Among the most interesting results of Sound Transit’s BRT studies was essentially no ridership benefit from “high investment” BRT options that spent more to dedicate right-of-way for buses.

I asked ST spokesman Geoff Patrick if the ridership model gave a bonus to routes that were more reliable. All models have to ignore certain effects, but omitting this one would have drastic implications for the computed value of bus capital investment.

The short answer is that the models do account for it, but perhaps not as much as someone like me might like. ST’s ridership model takes travel time as an input, and in general a bus with priority treatments will go faster. Moreover, the model assesses a higher ridership penalty for waiting time when compounded by uncertainty about the next arrival. However, specifics of the study corridors negate this time advantage.

In the case of 145th, the short distance means the potential time difference is small. Priority treatments like signal priority and queue jumps will make the usual time difference vs. a true bus lane negligible. And of course the vast majority of the route, on SR 522, will have dedicated lanes.

Meanwhile, on I-405 the investment is used to change the route, not make it faster. The high-investment scenario would add stops, and serve Tukwila Sounder and the planned dense neighborhood at Southcenter. These deviations increase end-to-end travel time enough to reduce ridership just as much as the new destinations increase it. Regrettably, the Southcenter plan doesn’t include Bus option “B2”, which would get buses out of Southcenter muck with the addition of a single on/off ramp.

This is somewhat ironic given Sound Transit’s primary purpose is to build 100% dedicated right of way, mostly light rail and commuter rail, without forcing every block of those alignments to justify those investments with a traffic study. On the other hand, new ROW is expensive, and the choice to use BRT is in practice a choice to cut costs and sacrifice reliability.

Although I don’t have a mathematical model to point to, one of the great things about truly dedicated ROW is that it reduces tail risk. When 145th st backs up because of an accident on I-5, one bus configuration will proceed with minimal delay and one will collapse in congestion. There’s no single answer for how much that peace of mind is worth. Some insist on grade separation; others will take the usually-good-enough priority treatments. For me, true dedicated right of way is the threshold between reliable transit, and not.

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UPDATE 1:31pm: The first train will be “approximately noon” on Saturday and service will be free until the Grand Opening.

UPDATE: 1:15pm:

SDOT has officially announced the launch in a media release, and The Stranger and Seattle Times also have more details.  We are still awaiting details on when the first train will be (other than ‘midday’), the duration of the fare-free period, a published weekday or weekend schedule, and the details of the Grand Opening festivities. From SDOT:

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is excited to announce promotional service on the First Hill Streetcar Line will begin midday on Saturday, January 23. This “soft launch” will feature free rides to introduce the new service, and will be followed in the weeks to come by a grand opening and community celebration.

Funded by Sound Transit, the First Hill Streetcar connects the diverse and vibrant neighborhoods of Capitol Hill, First Hill, the Central District, Little Saigon, Chinatown-International District, and Pioneer Square. The First Hill Streetcar line is just one part of the Seattle Streetcar system that will help provide new mobility options, support economic growth, and strengthen connections in the urban core.

Thank you to the communities, neighbors, and businesses along the line for bearing with us during construction and testing. We appreciate your patience and support. We are excited to see you on the First Hill Streetcar discovering Seattle’s neighborhoods and attractions, commuting to work, and linking to other modes of travel. Learn more about how to ride the streetcar. Stay tuned for details on the grand opening events to follow.

[ORIGINAL POST, 11:00AM:]

Though less than 24 hours away and with no official word from SDOT, the First Hill Streetcar might, just maybe, launch Saturday morning.

Multiple sources speaking anonymously to STB described a relatively chaotic process behind the scenes, with agency staff unable to confirm as of Thursday if the Saturday launch will proceed. News of a sudden ‘soft launch’ angered community groups who had been planning launch festivities for over a year, prompting an apologetic internal letter on Thursday from SDOT Director Scott Kubly that is still the only evidence of the planned launch. Capitol Hill Seattle obtained a copy of the letter this morning:

Dear Community Partners,

I understand that in the past couple of days there might have been confusion caused by news of a soft launch of the First Hill Street Car (FHSC) this coming Saturday. This news might have been confusing because it was unclear whether this soft launch was in lieu of the grand opening celebrations that SDOT had been working with community and neighborhood partners to plan.
I want to clarify that the intent for this coming Saturday is not to replace the celebratory events we want to hold in our neighborhoods, but to ensure that a soft launch of the FHSC is successful and we can ensure that the streetcar is in fact operational. The attached letter articulates SDOT’s commitment to this process and our continued interest in working with our community partners to finally celebrate the successful opening of the FHSC line.

Tomorrow [Friday], SDOT will be contacting the media to announce the soft launch on Saturday. We anticipate this will generate some media attention about the soft launch, but it is our intent to work with you, our community partners, to make sure that the grand opening celebrations are where we concentrate the most media attention.
If you are interested in joining us for the soft launch, your presence and participation will be welcome, but again, I want to reiterate that we are not intending Saturday to be anything other than a soft launch of the FHSC.

Sincerely,

Scott Kubly
Director
City of Seattle Department of Transportation

Director Kubly will be presenting at the city council’s Sustainability and Transportation committee at 2pm today, and we’ll update this post when more information becomes available.

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A lot of commuters, irate at the ever-increasing bottlenecks due to higher and higher freeway usage, have found their scapegoat: non-general-purpose lanes of any flavor.

The problem clearly pre-dated the roll-out of HOT lanes on I-405 north of Bellevue last September.

One of my own state representatives, Steve Bergquist (D – 11th District), resisted toll and HOV lanes before the lanes went live, so his support for scuttling the HOT experiment in its infancy should not be unexpected. Indeed, he is the second signatory on HB 2312, the companion to SB 6152, which got a hearing Thursday, and which Erica wrote about on Friday. As Bergquist admits, he is skeptical of taking away general-purpose lanes:

I think we jumped out ahead of ourselves a little bit on this project. Citizens want to see a reason to have two HOT lanes instead of one or three person carpool lanes instead of two person. My original bill, HB 2289, that I dropped last year would have eased us into a transition and used data to back up moving to 3+ carpool, rather than making such an abrupt jump.

Since September, I have been experiencing firsthand the significant effect this is having on my constituents. I am a small business owner up in the Kirkland / Bellevue area. Trying to commute back to Renton now pretty much anytime between 3 & 7 via 405 from the 520 corridor has added about 15 to 20 minutes to my normal commute, or 10 to 15 if I take alternative side roads which I have been using instead. I don’t think that was the desired impact.

So I’m signed on to continue the conversation and hopefully come up with a few changes that can help everyone in the corridor have a better commute. The bill will probably not be passing in the form it currently sits. But hopefully it will help move the conversation forward and come up with some solutions to many of the constituent frustrations I am hearing about within this corridor.

Continue reading “Priority Lanes & Their Democratic Skeptics”

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• Data from Vancouver suggests the path to stable housing prices lies with the type of housing where supply can expand (condos), not fixed (single family).
• Sound Transit will store buses from Pierce County in a Sodo lot during the day, save $500,000 annually.
• Mukilteo rail platform will open in “weeks”, after many delays.
• Shoreline Lynnwood Link meeting on January 27th.
• Mercer Island issuing parking permits at a grocery store in the town center, for residents only, for a $10 fee.
• You can now check I-405 tolls online.
• Given a likely large ST3 package, Kirkland City Council warming to light rail on the CKC. Pitchforks are still out.
• New owner of Victoria Clipper ($) to open a route between Victoria and Vancouver.
• Driver who murdered cyclist while drunk gets 6.5 years in prison ($).
• More parking = more traffic, and a study shows it’s causation, not just correlation.
• The deep bore tunnel project can’t catch a break; Inslee halts work.
• Frye museum to turn parking lot into a residential tower.
• We didn’t learn a ton from the Constantine/Rogoff U-Link press conference, but you can watch it in its entirety.

This is an open thread.

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While we wait for ULink’s opening date to be formally announced, I thought it’d be good to share ULink’s weekday schedule so riders can start planning their new trips for late March and beyond.

Though the official schedule hasn’t been published, Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray confirmed that there will be no new net service to existing stations, as ULink will extend service to Capitol Hill and UW using the same frequency and span of service Link currently offers. This allows us to extrapolate ULink’s full schedule from the existing one (see Excel file here for the full schedule). With the Sodo base being the only Operations and Maintenance (O&M) facility until 2023, much of the same schedule dynamics will likely endure until East Link opens.

The first 3 southbound trains will still originate in Beacon Hill, with the first train of the day (4:22am) remaining a ‘sweeper’ train limited to 25mph. The first UW to SeaTac train will depart UW at 4:49am.

The first 4 northbound trains will originate in Sodo and run every 12 minutes to UW between 4:48-5:24am, with the first SeaTac to UW train departing SeaTac at 5:04 and arriving at UW at 5:50am.

The duration of 6-minute peak service will vary depending on the station, as peak service will start earlier in the southbound direction and end later in the northbound direction. For example, riders at UW or Capitol Hill headed Downtown will see 6-minute service from roughly 6:00-8:30am and 3:00-6:30pm, whereas riders headed from Downtown to Capitol Hill or UW will see 6-minute service from 6:00-9:30am and 4:00-7:30pm, respectively. Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley riders headed to the airport will continue to have a frequency bonus afforded by being near the O&M facility, with 6-minute service starting at 5:30am.

The last trains of the day will be 12:34am from UW to SeaTac, and 12:04 from SeaTac to UW. The last 3 northbound trains will continue to terminate at Beacon Hill.

Assuming planned bus routes keep their same frequency and span, once Capitol Hill Station is closed Route 49 will continue running every half hour until 2am, while Route 10 will run one or two additional trips beyond Link’s closing time. Once UW Station is closed, the only access to either Downtown or Capitol Hill will be for riders to walk to 15th Avenue NE to catch Route 49, whereas current Route 43 runs at least every half hour until 2:30am (though primarily because trolley coaches are deadheading in service back to base). In fact, many of those coaches will likely still be deadheading to base as Route 44 along the Route 43 pathway, and it may be worth exploring running those routes in service to continue late-night service between Montlake and Capitol Hill, as the marginal cost of doing so is very low.

It will remain to be seen how other connecting routes at UW Station will be handled for first and last trains, but hopefully major routes replacing the 70-series will have timed connections that afford riders at least the same span of service they enjoy today.

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Link’s weekdway ridership was up an impressive 13% in November. It’s looking like Link will finish up the year with around 8% growth. This is especially impressive when you consider that 2014 saw growth of 14.2%.

November’s Link Weekday/Saturday/Sunday average boardings were 35,420 / 22,522 / 23,852, growth of 13.2%, 2.1%, and 9.6% respectively over November 2014. Sounder’s weekday boardings were up 11.4% with ridership increasing 17% on the North line and 11% on the South. Tacoma Link’s weekday ridership decreased -0.1% with overall ridership up 1.4%. Weekday ST Express ridership was up .3%. System wide weekday boardings were up 5.3%, and all boardings were up 7.4%. The complete November Ridership Summary is here.

My charts below the break.

Continue reading “November 2015 Sound Transit Ridership Report: Link up 13%”

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For all the vast differences between Western and Eastern Washington, many political dynamics endure. Much like Seattle vis-à-vis suburban King County, Spokane often finds itself an island of pro-transit urbanity within a largely hostile, anti-transit county. STB (especially former writer Bruce Nourish) has fawned over Spokane Transit Authority (STA) in the past, praising the agency for cutting-edge mapping, customer information, and graphic design, as well as running very efficiently and productively for an agency of its size.

STA lost its STA Moving Forward (full plan PDF) vote in April 2015 by a heartbreaking margin, 50.3% to 49.7%, or just 572 votes. The .3% sales tax boost would have funded an ambitious and even revolutionary proposal for mobility in Spokane and the Inland Empire, including:

• Operational funding for the $70m Central City Line, a frequent electric trolleybus service between Browne’s Addition, Downtown Spokane, WSU-Spokane, Gonzaga University, and Spokane Community College
• Bringing Spokane-Cheney/EWU service up to frequent service standards
• Construction of a new West Plains Transit Center to connect Cheney, Airway Heights, Medical Lake, and Spokane Airport without the need to go to Downtown Spokane
• Boosting evening service to midnight or later on core routes
• Implementing articulated buses and Rapid Ride style treatments on the busiest routes on Division and Sprague 
• Improving all-day, two-way express service between Spokane, Spokane Valley, and Liberty Lake
• Introducing pilot service to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (which also happens to be my hometown)

Within Spokane – 78% of STA’s ridership – the measure passed modestly but healthily, 54-46. Emboldened both by those results and by the resurgent economy, Spokane is getting ready to try again. The Spokesman-Review reports that the Spokane City Council is looking at a Spokane-only vote this year. Since last November, STA’s 10-year revenue forecast has improved by $26m, giving the agency the ability to ask more transit-friendly voters for less authority than before (from .3% to .2%).

Much like Seattle’s Prop 1, cities and their distinct mobility needs should not be held back by rural voters within a transit district who are neither likely to be persuaded nor well-served with transit. A city-only measure would hurt some pro-transit voters, too, especially those in Cheney who voted for the previous measure even more strongly than central Spokane. But Spokane is nonetheless right to go it alone, and perhaps interlocal agreements can be forged to boost service to Cheney/EWU. In the meantime, Cheney could direct their ire toward the likes of Spokane Valley, whose anti-transit and generally backwards politics are only getting worse.

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