Last week, the Mountlake Terrace city council gave its nod of approval (PDF) to a small rezone proposal in the Lake Ballinger neighborhood, an area less than a mile away from the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center at I-5 and 236th St SW.  The rezone is modest– an increase in height limit of 35-feet (3-story) to 50-feet (4-story).  There are already existing four-story structures in the area, built prior to code revisions in 1995 and which have since been grandfathered in.  The amendment once again permits four-story construction that would be conforming to code.

The approved proposal was actually the result of a compromise between the City and some area homeowners, who raised typical NIMBY concerns of traffic, views, etc.  Public testimony against the amendment was sufficient enough to force a revision of the original rezone and require that only properties in the north half of the zone be affected.  According to the City, the compromise protects views from the single-family areas to the east, which are ironically situated between the rezoned district and the freeway station.

More below the jump.

Continue reading “Mountlake Terrace’s Quest for Density”

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Mayor McGinn’s office announced last week that Seattle has selected Nelson/Nygaard, authors of the City’s Transit Master Plan (TMP), to conduct the federally funded $900,000 study of the downtown connector on 4th and 5th Avenues, which we discussed in detail last year.

The TMP argues that the connector is the most cost-effective streetcar line in terms of gaining new riders, although that’s largely a function of its length and it would presumably score worse in a passenger-mile calculation. It is also attractive because it links the two more advanced lines, is one of the cheaper streetcar options at $74m in capital, and is a necessary component of any line out to Fremont or up Eastlake.

Seattle’s next round of streetcar construction is supposed to be “rapid streetcar,” implying more priority treatments than the South Lake Union Line. However, observers of the First Hill Streetcar construction might be skeptical of SDOT’s fortitude in giving large transit investments the priority they deserve.

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Thanks to KCTS, here are Rob Ketcherside and I talking about the history and future of urban rail in Seattle. Not my finest public speaking performance, and editing out the questions makes the structure seem odd, but people seemed to like it.

 

More HistoryLink videos are here.

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Recently a developer has been using a loophole to build small-lot houses in SF5000 zones in Seattle.  Single family zones are classified by the minimum lot size allowed for each home, and the options are SF5000, SF7200, SF9600, and residential small lot (as low as 2,500 square feet, but there aren’t many RSL zones in Seattle).  Publicola reports that Richard Conlin has proposed interim legislation  to end this construction of small lot homes in single family zones.  Conlin’s legislation is exactly the wrong direction for a growing city.  Over 27,000 new households predicted to move to Seattle between 2010 and 2020 in Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan’s Housing Appendix (PDF).  Yet the same appendix predicts only 865 of those households will have children.  We’re out of space for single family homes, and it’s time to question whether every one needs to take up as much land as they’re currently required to.

We live in a city, not the suburbs.  SF5000, 7200, and 9600 zoning probably made sense 100 years ago when Seattle was a small city, trying to plan out the next 50 years or so.  But we’ve grown well beyond our original vision.

I propose we remove minimum lot sizes on single family homes, or at least dramatically reduce them.

We aren’t building many new single family homes, so removing minimum square footage requirements won’t dramatically change our city.  But as homes are redeveloped, it will allow more homes to be built on the same amount of land.  This will increase density and allow more people to live in Seattle even if they want to live in single family homes.  A city-wide change like this will spread out new development, changing each neighborhood slowly and by a small amount.

Write your Council members* immediately and tell them what you think about this – they’ll meet on Monday to vote on the emergency legislation.

* Richard Conlin Chair, Tim Burgess Vice Chair, Mike O’Brien Member, Sally J. Clark Alternate

Update 9/10/12: The City Council passed this emergency legislation.  Of course, it’s still possible that they could take up my proposal and reduce/remove SF lot size minimums.

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An intergovernmental workgroup has completed its work and released its report about the Montlake Bridge and the 520 project’s impact on flows across it, written by Nelson/Nygaard. The results hit the street today and will be considered by the Council on Monday. Here’s the one page summary (.doc). The full report is here.

WSDOT included a second bascule bridge in its preferred alternative, which would add two HOV lanes to the current four general purpose lanes and widen each. The city pushed back, reflecting neighborhood opposition to a wider roadway. So a new workgroup developed “triggers” for new bascule bridge construction.

The study looked at bike/ped, transit, and “mainline” impacts. By “mainline”, they mean traffic flow on the 520 bridge. It’s bad news for anyone who wanted to see a new bridge. The conclusions were:
Continue reading “Seattle Releases Montlake Bridge Report”

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Making buses (and mixed-traffic transit generally) work well can be a complex business. Streets need to work acceptably for all users — pedestrians, transit, bikes, freight and cars — and adjacent property owners. Walking through it, as I do, most days of the week, the intersection of Dexter and Mercer strikes me as a disaster for all road users that should be ringing alarm bells on high at SDOT and Metro. KIRO’s Chris Sullivan sums it up:

Mercer backs up terribly heading toward I-5 in the afternoon, creating a spill-over on the north-south side streets that have to cross it. It’s become so bad drivers are now calling it the Dexter Disaster and the Westlake Wrangle. Many are sitting through multiple lights without moving an inch.

Dexter and Westlake are both used by transit, and after the fall restructure, Westlake will host the new Route 40 trunk route to Fremont, Ballard, Crown Hill and Northgate. At the risk of stating the obvious, the routes on Dexter and Weslake will not thrive if their PM peak trips take half an hour to get through a half-mile stretch of South Lake Union. Moreover, some of the few restructure options Metro has to save money on unproductive service in north-central Seattle (which it must, to find the money to pay for additional service on RapidRide E) involve shifting the 5 or 16 off Aurora onto Dexter or Westlake. Those ideas will be DOA if these streets don’t work. More after the jump.

Continue reading “Fixing the “Dexter Disaster” is Vital for Transit”

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I wrote at Seattle’s Land Use Code about the upcoming emergency vote Councilmember Richard Conlin has proposed to stop development of some small lot cottage development in single-family neighborhoods. Why a few unique cottages being successfully developed under existing code is an emergency is still a mystery to me, especially since this is exactly the kind of infill development many of us wanted when the Council undertook a review of Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit regulations years ago. The emergency vote seems to be emblematic of the Seattle Problem—trying to make good things happen but then when they do, imposing rules that effectively prevent those good things.

The substance of the issue is that a developer has figured out what the planners at City Hall call the arcane details of the land use and tax code to figure out how to build tall, cool looking cottages on small and irregular lots in single-family neighborhoods. This has provoked the ire of some single-family neighbors who, in turn, have provoked the Council to throw on the brakes. The truth is that there are very few of these houses being built, and what’s so bad about them being “out of scale” with the surrounding neighborhood.

The fact is that the emergency in Seattle is that we have yet to see innovative land use solutions for Transit Oriented Development, for infill, and for other housing options. It’s true we have apodments and other efforts are underway to make a dent in our need for more housing, so why would we stop something that seems to be addressing that need?

Contact the Council—there isn’t much time, the vote would happen Monday—and let them know what you think. I posted this message to Councilmember Conlin’s Facebook page (it was subsequently deleted by Conlin) and I urge you to give your thoughts about whether this issue even needs a vote. Shouldn’t we wait and see whether this is a problem? Maybe it’s actually a good thing.

Continue reading “Big Houses, Small Lots, and the Seattle Problem”

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Earlier today Kevin Desmond responded to my post last Friday about RapidRide C and D not having ORCA card readers downtown. In general, his point is RapidRide will be an improvement over existing service at a low cost, but there are a few parts yet to be fully deployed.

I want to clarify certain points about my previous post which I think were not as clear as possible.

First, the focus of my post was entirely on Downtown, and specifically on the one-two punch that the one-year absence of ORCA card readers and elimination of the RFA will have on degrading the speed and reliability RapidRide C and D  as well as other 3rd Ave service. While RapidRide and elimination of the RFA are different issues, their effect on riders downtown are interrelated. RapidRide will be faster outside of Downtown and more frequent in most locations, but those benefits will be damped by the added delay in Downtown. If there were any stops where ORCA card readers should have been prioritized it would have been these few stops. Continue reading “Clarifying Points: RapidRide and RFA”

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by KEVIN DESMOND, King County Metro General Manager

Adam’s Aug. 31 post about the C and D line and RapidRide program expressed disappointment that our launch at the end of the month will not include ORCA readers and the real time signs that are standard at major RapidRide stops. Both of these features require communications backbones and downtown Seattle is a complex environment to lay fiber. We are taking advantage of a planned, Seattle funded project to install the fiber next year, and by doing so we are stretching very limited public dollars as far as we can.

We have a vision for our transit service downtown which includes RapidRide. We applied for and received two federal grants, in partnership with Seattle, to enhance the transit environment downtown, especially on Third Avenue. The grants, along with existing RapidRide funding, will allow Metro to install ORCA readers, real time signs and develop other off-board payment/ticketing devices.

Staff from both Metro and the city of Seattle worked shoulder to shoulder for many months in order to deliver the C and D lines to downtown Seattle – on time and on budget. They’ve problem-solved literally thousands of details as we count down to the Sept. 29 launch. We admit not every feature will be fully operational – but at launch what people will get is better connections, service that’s more reliable, less wait time to catch a bus, transit signal priority at many intersections, real-time arrival information at stations, well-lit shelters and great new Wi-Fi coaches.

Come Sept. 29, we will have readers at 16 stations on the C Line and 21 at stations on the D Line. So there will be a clear benefit at many heavy boarding locations.

Contrary to Adam’s transportation vision, we will never be able to mimic the exclusive, separated right-of-way rail enjoys. RapidRide is designed to operate on compact urban streets – and that’s the beauty of our bus rapid transit program.

We don’t have to guess if these new lines will meet the need of more riders. We already know.  Since the A Line between Federal Way and Tukwila was launched in 2010, ridership has increased nearly 50 percent, meeting our five year goal after just two years. It’s the same story on the B Line serving Redmond and Bellevue – ridership up 15 percent since launching last year.  On these already high ridership corridors in Seattle, we know RapidRide and Metro’s complementary routes will need to evolve over time to manage and respond to peak demand. Continue reading “Op-Ed: RapidRide will be Popular with Riders”

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• Point Defiance Bypass and Columbia River Crossing are two of the nation’s four “We Can’t Wait” projects that the Obama administration will expedite.
• Amalgamated Transit Union ratifies Pierce Transit three-year labor agreement; no wage increases, “redesigned” medical/dental.
• Sounder vandal charged.
• Portland commemorates something we can only dream of. And it’s a bus innovation, not a rail one.
• More process hurdles for Burke-Gilman trail completion.
• Cracking down on fare evasion in Vancouver.
• Yesler Terrace rebuild passes unanimously.
• Northwest gasoline consumption, per capita VMT on the decline.
• More Amazon buildings to come from Vulcan.
• I don’t know that party platforms matter, but the Republican transportation one is a horror show.
• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa setting the standard for aggressive pro-transit advocacy.

This is an open thread.

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