I have been working with a team that just submitted an application for funding from the Housing Trust Fund this week, and two things came up. First, our market study confirmed pretty much what real estate people have been saying a lot lately, apartment vacancies are down and prices are going up. That’s a trend that will continue for the next few years.

Second, monthly prices for rental housing—rent as it is more commonly called—are based the costs of construction and debt, and what the market will bear. The determination of how much a particular unit will rent for is made at the pro forma stage not after construction. Often in the public discourse about housing price and affordability the discussion proceeds as if developers build their projects then see what they can “get” for the units. Generally speaking, that isn’t how it works.

Why do these things matter when we talk about affordability of housing near transit or anywhere? Because the way we think about housing price should affect the interventions we make to affect it. That is, if we think housing prices are too high then how we change those prices requires understanding about where prices come from.

The first point is that housing price is affected by supply and demand. There is a stubborn resistance in some quarters to this basic economic principle rooted in culture and politics. Housing, some people argue, is different than anything else. Loosening regulation to allow more housing construction might lead to more developer profit, lower quality housing, and a windfall for the industry at the expense of renters.

But this perception—that allowing more housing construction will hurt renters—just isn’t true. Here’s a paragraph from the latest story highlighting real estate market studies that confirm the important relationship between supply and demand:

The Seattle and Bellevue downtown markets experienced sharper vacancy declines and stronger rent increases than the average. Seattle’s vacancy rate fell 0.74 percentage points to 4.8 percent this quarter, and Bellevue’s rate fell 0.35 percentage points to 4.09 percent, according to Apartment Insights. Both areas saw rent increases above $100 a month.

There you have it, when vacancy rates drop rents go up, a point repeated in market study after market study. It isn’t a radical concept, and it should lead to an easing of regulation to allow for more apartments to be built in Seattle, not less.
Continue reading “Housing Affordability: Where Do Rents Come From?”

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Imagine stumbling across 363,000 tons worth of concrete pontoons in the free section of Craig’s List.  Would you build a floating island? A massive version of Stonehenge?  Perhaps stack them on top of each other for a 33 story condo complex?

Well this is your chance to show off your idea for what our state should do with these massive blocks of concrete.  Come up with a brilliant idea, create a shiny and compelling poster to describe it, and you might win $3,000.  Head over to RETHINK REUSE for details.

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Now that Pierce Transit has voted to reduce its service area, transit advocates in Pierce County are kicking off the campaign to win that service back after last year’s defeat. The kickoff meeting is Thursday from 5-8pm at The Hub (203 Tacoma Ave. S., Tacoma). Details via the kick-off Facebook event page :

Please Join Mayor Marilyn Strickland, Pierce County Council member Tim Farrell, Pierce County Council member Rick Talbert, Tacoma Council member Jake Fey, Gig Harbor Council member Derek Young, Puyallup City Council member Steve Vermillion, Tacoma School Board member Karen Vialle as well as many more elected leaders, community leaders, riders and residents to kick off a critical campaign to Restore Transit NOW in Pierce County!

We have lived far to[o] long with the devastating cuts and its time we bring back the buses!

Stay together – Stay Connected – www.restoretransitnow.com

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“Competitiveness” is commonly used when we want to describe how transit matches up with other modes, particularly the automobile.  The value of transit competitiveness can be quantified in different ways, but travel time is most often used as the proxy, at least in the simplest terms of discussing how transit competes.  If a rider expends 10 minutes traveling between Point A and Point B aboard transit versus 12 minutes driving, we like to say that transit is competitive in that instance.

Of course, using travel time alone is probably a poor way of describing the breadth of how transit competes.  Cost, comfort, reliability, etc. are all variables that should be taken into account.  As such, the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) does have what’s called a Transit Competitiveness Index— a composite index that takes into account a multitude of factors in quantifying how transit competes with automobiles for any given origin or destination in the region.

At any rate, the problem with using competitiveness as a measuring stick of success is that it’s constructed on the basis of a singular rider experience, instead of an entire population, which is what transit is designed for.  If we try to minimize the travel time for that rider between A and B, it’s probably at the expense of the riders who live in between those two points.  Similarly, if we try to maximize comfort for each individual passenger aboard a transit vehicle by providing cushy armchairs, it means less people can get on that vehicle.

I think that where applicable, transit competitiveness can be appropriately used as a marketing tool, but it shouldn’t be the be-all end-all of how we plan our network.  Ultimately, people care less about lining up their mode choices side by side and judiciously selecting the most optimal one, and more about whether or not transit can meet their needs.  As long as that criteria is fulfilled, then our primary concern should be maximizing it for as many people as possible.

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Starting today, the curb lane between the Dexter off-ramp and Mercer on Aurora Avenue southbound will be converted to a BAT (business access and transit-only) lane.  Unlike some other BAT lanes in the city, the right-turn and transit-only designation applies all day and night, which means single-occupant drivers can get dinged for a citation if caught traveling in the lane, even at 2 in the morning.  The conversion helps pave the way for the E Line in 2013 while also acting as mitigation for upcoming roadwork.

From SDOT (.pdf):

King County Metro Transit will be starting RapidRide E Line service on Aurora Avenue North in 2013, but the lane will be designated earlier to keep buses moving during several ongoing construction projects. Metro carries almost 30,000 passengers a day on the Aurora corridor, which helps significantly reduce the number of cars on the road.

Two upcoming projects are the City’s Mercer West Project and the WSDOT’s Route 99 Tunnel Project. Traffic congestion is expected to increase on southbound Aurora when lanes are temporarily closed for these projects and optimizing transit travel will provide commuters with a better option for avoiding possible delays.

For more information, questions/comments can be sent to the project lead, Jonathan Dong, at jonathan.dong@seattle.gov.

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Transportation Issues Daily is reporting this morning that it looks as if a reauthorization bill will be ready by the July 1st deadline.

It sounds like nearly all transportation-related issues are resolved, but details are nearly impossible to come by.  There are rumors the mega-projects program (PNRS) and other freight provisions will be scrapped. There’s also a rumored deal involving keeping the Keystone XL provision in exchange for keeping the Senate’s project streamlining provisions.

By the end of the week, Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Speaker Boehner were optimistic that a bill could be passed before July 1 (details in The Hill’s story).  Senator Boxer and Representative Mica issued this statement: “The conferees have moved forward toward a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on a highway reauthorization bill. Both House and Senate conferees will continue work with a goal of completing a package” before July 1.

As more details or revelations emerge over the week we’ll make sure to share.

[UPDATE 11:41] Larry Ehl of Transportation Issues Daily adds, “I neglected to add that there are rumors the transit provisions are agreed to. Other than funding level for New Starts, I don’t recall there being any transit provisions that were particularly divisive. Excluding Amtrak/passenger rail, of course.”

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The structure of the deal, on which see Goldy’s exceptional two-part series, is this. There is no diversion of funds from the current budget per se. Instead, most of the taxes levied on arena activity are dedicated to paying off bonds on that arena. The deal involves the credit of municipal government and there are numerous second-order effects, but in the broadest sense the government’s fiscal position should remain unchanged.

Whether or not you think this is a good deal, this arrangement should sound familiar. Although the structure of the taxes is somewhat different, this strongly resembles the arrangement the state’s motorists enjoy. Rather than levy sales tax on gasoline like on almost any other good, the state levies a separate, roughly equivalent tax that is dedicated to highway purposes. And yet people are arguing with my contention that this is a sweetheart deal for drivers.

All of our transportation modes are subsidized, and it’s not crazy to think that driving should be as well.  It’s also entirely coherent to favor a benefit for the wide base of drivers but not the National Basketball Association. However, there’s no free market transportation mode that’s getting unfairly dinged by mass transit subsidies.

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This little YouTube gem is a 1950s time capsule in more ways than I can count, and surely in still more ways that I’m missing; but in particular, I feel it is the distilled essence of a certain generation’s negative view of cities and urban life. I don’t mean this disdainfully, and, of course, to impute any opinion to an entire generation of people is to grossly over-generalize and over-simplify. Subject to those caveats, I think anyone who’s been to lots of public events relating to transit or urbanism will have observed the same rough correlation between age and opinions on such matters as I have.

It’s easy for those of us who live in dense, walkable, clean, almost absurdly safe neighborhoods, to forget that cities in the decades prior to this film were in fact dirty, dangerous, cacophonous, claustrophobic places where I, for one, would not have wanted to live; and so there is much truth in this cartoon. Mass media reflects and amplifies popular opinion, itself grounded in commonplace experiences of life, here boiled down to cartoon form, but it also shapes opinion. Did the people who designed and built freeways in the 1950s and 60s regard this film as an indictment of urban life, or a cautionary tale about urban sprawl destroying the bucolic idyll it sets out to make available to the masses?

I’m fascinated by this intersection of policy and culture. People my age and younger grew up in youth culture where the “thoughtful” content was (and is) steeped in a rejection of the reigning oil- and plastic-based throw-away consumerism. Films like Wall·E* and The Lorax are virtually undisguised send-ups of those aspects of contemporary society, boiled down to a seemingly-innocuous cartoon form. How will those films affect the beliefs of the people who grow up watching them? Is the widespread abandonment of walkable urban life a historical aberration, or is it the new normal (at least until we are forced by external constraints to abandon the abandonment)? What will be the strange zeitgeist artefact, the Little House, of 2072?

This is an open thread.

* Funnily enough, I saw Wall·E in a drive-in theater.

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Over the last day or two it looks as if congress has finally started to make progress on a transportation re-authorization bill. However, it looks like Republicans are trying to strip dedicated safety funding from the bill. Please call and share immediately as this is rapidly unfolding. Information via TCC below:

Because you live in Washington, you have a very important chance to help in an urgent way today.

The House and Senate are on the cusp of finally striking a deal on the transportation bill. We’ve heard alarming news that some of the good provisions we’ve fought hard for that would make everyone safer, give us more transportation options and repair our roads, bridges and transit systems could be sacrificed to get a deal done.

More than 680 people have died while walking on STATE roads since 2000. Yet Congress is considering scrapping the funding that helps communities make their streets safer.

Your Senators are in a unique position to influence the deal, and they need to stand up now and refuse to see these good pieces of the bill discarded in favor of just getting a deal done. But time is short – they’re working right now to hammer out the details and strike a deal by early next week.

Please call your Senators Murray (202) 224-2621  and Cantwell (202) 224-3441  and leave this message with the person who answers the phone.

Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m calling from [PLACE]. I’m calling to ask [SENATOR] to stand up for three important provisions in the transportation bill being negotiated right now.

1)    Please preserve the Cardin-Cochran provisions and dedicated funding in MAP-21 that provide grants to communities to make walking and biking safer and prevent hundreds or thousands more preventable deaths. More than 680 pedestrians have died on Washington’s roads in the last ten years – this small bit of money provided in the Senate bill could help save very real lives.

2)    Please defend and preserve the Senate’s strong plan to make sure we repair our roads and bridges. With more than 391 structurally deficient bridges in Washington, we need the focus on repair to help reduce this backlog.

3)    Please ensure that our local public transportation systems are allowed to use some of their federal money to keep their buses and trains rolling during the recession. We need more affordable ways to get around during these hard times, not fewer.

Thank them for their time, and after you hang up the phone, please forward this email to all of your friends who live in your state. Time is extremely short and there’s great pressure to strip out these critical provisions in the bill just to get a deal done.

Thank you for caring about these issues!

the Transportation Choices team

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This weekend’s weather forecast is for rain, and the weekend transit and traffic forecast is for a giant mess in Seattle. Three big events — the Rock’n’Roll Marathon, Capitol Hill Pride Festival, and Seattle Pride Parade — will compound ongoing construction reroutes in the city. If the weather were better, this would be the perfect weekend to shun motorized transportation and bike and walk everywhere.

The official Metro Commute blog has a good summary of the events, times, impact and links to further information; but note that SDOT has cancelled the scheduled reconstruction of the 85th & Aurora intersection. Metro’s authoritative Transit Alerts page correctly reflects this cancellation. If you plan to use transit virtually anywhere in the city this weekend, the Transit Alerts for your route(s) are required reading. Plan ahead and expect delays.

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