At a presentation (PDF) to the Transit Advisory Board, Seattle DOT identified a list of Route 44 improvements that would be carried into 30% design. It’s encouraging to see that most of the big stuff, like the bus (BAT) lanes and signal priority, advanced.

The initial ideas were just “concepts” so while we shouldn’t expect everything to advance through the design phase. At the same time, death-by-1000-cuts is usually how these projects die. So what got cut?

One somewhat major idea was a set of left turn restrictions, which would have presumably made buses go faster. The second was an interesting idea to close off Wallingford Ave N at 45th, and create a mini park, which was pretty neat but which I’m sure raised the eyebrows of Wallingford QFC shopper-drivers.

SDOT project manager Janet Mayer told me that the concepts were for reasons including “public feedback, infeasibility, lack of transit benefit, or lack of support from SDOT Traffic Operations or partner agencies.”

She did add that stop removals at I-5 will “most likely” be implemented by Metro as part of a restructure and that the reroute to 43rd in the U-district is underway right now as part of the trolley project there.

Monica Nickelsburg, Geekwire:

AAA is expanding its GIG Car Share service beyond the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle. GIG will begin rolling out cars in Seattle this April and its full fleet of 250 Toyota Priuses will be deployed in the city by May.

Small Toyota Prius C cars seem like a much more sensible choice for car sharing than full-size German sedans and SUVs. Perhaps that will hopefully give GIG a better shot at amortizing the costs.

That said, a “full fleet” 250 cars is not that many (Car2Go and ShareNow had 750 each), so it’ll be interesting to see how GIG keeps them in use and not semi-abandoned in the far-reaches of the city, while maintaining equity.

Three fundamental challenges to the car share model remain: (1) Uber/Lyft are underpriced, (2) the addressable market is small, and (3) finding a parking spot at your destination is annoying. In addition, the bifurcated Seattle market presents a particular challenge: if you live in an urban village, you likely have good transit service already. If you live outside an urban village, parking is abundant and easy so why bother?

To be sure, GIG can make progress on some of these (apparently they have dedicated parking at BART stations), but others require a rethink from a city level.

(Oh, and don’t take the cars out of cell phone range).

Metro Connects is King County Metro’s long range plan. Developed in 2016, it lays out a 25 year vision for the evolution of the Metro network. The plan envisioned a 70% increase in Metro bus service hours by 2040 over 2015 levels. In recent months, Metro has been updating their analysis of how much the plan would cost to implement, and delivered an initial update to the Regional Transit Committee last week. The analysis has already identified billions of dollars in additional costs over the projection in 2016.

The Metro Connects plan was, by design, an unconstrained and unfunded vision of the future network to meet the needs of 2040. Baseline expectations for tax and fare revenue indicated enough funding for just 30% of the additional capital costs and 50% of the extra service hours originally identified. Early goals including RapidRide expansion have been scaled back. The initial plan was to open 13 new lines by 2024. In 2018, that was reduced to just 7 lines by 2027.

A report last June found Metro could reach its 2040 targets with a renewal of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (about $54 million annually) and another $220 million in county funding. A county ballot proposition is being considered for this August, but it will likely be sized at no more than $160 million including replacement of the Seattle levy. That can only be a down payment toward the 2040 targets. Last week’s update to Metro Connects’ costs push those goals further out of reach.