This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Amid all this streetcar hubub, I’ve been remiss in not talking about the emerging crisis with respect to the Steel Electric ferries that service the Port Townsend-Keystone route. The 80-year-old ferries have been pulled from service and are unlikely to return.

The Everett Herald has been all over this story, and it seems like a pretty big screw-up at all levels. The state legislature approved replacements in 2001, but the replacements were too large to dock at Keystone! So now we’re looking at 16 months or so before a local shipbuilder can design and build new boats.

In the meantime, the 90-minute passenger-only ferry being proposed from Seattle to Pt. Townsend sounds great. I’d make a weekend of that.

In a press conference today, Gov. Gregoire announced plans to build three new ferries at a cost of $100M by borrowing money from other ferry projects. The passenger ferry from Seattle will begin service in January.

Fun Fact: These ferries were built in 1927 to move people around the San Francisco Bay. When the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges were built, they were sold to the Puget Sound Navigation company and renamed (via Wikipedia).

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This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

The No. 8 bus, scourge of many, will get more service above and beyond TransitNow, due to a partership with the city and some local businesses:

The Route 8 bus, which runs east and west on Denny Way, between Capitol Hill — past South Lake Union– and Queen Anne will come every 15 minutes between 6 and 7:30 p.m., instead of every half-hour.

The city, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Vulcan, Group Health and REI are each giving $21,800 to the expansion over the next two years.

“It’s going to help,” [Gretchen] DeGroot said as she waited for the No. 8 on First Avenue near Denny Way. It was 6:15 p.m., and the next bus was scheduled to arrive about 6:35 p.m. “The fun thing about the 8 is you never know when it’s going to come.

Anecdotally, it seems that reliability, not frequency, is the No. 8’s problem, as Ms. DeGroot suggests. And that’s not really the Metro’s problem, it’s the fact that Denny Way is a tough cookie of a street. I give SDOT and Metro props for doing the best with it. The light timings are acually pretty good, and they’ve all but eliminated the ability to make backup-inducing left-hand turns.

Yet, as Denny Way transforms from parking lots and gas stations to apartments and retail, the traffic is likely to increase. Will the extra No. 8 buses help, or will they just stack up 2 and 3 deep during rush hour? It’s getting to the point where it’s almost as fast to ride the No. 2 or No. 3 buses from Queen Anne, through downtown, and up Capitol Hill than to take your chances with the No. 8.

Lowering Aurora Avenue and reconnecting the street grid between Queen Anne and South Lake Union will help disperse traffic, but that project is still years off. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how the added bus service helps.

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This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

It’s a day of nostalgia, apparently.

David Brewster interviews Seattle civic legend Jim Ellis, who worked on the 1968 “Forward Thrust” bond package:

The Forward Thrust package in 1968 would have given the area a system of amazing scope. It would have been completed in 1985 and fully paid off in 2008. It would have been heavy rail, largely in subways, with two prongs north, two prongs south, and two prongs on the Eastside. Unlike Portland’s system, which is largely on the street, this system would have been separated from traffic and much faster. It probably would have done a fair amount toward shaping dense neighborhoods and concentrating urban growth. All this at one quarter the local cost of a completed (much smaller and slower) Sound Transit system.

Elsewhere, Seattle Metblogs reminds us that the Green Line — the first line of the monorail system, was set to open December 15, 2007, otherwise known as this Saturday

IIRC, the Monorail folks eventually punted on that start date, saying that htey’d have a starter line open by then, but that it would take a couple more years to get all the way to West Seattle and Ballard.

But that’s all water under the (crumbling) bridge.

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This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

I snapped the photos above on my way to lunch at Whole Foods today. The sight of that many people cramming themsevles into a public transit vehicle for no real reason speaks volumes about why people prefer trains to buses.

Here’s an eyewitness report from a reader on the scene downtown:

I’m kicking myself for not having brought my camera to work today. My
office is at 6th & Stewart, and we have a great bird’s-eye view of the tiny rally for the SLUT’s inaugural passenger run.

At one point, several Metro buses and the Monorail were passing through that intersection while bike messengers circled the crowd and workers from a nearby daycare steered what looked like a miniature hay wagon stuffed with toddlers — it would have made a great “Spot the alternative modes of transportation!” game. (“Spot the VIABLE modes” would have been a much shorter round, unfortunately.)

They’re getting ready to do a second run on the Purple line. The crowd has mostly dispersed, revealing what appears to be a balding man in a skirt doing a celebratory scarf dance. (Not helping the cause, dude.)

What, no rickshaws? I’m disappointed, Seattle.

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This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

It hasn’t gotten nearly as much press as the Seattle Streetcar, but Community Transit in Snohomish County is working on a bus rapid transit system along Highway 99 that could be very successful, and will serve a lot more people. Swift will connect downtown Everett with the Aurora Transit Center, starting in 2009.

It has all the trappings of a good BRT system:

• stations that are well spaced out (so it doesn’t have to stop every 2 blocks)
• real-time bus information
• ticket vending machines (so people don’t fiddle with change and waste the driver’s time)
• dedicated right-of-way
• roomy, low-floor buses (easy wheelchair access, onboard bus racks!)
• signal priority

It’s all possible due to a collaboration between Community Transit and Everett Transit, Today’s Seattle Times notes:

CT and Everett last week transformed decades of struggle — including repeated attempts in the state Legislature to forcibly merge the two bus systems — into a display of harmony as they formalized plans to create a “trainlike” bus system along their shared Highway 99 corridor.

Further south, WSDOT has been building dedicated transit lanes on Aurora Ave in Shoreline. Phase 1 is complete, and Phase 2 will finish in 2012. So, when King County gets RapidRide going, we’ll have BRT all the way from Everett to Seattle along Highway 99.

Will it be as good as light rail from Seattle to Everett? No, of course not. There’s still the issue of crossing the Aurora Bridge, for example, without getting stuck in traffic. And an 80-passenger bus is more expensive to operate than a 400-passenger train. And (presumably) the Swift buses will have to move into general traffic lanes to bypass the slower local buses. And it’s still a bus. And on, and on…

But despite all that, it’s still got the potential to be a solid transit alternative. Sound Transit’s plan wouldn’t have gotten light rail all the way to Everett even by 2027. So having something up and running, even by 2012, is certainly welcome.

Photo “borrowed” from Community Transit’s web site.

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This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

After much wrangling, the Port voted unianimously to buy the Eastside rail corridor. The decision on dual-use has been kicked down the road, but the important thing is that the corridor is now slated to become public property.

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