by BERNIE HAYDEN

At the Sound Transit (ST) open house in Bellevue on June 5th (materials here) ST handed a packet outlining the progress made to date toward final design. ST and the City classified the cost savings into three categories. The first and least controversial are deemed “Cost Savings Ideas Advanced for Further Engineering Review.” These generally will not affect the alignment or have any operational impact. While not “sexy” it’s useful in “keeping score” toward the $60 million City Contingency agreed to in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City and ST.

Tunnel design and Station Optimization yielded three cost saving ideas. Utilizing a load bearing center wall can save $3m by reducing the roof structure requirements. Eliminating the Waterproofing Membrane System and allowing for routine drainage saves $2m. But I question the long term structural effects on porous concrete and structural steel. Reducing the mezzanine and platform size saves $3m. Presumably this item is moot since eliminating the mezzanine entirely seems to have the most traction and biggest savings.

Elevated guideway design elements total $16M in potential savings. Changing the Aerial Guideway Super-Structure to Precast Girder or Cast-In Place Box saves $8m. I’m not sure why this wasn’t the default and why the SR 520 segment is different. Geotechnical recommendations to optimize structural elements provides the other $8m in potential savings.

Replacing drainage structures with “low-impact development design elements” scores $2m in cost savings. I believe this comes from the Bellevue Transportation Commission and City staff design work on NE 15/16th which narrowed the street cross section from five lanes to two and made extensive use of drainage swales and pervious surfaces in lieu of the standard storm drains and retention ponds.

Perhaps not all of the ideas are totally without controversy. Expediting tunnel construction through additional road closures generates $13m in potential cost savings. Nobody is happy when their road gets closed but “living the dream” with all the current closures for 520 and the Bellevue Braids I cast my vote for more closures over a shorter period of time. Just get it over with already!

So, the score card for the category “Advanced for Further Engineering Review” adds up to $36m, not counting the $3m for reducing the mezzanine. The Executive Summary points out that engineering is still very preliminary, but even conservatively this amounts to at least $20m in savings. Still, I’m optimistic that through the Collaborative Design Process the tunnel is a done deal and there may even be money left for some “nice to have” elements.

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Now that its boundary revision process is complete – eliminating service and taxation for Buckley, Orting, Sumner, Bonney Lake, DuPont, the Key Peninsula, and swaths of unincorporated Pierce County – Pierce Transit (PT) will likely go back to voters this year to ask for its remaining sales tax authority.  (PT currently collects .6% sales tax, compared to .9% for Metro, Sound Transit, and Community Transit).  Newly excluded areas have long voted heavily against transit revenue, and the odds of a new ballot measure passing are much higher under the newly shrunk boundaries.  The new boundary is 30% smaller (292 sq mi vs 414) but retains 75% of the population (560k vs 750k).

At a public hearing last week, attendees expressed unanimous support in favor of returning to the ballot.  Since the failure of Proposition 1 last year, PT has reduced service by 33% (417k annual service hours vs 622k) and reduced staff by 18% (866 employees vs 1,054).  Most non-trunk service is now hourly and span of service is exceptionally poor, often ending by 6pm even in the densest areas.   Raising the sales tax to .9% would likely allow the smaller service area to return to previous levels of service, with most routes on 30-minute headways and operating until late at night.

It is worth noting that PT has a more impoverished ridership base than either Metro or ST, with the TNT reporting that 56% of riders make less than $20,000 a year.  Combined with very low densities and poor land use in Pierce County, this leaves Pierce Transit with an unfortunate incentive (or even mandate) to emphasize geographic coverage over frequency.

At the very least PT deserves the opportunity to collect sales tax at the regionally precedented level of .9%, as its residents do not deserve to be disproportionately disadvantaged relative to King, Snohomish, and Thurston (.8%) counties.  STB will support PT’s efforts should they officially decide to go back to ballot.

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This is an open thread.

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	E Line	F Line
Roadways/Communication/ Transit Signal Priority (TSP)	$5.97M (16%)	$9.93M (28%)
Passenger Facilities (Shelters, lighting, etc.)	$5.1M (14%)	$7.64M (22%)
Real Time Information Signs	$790,000 (2%)	$800,000 (2%)
New Buses	$24.9M (68%)	$16.8M (47%)
Total	$36.74	$35.12M

Following last weeks announcement of FTA’s Very Small Starts funding of the E and F lines I started wondering about the cost breakdown of RapidRide. I have some answers thanks to Rochelle Ogershok at King County Metro. For each line, the total cost is roughly the same, but the breakdown differs significantly between the two. For the E Line, almost 70% of capital costs go towards new coaches, which certainly reflects the longer cycle time, and thus larger number of buses necessary to achieve 10-minute peak period headways.

Comparing the two lines, the extra cost of new buses on the E Line is offset through lower roadway/communication/TSP costs and passenger facilities. This is likely because SDOT and Shoreline have already done most of the work to prepare signals for TSP along the corridor by upgrading signal controllers and cabinets, which is necessary for various component of the RapidRide ITS system to operate. The lower relative cost could also be related to the need for fewer concrete bus stop pads along the E Line.

Despite the larger number of “stations” on the E Line, passenger facility costs are higher for the F Line. The only reason I could see explaining this is better and thus cheaper access to power along Aurora, less right of way purchase necessary to accommodate stations and fewer sidewalk improvements for the E Line compared to the more suburban F Line. The smallest part of the budgets, just 2% for both routes, is spent on real-time information signs, although things like power and communication, which are included in the other cost categories, are need for real-time information signs are to operate.

My personal take on these numbers, which I have said before, is that American BRT over-emphasizes slick-looking buses at the expense of more broadly investing in speed and reliability improvements that benefit frequent bus routes, regardless of branding. That FTA specifically funds projects which meet its “BRT” criteria, without setting caps on the the percentage of a project budget that can go to buses, exacerbates this problem, and could create an undesirable incentives for transit agencies to see FTA BRT funding as free money for bus replacement, rather than a challenge from the FTA to improve the quality of bus transit.

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Recently, King County Metro published the details of a minor service change that will take effect Tomorrow, June 9th. There’s nothing earth-shattering in here, but lots of small, good changes that set the stage for the major West Seattle-Ballard service change in September. Several Sound Transit routes change at the same time. Here are the highlights:

• 10-minute Sunday headways on the Downtown to U-District 71/72/73 trunk. The busiest and most important transit corridor in the city gets an upgrade from 15-minute headways. While the night-Sunday service pattern (local on Eastlake) doesn’t optimally serve the vast majority of riders, who would be much better off with an extension of the weekday (express on I-5 or Eastlake) service pattern, this is a much-needed and comparatively cheap upgrade.
• Inbound tunnel buses are reassigned to the foremost bay at each tunnel stop. This (perhaps rather obvious) operational change helps increase the capacity of each tunnel station by allowing buses that are primarily unloading to pull as far forward as possible, so as not to waste precious platform space. The increase in capacity will help offset the expected reduction in tunnel capacity due to the elimination of daytime Pay as You Leave rules when the Ride Free Area goes away in the fall.
• Extension of evening Route 180 service between Kent Station and Burien Transit Center, which currently ends at 7:15. A small but significant improvement for mobility in South King.
• Sound Transit picks up Bonney Lake-Sumner Sounder connection as Route 596. Adam noted in a post a few weeks ago that this marks ST’s first significant non-capital expenditure to improve access to their rail services.
• More details about Route 99 (Waterfront): Route 99 will be extended later in the evening during the summer, but reduced to peak only during the winter; “Summer” will be early June through the end of September.
• Deletions and restructures of a few “worst of the worst” routes, notably the 38, 79 and 219. Sadly, Metro will not put the 42 out of its misery until Fall February of 2013.
• Ballard expresses acquire a stop at Elliott & Harrison. This area is very office-oriented, and I’m told local businesses were interested in better commuter access, especially with RapidRide skipping the Uptown stops nearest Harrison. It occurs to me that, once SDOT’s delayed West Thomas St overpass finally opens, smart commuters bound to or from Pioneer Square could use this stop to trade a long, slow bus ride though the CBD for a fast, scenic, flat bike ride along the waterfront.
• Minor routing changes, schedule changes, added trips, or deleted trips to various other routes. Metro adopted a proposal I discussed on the blog previously, consolidating the 25 with the Stevens Way corridor through campus.

There are no changes to any rail services in the region.

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Sound Transit has an extremely short online survey about the name of the station provisionally known as Brooklyn.

Apparently “University District” “U District” now has the inside track. ST explains why:

You may be aware that the current light rail system includes the University Street Station located in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT), which serves what was the original UW campus. The extension of the Link system to Northgate creates a potential scenario in which the word “university” could be used in three different station names, which would likely create confusion to riders about landmarks and geographic locations. That is why the Sound Transit Board recently adopted updated station naming criteria that discourages using similar names or words that are in existing station names.

The proposed “U District Station” name represents the local neighborhood and reduces the use of “university” in multiple station names. We’ve also heard feedback that the existing University Street Station should be renamed to better represent its location. That decision involves King County Metro and we will talk with them about whether there might be a better name for that particular station. While we won’t have an answer to that question for some time, we propose to keep the University of Washington Station name because it makes sense being located on the UW campus.

I’ve personally always liked “Brooklyn,” ostensibly because it maximizes simplicity and diversity of station names, but probably really because of East Coast media bias.

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Find out how the station, to open in 2016, is progressing. Here’s our report from the last one.

Project Open House

JOIN US!
Thursday, June 7
5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Madrona Elementary School – Music Room
20301 32nd Ave. S., SeaTac 98198

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• Shoreline politicians show up to comment on Link Stations.
• Everett Herald senses a threat to Swift and comes out swinging.
• State house candidate wants Metro to be free system-wide. Good intentions, but this simply doesn’t work for large transit systems.
• Capitol Hill exploring an “Eco District” anchored around Link station.
• Bremerton foot ferry slides to later this month. Kingston-Seattle foot ferry now on Saturday.
• New transit center going up in East Bremerton.
• Near Surrey Downs, ST may elevate the road instead of the tracks.
• Procedural maneuvering over Clark County Light Rail.
• Link crashes get more attention when they’re photogenic.
• June 14th Sound Transit hearing on selling off some property in Seatac.
• West Seattle getting faster buses, only had to give up a few parking spaces.
• Linden Ave N roadway reconstruction complete cycle track starts soon.
• Ray Lahood getting on the low-street bikeway bandwagon. How far we have come in just a few years.
• Pedal power, Big Picture Blog takes up bicycling around the globe. Seattle brings the sperm.
• All hail Metro’s newest operator of the year, Bruce Kennedy.
• What does Jane Jacobs style density look like?
• Vancouver BC debating if its Le Corbusier inspried, Garden City form is still desirable.
• Columbia River Crossing debate taking center stage in Portland’s mayors race. Parallels being drawn to the freeway revolt that brought us MAX.
• EnviroIssues looking for intern.

This is an open thread.

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The Federal Transit Administration last week formally awarded Metro $37.5m for the RapidRide E and F lines. Transit buffs will no doubt appreciate the cash, but might snicker at FTA director Peter Rogoff’s description of the line:

“King County’s RapidRide bus lines are a great example of bus rapid transit done right,” said FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff. “The RapidRide system is essentially rail on wheels and will help people keep more money in their wallets instead of paying it at the pump.”

Metro spokesperson Rochelle Ogershok told me that the federal contribution was already assumed in Metro’s budget, so this is more a lack of bad news than good new information. The Times reports that this money will cover more than half of the startup costs of the two lines, in line with earlier installments of RapidRide.

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OneBusAway is doing another round of user research to update their work done in 2009 and they would like your input. Info below:

Three years and many changes later, the UW team that runs OneBusAway is again looking for feedback about the service. Please respond if you are a current OneBusAway user or if you ever have used the service in the past three years. The web survey can be accessed here and will typically take around 10-15 minutes to complete. Those who take the survey will also be eligible to win a $25 dollar iTunes gift card. The survey is anonymous and will provide information related to transit use, real-time information and current OneBusAway issues. Your participation is appreciated.

You can take the survey here.

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