All posts by Zach Shaner

In the past week I have witnessed 2 groups of transit passengers grow bewildered, frustrated, and then angry when attempting to make a simple trip. Their mistake? Listening to and/or reading official information, information that in each case was incorrect. The first case involved 4 persons wanting to get from the Paramount Theatre to the Airport. Incorrectly going down to Convention Place, they might have noticed their error if not for the following 3 announcements [paraphrased from memory], made at very frequent intervals:

• “Please stand back and allow other passengers to exit the train before boarding; thank you for riding Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail.”
• “Please stand behind the yellow, textured strips until the train comes to a complete stop.”
• “Proof of payment is required prior to boarding Link Light Rail. Tickets may be purchased from the Ticket Vending Machines on the upper level.”

Of course, these announcements are completely inaccurate in every respect. These passengers were left to deduce for themselves, against all evidence to the contrary, that there are indeed no trains at Convention Place, there are no textured yellow strips to stand behind, and there are no Ticket Vending Machines on the upper level. I noticed their dilemma as they panicked at failing to find the non-existent TVMs, and finally I was able to direct them 4 blocks west to Westlake.

In the second case, last Tuesday I was waiting for the 5:39pm northbound Sounder from Tukwila to Seattle. Sound Transit recently switched the platform assignments on afternoon Sounder trains, and the afternoon trains now generally stop at the opposite platform. (ST has been good about publicizing this). However, Amtrak Cascades train 509 (Seattle to Eugene) arrives in Tukwila at 5:42pm. As my northbound train was arriving on the southbound platform, about 10 passengers waiting for Amtrak started to question on which platform their train might arrive. One rider noticed a green railroad signal heading south from the northbound platform, and he and a couple of his friends started sprinting down the ramp to change platforms, while a family of 4 stayed put on the southbound platform because of a sign reading, “Amtrak Cascades Service Begins on June 1, 2001. Trains South to Portland will board this platform.” I don’t know how their story ended, or if everyone got on their train, but again they were left to panic, run, and make quick decisions because information was either missing, outdated, or incorrect.

Other anecdotes abound. Last week I saw a passenger waiting at 26th/McClellan waiting for a #38 bus that no longer exists but still has a signed stop. The “42 to Rainier View” sign graced the I-90 freeway station long after LINK opened. Multiple maps downtown still point unsuspecting tourists to the defunct Waterfront Streetcar. The SLU streetcar maps abound in errors, showing the 74 bus on Westlake Ave, and listing both the 174 and 194 (not to mention grammatical oddities at streetcar stations, such as the lovely “Arriving in Now”).

This is inexcusable. While mistakes are to be expected, especially with quickly changing rider alerts, many of the above examples have been in place for years. There is no excuse for having an Amtrak sign that speaks to us, in the present tense, from 2001. In the case of Convention Place, it cannot be the case that we have no choice but to announce services that do not exist, every other minute for years, just because the same information happens to be valid somewhere else (the rest of the Transit Tunnel).

Passengers have a basic right to coherent, usable, correct information. Because people instinctively trust authority, especially in relatively benign information environments such as transit, saying something incorrect is far worse than saying nothing at all.

Two weekends ago I traveled to Idaho to experience some the country’s best bicycling.  The Inland Northwest’s trails are a spectacular pleasure, and if you’re a Seattle cyclist you really owe it to yourself to experience them. And with a combination of Amtrak, Greyhound, and/or local transit, it’s possible to do it all without a car.

The silk-smooth asphalt and (almost) complete separation from traffic allow even a casual cyclist to ride safely and without intimidation. Over  the course of 134 scenic miles, you can travel through and alongside many distinct ecoregions: dry pine parklands, river valleys, glacial lakes, boggy wetlands, and mid-montane forest.

From Spokane to Coeur d’Alene, The Centennial Trail offers 60 total miles of paved trail from Nine Mile Falls eastward to Higgins Point (though it’s just 35 miles from downtown Spokane to downtown Coeur d’Alene).  Heading east you begin an unnoticeable climb to the Idaho border, where the sparse pine parklands begin to thicken and you start feeling the transition back into the wetter Rocky Mountain forests.  Once in Coeur d’Alene, the trail hugs the spectacular northern shore of Lake Coeur d’Alene, where you can really appreciate the awesome erosive power of the Missoula Floods.  The city of Coeur d’Alene is also worth exploring in its own right.  With a population of ~50,000 – and sporting an unusual number of high rises (three 200′ towers) – the city has aggressively pursued bicycle improvements since the adoption of their Bikeways Master Plan.

More than you could possibly want to know after the jump… Continue reading “Eastern Washington and Idaho by Bike and Transit”

Now that its boundary revision process is complete – eliminating service and taxation for Buckley, Orting, Sumner, Bonney Lake, DuPont, the Key Peninsula, and swaths of unincorporated Pierce County – Pierce Transit (PT) will likely go back to voters this year to ask for its remaining sales tax authority.  (PT currently collects .6% sales tax, compared to .9% for Metro, Sound Transit, and Community Transit).  Newly excluded areas have long voted heavily against transit revenue, and the odds of a new ballot measure passing are much higher under the newly shrunk boundaries.  The new boundary is 30% smaller (292 sq mi vs 414) but retains 75% of the population (560k vs 750k).

At a public hearing last week, attendees expressed unanimous support in favor of returning to the ballot.  Since the failure of Proposition 1 last year, PT has reduced service by 33% (417k annual service hours vs 622k) and reduced staff by 18% (866 employees vs 1,054).  Most non-trunk service is now hourly and span of service is exceptionally poor, often ending by 6pm even in the densest areas.   Raising the sales tax to .9% would likely allow the smaller service area to return to previous levels of service, with most routes on 30-minute headways and operating until late at night.

It is worth noting that PT has a more impoverished ridership base than either Metro or ST, with the TNT reporting that 56% of riders make less than $20,000 a year.  Combined with very low densities and poor land use in Pierce County, this leaves Pierce Transit with an unfortunate incentive (or even mandate) to emphasize geographic coverage over frequency.

At the very least PT deserves the opportunity to collect sales tax at the regionally precedented level of .9%, as its residents do not deserve to be disproportionately disadvantaged relative to King, Snohomish, and Thurston (.8%) counties.  STB will support PT’s efforts should they officially decide to go back to ballot.

At a 2:30 press conference today at Tukwila Int’l Blvd Station, Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray and Chief of Police Ron Griffin announced the discovery that approximately 4.2 miles and 70,000 pounds of copper wire has been stolen from within LINK’s hollow elevated guideway.  With the exception of the stations themselves, all of the wire between Rainier Beach and SeaTac Airport has been stolen.   The copper wire sections – roughly an inch in diameter – function to isolate stray current that might otherwise be absorbed by the structure, slowly weakening it over a period of decades.  At current copper prices, the theft is valued well over $200,000.

Gray and Griffin were understandably unwilling to discuss the details of ingress points that allowed the thieves to access the guideway, but they did say that upon successful access there would have been no way to know that anyone was within the structure.  Gray stressed that there are no operational safety concerns related to the theft, and that the wire was strictly for the purposes of reducing stress on the concrete and rebar, thus extending the useful life of the structure. Sound Transit expects to replace the copper within 2-3 months.

Sound Transit is seeking the public’s help with any information that might lead to the discovery and arrest of the thieves. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the King County Sheriff’s office (206) 296-3311.

Perhaps the most pressing concern about the September elimination of the Ride Free Area (RFA) is the likelihood of severely degraded peak-hour travel times within the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Without significant mitigation, the already precarious mixed bus-rail operations of the DSTT are certain to get much worse.  Of particular concern are northbound trips in the PM peak, as each crush-loaded departure (particularly to Northgate and the UDistrict) will require at least an additional minute of platform time to accommodate fare payment, in addition to the mandatory and time-consuming inspection that each Link train makes before proceeding from Westlake to the Pine Street Stub.

The DSTT currently operates approximately 1,500 trips per day, 750 in each direction. Median overall headway is every 3 minutes in the morning and evening, every 30-60 seconds in the peak, and every 2 minutes mid-day. This offers impressive capacity but – like closely stacked dominoes – precious little room for error. Bus and train breakdowns, cash fares, overly discursive drivers and passengers, overly restrictive train/bus separation requirements, and wheelchair/bike accommodation, can and do cause cascading delays whose magnitude is far greater than the sum of the individual behaviors.

In the absence of instituting proof-of-payment (POP) in the DSTT, it is clear to me that the transition to Pay-as-You-Enter will require reducing overall tunnel bus frequencies in order to avoid a total breakdown of service reliability.  Thankfully our agencies are able to “tunnel” or “surface” routes with far less public process than is normally required when a service change is being considered. As someone who commutes from Convention Place to Tukwila every day – in which my mornings are a reliable 30-minute breeze and my afternoons a variable 50-minute headache – I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking in big-picture terms about the proper role of the DSTT in our regional transit system. Below are 5 principles – roughly in order of importance –that I offer as one model for determining which routes to keep underground.

Principle 1: Common corridors should be served by common stops.
Principle 2: Keep routes slated for future LINK conversion.
Principle 3: Remove local routes.
Principle 4: Until the DSTT is rail-only, keep all-day express routes to regional transit hubs.
Principle 5: Except where it conflicts with Principles 1 and 2, remove peak-only routes.

What would the DSTT look like under these principles? And would it solve the capacity problems that will be brought on by the elimination of the RFA?

 More after the jump…

Continue reading “Which Routes Should the DSTT Serve?”

Metro just announced that during Bike to Work Week (May 14-18), any cyclist loading their bike on a Metro bus will ride free. All Metro-operated Sound Transit routes (540, 542, 545, 550, 554, 555, 556, and 560) are also included.

More information and a link to the promotion will be added when it becomes available.

PSRC wants to know where and why Puget Sound bicyclists ride, and they have partnered with Bay Area smartphone app Cycle Tracks to allow bicyclists to record their trips and share their data directly with PSRC. The data will help prioritize present and future investments in bicycle infrastructure and will improve the ability of planners to model cycling demand variables such as slope, arterial speed, presence or absence of bike lanes, etc…

Cyclists may start using the app anytime, while PSRC will begin collecting data on May 1.  The app is available only for iPhone (download) and Android (download).  The app asks for your age, email, gender, home/work/school ZIP, and cycling frequency, but all of these inputs are voluntary.  For the purpose of grouping trips by user, the app does require your Unique Device Identifier, but this data will not be shared.

I have been testing out the app for the past week, and it has a generally pleasant user interface and its basic functions work well.  Trips are saved by date and trip purpose, all trips are mapped, and average speed is given. Other apps such as SpeedTracker provide more information, such as color-coding your map by speed so you can see your bottlenecks. There are some unfortunate quirks, such as the app only being able to run on an active (though dimmed) screen (i.e. you can’t press the top button on an iPhone or this will stop the trip from being recorded)  Using CycleTracks on my 13-mile bike commute drains about 35% of the battery.

Overall, this app represents a nice chance for cyclists to allow their own travel preferences to directly impact how planners understand cycling.  An app FAQ is here, and questions can be referred to Peter Schmiedeskamp, pschmiedeskamp@psrc.org.

This afternoon gubernatorial candidate Jay Inslee,  King County Executive Dow Constantine, and Bellevue City Council member Claudia Balducci held a press conference to respond to WA Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna’s comments reiterating his opposition to both the East Link project and to the existence of Sound Transit.

Inslee’s remarks are embedded above.  Balducci’s introductory remarks are here, and Constantine’s remarks are here.

On Monday, Sound Transit substantially completed the rail bridge over Pacific Avenue in Tacoma, marking a major milestone on the ‘D-to-M Street’ portion of the Sounder to Lakewood Extension Project. Pacific Avenue reopened to vehicle and transit traffic as well – nearly 2 months ahead of schedule – modifying detours on Pierce Transit Routes 1 and 53. Remaining work at the site involves the laying of track, berm construction, construction of a pedestrian underpass on A Street, signal and safety installations, etc.

In October the single-track bridge will serve 5 daily Sounder roundtrips to/from South Tacoma and Lakewood. The other 4 daily round-trips (2 peak, 2 reverse peak) will continue to originate/terminate at Tacoma’s Freighthouse Square.

In accordance with the 2012 Service Implementation Plan, Sound Transit will reconfigure its Pierce County services once Sounder service begins. Route 592 will be cut back to 15-minute headways but all trips will begin at DuPont, whereas currently only 1/3 do. Route 592 will also be rerouted off the SODO busway in favor of the Seneca/Edgar Martinez couplet taken by the 577/578. Route 593 will be eliminated and its service hours added to the 590/594, extending the window in which those routes have frequent service. Though Sound Transit had initially planned to move Route 574’s terminus to Lakewood Sounder Station (instead of the current Lakewood Towne Center), subsequent public comment shelved that plan for now.

This bridge also marks a major milestone for the eventual Point Defiance Bypass, even though they are separate projects with different funding structures. Within 5 years or so Amtrak will begin to use the bridge, shaving 6 minutes off Seattle to Portland trips and significantly improving reliability by reducing conflicts with freight traffic.

More coverage, from the Seattle Times and the Tacoma News Tribune.

I think Sherwin’s piece rightfully complained about the commercial environment on 3rd Avenue; no one can argue that payday loans and smoke shops make for an attractive streetscape.  But to counter Sherwin, I don’t think that adding a more desirable slate of businesses (as if one could just do so by fiat) would fix what is an undoubtedly structural problem.  Fixing the shops is fine, but it doesn’t fix the shoppers.  We have a huge number of workers, tourists, the homeless, and a small number of the condo-owning elite.  Missing are the middle-income folks so common to all our other neighborhoods:  hipsters, students, immigrants, and families with kids.

In my opinion, downtown’s problem is most easily seen by looking at income inequality. Not enough people live downtown, and we have made it largely illegal to develop residential space downtown (most new construction is in Belltown/Denny Triangle/SLU). As a result we have encouraged housing policies that are doubly exclusionary – where the middle and upper-middle classes are excluded by both the very rich (due to the economics of new construction) and the very poor (due to government support for deeply subsidized housing and centrally-located homeless shelters).

Now some data.  One quick and easy way to measure income inequality is to divide mean household income by median household income and look for positive skew (>1.0), indicating that a small number of very high incomes distort the otherwise representative value of the mean. Continue reading “Downtown’s Inequality Problem”