Category: Guest Posts

by ROSS BLEAKNEY

[This seems a good a time as any to remind everyone that guest posts do not necessarily reflect the views of STB staff or the editorial board – Ed.]

What exactly is Bus Rapid Transit (or BRT)? Perhaps, like the Supreme Court said about “pornography”, you know it when you see it. If the Wikipedia definition of BRT is any guide, I haven’t seen it in Seattle. To quote their definition, “To be considered BRT, buses should operate for a significant part of their journey within a fully dedicated right of way (busway) to avoid traffic congestion”. RapidRide is not BRT, falling well short by ITDP standards.

But we can certainly build a real BRT system for West Seattle that has almost every advantage of what we call “light rail” (mostly grade separated, off-board fare collection, station platforms level with the bus floor, priority at intersections, etc.). Unlike the light rail concepts being offered by Sound Transit, BRT to West Seattle would allow riders from all the key corridors of West Seattle (California, Fauntleroy, 35th, Admiral/Alki and Delridge) to enjoy a fast and frequent ride to downtown without having to transfer.

The Challenges of Serving West Seattle with Transit

West Seattle is a fairly large area, separated from the rest of Seattle by the Duwamish River. If you look at a census map of West Seattle, there are a few pockets of scattered density, but nothing over 25,000 people per square mile. The more densely populated areas are not in a line, either, making it all but impossible to connect the area with one rail line. A light rail line that serves the Junction is likely to miss Admiral, Alki and the Delridge corridor. A rail line on Delridge would miss Admiral, Alki, California, Fauntleroy and 35th.

Link to West Seattle would be expensive. It would have to traverse low-ridership Sodo and Harbor Island, cross water and rugged terrain. Martin Duke estimated the cost of getting to the junction at $2 – 2.5 billion, not including a downtown tunnel.

The city is unlikely to build parking around the stations, meaning that most riders would walk to the station or arrive by bus.  A comparison of population density and the proposed set of stations shows that no set of West Seattle stations will be within walking distance of a majority of potential riders. For light rail to be successful, a vast majority of riders would have to arrive to the station by bus.

Transferring from to bus to train incurs a transfer penalty: exiting the bus, walking to the station, getting to the platform, and waiting for a train (Sound Transit suggests headways of ten minutes). In most of Seattle, the train makes up for that penalty by using its dedicated right of way to outrun buses mired on surface streets. In West Seattle, however, there is easy access to a high-speed freeway if agencies execute several relatively low-cost infrastructure projects. For most riders on West Seattle’s major bus corridors, this would result in a faster trip to and through downtown than with light rail.

Continue reading “Build Real BRT for West Seattle”

Last year Metro won a $4.7 million federal TIGGER grant to purchase two Proterra battery-operated buses and two charging stations. Last week Metro finished installing and began testing a fast charger at Eastgate Transit Center. Currently a Proterra factory unit is being used (not the one that visited earlier this year) but later three different vehicles will be delivered. Metro originally intended to purchase two charging stations but decided against a second station and instead applied that funding toward the purchase of a third bus. The first vehicle is expected to be delivered this fall with the other two coming later in the fall.

The vehicles won’t go in to revenue service for quite some time; initial testing will last a few weeks after arrival and more in-depth testing will occur for up to a year for Metro to determine how they perform in Metro’s service area. This data will be used to decide how they might fit in with their future fleet plans. While no final decisions have been as to what routes will see some electric action, routes 226 and 241 are the most likely candidates. They are interlined on an 18.25 mile route and terminate at Eastgate TC. If the buses are able to go the distance, 221 and 248 are other possibilities since they both have layovers (in one direction) at Eastgate TC. During the testing period, the vehicles will likely be placed on a variety of routes to gather as much performance data as possible. While the exact numbers will depend on the batteries’ state of charge, Metro’s contract stipulates that the vehicle will need to be able to charge in 10 minutes or less and be able to maintain a 23 mile service route off that charge, and Proterra has been able to meet that requirement.

This project is more of a R&D project for Metro than a rush to put new technology in to revenue service. Metro is using it to determine whether or not battery technology could be used on replacement 40′ buses. A PowerPoint presentation from Metro’s vehicle maintenance outlines the goals and some of the construction of the vehicle. An interesting note is that BYD and New Flyer also bid on the contract (Design Line, E-Bus, Nova, and Skoda dropped out).

A few photos of the testing can be found here.

The signing of the statewide transportation package yesterday by Governor Jay Inslee granted permission to Community Transit to exceed the maximum 0.9% sales tax rate set for public transportation benefit areas (as allowed for in Section 312 of Senate Bill 5987, specifically for counties with a population of at least 700,000 that contains a city of at least 75,000 with its own transit system). The CT Board voted unanimously today to place a measure on the November 3, 2015 ballot that would increase sales taxes by 0.3% (3 cents on $10 taxable purchases) and generate an estimated $25 million in additional annual revenue for the agency.

In their press release, Community Transit outlined where the new revenue would be spent, beginning as early as March 2016:

• Swift II, whose capital costs are already covered by state and federal grants, will use $7 to 8 million per year in op. It is scheduled to open as early as 2018. (See my open house report from last month for more details)
• Improved frequency on local routes with more trips added throughout the day and expanded service spans.
• Additional commuter runs to downtown Seattle and the University of Washington.
• Increased east-west connections within the county.
• More service to job, housing and educational centers throughout the county, including communities such as Arlington, Monroe and Stanwood.
• New routes, including service on State Route 9 from Marysville to McCollum Park via Lake Stevens, Snohomish and Silver Firs, last proposed during the failed annexation of Cathcart, Clearview and Maltby in 2008.
• Reconfigured local bus service to connect with Sound Transit Link Light Rail when it reaches Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood in 2023, and eventually to Everett.
• More vanpools and expanded DART paratransit service.

Near the top of the “Tier 1” transit projects funded by the state’s new Transportation budget is a curious item:

That’s a $5.5 million allocation to expand bike sharing to 4 Eastside cities.  You may be wondering (as I was), what would Bike Sharing look like if it expanded to those cities? And how did this make its way into the budget?

To find out, you need to go back a few years and read the King County Bike Share Business Plan. It maps out the plan for what a region-wide bike sharing system would look like. It is a few years old now, funding might levy new requirements, and lessons from operations means that the real life system might look a bit different.

The original plan was to launch with 50 stations in Downtown Seattle and near the UW, and then add a total of 110 more stations in those areas and adjacent ones. Finally, Pronto would add 50 stations in a few relatively dense Eastside cities. The program got off the ground with 50 stations last year, and Seattle has a grant pending to expand bike sharing to most of the rest of the city with an additional 250 stations.

Does the state funding mean that Pronto would be heading to the Eastside too, or would it be separate? The answer is likely that Pronto will expand. Pronto is actually an independent non-profit, not an arm of the City of Seattle. Its board is a cross section of transportation staff from various agencies (including King County Metro, the recipient of the state funding) and some community members. It gets grants from the cities and county (who in turn get grants from the state and federal government) and hires a vendor to administer the system.  The vendor is Motivate, formerly known as Alta Cycle Share. They run similar programs in other cities like DC and Boston.

What would a small bike share deployment look like on the Eastside? I took the original business plan’s goal of spacing stations out by 1300 feet and placing 10 in Bellevue, and plotted them out in downtown. These are not the actual locations, just some ideas on where they could go. You could cover all of the downtown core easily, and add a few stations at Overlake, Bellevue High School and at the Hotels on 112th. You could easily apply the same logic to Kirkland and Redmond, especially if Microsoft wants to get involved.

Continue reading “Bike Sharing is Likely Coming to the Eastside”

Community Transit held three open houses this week for their Swift II project, which aims to build a 12.5-mile-long bus rapid transit line with 15 stations connecting northern Bothell to Mill Creek and the Paine Field industrial area in Everett. The project is estimated to cost $42-48m, with the majority of capital funds provided from the FTA (through their Small Starts program) and WSDOT (through their mobility grants). The money will primarily fund two major projects: the new Seaway Transit Center on the east side of the Boeing factory and BAT lanes on 128th Street SW as it approaches its interchange with Interstate 5.

The second of these meetings, held Wednesday night at Mariner High School near the midpoint of the Swift II corridor, was attended by five members of the public (including me) and six Community Transit employees. CT also published the slides online.

While most of the information presented was already previously public, mostly as documents on CT’s website, there was one noteworthy new item. The table map of the proposed stations used colors to label both the existing Swift line and the proposed Swift II line as the “Blue Line” and “Green Line”, respectively. Swift I and Swift II will be eventually renamed, but not until the run-up to a local election on Swift II funding. The election will occur after the passage of House Bill 1393 by the state legislature, which would allow CT to raise sales taxes by an additional 0.3% with approval from voters. The bill is still alive in the special session.

CT expects the line to open sometime between 2018 and 2020, at the earliest September 2018. It projects 3,300 daily boardings by the end of the first year of operations, dominated by commuters to the Paine Field industrial area and Canyon Park’s office parks until the corridor matures into an all-day destination. The goal for base frequency is every 10 minutes, the same headway Swift I had until it was reduced to 12 minutes in 2012. This requires 12 new coaches funded by the FTA and WSDOT grants. CT confirmed they are looking into shadow service on the Swift II corridor, similar to how Route 101 stops on the southern half of the Swift I corridor, but there are no concrete plans.

The draft plan for the proposed Seaway Transit Center was in the presentation but omitted from the online copy because of its unfinished nature. It showed a layout for the transit center that accommodated both Everett Transit as well as a possible Boeing shuttle with its own bay, similar to the Microsoft Connect shuttle at the Overlake Transit Center in Redmond.

The initial Swift line still has one remaining infill station, located southbound at 204th Street SW east of Edmonds Community College, that will be named “College Station”. This presents a possible conflict with a future Swift line on North Broadway that could serve Everett Community College.

King County Metro Transit is preparing to add several hundred new buses to its fleet over the next few months.

It’s welcome news for most regular Metro riders, who know there are a lot of old buses still running on the streets of King County.

Budget pressure, mostly from the 2008 recession, forced Metro to hold off on any bus purchases the last few years. But now that Seattle voters have passed new taxes to fund more bus service, the agency can’t wait any longer.

Over the next year Metro said it will add 174 all-electric trolley buses and 105 hybrid buses to the fleet. All of the hybrid buses and 64 of the trolleys will be 60-foot long and bend in the middle.

Twenty of the hybrids will be dedicated to the RapidRide C and D lines, which are slated to be split up next year, sending them to South Lake Union and Pioneer Square respectively. These new buses, expected to be delivered early next year, will make that split possible.

The other 85 hybrids will replace buses in Metro’s fleet that are over 15 years old and lack air conditioning. Metro spokeswoman Rochelle Ogershok says these new buses will be delivered by November 2016 and will be equipped with three doors for faster unloading of passengers.

Meanwhile testing continues on Metro’s new fleet of trolley buses.

Back in November, KING 5 went along on a test run and now Metro expects the 40-foot trolleys to start going into service within the next month. The first 60-foot articulated trolley arrived in Seattle a few weeks ago and just started doing test runs on the streets of Seattle.

These will be Metro’s first trolley buses to have low floors, a wheelchair ramp (instead of a lift), air conditioning and a battery pack that will allow them to operate off-wire for up to 3 miles.

Snohomish County residents looking to ditch their car for Sundays and holidays can breathe a sigh of relief for the first time in five years. June 7 marks the restoration of Sunday service for Community Transit after its massive service cuts in June 2010, thanks to sales tax revenue returning to 2008 levels as well as a 25-cent fare increase to take place in July. Sunday and holiday service will be limited to hourly headways on most local routes, with the exception of Swift bus rapid transit (20 minute headways) and rural lifeline routes to outlying communities (2 hour headways). The June changes page on their website has specific, route-by-route details, which includes minor improvements to existing local service and additional trips on commuter routes 413 and 860.

In addition to the service restoration, Community Transit has modified its local service to eastern Snohomish County with the replacement of Route 275 with Route 271 on the Highway 2 corridor and extensions of certain Route 280 trips to serve the Boeing Everett plant.

Full list of changes below the jump.

Continue reading “Sunday service returns to Community Transit on June 7”

SDOT has started work on its second HCT corridor, “Roosevelt to Downtown”. It’s one of three HCT corridors in Seattle’s Transit Master Plan (TMP) adopted in 2012. The other two HCT corridors are Madison BRT, which is in design, and Ballard to Downtown, which was part of a joint light rail/streetcar study done by Sound Transit. The TMP also has fifteen Priority Bus Corridors, of which 23rd Avenue is about to start construction. The goal of the current Roosevelt study is to identify a “locally preferred alternative” mode and route by November. This summer SDOT will choose two alternatives and analyze them in detail.

SDOT held open houses last week to present their initial work and ask for comments. The initial alternative has a downtown rectangle (5th and Boren Avenues, Stewart and Virginia Streets), then goes north on Fairview Avenue N, Eastlake Avenue E, Roosevelt -11th-12th, NE 80th Street, and 5th Avenue NE to the Northgate transit center. Readers will recognize this as route 70 south of the Ship Canal and route 66 north of it. A “South Alternative” follows the SLU Streetcar’s routing from Valley Street on south. Most of the work done so far focuses on the corridor’s existing conditions and expected growth; i.e., the context for the line.

SDOT is heavily leaning toward BRT rather than rapid streetcar for this corridor; they said most of their results are pointing in that direction. One of the posters showed a chart of the unique advantages of BRT vs streetcars: BRT came out ahead in 8 of 11 metrics.

Continue reading “Roosevelt HCT is Underway”

There seems to be wide agreement that enhanced bus service on Madison Street between the waterfront and at least 23rd Avenue would be a great asset for the city.

The debate here on STB seems to be whether to move forward with dedicated, center-running lanes and median platforms, or bus/right-turn only lanes on the outsides of Madison with platforms constructed on current sidewalks. This center vs side debate exists in part because, though center-running lanes provide protection from right turns (leading to improved travel times and reliability) and afford greater visibility, the current center-running configuration seems to necessitate buses with left-side doors, precluding open BRT as the rest of the Metro fleet does not have doors on both sides. So the center-running vs side-running discussion has really become a discussion about closed vs open BRT.

As it turns out, no operational compromise is necessary to achieve open and center-running BRT on Madison. Below I explore two options (one of which SDOT seems to be considering but doesn’t get much attention) that are compatible with the center-running and open BRT concept.

Option 1: Center-running contraflow lanes

What if we could have all the benefits of center-running bus lanes and joint median platforms while allowing multiple routes to make use of different segments of the Madison BRT infrastructure?

One way this is possible is to have contra-flow, center-running bus lanes that allow buses with right side doors to drop off and pick up passengers at a median platforms. With this arrangement, there is no need to purchase buses with left side doors or exclude other buses that might travel down Madison—like a Broadway to Madison route 49—from using the infrastructure. Center-running contraflow lanes would allow us to retain future operational flexibility while still building what is necessary for a premium BRT the length of Madison.

This center-running contraflow concept creates a few complications:

Continue reading “Center-running open BRT on Madison”

I recently found out that Microsoft posts the schedules for its fixed route service on the publicly-accessible msshuttle.mobi. Those that are affiliated with Microsoft can also use the site to book rides for on-demand (e.g. intracampus) shuttles. Note this is not the same as the Microsoft Connector–the commute-oriented bus network whose reservations and schedules are part of a different application available only to Microsoft employees.

I’ve converted the shuttle data to GTFS, which you can download here. The GTFS is generated with a small PHP script.

Could this be added to OneBusAway? Maybe; the (also private) Children’s Hospital Shuttles are already there. Enterprising users can also grab OneBusAway Quickstart to host your own OBA server.

With light rail expansion and planning well on its way, things look positive for rail transport in the Puget Sound Region. The momentum and demand for rail-based transport in the region appears higher than ever, with residents beginning to realize that our current transport network is simply inadequate for the growth rate in this region. When a single fish truck can bring the region to hours of standstill, transport alternatives cannot come soon enough.

However, as with every major project, there is always a time to step back and once again look at the big picture. What type of transport objectives are we trying to accomplish? What kind of connections and services do we need?

But here is the biggest question that we need to answer before Sound Transit 3: What exactly are we building right now?

The simple answer is, of course, light rail. The more complicated answer is that we are building a regional light rail network.

And that could be a problem, because light rail vehicle technology is not intended for regional services. If Sound Transit pushes these vehicles to compete with cars between Everett and Seattle, or Tacoma and Seattle, it will have to find a delicate compromise between competitive travel times and travel time reliability. Let’s discuss why.

Vehicle performance matters in a regional context

Continue reading “Limitations of Light Rail as Regional Transport (Part 1)”

Last week Matthew Johnson posted an excellent piece regarding Regional Growth Centers and why Ballard isn’t one.  The short answer is that Ballard doesn’t have enough employment, and losing this classification amounts to losing 100s of millions of dollars in federal transit funds.  In other words, there’s a large financial incentive to would-be Regional Growth Centers to add jobs.

I argue that this is a backward incentive.  Job growth outside of the core is fundamentally poorly served by transit in our hub-and-spoke system (just try to get to Ballard from the East side, or the islands, or even from some places north on transit).  But what’s worse is that job growth outside the core helps build sprawl.  People choose housing based on a combination of lifestyle, cost, and transportation ease.  Make it easier and cheaper to live further from the city, and builders will build further from the city.  Every job added to a suburb, even a Regional Growth Center style suburb, potentially adds a home further out into sprawl.

King County should remove this job-based requirement, and let growth centers be centers of residential growth.

SEATTLE SUBWAY
Seattle Subway has learned that ESSB 5988 which authorizes transportation projects and a funding source for Sound Transit’s next big regional transit package (ST3) may make it out of committee this week and come to a vote on the House floor.

By NEIL GREENBERG

Hello Seattle!

Neil from Detroit here. I am working on a project that you all may find appealing. It has a Seattle connection. More importantly, is has broad relevance for the entire public transit space.

The effort is called 15 Minutes or Better. It’s a series of short videos to highlight the fundamentals of effective public transit: coverage, connectivity, speed, span, frequency, accessibility.

To longtime transit enthusiasts, these elements are painfully obvious. Today, thanks to increased academic interest and a chatty internet, more and more people are describing themselves as transit enthusiasts. It’s a positive phenomenon – we need all the support we can get.

However, many newcomers are overlooking the core ingredients of effective transit. Essential service attributes are regularly dismissed as “too technical” – while the conversation drifts toward trendy sub-topics of transit: policy, technology, private financing, real estate development.

Those are all worthwhile matters. Taken alone, though, none can significantly improve the full experience of using transit. As such, 15 Minutes or Better intends to give proper due to the meat-and-potatoes of transit service. We’ll address each “technical” component in a fun, engaging and decidedly non-technical way. In so doing, we’ll equip the growing ranks of transit enthusiasts with a more thorough, more powerful understanding of the issue.

The project starts in Detroit because our transit conversation is astoundingly incomplete. Despite well-documented deficiencies with our transit service, the official discussion is revolving around secondary themes. We talk of apps and websites and TOD and attracting millennials – while practically ignoring route coverage and service levels. We know that other cities have effective transit systems, but we’ve failed to identify – or even ask – what makes those systems effective.

So we’re hitting the road. We are travelling to multiple US cities – including Seattle – to showcase effective transit service in its natural, everyday habitat. In each city, we’ll walk the viewer through an actual transit trip and point out what is working. The message is clear: the elements of quality transit service should not be taken for granted. If you want to improve transit in your city – Detroit or elsewhere – insist on this element!

In Seattle, our particular element-of-focus is connectivity – how transit can downplay political boundaries to link logical destinations. For example, we may start at the Tacoma Dome and travel to UW. Anyone can see why this trip makes sense: a big population center to a big university. In too many other places, transit couldn’t connect these dots because they’re in different counties. But Puget Sound gets it right. Let’s bring that to light – and set it as a precedent for all metropolitan areas.

And – you had to see this coming – 15 Minutes or Better will cost us to produce. We’ve figured about $45,000 to film, edit and compile the whole video series. We are attempting to raise $15,000 of that through crowdfunding – check out the campaign, along with the trailer, at patronicity.com/15mob. Our first target audience is Detroit. Beyond the Motor City, our findings can help inform the national dialogue. We want to ensure that the transit conversation doesn’t forget to talk about transit.

We’d love your support – a small contribution, ideas for local transit highlights, even your knowledge on-camera as a “local host”. If you have any questions, please contact me directly.

Thank you!