Los Angeles Magazine has a great feature on Donald Shoup and the high cost of parking and parking regulations. It starts with a hilarious tale of how the Los Angeles Philharmonic exists to pay for parking garage the city mandated in the concert hall:

Yet before an auditorium could be raised on K, a six-floor subterranean garage capable of holding 2,188 cars needed to be sunk below it at a cost of $110 million—money raised from county bonds. Parking spaces can be amazingly expensive to fabricate. In aboveground structures they cost as much as $40,000 apiece. Belowground, all that excavating and shoring may run a developer $140,000 per space. The debt on Disney Hall’s garage would have to be paid off for decades to come, and as it turned out, a minimum schedule of 128 annual shows would be enough to cover the bill. The figure “128” was even written into the L.A. Philharmonic’s lease. In 2003, Esa-Pekka Salonen opened Frank Gehry’s masterpiece to a packed house with Mahler’sResurrection, and in the years since, concertgoers—who lay out $9 to enter the garage—have steadily funded performances that exist to cover the true price of their parking.

I recommend the entire thing. I also highly recommend Shoup’s book, The High Cost of Free Parking.

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Update: It seems people do not like the title of this post. Yes, it is true that this is still early days on the 520 bridge. However, I am sure congestion pricing does indeed work (see London, Stockholm, etc.). I’d welcome an argument that explains how the toll will not result in a reduction in congestion on the 520 bridge.

According to the Seattle Times, the 520 tolls have reduced traffic across the bridge by about 30% and have not (yet) had inverse effects on traffic on I-90 (according to the Times), with the 520 reduction exactly as predicted.

Substantially fewer drivers than normal crossed the 520 bridge this morning, while traffic on other major roads did not appear significantly worse than usual, according to transportation officials.

Ridership on buses across Lake Washington, however, appeared to be up.

…

Nearly 13,000 vehicles crossed the 520 bridge between 5 and 9 a.m., said Patty Michaud, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation. That’s about 30 percent lower than before tolling began. About 80 percent of them had state-issued Good to Go stickers that automatically pay tolling fees, she said.

Meanwhile, alternate routes like Interstate 90 and State Route 522 appeared in good shape during the early commute. Officials had expected rush hour on those roads to start earlier and end later.

So we’re getting a reduction in congestion and a (partially) free bridge to boot. It’s obviously too early to say this is a complete victory, but the theory is pretty obvious.

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At most of the meetings Metro staff have hosted regarding the Fall 2012 service change, there was also a set of poster boards from Metro’s Transit Pathways project. Thus far, this project has flown under the radar, but the decisions that will arise from it will affect almost all riders to Southwest Seattle for many years. The purpose of this project is to decide how Metro’s West Seattle and Delridge routes will transition between 3rd Ave and the rebuilt SR-99 freeway south of downtown once the viaduct closes and the crowded, caddywompus detours and flyovers are gone. The overall timeline is shown above.

The project is still at an early stage: initial screening has identified four workable pathways that will be studied in detail to choose the best, based on a raft of criteria including likely ridership numbers; speed and reliability; neighborhood impacts and environmental justice; accessibility and intermodal connections; Seattle’s plans for transit and the waterfront; and cost of facilities and “transit classification” (more on that later). Not much is likely to happen on this project in the next couple of months, as the city’s plans for the post-viaduct waterfront are still going through a public process, and the pathways project can’t continue further until the result of that process is more definite.

Alignments and discussion after the jump.

Continue reading “South End Transit Pathways”

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There is plenty one can find wrong with Richard Conlin’s latest blog post about the zoning battle in Roosevelt. But there are some good things to be said for Conlin’s post: he’s recognizing that land use decisions shouldn’t rest only in the hands of neighborhood planners and he’s ready to dispense with height as the measure of good land use policy. That’s good news for the New Year. But first let’s cover some ground opened by Conlin’s post.

Conlin decries the overheated rhetoric of the debate, flashing his credentials as a Solomon in the Northwest style. Conversations ought to be polite and fact based, Conlin implies, and it’s up to politicians to discern the facts and the law and make good decisions. Rhetoric, overheated and bloated, from bloggers isn’t helpful. Conlin suggests that the Council’s job is to find the middle ground between two extremes, dividing the baby between NIMBYs and density advocates.

However, while compromise is beneficial in policy discussions there can be no compromise between fact and fantasy. The facts are in on density: it’s better than other patterns of development and growth, specifically sprawl. Furthermore the facts point to the importance and benefit of density to many things people care about, like jobs, water quality, air pollution, public safety, jobs, and economic development to name a few.

The fantasy subscribed to by opponents of the up zone is that “taking” more density than the Mayor’s proposal makes them pro-density, and thus immune from the charge that they are intent on scuttling Sisely’s project because they can’t stomach the idea of him making a profit. The supposed supporters of density were willing to amputate their noses to stop an up zone, even though the properties are doomed to stay blighted without one, a truth that Conlin’s colleague Nick Licata admitted when he proposed his amendment which would have limited the construction of more housing in Roosevelt.

Continue reading “Richard Conlin on TOD: Two Resolutions for the New Year”

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This image is massive, so it’s below the jump. Via Sullivan.

Continue reading “Holiday Open Thread: Why Bike?”

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Lots of stuff to watch this year!

• Sounder extends to Lakewood in October. ST Express routes are adjusted accordingly.
• In October, The RapidRide C and D lines open. Metro totally restructures service in West Seattle and Ballard.
• Metro’s worst performing routes get the axe in June, with hours shifted to overcrowded routes.
• Community Transit cuts and restructures service in February.
• Stage II (out of 3) of the I-90 Two-way HOV project completes in February.
• HOV improvements in Bothell finished.

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Most read posts of 2011 (according to Google Analytics)

1) Seattle Frequent Transit Map (Oran, 1/18) If you haven’t told your bus-riding friends about this, you’re doing them a disservice.

2) That’s A Lie (Adam, 6/28) When Adam gets mad, that’s news. Especially when it’s about the tunnel. Plus, Slog linked here.

3) Metro Goes Big for Fall 2012 Service Change (Bruce, 10/25) A huge subject that affects a lot of people, written by our route guru.

4) Let’s Build a Seattle Subway! (Ben, 11/23) Ben really caught fire with this. It makes me more hopeful then I’ve been for a while.

5) $20 CRC to Pass; Ride Free Area to be Eliminated (John, 8/12) The Ride Free Area generates lots of opinions.

6) Metro’s New Bus Stop Signs (Oran, 9/9) This one makes me scratch my head a bit.

7) We Should Pay: Free Ride Advocates Miss the Point (Roger, 10/20) Our angle on Occupy Seattle.

8) Good To Go Transponders Available, $10 Dollar Bonus (Adam, 2/16) Of course, an article about road tolling infrastructure would get lots of eyeballs on a transit blog.

9) In Defense of High Speed Rail (Andrew, 2/26)

10) Who Will Ride the First Hill Streetcar? (Zach, 12/20) This could conceivably move up a few slots early next year.

Most commented below the jump.

Continue reading “STB’s Most Popular Posts of 2011”

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Just about every year, we keep a close eye on Olympia during the legislative sessions to see if anything promising ever comes out for transit.  Usually little does, but it’s a stark reminder of how much hope we have resting on the State’s shoulders.  Once upon a time, before Tim Eyman declared war on transportation funding, the State did have a much more proactive role in ensuring local transit remained strong and robust.  Over the years, unfortunately, State involvement and help for transit, either direct or indirect, has been measly at best.

At last month’s meetup with Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond, an attendee asked the secretary how important she thought the State’s role was in terms of supporting transit.  While there was some mention of WSDOT-sponsored rail projects and hints of local funding options here and there, Hammond’s answer, much to our dismay, had strong emphasis on highway capital projects (i.e., HOV lanes, direct access ramps, etc.), which suggested a stronger obligation to fund “transit” projects if they also help cars, too.

More below the jump.

Continue reading “Redefining the State’s Role in Transit”

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Tolls started today at 5:00am but it will take weeks, or more likely months to get an idea of how SR-520 tolls will create a new “normal” for transportation in the central puget sound region. Regardless what was your experience like today?

How are you, friend and coworkers adjusting to tolls? Personally, I have become the commute trip advisor at my office in Totem Lake, where about a third of my co-workers live in Seattle. I expect transit ridership in the peak direction to grow but be constrained by Park & Ride capacity and I expect significant growth, as a percentage, in reverse peak transit ridership. Talking to coworkers I see reverse commute trips generally being much more “innovative” since transit service to employment centers on the Eastside is worse than to downtown Seattle.

What was your experience?

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