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.
Tuesday’s election was an existential whiplash in a number of ways, but it was a particular disaster for our cities. As Erica Barnett wrote in The C is for Crankthis morning, Trump has promised to withhold all federal funds from Sanctuary Cities, of which Seattle is one. If enacted, human services, parks, housing, and transportation projects could take the hardest hit, including local projects such as the Center City Connector, Madison BRT, all Move Seattle bus corridors, the bike share relaunch, and Sound Transit 3. At the federal level, Trump’s has hinted that “ranch/farm-to-market” are as important as “crowded subways”, he has chosen a highway-industry lobbyist to lead transportation policy, and he will almost surely undo our already halting efforts at addressing climate change.
This is all happening not because of our cities, but despite them. Hardly the ‘hell’ Mr. Trump described, our thriving cities nonetheless received a stunning rebuke from rural America. Rural Obama voters who believed in “Yes We Can” in 2008 turned out in 2016 to say “Well, We Didn’t“, especially in the upper Midwest. Continue reading “Cities in the Age of Trump”
These are the preliminary results for races in which STB endorsed a candidate. STB endorsees were 16-6 in first results last night, and are bolded below. Despite the national results, it was a good night for progressive and urbanist local government, and especially good for transit and streets measures.
Local/State Measures
We endorsed all 8 of these local or state measures, and all except I-732 and Issaquah Proposition 1 are passing.
On what can only be described as a destabilizing, contradictory night, Puget Sound said Yes to ST3 just as the country elected Donald Trump. At the subdued victory party at The Crocodile, Dow Constantine did his best to sieze the moment, successfully rallying the crowd and thanking them for a vote of visionary generational impact. Mayor Murray followed Dow, and he was clearly rattled by Trump’s apparent victory. Speaking to the crowd’s unease at the national results, Murray promised that “we will wake up the same city tomorrow” and that “Seattle will not turn its back on Muslims, immigrants, etc.”
Once the results for ST3 came in, there was little suspense. Pierce County rejected ST3 45%-55% in early returns, Snohomish County approved it 51.5%-48.5%, and King County (East, South, and North subareas combined) approved it 58%-42%. The aggregate tally for the first ballot drop was 55%-45, a lead of over 75,000 votes. ST3 will pass.
Other transit measures across the country did well too, with Los Angeles Measure M slightly leading in its supermajority-required vote, with 68% in favor. But Trump’s victory cast not only a psychological (existential?) shadow over the evening’s festivities, but also a fiscal one. With a Republican sweep in both houses of Congress accompanying a Trump Presidency, federal funding programs and formulas are likely to change over the next four years, and very likely in a way that favors rural roads over urban transit.
But while the wind was taken out of many of our sails, ST3’s victory has enormous impact for Puget Sound. We now have the authority to build high-capacity transit region wide, and 20 years to fight every step of the way to make ST3 projects more urban, housing more abundant and affordable, and access less vehicular. We look forward to being there every step of the way.
32 more of these coming to Snohomish County routes (AvgeekJoe/Flickr)
2017 will be a relatively quiet year for Sound Transit in terms of service delivery. The agency released its annual Service Implementation Plan (SIP) (Executive Summary, Complete) last Wednesday, combining 5-year service planning with in-depth route and corridor performance data. Here are some highlights:
Sounder and Amtrak
The biggest service addition in 2017 will be September launch of the final two new Sounder roundtrips funded by ST2, which will bring peak service frequencies closer to 15 minutes, compared to 20-30 minutes today. Further Sounder trips, lengthened platforms, and longer trains await a successful ST3 vote before their formal planning could begin. The final schedule will be released sometime next year, pending negotiations with BNSF, Amtrak, and WSDOT, as Cascades trains will begin using Tacoma’s Freighthouse Square in September 2017 also.
Reliability
Facing worsening congestion, and like Community Transit did last year, Sound Transit will sink 15,000 bus hours into schedule padding to make timetables more realistic for ST Express. That’s over $2M a year in direct congestion costs, borne by us the taxpayers, due to our inability to effectively prioritize transit on our highways and surface arterials.
Restructures
During the ULink restructure process, many Eastside changes were proposed but scrapped at the last minute, as a lack of overall response from the public spooked ST and Metro into backing off. The 2017 SIP promises Eastsiders a redo (page 69):
In the spring of 2017, Sound Transit and King County Metro plan to re-engage key stakeholders and the public in East King County to review key outcomes of the changes completed for the opening of the University Link extension.
Ridership Growth
ST expects Link ridership to grow another 24% next year as ULink matures and Angle Lake catches on, with annual ridership exceeding 20M for the first time. With continued organic growth and the two new roundtrips, Sounder is expected to grow by 10%. Meanwhile, ST Express is projected to grow 1% and Tacoma Link will continue to be flat or decline slightly.
Corridor Planning
The I-5 North corridor (Route 510/511/512/513) will be adding more double-decker buses in Spring 2017.
The I-405 North corridor (Routes 532/535) will also add double-decker buses, but only once those routes are redesigned to avoid entering Bellevue Transit Center, whose overhangs are too low for the Double Talls.
The I-90 corridor will see intensive East Link construction begin in spring 2017, with the express lanes permanently closed to buses beginning in June. At that time, 2-way HOV lanes will be in place from Mercer Island to Seattle, speeding the reverse-peak commute significantly while slightly worsening the peak-direction trip. The Rainier Freeway Station will remain open until the closure of the D-2 roadway in Fall 2018 for the construction of Judkins Park Station.
The I-5 South corridor will remain largely the same, though Sound Transit will consider deleting Route 586 and rerouting ST Express 574 to serve both Angle Lake and SeaTac/Airport Stations. In addition, the state grant to extend some Route 592 trips to Olympia ends in June 2017, and ST will review the extension’s performance to decide whether to continue funding it (hint: it’s carrying less than 100 boardings per day).
Corridor and Route Performance Data
The 2017 SIP has a fantastic new presentation format, offering ridership, reliability, and crowding data for every trip on every route. A deeper dive will have to await future posts, but the new format is intuitive and compact. Check it out.
Northbound Link Boardings by Time of DayNorthbound Sounder Boardings By TripRoute 511 Boardings Per Northbound Trip
Sound Transit released its September ridership numbers yesterday, and it was another impressive month for Link and Sounder. Average weekday Link boardings held steady at 68,358 (+76% YOY), average Saturday boardings were 51,799 (+100%, thanks Huskies!), and average Sunday boardings were 39,919 (+116%, thanks Seahawks!).
As usual, weekday Link ridership dropped slightly from August to September, but September still bested July for Link’s second-best month to date. The total drop was a mere 767 weekday riders, or about 1.1%. Last year the August-September drop was 888 (and against a much smaller baseline), or 2.2%. The U-Link extension is flattening Link’s traditional seasonal curve, with summer-like numbers extending into autumn. With Angle Lake’s first numbers expected next month, October could be another summer-like month.
As ticket-buying tourists were replaced with UPass riding students, Link’s farebox recovery fell from 60% to 37%. Sound Transit also says the “timing of outbound payments” affected the large drop as well.
Sounder ridership was up another 6% YOY, with a record-setting 16,261 weekday boardings. As we predicted back in August, the new mid-day service is performing better southbound, with 115 weekday riders on the 10:18am northbound train, and 300 riders on the 2:32pm southbound train. With 2-car trains and 150 seats per car, that means the northbound midday train is 38% full, while on the southbound train every seat is taken. Sound Transit has appropriately right-sized the capacity of the trip so far.
ST Express was up 5.1%, and for the first time in months Tacoma Link ridership didn’t fall, instead edging up by 0.2%. Sometime in October, Link likely exceeded total ST Express boardings for the year, despite having nearly 3 months without ULink.
Sound Transit 3 isn’t the only “Proposition 1” on the ballot next Tuesday. Kitsap Transit has an ambitious proposal for year-round passenger ferries from Bremerton (July 2017), Kingston (July 2018), and Southworth (July 2020).
From May-September, the ferries would operate with all-day, bidirectional service from all 3 terminals, with an impressive span of service from 5am-9pm Monday-Thursday, 5am-11pm on Fridays, and 9am-11pm on Saturdays (no Sunday service). From October-April, the service would operate only during weekday peak periods.
Fares would be $12 round-trip, and travel time advantages would be enormous. Current state ferries from Bremerton are infrequent, and the trip takes a full hour due to speed and wake restrictions in Rich Passage. The Bremerton foot ferry would take only 28 minutes via a special high-speed, low-wake vessel. Travel time advantages would be even more pronounced for Kingston and Southworth, negating the need to transfer to Sounder or RapidRide C.
The service would be very expensive to operate, with the goal of 28% farebox recovery rate on a $12 retail fare meaning a round-trip cost of $30-40 per passenger, and a subsidy per boarding in the $20-$30 range depending on the route. Ridership is projected at 775,000 per year.
The current foot ferries between Bremerton, Port Orchard and Annapolis would also be funded by the new plan, freeing up $1.5m per year for local and feeder bus service, with a dividend of 23,000 additional bus hours due to Kitsap’s low service-hour cost of $65. This would enable Kitsap Transit to improve frequency on a handful of bus routes, but wouldn’t likely enable a full restructure of service (for reference, the SLU extension and splitting of RapidRide C/D cost 50,000 hours).
Kitsap Transit would also take a Sound Transit-like approach to operations, being responsible for capital costs, marketing, and fare policies, while the service would be operated by the King County Marine Division, meaning there would be a single operator at Pier 50 for the 5 separate foot ferry destinations (West Seattle, Vashon, Southworth, Bremerton, and Kingston).
The last time we had a civic discussion about a new basketball/hockey arena, let’s just say it didn’t go well. There was politically convenient fear mongering about our Working Waterfront and industrial jobs. There was the hypocritical HIGHF (Hey! I Got Here First!) form of corporate NIMBYism from the Seattle Mariners. There was charmingly predictable concern trolling about traffic, where disaster is always around the corner if only _insert project_ is built. To top it off, many arena supporters then poisoned the well by bitterly gendering their disgust.
While we’re still no closer to bringing leather balls and wooden sticks back to Seattle, the recent proposal by developer Chris Hansen offers us the welcome chance of a civic redo. In one fell swoop, his offer to plug the funding gap for the Lander Street Overpass protects Port interests while improving traffic outcomes; and his proposal to build the new arena without public funding relieves us of another reason for (legitimate) infighting.
A contestable premise: Stadia don’t belong in urban neighborhoods, they belong on the urban-industrial edge. Stadia are infrequently used, special purpose structures that fragment neighborhoods. As the most egregious example, Husky Stadium is used less than 10 times per year. On account of those select fall Saturdays, thousands of bus passengers have to walk farther to transfer every day, thousands of students and faculty cannot live nearer their university, and hundreds of acres of asphalt lay mostly idle.
If we build a new arena in Sodo, we shouldtear down the Key and return housing to Seattle Center. Seattle 2035calls for “Uptown” (Lower Queen Anne) to be an Urban Center, the same designation as Capitol Hill, Downtown, or Northgate. Just a mile from downtown, LQA currently only houses about 10,000 people in predominantly low-rise structures, or only 1.5% of the city’s population. If ST3 passes, a subway station will be located two blocks away at Queen Anne/Mercer, with quick access to Ballard, South Lake Union, Downtown, the Rainier Valley, and SeaTac. Lower Queen Anne needs people, not occasional large events.
Key Arena sits on 48 historic parcels covering most of 4 city blocks, and it’s only used for 18 Storm games and every 3 weeks or so for concerts and other events. If there were a successful renovation and if that were to draw a team, you could add another 40 days a year of activation. But that would still leave 280 days a year in which people would walk, bike, bus, train, and drive around it as an obstacle, rather than to it as a destination.
Stadia on the periphery are much better for a city and its residents. Upper Sodo is perfect for sports, acting as a partially-activated and aesthetically pleasing bridge between an urban core and heavy industry. LQA and the Mercer Mess will never work well for SOV access, and if we build the neighborhood for people that’s kinda the point. The subway station we hope to build should be accessible to as many Seattleites as possible as often as possible. Since the top of Queen Anne is set to be ossified as a Single-Family Zone, the four blocks of Key Arena offer precious mid or high-rise capacity. And with a 135′ arena already on site, tall housing is already ‘in scale’.
Sodo will never be good for dense housing, but LQA will. LQA will never be good for SOV access, but Sodo will. And while Sodo is less transit-accessible than LQA will be, better to solve an occasional problem than limit an everyday social good (housing). Mr. Murray, tear down this Key.
Done well, transit is is a public utility that improves life for the many but excites the passions of the few (sorry, fellow nerds). Good transit readjusts our baseline expectations onward and upward […] Transit’s highest compliment is when the magical becomes ordinary. Far better to be necessity than novelty.
Ordinary magic is indeed a good way to describe how it felt to move around Mexico City. On the one hand, the city has everything going against it. The compact colonial core is choked by endless sprawl on the periphery, with 8 million city residents surrounded by 16 million more in the suburban State of Mexico. The city’s anti-urban boulevards – such as the 14-lane Paseo de la Reforma – rival in their hostile sterility the worst of the Champs Élysées. Cars also drive fast and with little regard for Vision Zero type sensibilities.
But in the context of the chaos on the surface, the Metro is a priceless gift to Chilangos, 140 miles of fully grade separated transit, with 195 stations on 12 lines. It is the 2nd largest Metro in the Western Hemisphere, behind only NYC. But though 2nd largest, it is the most densely ridden. Despite having only 60% as many track miles as NYC, the Mexico City Metro has 90% of NYC’s ridership, nearly 5 million riders per day. I found it to be an effortless, cheap, fast, and reliable way to see the city, and I can’t imagine my trip without it. Here’s my report card. Continue reading “Transit Report Card: Mexico City”
With the (60′) trolley replacement project now complete, the last of the Breda trolleys will take its final in-service ride tomorrow afternoon with a ceremonial trip from Beacon/Spokane to Atlantic Base.
The lovably awful buses – dubbed ‘Frankenbuses’ by many – have a complicated and storied history in Seattle. Originally a “DuoBus” of electric trolley and diesel power, they began service with the introduction of the Downtown Transit Tunnel in September 1990, running as trolleys underground and where there was wire, and as a standard diesel bus otherwise.
They were difficult or impossible to source parts for, and generally recognized to be a disaster. The imported Italian parts were so scarce and expensive that Metro began hiring sheet metal workers to make replacement doors themselves. In the late 1990s, nearly a third of the fleet needed an engine or transmission rebuild annually.
Peter McLaughlin c. 2002
Metro plodded along through their 12 year service life, eventually replacing them with the sort of diesel hybrids familiar to the tunnel today. Metro repurposed 59 of the 236 coaches as trolleys between 2004-2007, their diesel engines removed and their current collection system overhauled. As a Capitol Hill resident who moved here in 2009, they were all I knew until Link came along, and would be familiar to any recent rider of Routes 7, 36, 43, 44, 49, or 70.
They were notable for their poor ride quality, their pavement-destroying weight (8 tons heavier than a standard bus), their frequency of dropped wire (Bellevue/Pine anyone?), their distinctive musty smell, and their old-timey ‘Stop Requested” bell. But the fact that they lasted 26 years, and the amount of sweat equity put into them, has made many nostalgic about their sendoff.
No matter how much we can justifiably complain about transit policies here and there, we should also recognize genuine progress and bullets we’ve dodged. We could have lost our trolley fleet after a 2009 audit found the aging fleet cost more to service and operate than running diesel hybrids instead. Thankfully Metro persevered and purchased a sleek new generation of trolleys, adding purple to Metro’s color palette and much-needed off wire operation to its bag of tricks. When I stand at Broadway and John today, I have a 2-minute subway and brand-new trolleybuses coming more frequently than ever. Things are getting iteratively better all the time, and it’s time to send the tired ones off.
Eight months after Kevin Desmond’s abrupt departure for Vancouver, BC, Metro again has a General Manager. Later this morning, County Executive Dow Constantine will name Interim GM Rob Gannon as the permanent General Manager.
By deciding against a wider candidate search and going with an internal hire, Gannon represents a choice for continuity. Metro appears content with its progress and trajectory and has chosen the least disruptive path. The politically complex nature of the GM position may also have dissuaded many from a larger candidate pool and made an internal hiring process more attractive. Whereas Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff reports directly to the ST board, the Metro GM has two layers of interim management – County Executive Dow Constantine andd KCDOT Director Taniguchi – between himself and the King County Council.
Speaking briefly with Gannon yesterday, he charted a safe and steady course for Metro, unwilling to elaborate on specific changes or directions other than those already contained in the Metro Connects Long Range Plan. He emphasized safety, customer service, and interagency partnerships, but understandably held his more detailed cards close to his chest.
Not a transit wonk by training, Gannon’s background includes a decade of upper level Human Resources Management, first at the University of Montana and then at Metro. Though having someone with more explicit transit chops would be desirable, executive HR skills will serve Gannon very well as he manages relationships between Metro’s 4,500 employees, ATU 587, intergovernmental partners, and the general public. And with smart minds like Ted Harris newly at the helm as Operations Manager, Gannon’s skill set and experience may provide well-rounded leadership.
September 30 was a glorious day for transit ridership in many respects. Link broke 100,000 for the first time, and our system bent but didn’t break under the simultaneous pressure of a regular afternoon commute, a Mariners game, and a relatively rare weeknight Husky football game. But the darker side of this is that regular commuters in NE Seattle were thrown under the bus.
We’ve long supported 2-seat rides in cases in which they strengthen the network, permit greater overall frequency, or offer unquestionable speed advantages, as is the case with Link. But forcing such transfers should come with an explicit guarantee that the network will function no matter the event-related disruption. Reroutes that extend transfer walks beyond a reasonable limit, or that force a 3-seat ride with an intermediate shuttle, are nearly the equivalent of not offering service at all. Choice riders will flee, and the transit-dependent suffer.
Our instincts are all wrong for gameday diversions. We shun the highest capacity and move it far away to let low-capacity vehicles maintain their free and general access. Though the event shuttles are a good and necessary service, and though they queue on Montlake Blvd itself in many cases, general transit availability is more necessary when events cause massive disruptions, not less. If we can’t bring ourselves to engineer permanent bus lanes on Montlake yet, we can at least provide them when a capacity crunch demands it.
So a modest proposal: until Northgate Link opens and/or as long as UW Station remains the primary transfer hub in NE Seattle, we should guarantee that we will maintain the integrity of the service network we just overhauled, no matter the event. If we’re going to force 2-seat rides, riders deserve to be able to count on them.
After a few years of steady but slow progress for Pierce Transit (PT), things are beginning to accelerate in a positive direction. After hemorrhaging service hours in the recession – with most routes cut to hourly service and span of service barely extending past dinnertime – PT is back with a bold new service proposal that restores a basic functioning grid of half-hourly service for most of Tacoma. It does so on the back of some route consolidation, reducing overall coverage, but while making remaining services far more useful. For a comprehensive review of the restructure proposal, check out Chris Karnes’ blog Tacoma Transit.
The two alternatives would use newly available service hours in one of two ways. Alternative 1 would bring the current network up to peak 30-minute headways while retaining hourly off-peak frequency and dismal span of service. Alternative 2 would bring most routes back up to 30-minute all day service, and extend span of service to 10pm. Route consolidation would be most strongly felt in Tacoma’s posh north end, including the Proctor District, where a spaghetti of hourly routes (10, 11, 13, 14, 16) would be consolidated into a half-hourly grid of Routes 10, 11, and 16. Service would also be rationalized in East Tacoma and along South Tacoma Way, straightening routes and better coordinating their schedules. If you are PT rider, you have 3 upcoming open houses to attend and make your voice heard.
In addition, PT recently announced a small $200k grant to partner with Uber, Lyft, and/or taxi companies to extend the reach of transit. The “Mobility on Demand Sandbox” grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will allow Pierce Transit to:
Coordinate with Transportation Networking Companies and/or taxi companies to coordinate on-demand rides within certain areas though the use of app-based technology. The rides, funded by this grant, will get people to bus stops, select transit centers or Park & Rides, or – from select locations – to a rider’s final destination after Pierce Transit’s service hours.
In low-demand areas, fixed route transit sometimes just isn’t viable. This was shown with painful clarity by PT’s short-lived “Community Connector” program in Fife, Milton, and Edgewood, where Routes 503 and 504 averaged less than 1 rider per hour and costs per rider ranged from $100-$140 (page 24-25). If this new partnership succeeds, it would represent one of the better ways for transit and Uber-like services to partner for the common good. A partial or full subsidy of these rides would be an order of magnitude cheaper than the low frequency shuttles, and offer more convenient point-to-point service as well.
So things are looking up in Pierce County. By this time next year, let’s hope that they have a solid local bus network, an innovative on-demand partnership, and a successful Sound Transit 3 coming their way.
Sound Transit 3 is far from a perfect package. For the technically-minded advocate, election seasons must be maddening in their necessary binary framing, with nowhere for the pro-transit ST3 skeptic to turn. Such purists repeatedly cite particulars as a reason to reject the whole, seeing ‘undeserved’ rail lines outweighing the value of the indispensable ones, or waging modal wars in corridors for which Bus Rapid Transit could be superior if everything broke just our way.
Those of us who share these technical instincts but nonetheless support ST3 are not blind to its shortcomings. Instead, we value its strengths and have made our positive assessment in the context of what we judge as plausible political outcomes.
What would a technically perfect package look like? I could offer a dozen or so principles to which most Seattle urbanists would agree:
Maximize ridership with urban stop spacing
Maximize reliability with 100% grade separation
Maximize capacity with low headways
Maximize passenger turnover and balance loads by building many “short & fat” lines rather than a few “long & thin” ones
Respond to present demand rather attempt to induce it
Allow differential subarea taxation to match demand with revenue
Adopt minimum station-area density requirements
Charge market rates for (a very limited amount of) parking
Expand the use of Categorical Exclusions to reduce delay related to environmental review
Allow transit agencies to develop for-profit housing as a revenue stream (like Hong Kong)
Getting a package with all of those principles intact would mean building new transit and land use governance from scratch, a luxury available in a political version of SIM City but in reality an impossibly high bar. Public agencies do not appear from thin air, but are the product of the minimum mutual viability of competing concerns. Our agencies and their tax authority are set by a state that will not have urban instincts within our lifetimes, and whose legislation is itself the product of endless compromise and favor-trading. Once formed, the agencies must then equitably represent the interests of their taxpayers, all of whom reasonably expect direct value for their money.
To vote “no” on ST3 expecting to remove these constraints is misguided. Human nature will dictate continued compromise, and legislation will continue to come burdened with compensatory goodies that dilute the purity of a package. Any alternative plan would rely on aggressively wresting highway capacity away from cars, a monumental (and likely futile) political task. Though we may wish to speed projects with reduced environmental review or neighborhood input, we have a way of valuing these things when push comes to shove. Some may fantasize about convincing a Tacoman to yield their Spine Destiny to pay for Seattle subways, but I can guarantee you would be shown the door with nothing for your efforts.
So within this pessimistic framing, let’s consider what a Yes vote buys us. Unlike almost any other American city, we will be getting new high quality transit, 100% grade separated, fast, and reliable. It will be built by an agency that, after much tribulation, has learned how to budget and build and keep its word. For roughly $4-5B (in current dollars) of new taxes, spread out over 25 years, Seattle will get a second subway, and will finally unite Queen Anne and South Lake Union as part of one Greater Downtown. After 3 tries, Northwest Seattle will finally have a reliable way of getting around. The masses of money being spent on downtown-oriented bus service will be systematically redeployed to feed Link and provide the crosstown bus service we’ve always wanted but rarely had. With the majority of transit riders arriving underground, our surface streets can have the breathing room for the urban placemaking we need: traffic calming, street narrowing, protected bike lanes, street cafes, and a plausible shot at achieving Vision Zero.
And when it comes to the suburban Link projects, we may wish they were more like commuter rail, or Paris RER, but its their money and I think it’d be wise to be bullish about their development prospects. From climate refugees in our temperate city to the continued boom of the knowledge economy, Seattle’s long-term future is very bright. Critically, however, there is zero indication that housing production in Seattle will keep pace with this growth.
For all their many merits, HALA and Seattle 2035 still treat housing as an impact to be mitigated rather than a social good to be welcomed at every turn. Outside of the UDistrict, our proposed upzones are anemic, bureaucratic red tape is only rising, and half the city is set to be ossified indefinitely as a Craftsman set piece. We’re doing far better than San Francisco when it comes to housing, but it’s still not nearly enough. In this context, radial commuting is here to stay, suburban housing production will necessarily boom and densify, and inter-suburb connectivity will matter ever more.If Seattle won’t welcome all who wish to work here, we need to support reliable, all-day, high capacity, bi-directional transit as a matter of justice.
[Update: Facebook commenters pointed out that the behavior I’m advocating for is already legal per Washington Administrative Code 468-510-020, which lifts the “keep right” requirement for the 40-mile stretch of I-5 from Tukwila to Everett, and on I-90 between I-5 and I-405.]
Every June, the National Motorist Association uses its own Lane Courtesy Month to produce a rush of news stories about the scourge of “left lane camping,” or drivers who remain in the left lane despite another motorist wishing to pass. A representative paragraph from Vox:
That’s because even if you’re driving fast, there’s always someone going faster. If you promptly get back over after passing, that car will be able to pass you, allowing everyone on the road to get to their destinations as quickly as possible. If you don’t, it’ll inevitably lead to buildups of traffic and likely raise the chance of accidents.
When you’re traveling on the highway, the moment at which you’re most at risk of getting into a crash is when you’re changing lanes. And when you have people going slow in the left lane, as well as the right lane, then people who want to move faster kind of have to zigzag back and forth. They have to change lanes looking over both different shoulders, and it just increases the amount of possible accident scenarios that can happen.
Look at the two statements I bolded above, which to me seem inherently contradictory in urban settings. “There’s always someone going faster” assumes both the right of drivers to create differential speed conditions and your responsibility to yield to their desires. But the Solomon Curve shows one of the most dangerous driving behaviors is deviating from the median speed of traffic, whether slower or faster. So if you’re traveling near the speed limit in the left lane, you should have zero responsibility to move over and are in fact doing a favor for overall safety and flow. The notion of constant lane-switching to appease lead footed drivers is contradicted by the same writer’s second statement, that changing lanes is inherently one of the riskiest behavior. These two are irreconcilable.
The I-5 express lanes are an underutilized asset. A relic of the days when peak flow into Downtown by car was the primary engineering concern, the express lanes generally flow freely with the exception of single-occupancy vehicles clogging the ramps at Mercer and Stewart. Meanwhile, reverse-peak freeway transit is probably one of the most miserable experiences in the region, as anyone caught on an southbound afternoon Route 41 or 512 can attest. The marginal benefit of ST2 is perhaps greatest for those riders caught outside the traditional commute. Last year, Community Transit used “the last $2m we could find” not for any added service, but just for I-5 congestion padding in their schedules.
It’s remarkable how I-5 is generally ignored in regional planning discussions. It was omitted from the massive transportation package passed last year in favor of new lanes elsewhere. While SR 520 gets HOV3 and I-405 gets dynamic tolling, there has never been any momentum for any type of HOV or transit priority from Northgate to Downtown other than the express lanes. I-5’s needed redecking and seismic rebuild loom silently as the state’s largest unfunded liability. Former WSDOT head Doug MacDonald may be curmudgeonly about light rail or Amtrak Cascades, but he’s absolutely right that I-5 is “a planning orphan.”
Though most (if not all) peak buses are set to be truncated with the completion of ST2 in 2023, that’s still 7 more years of people’s lives to plan for and accommodate. And of course the physical asset will remain indefinitely. So what should we do with the express lanes?Continue reading “We Don’t Talk Enough About the Future of the I-5 Express Lanes”
This morning Sound Transit released ridership numbers for September 30, the day a perfect storm of Mariners, Huskies, and an afternoon commute converged. And ridership lived up to the hype, with an estimated 101,000 riders, 18% higher than the previous record of 85,000 on August 25th. Sound Transit stretched its undersized fleet to the limit – running 3-car trains as often as every 5 minutes to clear the Husky crush – while simultaneously dealing with service disruptions due to a pedestrian/train collision in Columbia City at the peak of demand. (The person survived and is recovering.)
Though there were anecdotes of failed escalators and long queues to enter UW Station, overall Sound Transit emerged from the day showing that there’s nothing like high-capacity transit to soak up enormous demand in a minimal footprint. The primary pain for the day was borne by regular commuters, however, whose restructured routes rely on transfers that were either unavailable or up to 1/2 a mile away due to bus rerouting.
Sound Transit also released systemwide numbers for August, with Link averaging 69,000 weekday boardings, easily breaking the July record of 65,000. Weekend Link ridership continued to be strong as well, with 48,000 on Saturdays and 43,000 on Sundays. Sound Transit also had its first-ever 4 million boarding month, and Link alone accounted for 45% of Sound Transit’s total boardings.
The insane Night Owl loops of Routes 82, 83, and 84 will finally meet their end under a new proposal by King County Metro and SDOT announced this morning. Remnants of pre-Metro Seattle Transit that have remained mostly unchanged since the 1950s, the Night Owl routes have always been poorly-ridden, difficult to understand, and unnecessarily complex.
Routes 81 and 85 were terminated upon introduction of the C and D lines, and by finishing the job, the new proposal brings a healthy grid of simple, comprehensible overnight service to Seattle for the first time.
If approved by the County Council, the proposal would boost total overnight service by roughly 50%. The proposal would:
Replace Route 82 with Night Owl trips on Routes 3 (to Seattle Pacific), Route 5, and Route 62 (to Roosevelt only).
Replace Route 83 with Night Owl trips on Route 70
Replace Route 84 with Night Owl trips on Routes 3 and 11
Add Night Owl trips on Route 120
Upgrade RapidRide C, D, and E to hourly overnight service, up from 75-90 minute frequencies currently
Extend Route 124 to SeaTac Airport when Link isn’t running.
This is an excellent start for a reliable, comprehensible all-night service network, and it’s exciting that after a half-century we’re finally getting here. SDOT currently funds the entirety of the Owl network to the tune of 3,900 service hours; the Owl network was slated for elimination before Mayor Murray deferred Ship Canal Crossing study funds to save it in 2014. The County Executive’s recent budget proposal includes some funding for the final year of the current Night Owls.
On Monday, County Executive Dow Constantine released his $11.3B biennial budget proposal for King County, and the Metro portion of the budget represents a positive and ambitious forecast for the next two years, and one that telegraphs the expected adoption of the Long Range Plan in the next few months. The proposal adds 300,000 total service hours over the 2017-2018 biennium, roughly as big as Seattle’s Prop 1 investments (270,000 hours). It invests primarily in suburban routes in South King County, East King County, and the Ballard and West Seattle corridors. The service improvements are yet to be fully detailed, and while some of them are suspect – such as Route 22, or Night Owl routes set to be replaced in an upcoming proposal – most of these routes can clearly support additional frequency or reliability improvements. In the spirit of the Prop 1 supplantation clause, the Metro-funded Seattle investments will allow the city to increasingly focus its purchased hours on its Move Seattle Rapid Ride corridors.
In addition to the more-visible service hours, there are a number of other exciting additions. First and foremost, Metro’s Capital Program is back from its recession-era slumber. The bulk of the added 2017 costs are for fleet improvement, including $209m for 181 40-foot hybrid coaches, $297m for 252 60-foot hybrid coaches, $21m for 13 60-foot trolleys for Madison BRT, and $9m for 8 additional battery-electric buses. By the end of the program, Metro’s fleet would be entirely new and 100% hybrid or trolley. So long Bredas and high-floor buses.
Mayor Murray is delivering his budget address from 2-3pm today. The speech will be archived on the Seattle Channel, or you can read the remarks as prepared here. Though rightfully focused on housing, policing, and other major issues, several transportation line items were also called out.
The budget funds the Lander overpass, Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan implementation, Vision Zero initiatives, and the first hard commitment to fund the City Center Connector. The $45m city contribution will combine with an expected $75m grant to fund roughly 75% of the line’s capital cost, with $30m in additional funds coming from Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities for relocation work on 1st Avenue and Stewart Street. The city’s funding will primarily come from bonding against Commercial Parking Tax revenue. Total project costs are estimated at $166m.
The $45m in local funding would be spread over 4 years, with $4.7m this year, $16m in 2018, and $24m in the 2019-2020 biennium. The Council’s actions this fall would commit the city to spend the full $45m, but they would only be allocating the first $21m for this biennium.
The funding would set up the line for construction in 2018-2019, with a 2020 opening. The construction would bring welcome transit right-of-way to 1st Avenue, and make relative lemonade from the relative lemons of the South Lake Union and First Hill lines. From Pioneer Square to Pike Place Market, or Chinatown to Colman Dock, etc, the streetcar will be a more direct path than an out-of-direction walk to 3rd Avenue or the Link tunnel. The line would also forego the fatal mistake of the first two lines, that of running in mixed-traffic.
If the new funding is approved and the federal grant comes through as expected, construction would occur during the most intense period of disruption for downtown arterials, with simultaneous construction of Madison BRT, 2-way Columbia Street, Alaskan Way Viaduct demolition, the Waterfront overhaul, Convention Center expansion, conversion to a rail-only Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, East Link related closure of the I-90 transitway, and more. The confluence of these issues is the heart of the One Center City (formerly Center City Mobility Plan) that is off to a slow start, but will begin convening its Advisory Group this fall.
Prior City Councils were pronounced for their streetcar skepticism – especially former CM Nick Licata – with both good and bad reasons for opposition. It will be interesting to watch as this line item works its way through the budget process. There are fears that the city balking at this line may make the FTA more hesitant to fund future grants to Seattle DOT, for projects such as Madison BRT or other Rapid Ride conversions.
Wandering around Downtown Tacoma is a strange and almost eerie experience. Stately and graceful buildings adorn an intact, human scaled street grid built to serve the golden age of railways. On the east side of Pacific Avenue, the most beautiful train station in the northwest now lies in sterile use as a courthouse. Downtown is anchored on the south end by a beautifully renovated UW satellite campus, and on the north end by a derelict Italianate old city hall that is finally coming back to life. Large multifamily developments in the Stadium District speak to a more urban past, while tranquil neighborhoods such as Proctor are reminiscent of the nicest residential neighborhoods in Seattle. And its housing is the most affordable in the region.
But walking around, hardly a creature is stirring. Tacoma has roughly 1/3 the population of Seattle (200k vs 650k), but its urban core has only 5% as many jobs (14k vs 275k). Its Tacoma Link streetcar has been losing ridership steadily for a couple years now, despite being free. Pierce Transit’s service area voted against local transit service twice (in February 2011 and November 2012), leading to a contraction of the agency’s boundaries and a bloodbath of cuts that the agency is just beginning to crawl back from (Tacoma itself has repeatedly voted in favor). Its transit riders are the region’s poorest on average, and at 53%, their ORCA use is the lowest. And proving that you don’t need a War on Cars to have traffic woes, its residents suffer daily on I-5 from the Fife Curve to Joint Base Lewis McChord.So Tacoma is a scrawny city, with good bones and a solid core, just desperate to be fed. Unlike many of the more irredeemable intermediate suburbs, Tacoma is an excellent place to direct growth. You can’t really call Tacoma a suburb; it’s more like a shadow city. If it were geographically isolated like Spokane, it would stand on its own as a regional center of employment and commerce, but caught in Seattle’s gravitational pull it continuously loses by comparison. If Seattle is DC, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, or Chicago, Tacoma is Baltimore, Oakland, Fort Worth, Providence, or Milwaukee.
So when it comes to its transit future, it’s at least understandable that it would look without rather than within.
Like Federal Way, light rail to Tacoma isn’t really about Seattle. Current traffic between Seattle and Tacoma is occasionally terrible, but nothing like the consistent misery of those in Snohomish County. Express bus travel times routinely beat an hour, and during peak hours Sounder makes the trip in a reliable 55 minutes as well. Link to Tacoma would clock in at a reliable 69 minutes from Tacoma to Westlake, slower than buses on all but the worst days, and certainly slower than Sounder. So why is it worth it? Here are 6 reasons. Continue reading “Why ST3 is Worth It, Part 2: Tacoma”
So Tacoma is a scrawny city, with good bones and a solid core, just desperate to be fed. Unlike many of the more irredeemable intermediate suburbs, Tacoma is an excellent place to direct growth. You can’t really call Tacoma a suburb; it’s more like a shadow city. If it were geographically isolated like Spokane, it would stand on its own as a regional center of employment and commerce, but 