Afternoon traffic on I-405 near Canyon Park. Photo by SounderBruce.
We are regularly reminded that traffic congestion is growing across the region. The median Seattle metro area worker commutes nine miles to work. What if we could live closer to our workplaces? Drivers would drive fewer miles, and spend less time in traffic. Everybody who lives closer to work would contribute less to the congestion experienced by everybody else. This would reduce traffic even if everybody drives. But there’s a multiplier as denser places have higher transit (and walk, and bike) shares. Reduce travel distances by 10%, and there’s a more than 10% reduction in vehicle miles traveled.
The shortest commutes are enjoyed by residents of Mercer Island, Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, and Redmond. 75% live within ten miles of their work (vs. 52% for the region). Of course, these are the nearest cities to the two largest employment centers in the region. Commuters from more distant cities to downtown Seattle and downtown Bellevue must travel further.
Among the cities on the chart, the longest commutes are from the exurban communities of Maple Valley, Monroe, Arlington, Lake Stevens and Marysville. 71% of workers who live in those cities are more than 10 miles from their work. 31% are more than 25 miles away. These aren’t the very worst commutes in the region, however. Residents of some of the tiny mountain ‘smaller cities’ drive extraordinarily long distances to work.
Incidentally, Covington and Bonney Lake, both seeking larger city designation so they can grow faster, would have longer commute distances than most of the larger city peer group.
It will surprise few that people who live near Seattle and Bellevue have shorter commutes. But it invites an obvious question. Why is the regional growth strategy constructed around five Metropolitan Cities and 29 Regional Growth Centers? Why not draw more residential development closer to the two dominant business centers?
In 2015, as SDOT began selecting Metro bus routes to improve with Prop 1 funds, much of the first round of funds went not toward frequency or speed, but to ‘schedule reliability’. Basically, congestion was so bad and variability so high that one of the first priorities was simply to pad the schedule to adapt to worsening realities. Later that year in September, facing ever-increasing delays on its Snohomish County commuter services, Community Transit threw “the last $2m [they] could find” to pad their commuter schedules for reliability.
It’s important to note that funds used for schedule padding amount to an indirect subsidy of our single-occupant vehicle culture. While schedule padding can reduce total delay as buses have more chances to recover, padding doesn’t make anyone’s trip faster. It reinforces the perceived right of open vehicular access, increases the cost of each bus trip, reduces all ridership/performance metrics, and downshifts rider expectations into a newer, slower baseline.
Directly quantifying the costs of this congestion is very difficult, but some approximations can be made. Metro has said that its buses are only moving 54% of their run time. 28% is taken up by stop/dwell time and 18% is consumed by traffic delay. Compare this to Link light rail, which is moving 80% of the time, stopped 15% of the time, and delayed up to 5% by (temporary) bus/rail conflict.
In 2015, Metro provided 3.7 million service hours. If 18% of those hours were consumed by traffic, and assuming a conservative $150 per service hour, we can infer that our car habits cost Metro roughly $100m per year in direct service costs. This would be roughly 10% of Metro’s annual budget, imposed by drivers, borne by transit agencies and taxpayers. It’s money lit on fire while we all sit in gridlock, all of us paying more for lesser service. So when we talk about the costs of transit, it’d be helpful to remember the unnecessary costs we already incur, and how transit priority (and enforcement) can often pay for themselves. We shouldn’t be paying to absorb inefficiencies, we should be paying to fix them.
Mayor Murray has achieved this election-year shut down by diverting the intended $5m funding stream to other bicycle projects. Much-needed Center City bike connections will now be prioritized instead, including 4th Avenue from Spring to Vine and east-west connections on Pike and Pine; and $3m will go towards Vision Zero goals via Safe Routes to School. Diverting the funding to other bike priorities is likely intended to soften or blunt the criticism from the bike community, and supportive statements from Cascade Bicycle Club and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways were in Mayor Murray’s press release (see below). But beyond politics, it’s true that a fully-built Center City network will definitely increase the chances of eventual bikeshare success.
So while there may be future chapters for bike share in Seattle, the Pronto saga will come to a close on March 31 with a series of unforced errors and unnecessary political pain. Severely undercapitalized, hobbled by helmets, and going against best practices for network design, Pronto was doomed to disappointment at least and failure at most. For those of us broadly supportive of public biking in Seattle, the slow-moving demise was sad to watch. For now, a second try will have to wait.
Mayor Murray’s press release after the jump.
Today, Mayor Ed Murray announced over $3 million in funding for Safe Routes to School, as well as other bicycle and pedestrian improvements throughout the city. These projects will grow Seattle’s bicycle and pedestrian network as we continue to lay the foundation for a multimodal transportation system that reflects our growth and our values. The funding for these new projects is derived from funding previously allocated to the 2017 re-launch of the city’s bike share program. It will instead be invested in safety improvement projects and expanding the city’s bicycle and pedestrian network. Pronto, the city’s current bike share service, will end March 31.
“This shift in funding priorities allows us to make critical bicycle and pedestrian improvements—especially for students walking and biking to school,” said Mayor Murray. “While I remain optimistic about the future of bike share in Seattle, today we are focusing on a set of existing projects that will help build a safe, world-class bicycle and pedestrian network.”
The funding will go to the following projects:
Adding pedestrian safety improvements, including traffic calming and crosswalk improvements, at 19 schools through the Safe Routes to School Program.
Completing a missing link of the 4th Avenue bicycle lane and extension to Vine Street.
Accelerating design and outreach for the east/west connections in the Center City bicycle network.
Improving accessibility in Pioneer Square by adding curb ramps at key locations.
These projects are scheduled to begin in 2017.
“Cascade Bicycle Club applauds the Mayor for accelerating the downtown bicycle network and connecting key neighborhoods to where people live, work, play, and shop,” said Blake Trask, Senior Policy Director, Cascade Bicycle Club. “These new safety improvements around targeted schools will amplify the bike and walk education that Cascade provides in every Seattle Public elementary school.”
“I’m thrilled Mayor Murray has renewed his commitment to safer routes to school! Any investment in safe routes is a good investment in our children’s health and in Seattle’s future,” said Cathy Tuttle, Executive Director, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. “Mayor Murray’s targeted spending on a downtown bicycle network is also a bold statement that Seattle values safe streets for all people, whether they choose to get around by walking, riding a bike, or in a vehicle. Great choices for a healthy Seattle, Mr. Mayor!”
For over a year, regional planners have wrestled over growth plans with six small cities that are planning to ‘grow too fast’. Last month, the PSRC Executive Board tabled a decision on reclassification that could have eased the way for faster growth in Covington and Bonney Lake.
Six smaller cities, four of them in King County, are planning for growth that runs ahead of regional targets.
The region’s growth management strategy, VISION 2040, focuses most development within an urban growth boundary. Inside the growth boundary, the highest planned growth in each county is in “Metropolitan Cities” like Seattle and Bellevue. The next highest growth rates are planned for “Core Cities”, with progressively lower growth in “Larger Cities” and “Small Cities”. Small cities outside the contiguous urban area should grow more slowly than cities within.
In the last round of comprehensive plans, Six small cities created plans with growth capacity well above their regional targets. Four of these (Carnation, Snoqualmie, North Bend and Covington) are in King County, and two are in Pierce (Gig Harbor and Bonney Lake). In response, their plans were certified conditionally until they could come into compliance with regional goals. To date, the conditional certification has not impacted their access to grant funding, but might do so in the future.
Small cities have lower growth targets because they are typically further from major business centers. This means longer commutes that increase demands on regional transportation infrastructure. Unplanned growth impacts traffic in neighboring communities and on rural roads. The character of small towns is to be preserved. (Some small cities are indeed charming, others maybe less so). But slow growth strains the budgets of many smaller towns, dependent on an influx of new residents or businesses to fund existing services and infrastructure.
Seattle Subway’s political director, Jonathan Hopkins, is moving on to be the Executive Director of Commute Seattle. We’re sad to see him go, he has done a plainly incredible job for Seattle Subway and our region and will be very much missed — all of the congrats to Jonathan on his new role!
He leaves big shoes to fill but a big opportunity for someone who wants to get involved in transit advocacy in our region.
The Seattle Subway Political Director is a central role to our organization. This person is the face of Seattle Subway. This means regular contact with Sound Transit and other government agencies, local politicians and media (print, online, radio and TV).
Duties include but aren’t limited to:
Attending monthly board meetings (remotely if necessary).
Regular appearances at volunteer events.
Maintaining relationships with regional institutions, agencies, politicos and other stakeholders.
We are looking for someone who is excited about what is happening with transit in our city, has excellent communications skills and a passion to get involved. Backgrounds in communications, media relations, political outreach, non-profit work and transit advocacy are all big pluses.
Seattle Subway is an all volunteer organization. If you are interested in joining our team – email contact@SeattleSubway.org
Aside from the SE Seattle Metro restructure, the two major service additions in September 2016 were the opening of Angle Lake Station and the addition of the first mid-day Sounder roundtrip. Nearly 4 months after their launch, we wanted to check in on ridership stats for the Angle Lake and Sounder portions.
Sound Transit tells STB that Angle Lake is drawing a weekday average of 2,578 boardings, a Saturday average of 2,174, and a Sunday average of 1,411. Based on August numbers for Link ridership by station, this would place Angle Lake 9th among Link’s 16 stations stations for weekday ridership, slightly higher than Beacon Hill and slightly lower than Tukwila Int’l Blvd.
Angle Lake is naturally dependent on the park & ride commuter market, with little residential/commercial development or bus transfer synergy to induce all day ridership. Sound Transit says that December weekday parking usage ranged from 86-98%. With more than two times the boardings compared to the 1,160 parking spaces, a surprisingly high number of riders seem to be transferring from buses, carpooling, biking, or commuting to Angle Lake for jobs at places like Alaska Airlines.
Sounder
Though Sounder introduced nominal ‘mid-day service’ in September, ridership on the trip pair has been highly asymmetric, with the 10:18am northbound trip (115 boardings per day) having only one-third the ridership of the 2:32pm southbound trip (356 boardings). Given the early schedule of inbound trains from Lakewood and South Tacoma, using Sounder in both directions wasn’t terribly practical before the 2:32pm train was introduced. Now those taking inbound trains in the 4am and 5am hours have a way home by train before 5:30pm. Remember too that the new train uses a smaller 2-car trainset, meaning the afternoon train is packed with 178 riders per car. There is clearly demand for a broader peak period for Sounder.
We’ve requested ridership info on the SE Seattle restructure as well, and will post that when available.
Mercer Island circulating a petition demanding special rights to public property, and keeping as many outsiders as possible off their island, as “compensation” for ST building a light rail station for their city.
