Whether you think of park and ride lots as a necessary service for suburban transit or a sprawl-inducing evil, we can hopefully agree that maximizing utilization of existing parking capacity near transit is a good thing.

With that idea in mind, WSDOT conducted an interesting evaluation of park and rides (via KIRO). They visited 17 lots in the Seattle region and interviewed riders. The results won’t surprise you: Most lots are full by 8am, almost everyone drives alone to get there, and almost everyone is going to work.

There were some interesting bits in the rider survey however:  46% of respondents were willing to pay for a “guaranteed” spot at the lot, but only 28% were willing to pay for a general spot in the lot.  If people are going to be asked to pay for something that used to be free, they want something in return.

The survey recommendations include some ideas around incentivizing carpooling to park and rides.  The initiative is laudable, and Sound Transit is working on something similar, but it’s hard enough to get people to carpool, even all the way to work. Going through the hassle of organizing a carpool just to get to a bus stop seems like a lot of effort for little return.  It seems like a better idea to just charge for spaces and let people organize a carpool if they want to save money.

Whatever program takes hold, increasing the utilization and/or revenue generation from park and rides is a good thing.  Folks will complain and threaten to just drive to work, but the reality is that a monthly spot in the Seattle CBD costs $288/month, the 7th most expensive in the country.  Paying for parking and an ORCA card (assuming your employer doesn’t provide one) is still a better deal.

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In a move that will surprise no one who has been paying attention, The Seattle Times endorsed a NO vote on ST3 ($), apparently less interested in quality transit than the Tacoma News-Tribune, among others. It is fundamentally insincere and dishonest about why they oppose the package. As usual, they apply arbitrary and vague objections they wouldn’t apply to non-transit projects. For a more authentic (but wrong) objection, see their 2007 anti-ST2 screed ($) that says rail is pointless and we should just widen highways. The current complaints are too incoherent to be real:

Voters should say no to this measure — appearing as Proposition 1 on the Nov. 8 ballot — which would commit them to a lifetime of taxation for a $54 billion project with unclear benefits and little accountability.

If only one of the largest concentrations of reporters in the state could have somehow, some way, figured out what voters would get from the ST3 package. What would constitute “clear” benefits? What’s the proper level of accountability? After all, the Times backed a giant highway package with zero public votes, and a deep-bore tunnel run amok with no voter “accountability”, so there’s no way they’re just expecting yet more votes?

Because ST3 establishes permanent tax authority, voters would lose the opportunity to periodically say whether its funding should continue or its course corrected.

Oh.

It is not good practice to stop giant capital projects in mid-stream, and default on all the bonds, at whatever moment the agency is least popular. Not a great way to get things done! If one doesn’t like how ST is going, one could always vote against the County Executives most responsible. But most of those Executives — and Sound Transit — are popular, so anti-transit forces would like to add as many veto points as possible. There is no real ideological commitment to “accountability.”

And by the way: the permanent tax authority is only what’s needed for operations and maintenance. But they won’t tell you that, because the Editorial Board of our city’s largest newspaper exists to deceive citizens and make them less knowledgeable about issues. Or perhaps the Times objects to operating and maintaining rail lines we’ve already built?

Yet ST3 would provide little direct benefit for most residents. Many won’t be around to enjoy the system’s full benefits, which wouldn’t come until around 2040.

ST3 will start delivering real benefits in the early 2020s, but apparently nothing’s worthwhile until rail gets to Issaquah. Benefits to young people and future generations are, of course, simply irrelevant. But yeah, it takes a long time. Better hurry, no time to pause!

Pressing pause would not doom the region to traffic hell nor would it kill transit.

Well then! Traffic is solved, everyone! Never mind, South Lake Union!

Continue reading “Times Surprises No One, Misinforms Its Readers”

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Ballots for the November 8 general election have been mailed out. Numerous drop boxes open today, as do a limited number of accessible voting centers. Be sure to sign your ballot envelope and include contact info in case the county questions your signature. If you mail your ballot, put postage on the return envelope worth at least 47 cents in King and Pierce County, and 68 cents in Snohomish County.

The Secretary of State’s website has a markable online ballot, along with a lot more information regarding accessible voting.

King County has 43 drop boxes. Among them are ones at:

• Schmitz Hall on the UW campus between University Way NE and 15th Ave NE on the south side of NE 41st St (a block north of NE Campus Pkwy). The box is at the north entrance of the building.
• Seattle Central College a block south of Capitol Hill Station. The box is at the northeast corner of the main building on the west side of Broadway.
• the King County Administration Building, 500 4th Ave, a block east of Pioneer Square Station. The box is at the west entrance on 4th Ave.
• Uwajimaya, just southeast of International District/Chinatown light rail Station. The box is on the east side of the store / west side of 6th Ave S, a block east of the station.
• Beacon Hill Library a block south of Beacon Hill Station.
• Ballard Library, at the corner of NW 57th St and 22nd Ave NE. The box is on the west side of the library.

All are open 24/7.

Continue reading “Ballot Drop Boxes Open Today”

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• Local climate scientists strongly urge a YES vote on I-732.
• PSRC declares ST3 conforms to regional goals.
• No-on-ST3 campaign funded by all the right enemies.
• Seattle task force to address bike safety and the CCC.
• West Seattle Water Taxi breaks ridership record, around what a middling bus line carries.
• Lake Forest Park Council endorses ST3. So does Tukwila.
• Dave Roberts explains the whole debate on I-732. If it loses, and the “Alliance” follows through with their plan to go in the 2018 midterms, we really are screwed.
• I’m lukewarm about a park-like lid over I-5, but if we put housing there I am 100% in.
• How we blew it with Forward Thrust.
• PT has new tech to avoid pedestrian accidents.
• The Seattle City Council’s position on housing seems to be no to microhousing, yes to tents.
• Jon Talton’s objections to a Vancouver-like foreigner tax ($) are more about legal authority than economic merit.
• It is incoherent to support climate action and oppose density.
• A new bargain edits the HALA “grand bargain.”
• BRT is not cheaper than light rail.

This is an open thread.

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Vancouver’s C-Tran, one of the largest suburban transit agencies in the state, will open its bus rapid transit system, “The Vine“, on Sunday, January 8, during a weekend of celebrations.

It is the first bus rapid transit system in the Portland region, and has been over a half-decade in the making. The $53 million project was funded with a $38.5 million federal grant, state contributions, and $7.4 million in local funds from C-Tran, using reserve funding after a sales tax increase was defeated at the ballot. Opponents tried to stop the project with a lawsuit, arguing that BRT did not meet the legal requirements of high-capacity transit that was specified in the ballot text. Next City has a nice write-up of the project’s troubles and general history.

The Vine will operate more like Community Transit’s Swift than Metro’s RapidRide, featuring a wider variety of traditional BRT features. Stations are spaced a third of a mile apart, with only 17 pairs on the 6.7 miles from Downtown Vancouver to Vancouver Mall. Platforms are raised to be level with buses, which have three doors for boarding and three interior bicycle racks for roll-on boarding through the back door. Payment is done off-board, with ticket vending machines at all stations; the Portland region’s new Hop Fastpass fare card will debut next year and C-Tran is one of the launch agencies, so integration with The Vine is expected soon. Sections of Fourth Plain Boulevard, where The Vine runs, will have transit signal priority to help speed up bus travel through the corridor by as much as 10 minutes, despite remaining in mixed traffic.

Fourth Plain is currently served by route 4, and formerly by route 44, which will be replaced by The Vine in January. Replacement of the two routes, among the agency’s most popular, is expected to cost less to operate for C-Tran. The two routes also continued to a transfer with the MAX Yellow Line across the river at Delta Park, which will instead be served by a “frequent cross-river shuttle” from Downtown Vancouver.

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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.

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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.

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This is from a meeting of the 34th District Democrats on July 16. Video by West Seattle Blog

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