Zach wrote for STB from 2010-2017, and was our inaugural Staff Reporter from 2015-2017. Zach has also worked for Pierce Transit, Commute Seattle, and owned a bike rental business. As of June 2017 he works at Sound Transit. Zach is a Beacon Hill resident and can often be found biking, riding Link, or driving his Seattle-cliche Subaru.
This week has been a miserable one for trains in the Seattle area. After two Monday mudslides, one near Nisqually and one near Everett, on Tuesday not a single Amtrak train arrived or departed King Street Station. Another mudslide yesterday has put North Sounder and Amtrak off until at least Friday. Mudslide prevention projects are still on the way thanks to stimulus dollars, but at this point these efforts seem meager compared to the enormity of the problem. At least 30 mudslides have occurred just since Thanksgiving.
From YouTube user John Hill, here’s up close video of Monday afternoon’s mudslide and 7-car derailment just south of Everett. The slide begins at the 1’00” mark. The 48-hour passenger moratorium may be frustrating — and moving to a case-by-case assessment would be superior to an arbitrary time period — but let’s not forget that mudslides are serious business. Video like this shows just how dangerous they can be.
Sound Transit recently released its 3rd Quarter ridership report, and it is good news all around for Link, including improved reliability, solid ridership growth, reduced operating costs, and reduced customer complaints.
Reliability: Comparison across years and across modes is a bit of a mess because each mode’s definition of reliability is different, and Central Link moved from a schedule-based reliability metric to a headway-based one this year. These metrics are defined every year in the budget.
ST Express defines “on-time” as no more than 10 minutes late. Sounder must be no more than 7 minutes late at the terminus. Central Link now defines on time as maintaining headways within three minutes of the expectation but the budget doesn’t specify a time standard.* In previous years, a train was defined as late in accordance with the internal Link schedule.
Most of Sounder’s North Line problems are well-known and structural: its would-be walkshed is comprised of half ocean and half cliffs, transit connections are poor, parking availability is poorer still, frequency is severely limited and codified by contract agreement with BNSF, and mudslides knock out service a couple dozen days per year. Given these rather severe odds, the service garners just over 1,000 daily riders. While the North Line’s high costs and poor performance have been all over the news lately (Seattle Times, STB, etc) , all indications are that the line will continue to operate indefinitely. Sound Transit recently leased 5 years of additional Edmonds parking and is proceeding with long-term station enhancements, and on Thursday the mayors of Everett, Mukilteo, and Edmonds offered their unequivocal support (emphases mine):
Our service along the shore of Puget Sound offers the nation’s most beautiful commute…We strongly disagree with [the Citizen Oversight Panel’s] suggestion of reducing Sounder service to pay for more buses on I-5. Our communities have made a tremendous long-term investment in Sounder. We will not stand for reducing service. A number of vocal Sounder opponents, many of whom live nowhere near Snohomish County, have tried to skew the COP’s report to suggest the service might be subject to outright elimination. That will never happen.
So if the service is to continue, can it be improved without ‘throwing money at it’? What sort of operational enhancements (if any) could increase ridership at no or little cost? One possibility after the jump. Continue reading “Through-Route Sounder North?”
KOMO reported last Thursday that Sound Transit is planning to lease an additional 103 parking spaces at Edmonds Station under a 5-year agreement with Salish Crossing, owners of the adjacent Edmonds Antique Mall. This will increase P&R capacity by 66% (from 156 to 259 spaces). The spaces will be free for riders.
Much critical attention, both here on STB and elsewhere, has been paid to Sounder North since the Citizens’ Oversight Panel publicly questioned its continued viability. In this critical context it will be interesting to see the effects of the new parking both on ridership and public sentiment. Adding free parking is almost always a net political win for agencies, but in this case the price is very high. Sound Transit has agreed to pay $150 per space per month for 5 years, for a total contract cost of approximately $927,000. Assuming 100% utilization, 250 workdays per year, and 15 special event service days, the new parking will amount to an additional subsidy of $6.79 per car per day. This will be in addition to the $32/boarding costsAdding roughly 10% to ridership will certainly decrease the $32 cost per boarding figure, but probably not enough to outweigh the cost of the added parking. In any case, Sounder North costs will remain sky-high.
But if there’s any place that it’s proper to invest along the line, it’s Edmonds. Sounder is 46% faster to Edmonds (27 minutes) than CT 416 (50 minutes), 50% faster (42 minutes) to Mukilteo than CT 417 (83 minutes),but 31% slower to Everett (59 minutes) than ST 510 (45 minutes)and a reliable 59 minutes to Everett, while ST 510 runs 50-75 minutes, depending on time of day and traffic. Relatively speaking, Sounder should be more attractive to Edmonds commuters than anyone else, and if constraints in parking supply have been a true drag on ridership, then it is reasonable to expect the agency to seek to lease existing but unused spaces.
The Sound Transit board is expected to vote on the issue on November 15th. The new spaces are expected to become available May 1, 2013.
[Update: See clarifications above. The original post erroneously used off-peak travel times on ST 510 from 4th/Union to Everett Station. The post has been updated to show the full range of travel times between 4th/Jackson and Everett.
Lakeview Subdivision at I-5 and Gravelly Lake Drive, Lakewood (2010 photo by the author)
Roughly three weeks ago WSDOT completed the required Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Point Defiance Bypass (PDB). You can wade through the full 1,500 pages if you dare, but to the casual reader I would suggest the concise Executive Summary. For those unfamiliar with the project, a small sampling of 4 years of STB coverage can be found here, here, here, and here.
It is wholly predictable that rebuilding and upgrading an existing single-track railway would create no significant environmental impacts, especially when its construction will allow for greatly increased diversion of vehicle trips to train trips. Nonetheless, it is a relief to note that the EA indeed found no significant negative impacts to air quality, noise/vibration, soils, wetlands, flora/fauna, social justice, or cultural resources. Temporary construction impacts will be aggressively mitigated through Best Management Practices (BMPs).
Every now and then there is a simple fix to an existing inefficiency that improves transit access, decreases travel time, and costs very little. Such an opportunity exists at the Olive Way/Melrose Ave on-ramp to northbound I-5.
In a well-known story, in 2005 Anirudh Sahni successfully lobbied for a morning-only Capitol Hill stop for Sound Transit Route 545 at Bellevue/Olive, sparing mostly Microsoft commuters living on the Hill an unpleasant walk over I-5 to Olive/Terry. (In the afternoons, however, Route 545 commuters still have a longer and even more unpleasant walk back up the hill from Denny/Stewart or 9th/Stewart.)
Made by 30 AM trips, the Bellevue/Olive deviation requires 5 turns in ½ a mile – 3 of which are signalized left turns (from Boren to Pine, Pine to Bellevue, and Bellevue to Olive) – adding a minimum of 5 minutes to each AM trip. Simply adding a stop at Melrose/Olive/I-5, a mere shift of about 750 feet, would save 2-3 hours of cumulative delay every day on the 545.
But the benefits of this stop would extend well beyond just the 545. At the cost of perhaps 30 seconds per trip, and without changing any routing at all, the stop could be also served by:
U-District and Northgate express routes in the AM peak (41,71,72,73,205)
All SR-520 PM peak routes (250,252,257,260,265,268,311,424)
All outbound trips on the 255 and 545
All off-peak northbound trips to Lynnwood (511) and Everett (510)
In all, over 350 daily trips could serve the stop. Just as one example, UW students living in the Summit Slope/Olive Way corridors – many of whom likely take the much slower 43/49 to the UDistrict rather than walk/bus to Convention Place – could see their travel times halved.
Olive/Melrose/I-5, Photo by the Author
Sound Transit included this idea as a service change concept in their 2010 SIP (Service Implementation Plan), but calls and emails to Sound Transit and Metro staff indicated that there are no current plans to add the stop. Even more, the intersection has recently received a pedestrian safety upgrade (see photo above), and all that is needed now is a shelter and signage.
If you live on Capitol Hill, would you like to be able to get to Northgate, the UDistrict, Kirkland, Redmond, Everett, Lynnwood, etc much more quickly and without walking across Boren and I-5? Equipping dense neighborhoods with regional mobility is a central mandate of our agencies, and to me this stop seems to be very low-hanging fruit. How can we get it done?
Perhaps the biggest news is that under federal law, Cascades must be financially independent of Amtrak by October 2013. Thereafter, the governments of Oregon, Washington, and (perhaps someday) British Columbia will assume all operating costs. This presents short-term funding challenges, as Amtrak currently provides 24% of Cascades’ funding, but this independence may also offer a measure of long-term protection against hostile Republican administrations. In response, WSDOT and ODOT will complete their joint corridor management plan by January 2013, and WSDOT is also developing a new State Rail Plan.
Last Saturday I missed an hourly connection from Seattle to Kennydale (550–>560) because of an affable and knowledgeable 550 operator. My bus was held for 4 minutes at International District Station while the operator proceeded to plan 2 riders’ trips to far-flung places. In those 4 minutes she told these riders how to purchase and use ORCA Cards, described several route alternatives, discussed interagency fare structure, and made various small talk about the weather.
As many transit grievances are born out of personal anecdotes, I spent the (delayed) ride to Bellevue thinking about what level of humanity we should generally expect from our transit. By all accounts the driver who forced me to wait an hour in South Bellevue was just being a decent human being, using her considerable knowledge base to inform misguided riders in need. Yet in doing so she was being a terrible transit operator. More after the jump.
Puget Sound Bike Share (PSBS) has been in the news a lot lately. They are searching for an Executive Director, and they have published a 5-year business plan which hopes to have bikeshare up and running in Seattle by summer or fall next year. Seattle Bike Blog has posted a thorough summary of the business plan along with an excellent comment thread, both of which are worth reading in their entirety.
In short, PSBS plans to rollout bikeshare in 4 phases (see map):
PSBS Phased Rollout
I have a great enthusiasm for bikeshare, and I think it could be very successful in Seattle — if done right. I am, however, deeply unsettled by some parts of this plan, in particular its phasing, and the prospect of putting bikeshare users — who, if the project is to succeed, must be drawn from the full spectrum of ages and abilities — on the streets of downtown Seattle with the current bicycle facilities. More after the jump.
After my post on incorrect transit information, and Matt’s follow-up on crowdsourcing, on July 25 STB received this email from Sound Transit Link Operations:
As of this morning I have directed the SCADA technical staff to remove Convention Place Station from all recurring informational messages. What this means is that Adhoc messages about tunnel emergencies, reroutes and shutdowns will still play, as well as all Fire Life Safety emergency information but passengers will no longer hear the recurring messaging regarding light rail procedures.
I still find it remarkable that something like this could have gone unnoticed for so long, but many thanks to Sound Transit for a quick response.
