Recall that we’re having an informal meetup tonight at 6pm, at the Columbia City Ale House. Be there.
1 commentsFirst Hill Loses Its Grocery Store
Despite our present trend toward quantifying everything, I still frequently prefer to make more qualitative, intuitive judgments about the livability of neighborhoods. The single best shorthand I know is an affirmative answer to the question, “If I lived here, would I walk to the grocery store?” Consider Capitol Hill, where in just over a square mile there are 7 major grocery stores, sewn together by dozens of small markets and convenience stores. Or walk around Lower Queen Anne; Metropolitan Market is quite the neighborhood anchor, isn’t it?
So it’s a great loss for First Hill that its only full-service grocery, M Street, shut its doors last week. King 5 quotes a customer named Tony Lucas, “It’s like a desert out here. The closest one is on Broadway and University. I’m not going to walk that far.” There is still easy transit access to groceries – including Metro #2 and #12 (to Kress, Pike Place Market, Madison Market, Trader Joes, or the Broadway/Union QFC) – but losing easy walking access considerably diminishes urban quality of life. Walk Score gives the intersection of Boren/Madison a score of 97, a “Walker’s Paradise”, while giving Broadway/John an 89, merely “Very Walkable.” Could anyone possibly walk around those two areas and argue that those scores are merited?
If you live car-free or car-lite, give thanks for your neighborhood grocery stores, patronize them liberally, and show them the value that comes from having a dense pedestrian customer base. Walkable neighborhoods can’t afford not to have them.
107 commentsRide Free Area To Do List
VeloBusDriver had a great post this weekend with a “to do list” of changes to Metro’s current fare system that he thinks should be implemented if Metro decides to eliminate the Ride Free Area (RFA). While I’m not going to dive into which changes I think are needed, at least not now, I want to emphatically state that the outright elimination of the RFA without significant improvements to Metro’s fare system is unacceptable. The question shouldn’t be whether to have a RFA or not, it should be what improvements can be made to the fare system so that the RFA isn’t necessary.
I’m actually optimistic that elimination of the RFA could be a net positive change but only if Metro takes a holistic look at the fare system, including both how it’s structured and how it’s collected. Previously I wrote about how Rapidride’s fare system in incompatible with the RFA.
Below is VeloBusDrivers full post.
Metro is currently studying the effects of eliminating the Ride Free Area in Downtown Seattle. While I favor the elimination of the Ride Free Area for a host of reasons, it is critical that fare collection be fully optimized before implementation of such a policy. The steps below would incentivize ORCA use, speed boarding, and also streamline collection of payments:
- Ubiquitous ORCA availability at drug stores, grocery stores, Coinstar vending machines, train stations, airport, hotels, etc… $10 for a pre-loaded $5 ORCA card with a small built-in profit for the vendor should be possible.
- Tourist-friendly ORCA cards with day and multi-day passes should be readily available
- Provide discounts for loading large dollar amounts onto ORCA cards to further incentivize ORCA use
- Coaches would be tap/pay at front door, exit through rear door except at high volume stops such as transit centers and certain downtown stops. Designated high volume stops would have off-bus ORCA readers and drivers would open ALL doors.
More after the jump.
Continue reading “Ride Free Area To Do List”
Parkin’ and Ridin’
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
BREAKING NEWS: Erica Barnett reports that private property owners in Seattle will be able to rent out their land in exchange for money through at least 2015. Think of that!
I don’t have much more to add to this conversation than what I already wrote when this issue came up a year ago, but I do think it’s worth reminding people that there’s a difference between a privately owned lot and a goverment-owned “park and ride.” The former goes away as soon as there’s more gain to be had in developing the land. The latter tends to last forever, because politicians are afraid to take away people’s God-given right to free parking.
0 commentsSunday Open Thread: Microsoft Connector
H/T: Atomic Taco.
78 commentsRapidRide Survey Results
Oran already wrote about some of the ORCA and fare results, but those come from a Metro-commissioned survey of riders on the A line, for which you can read the summary or the full survey results. The press release indicates that weekday boardings have increased from 6,000 on the 174 to 7,500 on the nearly identically routed A Line. Metro doesn’t regularly release route ridership figures but Spring 2009 numbers are here.
I don’t know what there is to say except that people like it when service improves. I was somewhat amused that the most popular suggested improvement was “less fare enforcement,” above.
42 commentsRevisiting Jacobs
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
A year or so ago, I wrote that Jane Jacobs was the “original NIMBY” for opposing redevelopment in her neighborhood, and I noted the irony that new urbanists — those most likely to support her ideals — are now the ones most likely to do battle with NIMBYs of their own.
That thought was incomplete. Jacobs wasn’t opposed to redevelopment for its sake. She opposed redevelopment that put concrete and steel ahead of people. Redevelopment that tried in vain to create “order” out of the chaotic urban fabric. If Robert Moses had proposed leveling the Greenwich Village brownstones and replacing them with newer brownstones, I don’t think Jacobs would have had much of a fight. Moses wanted to build freeways. That was the problem.
I was thinking about this as I walked past an old, boarded up house in my neighborhood that’s set to be torn down. I thought about whether I should be sad that another 100-year-old house was being town down. But it’s never about the architecture. It’s about the people who live in it. New urbanists envy the 19th-century urban built environment — streetcars, brownstones, walk-up apartments — but we should never forget that it’s the neighborhood vitality created by that built environment that matters, not the wrap-around Victorian porches or intricate stone cornices themselves.
0 commentsThe Downside of Agglomeration Effects
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Agglomeration effects are generally good things for cities: people move to a city because other people live there, and so on. Neighborhoods thrive on agglomeration effects: you open a bar in a neighborhood with other bars, because that neighborhood’s a “destination,” where people go when they want to go out carousing or what have you.
But agglomeration effects can have downsides. Too many bars and sports stadia in Pioneer Square can make the neighborhood feel overrun to some people. Too many hospitals on First Hill means that parts of the neighborhood can feel like a ghost town at night. And so forth.
I think a similar dynamic is unfolding with this debate on where to put the Downtown Emergency Services Center’s new Crisis Solutions Center:
“The City of Seattle was unlikely to use the facility if it were located in Tukwila,” said Hobson, because SPD and Medic One personnel may not have the time and resources to make the trip. The Jackson Place location is ideal, he said, because it has good access to Swedish and Harborview hospitals and is centrally located between the SPD precincts and both I-5 and I-90. Of the 7-8 properties they looked at in the area, the one on Lane Street was the best fit, he said.
When it’s time to build the next DESC facility, certainly the same neighborhood will be a front-runner. After all, it’s so close to the Crisis Solutions Center! And so on, and so on.
Now, I don’t live too far from this area, and I have seen the ways in which large institutions — Seattle U, Swedish, the Polyclinic — create long shadows that seem to overwhelm everything around them. To be clear, I don’t personally oppose this new project, I just think the phenomenon is interesting.
0 commentsRapidRide Survey: Fares and ORCA
One of the more striking results from Metro’s RapidRide A Line customer survey is the ORCA usage rate and why people do not use ORCA to pay fares (page 30). 55 percent of those surveyed don’t use ORCA. Of the top reasons for not using ORCA, 32 percent don’t know where to obtain the card, 32 percent say it’s not convenient to obtain an ORCA card, 14 percent don’t know what an ORCA card is, and 7 percent can’t afford to buy one.
I’m surprised to see Metro not promote ORCA more prominently along with RapidRide’s launch. If customers only knew that they could conveniently purchase and reload an ORCA card at RapidRide’s northern terminus, the Tukwila International Boulevard Link station, we wouldn’t have the results we see above.
Tukwila has four self-service fare vending machines (TVMs) that take cash and cards, and speak in three languages. What Metro could do is produce a banner or two (or use existing ones), some in-bus placards and maybe record a message to be played periodically on the bus promoting ORCA (like on Sounder). That alone could eliminate 78 percent of the reasons people don’t use ORCA. Metro does have a brochure explaining how to pay on RapidRide in seven languages but it doesn’t explain what ORCA is or where to get it.
Without TVMs at every stop, RapidRide greatly depends on ORCA and multiple doors to speed up boarding. One less cash payer equals many seconds less dwell time at each stop. Multiply that over each person and each stop and many minutes are saved. ORCA readers at every door would also help.
The good news is when people do use ORCA, 69 percent use the off-board reader at stops (not every stop has a reader). On the proof-of-payment (POP) system, 84 percent said they were checked for proof of payment by a fare enforcement officer and 58 percent thought the number of inspections was appropriate. I hope this means positive encouragement for continuing and extending POP.
For comparison, 44 percent of Swift riders pay fares with ORCA. So Metro, don’t feel too bad. The upcoming B Line also has an ORCA vending machine at the Bellevue TC terminus. The rest of the RapidRide lines do too. And Metro didn’t have to spend a dime for those machines. So please take full advantage of them!
216 commentsMetro Fixes Scheduling Mistake
King County Metro silently fixed a major scheduling mistake for routes 71, 72, and 73 in the February 2011 service change. Those routes together provide frequent service between Downtown Seattle and NE 65th St in Roosevelt via the University District. Buses are supposed to arrive at evenly spaced intervals (headways), about every 7.5-10 minutes during most of the day and at least every 15 minutes from 5 am to midnight. However, the combined schedule for those routes in the past six months had buses arriving at irregular intervals, leading to bunching and long gaps in service. The new schedule restores the even spacing (actually more regular than the Feb 2009 schedule) on weekdays. For some reason, the combined timetable is not available online but the new blue timetables are already out (photo excerpts: weekday 1, weekday 2, Saturday).
For example, people had to wait 18 minutes in the middle of the morning rush hour for a 72 and 73 to arrive simultaneously. If they missed those two, then they had to wait another 12 minutes, then another 5 minutes, and so on. This is a service that’s supposed to always arrive every 7-8 minutes during that period. Another frustrating case was having the last non-owl trip of the night arrive one minute after the trip before it, leaving people waiting an hour for the owl bus. That pair is now 15 minutes apart like the other late night trips.
When you design a high frequency trunk line created from less-frequent branches, it is important to have evenly spaced service to minimize wait time and bunching on the trunk. With this irregular schedule, buses are both bunched on purpose (by schedule) and unintentionally (by delays), leading to a reduction in usable capacity by having overcrowded buses trailed by relatively empty buses. This cannot be called “efficiency”, if that was the original intent. Intentional or not, Metro realized its mistake and fixed it, likely after a bunch of customer and operator complaints.
94 comments