by LISA HERBOLD

Seattle Transit Blog editor Martin H. Duke misrepresented my position when he wrote on Saturday:

Council Candidate Lisa Herbold argues that flexibility in single­-family zones will threaten displacement from affordable single-family homes.

Click through to the article in the link above, and you will see that my position relates not to opposing “flexibility,” but to rezoning existing single­-family zones without including a companion housing preservation strategy. When we talk about “flexibility” within single-­family zones, we are not referring to rezones; rather we are referring to expansion of the current DADU program and allowing backyard cottages in existing single-­family zones, which I support. “Flexibility in single-­family” zones presupposes the retention, not the elimination, of the single­-family zone.

So now that we’ve got the definitions straight, on to the rest of the article, which says:

But current law doesn’t prevent a landlord from renovating or rebuilding a single­family home to be more valuable and displacing the tenant. When this redevelopment occurs, the only difference between the law allowing a triplex and demanding a single home is that it forces two additional households out of Seattle.

It’s true that current law doesn’t prevent rebuilding or renovating a single­-family structure that displaces the tenant when a new single family structure is built. But it is not a good comparison because it ignores how upzones create incentives for redevelopment. Hopefully it is understood that the frequency of tenants being displaced after a renovation or rebuilding of a single-family home in single-family zones is less than the frequency of displacement from redevelopment that occurs when the value of property is increased after an upzone. It is that frequency of displacement that makes this a pressing issue when contemplating the upzone of approximately 138,000 single family homes, about 36,000 of them home to renter households.

Finally, the mischaracterization of my position and argument against it ends with this sentence:

Continue reading “Correcting the Record on Single-Family Upzones”

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• SDOT seeking comment on more restrictions for ship canal bridge openings.
• Scott Bonjukian writes at length on Kitsap’s Transit high-speed foot ferries.
• WSDOT  tackling mudslide issues on the North Sounder route.
• Hurrah! Seattle Police step up enforcement of bus lanes.
• UW may crown U-District station with a 240-foot tower.
• Only 0.1% of eligible Seattle residents have received a $20 rebate on their vehicle license fee for transit, but the City is looking at reducing paperwork.
• The drive for TOD at Tacoma Mall(!)
• Othello TOD project now in trouble due to fraud allegations.
• Seattle-area drivers apparently among the most accident-prone.
• Rapid Metro service growth leading to sporadic route cancellations.
• King County Council mulling Lake Washington ferries.
• Struggling Sodo arena plan adds a pedestrian/bike bridge over the train tracks.
• O’Brien proposes unionization for Uber drivers ($); political, legal obstacles to follow.
• Bertha is back underground ($).
• Nobody seems to know when the First Hill Streetcar will open.

This is an open thread.

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The miscellaneous route restructures for King County Metro proposed for March 2016, transmitted from the King County Executive Dow Constantine to the County Council last week, included some good news for South King County Commuters:

Per Executive Constantine:

Metro is proposing service additions to peak period service on two routes in the I-5 South Corridor: routes 179 and 190. Metro was awarded State Regional Mobility Grant funding for these routes to relieve congestion on Interstate 5 between Federal Way and downtown Seattle, which accommodates over 150,000 vehicles every day, with very high volumes during peak periods. During peak periods, it can take commuters more than an hour to drive the 22 miles between these places due to congestion. Adding two AM and two PM peak trips to both routes 179 and 190 will enable Metro to serve more riders during these periods, relieve crowding on existing service, and reduce single occupancy vehicle traffic. Both Metro and Sound Transit partnered together in pursuing this grant funding. The Regional Mobility Grant will also fund additional service for Sound Transit Route 577.

Route 179 serves western Federal Way, Federal Way Transit Center, and downtown Seattle. Route 190 serves Redondo Heights Park & Ride, Star Lake P&R, and downtown Seattle.

Sound Transit will be adding two AM peak direction trips and one PM peak direction trip on ST Express 577 in the upcoming September service change.

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The King County Council will soon consider the restructure proposal that Metro submitted last week to take effect in March. They’ve set up an online form for public testimony on these changes. Our sources tell us that the initial comments from this tool, not widely publicized, are running heavily against any changes.

Most STB readers likely understand some basic principles of bus service planning. The University Link restructure enables higher frequency and easy trips to more locations by placing less emphasis on one-seat rides. It also leverages the enormous time advantage of transferring to U-Link from many parts of Northeast Seattle. During peak hours, most riders will still retain their direct buses if they so choose.

The rough STB staff consensus is that the Northeast Seattle changes are a huge step forward for transit connectivity and frequency. The Capitol Hill changes, while significantly watered down from a fantastic first draft, make some important improvements over the status quo for the 8, 11, 48, and 49.

Service changes of this magnitude are a huge organizational effort for Metro, and if the Council strangles this proposal it will only make Metro even more reluctant to rationalize the network County-wide. Moving this plan forward is critical to the system’s ability to improve in speed, efficiency, and usability.

So take a few moments to fill out the short form and tell the Council what you think about what Metro has done. It’s not clear what the deadline is, and there will be no new information, so do it now.

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Monday, September 7 is Labor Day.

King County Metro, Link Light Rail, Sound Transit Express, the Tacoma Link Streetcar, the South Lake Union Streetcar, the West Seattle Water Taxi, Pierce Transit, Community Transit local buses, Intercity Transit, and Everett Transit will be running on their Sunday schedules.

Sounder, the Tacoma Link streetcar, the Vashon Water Taxi, Kitsap Transit, Community Transit commuter buses, Skagit Transit, Island Transit, Whatcom Transit, Mason Transit, Jefferson Transit, Clallam Transit, Grays Harbor Transit, and Twin Transit will not be in service.

The Seattle Center Monorail will run 8:30 am – midnight Saturday, August 5 through Labor Day, in support of the huge crowds expected for Bumbershoot.

For Washington State Ferries, check the info on your specific route.

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Amid the general hand-wringing about growth in Seattle lately – be it from Danny Westneat, Crosscut, or innumerable KUOW radio hours – there has been no shortage of discussion about the relative lack of transit service in South Lake Union. A combination of fewer transit options, abundant parking, and an affluent workforce have yielded a drive-alone rate in SLU (46%) that is more than double that of the traditional downtown core (22%). Though no one would argue that transit has kept up with growth, our agencies are working hard to catch up, with many potential projects to address the problem:

• By September, Prop 1 will have boosted service to every route in SLU.
• By March 2016, RapidRide C will have extended to Fairview/Aloha in SLU, and will likely share new transit lanes with Route 40 and the SLU Streetcar.
• SDOT has asked Sound Transit to shift an ST3 Ballard line eastward to two new stops in SLU.
• If/whenever Bertha finishes the tunnel, Route 8 may shift to Harrison and be (mostly) free of Denny, and bikes will have a new route on Thomas.
• The Downtown-to-Roosevelt HCT project will likely positively impact SLU arterials for transit.
• If the U-Link restructure is approved, new peak service to SLU will be added from Lake City, Wedgwood, Ravenna, Green Lake, and Northgate.

Aside from an ST3-funded subway – a line at least 15 years away if all goes well – the good projects above still generally tinker around the margins while continuing to treat SLU as a peripheral neighborhood. But SLU deserves transit service befitting what it has become, which is the northern half of Downtown. That means a lot of peak bus service, at least until 2023.

But if you look at the current peak network operated by Metro, Sound Transit, and Community Transit, you could be forgiven for thinking that the respective agencies still view SLU primarily as layover space for buses. Aside from Route 309, the closest any I-5 buses get to SLU is the view they get from I-5 while slogging towards Stewart Street. From the south, it’s much the same, with all routes petering out in Belltown or Denny Triangle and either deadheading back to base or laying over. From the eastside, the 554’s routing is particularly disappointing, with the last stop on 4th/Lenora in Belltown, from which it then deadheads into SLU to layover. Despite all the growth, the peak network still acts as though Downtown ends at Stewart. And of course, Mercer Street has no transit at all.

A perfect storm is brewing, with massive growth in north Downtown and SLU, Convention Place likely closing a couple years early, ever fewer buses in the tunnel, too few Link vehicles to mitigate lost tunnel capacity, and progressively degraded surface transit pathways. We need more transit, and we need more surface right-of-way (ROW), especially in booming Denny Triangle and SLU. Fortunately, these two neighborhoods have two wide arterials that are not choked with traffic, have a direct connection to the I-5 express lanes, and could have a relatively uncongested pathway into Downtown: Fairview and Virginia.

A proposal:

• Shift most non-SR 520 peak service away from Stewart/Olive/Howell to Fairview/Virginia, drawn from the following routes:
  • Metro Routes 74, 76, 77, 111, 114, 157, 158, 159, 177, 178, 190, 192, 301, 304, 312, 316, 355
  • Community Transit routes 402, 405, 410, 413, 415, 416, 417, 421, 422, and 425
  • Sound Transit Routes 510, 511, 512, 513, 554, 577, 578, 590, 592, 594, and 595
• Add two-way bus lanes on Fairview between Mercer and Denny
• Add two-way bus lanes on Virginia, including a contraflow bus lane between 2nd-8th
• Add a bus-only turn lane from northbound Fairview to the Mercer on-ramp
• Add a bus-only turn lane from the Mercer off-ramp to southbound Fairview
• Make the Mercer off-ramp from the express lanes HOV/Transit only
• Remove the bus-only lane on Howell Street

Here’s how it could work.

Continue reading “Fairview & Virginia: New Transit Pathways for SLU?”

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As supply-and-demand skeptics are fond of pointing out, real estate is not an undifferentiated commodity, but in fact is a variety of products tailored to a wide range of tastes and requirements. One of the more difficult customers to serve under current urban market conditions is large households, in the most conventional case families with multiple children. As Josh Feit argued a few years ago, failing to do so is not only a tragedy for those families, but also for the city as a whole.

The housing shortage cuts across all parts of the market, but it’s hardest to see a simple solution for large households. In multifamily zones, market-rate development scarcely builds any 2-bedroom units, and 3 bedrooms or more are rare indeed: only 2% of multifamily units in 2009. Some households will win the public housing lottery, but everyone else will bid up the existing single-family stock, a stock that is fixed by simple geometry and the urban growth boundary.

There are denser housing forms that can easily tolerate larger households, like townhomes, row homes, duplexes, and triplexes. All of these tend to larger unit sizes and often include a yard that many might consider important for children. The buildable land in multifamily zones, already inadequate to meet multifamily demand, is likely too precious for much of this construction. That’s why the HALA plan opening up single family zones was the best chance to prevent them from becoming (remaining?) economically exclusive communities.

Council Candidate Lisa Herbold argues that flexibility in single family zones will threaten displacement from affordable single family homes. But current law doesn’t prevent a landlord from renovating or rebuilding a single-family home to be more valuable and displacing the tenant. When this redevelopment occurs, the only difference between the law allowing a triplex and demanding a single home is that it forces two additional households out of Seattle. Whatever compassion we feel for displaced households should also extend to those who never get to live in our city in the first place, solely due to arbitrary regulations.

The HALA plan, if enacted, will do a lot to meet some (but not nearly all) of the demand for housing in Seattle. But the missing HALA upzone creates a hole that tomorrow’s large families will slip through.

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Image via Division Ave blog.

Last week, after residents in his new council district protested a new live-work development in Ballard, city council member Mike O’Brien took the unusual step of slipping a new design review mandate into an otherwise standard-issue omnibus cleanup bill. The change O’Brien made would require design review–a process that can add more than a year to a project timeline–when the combined development proposals on two adjacent lots exceed the maximum for a single lot according to the city’s design review standards. In low-rise zones, which is where the change is targeted, that means that two adjacent lots under development can’t exceed eight units total. That design-review trigger applies even if two adjacent lots are being developed by different builders; more than eight, and you’re looking at an automatic, time-consuming design review.

The amendment, which O’Brien acknowledges was unorthodox, was intended to address developments like the controversial townhouses going in at 71st and Division in Ballard, where six live/work units will replace a single-family home that sat astride two historic lots; in that case, the developer took advantage of an old lot line that hadn’t been used in decades to build three units per lot.

But the change will have sweeping implications for development potential on smaller lots across the city. O’Brien says the new requirement is “intended to address instances where a developer in a low-rise or neighborhood commercial zone will break a project up into a couple of different projects to avoid going through design review.” O’Brien acknowledges that the city already has plans to overhaul the design review process next year, but says that in the meantime, “we’re going to continue to set rules that are going to allow more and more people to live in Seattle, but there’s got to be an expectation that when we set those rules, they are going to be followed.”

Bruce Harrell, who proposed an unsuccessful amendment stripping the design review changes from the omnibus bill, said at last week’s meeting that although “Council Member O’Brien and the [Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability] committee had some good intentions in mind to protect neighbors from developers circumventing the system and using what could be called loopholes and that kind of thing … I just think it’s a little dangerous to do a one-off in the omnibus legislation,” especially when the HALA committee already plans to take up design review next year.

Continue reading “O’Brien Amendment Sidesteps HALA to Add Months to Small Projects”

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If all goes well, by 4:30pm today we’ll know what will be considered for an ST3 package.  The Board will be deliberating the Priority Projects List that, if approved, would direct ST staff to study each project for cost, ridership, etc for inclusion in the System Plan and the eventual ballot measure. Like a cut in a round of golf, today’s motion will be exclusionary, eliminating non-listed projects from further consideration, while not revealing much about the eventual projects that will make it all the way through to ST3. With specific projects in each subarea, this list is what will kickoff what’s sure to be a an intense and earnest 1.5 years of debate, compromise, and horse trading.

Though the Priority Projects List is one of the last items on the Board’s agenda, we’ll be liveblogging throughout the meeting as other items of interest arise, including ST’s Transit Development Plan, a Tacoma Trestle Project update, approval of a small ($1.5M) cost increase for Capitol Hill Station work, and authorizing the construction contract for the Point Defiance Bypass.

Watch the video above beginning at 1:30pm, or follow along on Twitter. As soon as the meeting begins, we’ll post the Priority Project List for your perusal.

1:35 The meeting has begun. Here is the ST3 Priority Project List that the Board will be deliberating today.

Continue reading “Sound Transit Board Meeting Liveblog: What Will Survive for ST3?”

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