Category: Guest Posts

The 10 year concession agreement for operation of the Seattle Center Monorail will be discussed at this Tuesday’s meeting of the Seattle City Council Parks, Center, Libraries and Equity Committee. Thanks to commenter Ricky for pointing out this opportunity to comment on monorail operations. The City has already received a Request for Proposal from the current operator, Seattle Monorail Services, which basically continues the status quo.  If you are unable to attend the Council Committee meeting on Tuesday, December 2^nd at 9:30 a.m in the Seattle City Council Chambers, you may send comments to the Seattle City Council members on the committee: Jean Godden, Bruce Harrell, Tom Rasmussen and Kshama Sawant (alternate).

The Seattle Center Monorail is a publicly-owned asset operated for private profit (of which the City receives a cut). The monorail does not accept Orca cards or Puget passes; it is cash only. Due to these fare policies it is generally ignored by local residents and workers. An amendment to the legislation authorizing the concession agreement could require that the private operator install payment readers for Orca cards and accept Puget Passes, similar to the City-owned Seattle Streetcar. As a revenue offset, cash fares could be raised significantly (San Francisco charges a $6 cash fare for cable cars). The Seattle DOT budget could be used to offset any remaining revenue loss due to accepting passes, just as it is used to subsidize streetcar operations. The table below summarizes the dissimilar fare policies of the monorail and the Seattle Streetcar, also owned by the City of Seattle.

The monorail is Seattle’s most underappreciated grade-separated rail asset. It travels between Westlake Center to the Seattle Center grounds in 2 minutes at 10 minute frequencies, all day and evening long. Yet tens of thousands of residents daily ride the myriad of surface buses between downtown and Mercer Street, taking at least 10 and occasionally as much as 30 minutes to traverse this short distance. Why? One big reason is the lack of fare integration. Monorail fare integration is a transit best practice that would greatly improve mobility in the area.

Metro’s now-defunct cut proposals included some restructures that are worth implementing on their own merits. They aren’t scheduled because the County Council never approved them, but at the same time the council didn’t reject them specifically — it just rejected the cuts as a whole. So Metro could still propose the restructures again. It should go ahead with the good changes, while leaving the bad ones in the dustbin.

Here are the cut proposals again:  Feb 2015 revision 2 (10 MB), original proposals (25 MB). Both are ZIP files containing PDFs. (These aren’t the entire cuts, just the routes I downloaded at the time.)

Very Good Restructures:

Queen Anne. The strongest of all, Route 2N is consolidated into the 13, and 4N is consolidated into 3N. Both 13 and 3N terminate at Seattle Pacific University. This gives two frequent routes on upper Queen Anne Avenue, the center of the urban village. It fixes the schizophrenic pattern of two half-hourly routes six blocks apart, and two routes that go downtown on opposite sides of the street. The losers would be those near 6th Ave W, but they would have a flat six-minute walk to the 13, and they’d still have the 29 peak hours. Metro has tried to do this change twice now, the first time in 2012, so Metro thinks it’s a strong alternative.

Central District and First Hill. The 4S would be consolidated into the 3S, and the 2S would move to Madison from Seneca. The 4S is redundant with other routes on the same street and nearby, and is slower than those other routes. The 3S serves an otherwise-unserved part of the Central District, so it’s a good route to make frequent. Moving the 2 to Madison would, along with the 12, give full-time frequent service on Madison. I’m not wedded on Madison vs Seneca, but I want both routes on the same street to make the corridor more usable. Metro has also tried to do this change twice now.

Continue reading “Save the Restructures!”

On Thursday the King County Council’s Budget and Fiscal Management Committee unanimously approved a 2015-16 budget ordinance that “maintains current levels of transit services.” The Council will formally take up the proposed budget in its scheduled meeting on Monday, November 17.  As all 9 council members serve on the Budget committee and voted to approve, approval is likely in the Council itself on Monday.

The proposed budget also:

• Increases funding to $6M per year (corrected from “per biennium”) for an alternative-services “demonstration program” intended to “right size [transit] service options and help those communities most affected by recent service reductions.” The program will be led by Metro and “include discussion with local governments, nonprofit organizations, private businesses, community groups, and other stakeholders in communities where fixed-route transit may not be a cost-effective option.”
• As part of the alternative-services program, provides for a regional task force to review and make recommendations regarding the Metro Service Guidelines. These are intended to be reflected in revisions to the [Metro] Strategic Plan and in further policy details for transit service agreements with cities.
• Funds study of  “transition to a cashless fare system… [and elimination] of paper transfers”
• Approves a low-income fare
• Increases the number of discounted tickets for nonprofit agencies
• Maintains the  target level for the fleet replacement reserve (RFRF) at 30% of estimated full replacement cost
• Funds the recently-enacted “permanent Metro transit audit function”
• Funds a “Strategic Technology Roadmap for Transit” to “address how technology will be used in the future to support Transit in delivering transit services”
• Provides for a strategic plan to address “the housing affordability and homelessness crisis”  and specifically includes “microhousing” among the solutions to be considered.

The Ordinance itself does not include a revised Financial Plan for Metro that reflects its provisions, nor the impact on the Revenue Stabilization Reserve. But for those interested, this report by Council staff  evaluates financial plan scenarios of different service levels, reserve policies, and economic forecast assumptions. In that document, Scenario 3 seems to correspond to the recommended budget, and Scenario 4 evaluates that plan in the case of a “moderate recession.”

Proposed Sunday Network map, courtesy of Community Transit

Community Transit has proposed a 25-cent increase for adult and DART fares to help fund 27,000 hours of restored service, including 18,000 hours of Sunday and holiday service on 16 local bus routes beginning as early as June 7, 2015.

Swift would get 20 minute frequencies on Sunday, last seen before the June 2010 service cuts, while major routes in Southwest Snohomish County, Marysville and Arlington would get hourly service. “Rural lifeline routes” serving far-flung cities such as Stanwood and Gold Bar would see buses every two hours on Sundays. CT hopes to fully restore Sunday and holiday service that was cut in 2010, with the 2015 proposal funding 65 percent of the lost hours but covering the same area. The ultimate goal for the agency is to operate the same amount of service on Saturdays and Sundays as a single weekend schedule.

Full list of routes after the jump.

Continue reading “Community Transit Proposes Restored Sunday Service”

Metro’s 35 foot Xcelsiors hit the streets for the first time this week. These coaches replace and supplement the retired 35 foot Gilligs (3185-3199). Coaches 3702-3705 have been seen on routes 246 and 269. The coaches will be numbered 3700-3759 and will be spread out amongst South Base (28), North Base (12) and Bellevue Base (20). Next year we should begin to see sixty 40 foot Xcelsiors arriving at Bellevue Base.

Photo by the author
Continue reading “Metro’s Xcelsiors hit the streets”

Sound Transit held a board workshop on Thursday to begin considering financing options for ST3, the draft update to its Long Range Plan (LRP), and the timeline to a potential ST3 vote in 2016. This article covers the funding aspect (slides here) and timeline because that’s where most of the new information was. The LRP will follow in a later post. The 3 1/2 hour workshop consisted of the ST board and staff who did all the talking, and some forty observers including people from Metro and your reporter.

ST’s current state-granted taxing authority is 0.9% sales tax, 0.8% rental car tax, 0.8% restricted MVET (Motor-Vehicle Excise Tax), and an employer tax ($2.5000/ employee / month). Of these ST is currently maxed out on the sales tax and rental car tax. The MVET can only be used to pay existing bonds and expires in 2028. ST has never collected the employer tax so it’s an unused capacity. When ST2 construction ends in 2023 it will free up $1 billion, mostly in the Pierce and Snohomish subareas.

The staff presented three potential levels for ST3. The lowest level (“ST2a”) stays within the existing taxing authority and could complete planning and engineering of the “Spine” (meaning the Everett, Tacoma, and Redmond Link extensions) — but not construction. The middle level (“Incremental”) would require more taxing authority from the legislature and could construct one or two of the “best-performing” light rail segments (which ones were left unspecified). The highest level (“Large”) would be a similar size as ST1 and ST2 and require $15 billion in new taxes.

The board seems to be leaning toward the Large option. One board member cited deep public hunger in both Seattle and the suburbs for high-capacity transit (HCT). Another said a larger package would have a better chance of being approved by the legislature and by voters. A third said the board’s consensus seems to be for a “bold” legislative proposal, “more than we need”. The staff are assuming a Large proposal for planning, and the board can scale it back if it decides to go smaller. Mayor Murray emphasized the importance of clarifying their legislative ask and making sure any ST3 package goes big.

The presentation listed ten revenue sources used by other North American transit agencies: sales tax, rental car tax, payroll tax, MVET, car sales tax, car fuel tax, parking tax, utility bill levy, toll revenue, or property tax. Staff chose three of these for comparison and presented tax rates based on the use of one, two or all three sources. The three slides above show the results of this analysis. Of course these could be mixed and matched to balance the revenue among two or three sources.

Staff identified reliance on a single revenue source as potentially problematic because it would increase sales tax above 10% or hit constitutional property tax limits in King County. Property tax is also harder to bond against. Staff also noted that property tax is the least objectionable revenue source, as determined by rider surveys. Using this as guidance, Sound Transit staff will be developing a legislative agenda including adequate revenue capacity for any of these scenarios.

One board member suggested the staff consider additional funding sources such as LIDs (local improvement districts), the TIF model (taxing the added real-estate value of being near HCT), partnerships with companies benefiting from the service, and federal and state grants.

The potential timeline for a 2016 vote and subsequent ST3 construction is as follows:

Continue reading “ST3 Funding Options”

Following my post regarding Metro service cuts and Kevin Desmond’s reply, Mr. Desmond very generously added some key details of financial projections, made time for a phone conversation, and then later commented on a draft of this article. Though I am grateful for Mr. Desmond’s time and help, I believe the details provided are actually strong evidence that the cuts are much greater than required, and that cuts can safely be postponed until a recession is apparent. Below I’ll review the financial projections and their implications, and then show Mr. Desmond’s response and other comments.

Background: Metro (and the county Executive) have proposed a financial plan that includes 250K annual hours of service cuts, introduced in 2015 and 2016, and funds a Revenue Stabilization Reserve (RSR) at a level intended to avoid further cuts in the case of a “moderate recession.” Others believe that the cuts may not be required, might be smaller, or could be deferred until the need is clearer.

About the financial projections based on a moderate recession, Desmond noted that the proposed reserve funding was not intended to handle another major recession such as started in 2008, but rather a more typical and frequent “moderate” recession. His office provided the following results of modeling based on a “moderate” recession (amounts are $M), compared with the OEFA forecast that assumes no recessions:

*The RSR balances in this table sometimes exceed Metro’s proposed target level of 50% of annual Sales Tax revenue. In the County Executive’s proposed budget, the excess (if any) is included in the Ending Undesignated Fund Balance. At the end of the 2019-20 biennium, this amount is $170M. The excess would be available for service growth.

**A negative balance indicate the added amount needed so that other fund balance targets would still be met.

IMPLICATIONS:

Continue reading “Metro cuts: follow-up with Kevin Desmond”