The Sound Transit bills are thick on the ground in Olympia. Josh Feit found this one, and it’s got the Senate Transportation Chair as a sponsor:

The legislation, sponsored by the Democratic contingent from the 22nd Legislative District in Thurston County around Olympia—senator Karen Fraser, D-22, Thurston County, and representatives Chris Reykdal, D-22, Tumwater, and Sam Hunt, D-22, Olympia— would allow Sound Transit to expand its boundaries west so that I-5 corridor cities which are in counties that are “contiguous” to existing ST counties, like Thurston county’s Olympia, could be included in the future if voters wanted.

The bill is SB 5780 and the House version is HB 1921. Aside from the 22nd District, sponsors include Senate Transportation Chair Curtis King (R-Yakima), Sen. Randi Becker (R-Yelm), and Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-Snohomish).

If I read the text correctly, the ST Board and local councils would have to agree to annex. The new territory would form its own subarea and be taxed at the prevailing rate elsewhere in the district. Although it’s not entirely clear, I believe the only election would be in the annexed territory, not in the ST district as a whole.

I have mixed feelings about this proposal. I have no objection to ST Express or Sounder service to Olympia, and giving state employees a visceral stake in ST is probably wise for the agency’s long-term health. On the other hand, in practice the rail line is quite far from the center city. More fundamentally, a bigger district means annexing a relatively anti-transit electorate, likely raising the hurdle to pass a Sound Transit package.

Josh has lots of quotes about the bill.

Yesterday HB1180 — granting Sound Transit taxing authority to fund an ST3 measure — passed the House Transportation Committee by a 13-12 vote, advancing it to the House floor (video here, starting at 47:20 and again at 51:00). You can see the list of committee members here.

In a remarkable display of anti-tax ideological purity trumping any notions of local control, all 11 Republicans voted against the bill, including all 5 that represent part of the Sound Transit District. Rep. Linda Kochmar (R-Federal Way) said it was

not clear to me how much the average property owner would pay. I’m not sure when the bonds are going to be repaid from ST2 [while ST3 MVET would be in addition to that.] But the bigger problem, though we do have people and businesses that want Sound Transit in my district, is that I don’t have any guarantee. My subarea pays $13m per year for nothing. The money basically went to the Eastside to extend light rail to Bellevue and Redmond. I need a guarantee that subregion money will benefit that subregion, and I need to know how much this is going to cost.

Setting aside that “nothing” includes a significant amount of express bus service and a Link line coming ever closer to Federal Way, it is simply not true* that South King dollars have gone to fund East Link. The deferral of the only ST2 station in Federal Way is a result of collapsing South King revenues; if anything, a loan backed by East Link performance may help to restore some of the Federal Way funding. On the other hand, if Rep. Kochmar’s concerns are sincere, a little education and some assurances from ST board members that Federal Way is a core priority of ST3 would probably win some important votes.

Continue reading “ST3 Bill Passes House Committee”

Last Wednesday, a long line of public officials and organizational leaders showed up to testify in front of the State House Transportation Committee in favor of House Bill 1180, which would grant Sound Transit the authority to take a new tax package, commonly referred to as “ST3”, to the voters for the next round of light rail construction and other new ST services.

Rep. Jake Fey (D – Tacoma), the prime sponsor of HB 1180, invoked the memory of Ruth Fisher, who as Chair of the House Transportation Committee, led the way for creation of Sound Transit. Fey represents the 27th District, which Fisher represented. The hearing can be viewed here.

The bill is scheduled for a vote in committee Monday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. Watch today’s meeting live.
Continue reading “First Vote on Sound Transit 3 Authority Today”

It looks like a rough life being a trolley shoe. Dayton got low-floor Gillig trolley buses with auxiliary power units.

A few weeks ago I attended the TCC organized Transit Talk. Along with transit champions Marko Liias and Jessyn Farrell, WSDOT Public Transit Division’s Stan Suchan rounded out the panel. During the Q&A I brought up the failure of our HOV system and asked what could be done, specifically mentioning HOV 3+ as a possibility in those stretches where even WSDOT admits the HOV lanes aren’t meeting reliability standards.

In my opinion, the answers were underwhelming. Senator Liias stated that it was very hard for a politician to take away something from a constituent without giving back something in return. Representative Farrell seemed to agree.

WSDOT’s Stan Suchan basically said the agency needed more time to study the situation. The agency has questions on whether moving to HOV 3+ would result in breaking down some current 2 person carpools into 2 SOVs, thus increasing congestion. To my mind the obvious question is if WSDOT’s definition of congestion is looking at person throughput or only vehicular.

Multiple times both Mr. Suchan and Senator Liias stated that we need to wait for the I-405 widening project to finish up and the results studied before anything could be done on other corridors. Considering that in many places our HOV lanes are worthless right now during peak hours, being no faster than the general purpose lanes, I found the need to wait years to fix the situation disappointing.

That was just my impression from an on the spot answer so I wrote Mr. Suchen in order to make sure I got the whole story. He was gracious enough to write back with substantive responses. Below are my questions and his full responses.

Continue reading “HOV 3+ not happening any time soon”

4th & Battery (SDOT Photo)

• Rampant bus-lane violations continue, but SDOT’s request to SPD for more enforcement appears to have been drafted but never sent.
• The Legislature is rightly looking to expand the distracted driving ban to include email and web browsing ($), not covered by the 2007 law.
• Republican Senators troll Governor Inslee, dropping a bill to kill Bertha and cancel the project. Just as quickly, Senate Transportation Committee Chair Curtis King (R-Yakima) kills it. ($)
• Publicola looks at the political process for ST3
• HB 1180 (ST3 authority) was heard yesterday by the House Transportation Committee (video here). Overwhelmingly supportive testimony runs from 15:30 to 93:00.
• Car vs. Link crash in Columbia City last Sunday. The scene was cleared in less than 10 minutes, and delays were minimal. Bravo!
• Mr Kubly Goes to Ostrava: frustrated by First Hill streetcar delays, SDOT Director Scott Kubly will make to trip to the Czech manufacturer. (Meanwhile, one of the streetcars is at sea near the Azores.)
• Under a new lease deal, Metro will pay the City of Renton 50% more for 25% fewer Park & Ride spaces at Renton Transit Center.
• Parts of NE 43rd and Brooklyn Ave NE have reopened to traffic.
• “A person walking their dog, and the dog takes a dump on your front lawn, you expect them to clean up after themselves.” – Senator Hasegawa on why Sound Transit should pay for residential parking permits. Thankfully, Martin follows that quote with something much more sensible.
• What is the future of Sea-Tac Airport? Another terminal? More satellite gates? ($)
• No more Route 2 misery. Spring St to get bus lanes this summer between 3rd and 6th.
• What do you think of a Swiss style tram from Port Angeles to Hurricane Ridge?

This is an open thread.

Tom Rasmussen has opted not to seek re-election to City Council.  According to The Stranger, transit advocates are “dancing on his grave.” Having attended the last STB board meeting, I can say with certainty that no grave dancing occurred, but it’s true that Rasmussen belongs to the camp who’d rather improve the existing bus network than spend money on streetcars.  He wrote thoughtfully on this site about his bus commute and how it might be improved.

West Seattle is at an interesting junction (ahem) in terms of transit: RapidRide C is quite popular and will be expanded with Prop 1. Development in the urbanized areas is continuing, despite the usual protests.

With expanded bus service in motion, the most immediate transit issue facing the new Council District 1, which covers West Seattle, is light rail and ST3.  Sending Link over the Duwamish will be geographically difficult and possibly unaffordable within Sound Transit’s self-imposed $15B regional package cap. On the other hand, federal grant money is always possible, the district has some well-connected residents, and keeping West Seattle in the fold is part of Seattle’s strategy to present a unified front in advance of a possible vote in 2016.

District 1 residents will get a sneak peek at potential candidates on February 5. I’d encourage our West Seattle readers to attend and let us know what you think.  It will be an interesting few years for whomever wins the seat.

At December’s Sound Transit Board Meeting*, Mayor Murray offered an interesting amendment to the “building blocks” section of the long range plan (79:30):

T18. In addition, as part of implementing a regional transit system, Sound Transit can explore policy and funding alternatives to address significant regional facilities, such as tunneling for future core system capacity through downtown Seattle; operations, maintenance and storage facilities; and transit vehicles.

The introduction began a bizarre sequence where Mr. Murray immediately left for another event, leaving Mike O’Brien to defend the measure; a series of board members stating that a second tunnel was an ST 4 or 5 discussion and therefore premature; and it finally going to defeat 6-8 (O’Brien, Constantine, Balducci, Phillips, Peterson, and Strickland voted yes).

This would have been the first (small) step to suspending subarea equity when funding a second downtown tunnel. This train of thought goes way back to the Mayoral campaign, where candidate Murray critiqued Mayor McGinn’s potentially city-only rail plans by saying that Seattle couldn’t afford light rail alone, and that tweaking subarea equity was the only way to build it. And in fact, if you define the minimum Seattle light rail increment as serving Ballard and West Seattle, that may be an accurate statement given the agreed revenue limits of the next package.**

Continue reading “Murray Suggests Regional Funding of Second DSTT”