I-405/SR-167 Express Toll Corridor

Posted on by Adam Bejan Parast
I-405 Tolling Option 4

This session the state legislature is looking at moving forward the idea of “Express Toll Lanes” on I-405 and SR-167. More commonly referred to as High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes, HB 1382 would start a process of expanding the HOT lane system, starting at the north end of I-405 and working southwards, eventually connecting to the existing HOT lanes. This would create a continuous managed north-south corridor from Puyallup to Lynnwood.

The idea behind managed lanes is to preserve the travel time reliability of the HOV network while maximizing the throughput of those lanes. Transit and some carpools would continue to use the lanes as normal but solo drivers would be able to buy into the lanes. As the lanes fill up the price for solo drivers to enter the lanes increases.

A major change, that will certainly be controversial is a move away from 2+ HOV lanes to 3+ HOV lanes. This is necessary for the lanes to pencil out financial and for WSDOT to meet HOV performance standards in the future. Today many regional HOV facilities are already failing WSDOT’s 45 MPH, during 90% of rush hour performance standard.

While the SR-167 HOT lane pilot has been somewhat of a disappointment, especially with regards to revenue,  it has shown that a system like this is feasible and has potential. Last year the legislature directed WSDOT to complete a study of the idea, which they also had reviewed by an expert review panel. The proposed legislation builds off the expert review panel’s recommendation.

The expert review panel recommended moving forward with a two phase implementation of Option 4. They identified two generations of HOT lanes systems, the first which requires less capitol is targeted a maximizing the efficiency of the road system with second generation systems having an added focus on revenue generation to pay for HOT lane related capacity expansion.

Last week it passed out of the House Transportation Committee. It will be interesting to see where this bill goes.

60 comments

Sunday Open Thread: What Developers Hear

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
What the Planners say What the Planners mean What the Developer hears / understands
“I like it.” I like it. They like it.
“Well done!” Well done! We’re done!
“I wish more projects had this feel.” “I wish more projects had this feel.” They like it so much maybe they’ll give us more.
“Lets review this” I don’t like it. It’s taken their breath away!
“Does this meet the regulations?” Can we kill it through technicalities? We’re OK, it meets the regulations…I think
“Well…?” We don’t like it, do we? They have some minor questions.

The rest here, via.

51 comments

Transit Report Card: Toronto

Posted on by Andrew Smith
ossington
Ossington Station, photo by flickr user tcp909

[This is part of the “Transit Report Card” series, in which writers generalize wildly based on short and limited experience with another city’s transit system.]

Segments ridden:
Yonge-University-Spadina (Yellow) Line: Glencairn – Union Station; Union Station – St. Clair
Bloor-Danforth (Green) Line: Landsdowne-Victoria Park
Various Street cars and buses.
Time ridden: Four days.

Scope: A-
The Toronto Subway has very good service where it does go, but that covers a fairly limited area. There are twomain lines, one that goes north-south in a “U” shape, and another east-west. There are also two short spur lines.

This Google maps overlay shows the area the subway covers. Each subway station has bus or streetcar routes that travel perpendicular to the line the subway station travels, forming a wonderful transit grid. This map shows the overall coverage, including buses and streetcars. If there isn’t a subway station or a streetcar line where you’re going, you’ll have find the nearest station, and then take the bus that travels perpendicular to the line and to your destination.

Service: A
Service is very frequent. Most buses had frequencies under ten minutes except late at night – many ran 24 hours – and the subway comes every few minutes.  Most stations had electronic signs to tell you when the next train was coming, but they were a mix of new LCD screens and some 30 years old or older, and many of the older models didn’t seem to work. Major bus locations also had next bus signs.

Routing: A
As far as I could tell (feel free to correct me in the comments), there are really only four major highways in Toronto (401, 427, 404 and “the Gardiner”), and those are mainly served by “bus rapid transit”, a service similar to ST express buses. Many of the rest of the bus lines are oriented around the subway, and the subway is mostly oriented in cardinal directions (N-S, E-W).

Grade/ROW: A
The subway is entirely grade-separated, and the streetcars have their own lanes in some places, as do some of the buses.

TOD: B
Downtown Toronto is a sea of modern skyscrapers, and there are many older, dense neighborhoods. Some outlying areas have become densely urbanized, such as North York. However, I was surprised single family homes with yards across the street from stations such as Ossington, just five stations from Bay station in the heart of downtown.

Culture: A
A surprisingly large number of people live in Downtown Toronto itself – apparently most of the over 2,000 skyscrapers in the city are residential – and the Toronto subway the beats the DC Metro for the 2nd most ridden rapid transit system in Anglophone North America at 910,300 people per day. The buses carry another 1.25 million, with streetcars carrying 300,000. Most commuters in the city either take transit or carpool. In the greater Toronto area, 22.2% of commuters take transit, according to the Canadian Census, compared to around 7.3% here in the Seattle area.

Continue reading “Transit Report Card: Toronto”

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Light Rail Excuse of the Week

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

Nothing like a slow news Friday to do some self-interest blogging*. If you’re looking for a good and somewhat unique dining experience to pull you into the South end, I recommend St. Dames, a vegetarian place one block north of Columbia City Station.

I’m by no means a vegetarian, nor do I know much about other vegetarian places, but this place is pretty creative about tasty meat substitutes. If you’re reluctant to accept food criticism from a transit pundit, and you should be, here’s The Stranger‘s pretty good review. If you’d like to cancel out the health benefits of vegetarian cuisine, there’s also a full bar.

They’re open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday, and have an interesting brunch menu on weekends starting at 9am. I’ve tried both and have been impressed.

* My self-interest is in plugging a good restaurant in my neighborhood, so that I continue to have good restaurants in my neighborhood.

36 comments

Stupidity is not an Explanation

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

I don’t think anyone who uses Metro or Sound Transit services doesn’t have some kind of complaint about how they run operations or allocate service. Sometimes that’s based on a selfish view that one’s service is needed while someone else’s service is obviously wasteful, but usually there are legitimate principles at stake.

The natural reaction is to assume that the agencies in question are stupid and/or ignorant if they don’t see it your way. However, a good general rule, on any issue, when critiquing the work of professional organizations that if you think it’s simple stupidity you probably don’t understand the forces at work.

There is a lot of change that I’d like to see. But the first step to realizing change is to properly assess the obstacles. The stupidity explanation really doesn’t survive initial contact with most agency planners. In reality, we have to look at the institutional incentives.

For instance, one continuing theme at STB is that there should be better service on key transit arterials even if it means a smaller geographic service area. This idea is not unknown to Metro staff, and its spirit is evident in documents like the Regional Transit Task Force final report. The fundamental obstacle is that you’ll get a much larger crowd of angry voters when you remove service, whatever its merits, than when you elect to not expand other service. And that goes back to a County Council that collectively will not back Metro when a few dozen people organize a complaint.

One way around that dilemma is to throw money at it: provide both the intensive and sprawling routes, and when the next round of cuts comes the interest groups will be more balanced. Of course, more funding is not a plausible course of action at the moment. The last good chance we had to do this was Transit Now, which included a lot for high ridership corridors but also spent significant resources on sending buses to even farther flung exurbs. Metro deserves some amount of credit for upholding RapidRide to the extent they have.

Why was service spread the way it was? The obvious answer is 20/40/40, which for the time being is still in place. Even in its absence, however, it’s arguable that voters wouldn’t have voted for a package perceived as disproportionately benefiting Seattle. Perhaps the true villain is the ability of many voters to see beyond narrow subarea interests. There’s plenty of that going around everywhere in the County.

68 comments

Mea Culpa

Posted on by Matt Gangemi

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Several months ago I compiled some census data regarding WA, King County, and Seattle and concluded that the Growth Management Act is broken.  Since then I’ve been pointing to this data from all over the Web.  Today, someone helped me realize that my numbers may be misleading.  They are correct, but too granular, looking only at census data (every 10 years).  Looking at year-by-year data for the last decade we get a completely different picture.

First, my original chart:

Now, let’s zoop in on those last 10 years and look at annual data:

Ok, that graph was boring.  That’s because populations don’t change very quickly.  However, let’s look at the percentage change each year:

Look at that.  Starting in 2006 WA population growth began decelerating.  But Seattle has been acelerating since 2005. 

What does that mean for growth management?  I don’t know.  The GMA has been around for 2 decades and it would be strange for it to just start working in 2005.  This probably has more to do with the economy than anything else.  I ended my piece claiming “our only hope of keeping Washington green is to make that Seattle line match the rise of the WA line.”  We’re still a ways from having that happen.  But at least we’ve started heading in the right direction.

0 comments

Herald: Liias to Roll Out Transit Funding Bill

Posted on by John Jensen
Transportation for Washington logo.

According to the Evertt Herald, State Rep. Marko Liias will introduce a bill soon called the Local Transit Act. The bill is expected to open new transit funding options for agencies. A group called Transportation for Washington will be holding a press conference today to roll out the package but the expected form is a series of revenue raisers that would have to go to the local ballot before taking effect. Revenue options have already been announced and include: a “progressive” vehicle excise tax based on the value of the car, a car tab fee based on annual mileage, a  tax based on a car’s fuel efficiency, and — most interesting — allowing local sales taxes to be applied to gasoline.

The Local Transit Act is unlikely to advance, and Josh Fiet of PubliCola theorizes that this group is attempting to get in front of a “‘roads & transit’ package that may come from Sen. transportation chair Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen.” If transit advocates have an alternative bill to support, they may be less willing to agree to roads funding especially without elements from that alternative incorporated into a roads package.

This bill represents a long term funding effort and is different from Liias’ earlier temporary car tab proposal.

Update at 3:30 pm: PubliCola has more from TCC about the politics behind this launch.

20 comments

Airport Link Station Gets a Flight Information Display

Posted on by Oran Viriyincy
Check your flight after leaving the train

The Port of Seattle announces:

A new Flight Information Display now welcomes light rail riders heading into the Airport. The six-foot tall, nine-foot long display is located on the SeaTac/Airport Light Rail station’s mezzanine level just before the skybridge to the terminal. The LCD display, contained in a weatherproof stainless steel enclosure, gives light rail passengers access to flight information as they exit the trains.

While you can check flight status online, the new display is a welcome addition. The blue screens are so bright you could see them from the other side of International Blvd. So when will Sound Transit return the favor and install train information displays in the airport? People getting off planes and heading into town want to know.

84 comments

National HSR

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

This was a big week for national high-speed rail.  First up, the almost-dead ARC tunnel project in New York re-emerged as the Gateway project.  Then, today, the Obama administration announced a $53B national high-speed rail plan.

First, let’s talk Gateway.  The tunnel would be smaller than the New Jersey Transit-sponsored ARC tunnel, but would serve largely the same purpose, expanding capacity on the Northeast Corridor between Newark and Penn Station.  This is why it was so important that Amtrak lay out its ambitious, 30-year, $117 billion vision for the Northeast Corridor last year.  Now, all of the projects like the Gateway project have a common vision to ladder up to.

Next, we have the proposal for $53B towards national HSR.  If you can do even a bit of math, you’ll quickly see that $53B is less than half what it would take to build out the NE corridor project above, meaning that getting truly national HSR is going to take far more than $53B.  Nonetheless, it’s a pretty significant proposal.

Regionally, there’s no doubt that this would have positive effects.  In addition to a respectable chunk of the initial $8B HSR pot, we managed to get a sizeable amount of the pot that Ohio and Wisconsin rejected a few months back.  Clearly, Amtrak Cascades is looked upon favorably in DC.  My guess is that DC, like most granting organizations, likes low-risk, high-reward projects.  The fact that Cascades is funded in large part by local money means that there’s a commitment here to seeing it through.  This makes the bean counters in DC happy, because it means it’s less likely that a rail-hostile Governor is going to come in and tear the thing up tomorrow.  So my guess is that we’d be in line for a nice chunk of that $53B when it comes through.

Will it come through?  Who knows.  The new Republican head of the House Transportation Committee says its a terrible idea.  On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of project that gets cut in the House, only to be added back in by the Senate in conference committee.  So we’ll see.

0 comments

News Roundup: Parting Ways

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
U-Link TBMs Being Assembled in Fife (Sound Transit)

This is an open thread.

58 comments