)

Of course, most welcome would be a provincial partnership with ODOT and WSDOT for operations funding and capital improvements, but don’t hold your breath.  I have an email in to Laura Kingman at WSDOT for more information, and will update this post if any new info becomes available.

via Streetsblog.

One of the first steps into mature thinking about transportation is to remove undue necessity from transportation technologies – to talk not about what they are but what they do.  To fetishize a tool, rather than the utility the tool provides, is to make a fundamental category error.  Both autophiles and railfans make this error constantly.  What we need is not cars nor even transit per se, but mobility, whatever form that may take.

I have nothing against cars as tools (I find them necessary and useful about once a week).   What I have a problem with is the social costs imposed by the ubiquitous and even obligatory use of one tool for all tasks.  As transit advocates we get accused of making arguments about kind, as though the tool (Cars vs. Bikes!, Buses vs. Trains!) were the most important consideration.  The proper discussion is all about degree, the scale of transport required for our daily lives.

Car dependence doubly reinforces this error.  As ownership represents sunk costs – lowering the marginal cost of each individual trip – the incentives to drive soon overwhelm all other considerations.  As a result, one begins to see a car not as a tool well-suited for a particular task, but as transportation itself, appropriate (by definition!) to any trip.  To borrow an analogy from golf, car dependence puts you in the absurd position of driving, pitching, and putting with just one club (and your largest one at that)!

Though I concur with all the standard urbanist arguments, increasingly I find conservative arguments against car dependence the most compelling.  Specifically, my aim these days is to maintain a diversified portfolio of transportation choices instantly and freely available, and to use the least-intensive technology possible for each trip.  By contrast, car dependence poorly manages risk, leaves you badly overcapitalized and acutely vulnerable to price shocks, and forces you into an obligatory all-you-can-drive insurance model that is completely insensitive to usage patterns.  Such dependence actively prohibits you from scaling your life up and down as necessary, and as such it represents a considerable loss of freedom.

The familiar result is waste, as suddenly society must provide a parking space and a lane of road whether the task is as simple as a loaf of bread or as complex as hauling furniture.  We would scoff at someone who buys a $4.75 ORCA PugetPass when his/her daily commute costs $2.50, but we tend not to scoff at the pickup owner who hauls loads a handful of times a year, even though the principle is the same.

If at any given moment you can choose to walk, bike, take transit, taxi, or drive, you can properly match the tool with the task.  I would argue that this provides a liberating flexibility of movement, and a freedom of spontaneous adaptation, that car ownership actively stifles.

If you really want to leave it all behind for a night or two, you can hardly do better than Shaw Island.  The least populous and least-visited among ferry-served San Juan Islands, Shaw is a quiet, wooded treasure.  The island has only one commercial establishment, the Shaw General Store, famously operated by nuns until just a few years ago.  San Juan County Parks operates the lone public campground, charging $12-$16 per night for one of 11 tent sites.  The campsites rest on a cliff above a sandy, south-facing beach with great views of San Juan, Canoe, and Lopez Islands.

If you strap on a backpack with a small tent, or better yet take a bicycle, you can have an easy car-free loop, 2 nights of quiet camping, a late lunch in Friday Harbor, and a scenic cruise back to Seattle…while still arriving back in Seattle for a full night’s sleep before work Monday morning.  Here’s a sample itinerary, below the jump.

Continue reading “Transit Hikes: Shaw Island and Friday Harbor”

Photo by Jim Wrinn – Editor of Trains Magazine – Original Image HERE

2nd Quarter 2011 ridership on Amtrak Cascades set an all-time quarterly record, with 231,194 passengers.  Ridership was up 8% on Q2 2010, the next highest year.  Since 2007 Q2 ridership has grown by an impressive 25%.  As opposed to Q1 (mudslides, 2010 Olympics, etc…) Q2 ridership is broadly indicative of annual trends, so these numbers are solid evidence of the growing popularity of the service.  Good news!

Cascades has always drawn most of its ridership from Seattle and Portland, and as ridership has grown major cities have only increased their relative share of riders. Comparing May 2010 to May 2011, ridership is up 8% in Seattle, 9% in Portland, 9% in Eugene, and up another 24% in Vancouver BC. Smaller cities lost riders, however, with 5% fewer passengers in Tacoma and 15%  fewer in Bellingham.   It’s clear to me that Vancouver BC deserves a 3rd train. More below the jump.

Continue reading “Cascades Ridership Breaks Another Record”

A quick reminder that numerous closures this weekend will snarl regional travel.  From Friday at 11pm to Monday at 5am, both SR 520 (Montlake to I-405) and the I-5/Mercer interchange will close completely.  SR520 buses will be rerouted to I-90, and expect backups in and around downtown Seattle all weekend.

Saturday is also the 32^nd annual Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic (STP).  10,000 cyclists (including yours truly) will make the 204-mile trek to Portland.  For our mutual sanity and safety, you would do well early Saturday morning to avoid Montlake, the University Bridge, Lake Washington from Madrona to Renton, West Valley Highway, Puyallup, Pacific Avenue/SR7, and SR 507.

In addition, I-5 northbound around Joint Base Lewis McChord will be restricted to a single lane (9pm Friday to 5am Monday), and WSDOT is predicting an 11-mile backup just as STPers drive and bus back from Portland.  If planning on traveling to Portland, Amtrak Cascades is your ticket out of congestion (ok, Horizon too).

Though these closures will frustrate motorists and transit riders alike, I would suggest making the best of a bad situation either by kayaking/canoeing in Union Bay or by visiting the Arboretum (walk, or take the #11 or #8).  The sunny and mild weather, combined with the tranquility afforded by a closed SR 520, should provide a lovely glimpse into the sights and sounds of pre-highway Union Bay.  (Each time I visit the Arboretum I’m grateful anew that the R.H. Thompson was never built.)   During the last viaduct closure I discovered that it’s really quite stunning to be near a major highway without the attendant white noise; one doesn’t internalize the scale of roadway noise until graced with its absence.  So take advantage of it!

At the STB Quarterly Board Meeting last Saturday –ok, informed nerds having brunch– we discussed at length various ways to improve STB.  We want to grow our readership, fix technical challenges, and improve the reader experience.  This thread is your chance to let us know what you’d like to see on STB.  A few seed thoughts:

(1. Comments. Trolling is significantly diminishing the quality of comment threads.  Of course, please don’t feed the trolls, but STB also has a strong position against blocking commenters unless they are abusive.  To improve everyone’s experience, we are beginning the process of overhauling the comment system.  What would you like to see?  Possibilities include :

• Up/down ratings to bury trolls at the bottom of the thread and reward smart comments
• A return to deeper threading
• Integration with Facebook comments
• A preview/edit feature

(2. Template and Design. We’ve taken pride in the lightweight, minimalist framing of STB.  Articles are always on the front page, there are no sections, etc…  We’ve wanted to keep the posts timely, on-point, frequent, and accessible, and a simple site has been great at doing that.  Nonetheless, cross-referencing with past posts is more difficult than it should be, and there is currently no organization of posts by thematic content.  We’re considering adding tab-like features just above the current article, with your standard array of reference articles, such as About Us, Best Arguments, Seattle for Visitors, Agency Links, Blogroll, etc. We’re also working on a mobile theme.   Aesthetic comments from information designers would be quite helpful.

(3.  Content and Audience. We know that STB is a high-concept, incurably wonky blog.  We attempt to conduct good analysis, have good conversation, and hopefully have a political impact.  With a few exceptions (we’re human) we  try to avoid the polemical, lazily framed writing that predominates at many other transportation sites.  Most items here are news+analysis, with occasional strong editorials, guest pieces, and of course Sunday Open Threads.  But what types of articles do you want more and less of?

(4.  Advertising. How is the current advertising working for you?  Our goal is for it to be mostly transportation related, non-intrusive, and bring in a healthy revenue stream.  We value the ability to make the site financially self-sustaining and subsidize meetups, and advertising has been successful for us so far.

It has been a terrible year for the Empire Builder.  On-time performance over the last 12 months is hovering around 10-15%, and delays have frequently been 5-12 hours or more.  Service has been either truncated or canceled outright over 50 times so far in 2011.  While collisions with vehicles, our epic mudslides, and an Idaho rockslide have all disrupted service, the heart of the problem is flooding in the Devil’s Lake Basin of North Dakota.  As an endorheic (closed) basin, Devil’s Lake has continued to rise over the past decades as precipitation has increased, increasingly submerging the railbed and 2 key bridges.  (BNSF has not operated through freight service between Grand Forks and Minot for over a year).  Amtrak, however, limps onward on the troubled segment.  On June 15, BNSF and Amtrak agreed in principle to split the $100m cost of rebuilding 17 miles of the corridor, raising the railbed and rebuilding the bridges.

My personal opinion is that this amounts to doubling down on a short-to-medium term solution.  Bypassing Devil’s Lake may be the better long-term choice.  While those in and around Grand Forks would lose service, using the direct line between Fargo and Minot would be faster, more direct and significantly more reliable.  Politically, however, it’s a non-starter.

It is beyond frustrating that rainfall in North Dakota means that Seattle passengers can’t get to Spokane, etc…  Though famously subsidized, Amtrak operates without a shred of redundancy, so when things go wrong, they tend to do so spectacularly.  With sufficient equipment and crew, Amtrak could (and should) operate segments of the line when service is disrupted, especially between Seattle-Spokane and Minneapolis-Chicago.  Perhaps these problems will someday bring about state support for Eastern Washington service that is independent of the long-distance network.

In normal times the Builder is perhaps the premier long-distance train in North America, offering unrivaled scenery, a lifeline to the northern plains, and quality onboard amenities.  It’s a shame to watch the service degrade into chaos without the ability for Amtrak to adapt quickly.

As last weekend’s weather represented the start of Silly Season for Seattle Happiness, I thought I’d write up another carfree Saturday daytrip. Deception Pass State Park, bringing together Fidalgo and Whidbey islands, is a pretty spectacular place.  As the bridge between the islands is itself a prime attraction, Deception Pass is a premier roadtrip destination, and can get very crowded on sunny weekends.

This 12-hour, relatively easy Saturday transit loop takes you from Seattle to Whidbey Island and back via Amtrak Cascades, Island Transit #411W, Island Transit #1, Washington State Ferries, Community Transit #113, and Sound Transit #511.  It allows time for a beautiful train ride along the central Sound, a 90-minute brunch in Mt Vernon, 4 hours of walking along the beaches and bays of Deception Pass, and has you back in Seattle before a June sunset.  Variations could allow a nice hike to the top of Mt Erie or an alternate return via Port Townsend and Bainbridge (only attempt on weekdays!).

And this loop is very cheap.  Island Transit is a fare-free agency, and doing the loop counter-clockwise gives you a free ride on the Clinton-Mukilteo ferry.  Aside from your Amtrak fare ($13-$20), with an ORCA card this trip allows you to ride 5 buses from 3 agencies for only $3.50!