With RapidRide B running from Downtown Bellevue to Overlake late next year, Metro is using the opportunity to reorganize service on the Eastside, resurrecting some ideas that have been floating around since at least 2006. This is also driven by the State and Federal requirement to add service over 520.

Routes suggested for added service: 212, 233, 245, 249, 255, 271

Routes suggested for revision: 221, 222, 230, 233, 240, 246, 249, 250, 253, 261, 265, 266, 272, 926

Suggested new route: 275

Routes suggested for deletion: 225, 229, 247, 250, 253, 256, 261, 266, 272, 926

The gist of these changes, I believe, is consolidating the buses that run all the way into Seattle and forcing transfers at hubs like Eastgate to get into Seattle. That’s a boon to transit-dependent people and reverse commuters (like me) for whom peak-only service is inadequate or useless; properly executed, there should be little pain for current one-seat rides who should retain a painless transfer to get to Seattle. In any case, less emphasis on peak routes and more on high-demand corridors is essential to a comprehensible system usable at all times of day.

You can share your feedback with an online survey, workshops on Nov. 3rd and 4th, by phone at 206-205-8788, or by email. Eliminating service, even when replaced by something arguably better, will always generate negative comments, so if you like these changes it’s important to make your voice heard.

Timeline for the changes is below the jump.

Continue reading “Metro to Reorganize Eastside Service”

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The Bellingham Herald reports that the Whatcom Transit Authority (WTA) is one vote away from abolishing transfers:

On Oct. 6, WTA held a hearing on the proposed changes to the fare policy. Staff recommended eliminating transfers, which WTA has used since 2005, because they’re often abused as people use them for a free return-trip ride. Staff also estimates the agency would get a roughly $100,000-a-year revenue boost after eliminating them, and it would save about $10,000 in printing costs. Transfers also encourage payment of cash fares, which WTA wants to discourage in favor of bus passes.

There are also administrative savings to postpone (and shrink) WTA’s second round of service cuts from 2013 to 2014.

In a system as complex as King County’s, abolishing transfers altogether is probably not possible. In anything, there is too much emphasis on one-seat rides rather than a functioning, interconnecting network.

However, there is asymmetry in the way that ORCA transfers compare to paper ones. Paper transfers tend to be valid for longer than policy states, whereas ORCA enforces the actual transfer time limit. Moreover, Link’s location-based fares offer no round-trip discount.

I’m in general in favor of fare increases, since they mean more revenue for transit. But what about “abuse” for round trips? Is this a feature or a bug of the transfer policy?

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• 

  Beacon Hill station a “marvel in engineering“. It’s certainly my favorite.

• Burien TC groundbreaking Saturday.
• East half of 520 bids come in well under budget.
• The feds promise $34m for the South Park bridge and $10m for freight rail in Vancouver, WA. Plus, $5m for TOD planning to PSRC.
• Transit drivers engaging in a little activism on the job, get slapped down by Metro.
• Another rough day for rail reliability. I’m not sure whether the frequency if these is a result of more failures or better reporting by ST.
• If you don’t pay your parking tickets, the city might boot your car.
• A new national database of TOD.
• The federal gas tax should be indexed to inflation.
• One reason STB doesn’t talk about other progressive issues is that we’d like this headline to be possible in Washington, someday.

This is an open thread.

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Last week, the King County Council decided to cancel the portion of Metro’s planned 2011 25-cent fare increase that applies to seniors and the disabled, holding the fare at 75 cents. The cost will be partially offset by raising the monthly pass cost for seniors from $18 to $27, bringing the breakeven point to 36 trips, just like other passes. KCDOT Spokeswoman Linda Thielke says the net revenue impact in 2011 will be a loss of $160,000.

In other news, ST has deferred the planned $1 fare on Tacoma Link indefinitely, due to out-of-date study assumptions.

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Recent talk of commercial parking tax (CPT) increases have been largely centered around where revenue would go, but have missed out on the broader implications for both drivers and transit users.  The benefits of the tax are generally twofold: more revenue and more disincentive to drive.  Ironically though, it is because of  increases in the City’s CPT over the past several years that blows have been dealt to the UW’s U-Pass, the University’s primary transportation demand management (TDM) program.

Over the past two years, the price of a quarterly U-Pass has nearly doubled from $50 to $99, largely due to an increased share of parking revenue going to the CPT.  Because parking fees help fund the U-Pass, the costs have drastically risen for both students and faculty.  The University’s student government, ASUW, has been lobbying the City for an exemption from the increase.  From the UW Daily:

Organizations such as hospitals and universities spend a significant amount of their parking revenue on subsidizing programs like the U-PASS, and if the CPT increases, it would make such programs more expensive, Lewis said…

The CPT increase for the UW alone is worth almost $2 million, and would be a huge loss of revenue during a difficult budget period, said Lewis, who has been in discussions with city council members and administration.

More below the jump.

Continue reading “The Case for UW’s Commercial Parking Tax Exemption”

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Lindblom at the Seattle Times reports that the state has made the Highway 99 tunnel contract a bit sweeter:

As a bid deadline nears and pressure mounts, Washington state has sweetened its Highway 99 tunnel contract by offering a pair of bid teams $230 million in concessions.

The changes reflect a view by construction executives that the real costs are higher on this world-record project than the state projected several months ago.

The money can be shifted out of a large pool of risk and contingency funds, so the overall tunnel budget remains $1.96 billion, said Ron Paananen, state program administrator.

Why make these changes?

They’re designed to reduce the companies’ risk, so bids are more likely to meet the target price of $1.1 billion, published many months ago.

“Both teams, and maybe the two teams that dropped out, expressed concern the [state’s cost target] is too low. They couldn’t figure out how to bid the project at that amount or lower,” [one of the bidders] said.

WSDOT’s expert panel and the Seattle city council’s risk consultant say that reducing the amount of contingency funds is fine, and perhaps some of that contingency money exists for exactly the type of bid inflation we’re witnessing. But it’s slightly concerning that the engineer’s estimates are already unrealistic in a period where construction bids routinely come in under budget. Imagine what happens in 2014 or so, when construction is beginning in earnest and the change orders come pouring in.

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Regrettably, the Pierce Transit sales tax increase is not on the ballot with their sales tax increase until February 8, instead of in the high-turnout general election. Regardless, there is now a Yes-on-Prop-1 website, Facebook page, and donation site.

PT is hoping to avert a 43% service cut by increasing the sales tax rate from 0.6% to the state maximum of 0.9%, a level where Metro, Community Transit, and Sound Transit already are. That level would actually fund a service increase of about 5%, rather than merely avoiding the cuts.

You can get detailed by-route information about the proposal here.

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Link ridership continues to decline slightly from its summer peak.

Weekday: 23,007 (down slightly from August)

Saturday: 18,063

Sunday: 16,051

I don’t think there’s anything new to be said about this.

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There are a bunch of inaccuracies in Erica Barnett’s rant on Publicola Monday:

As Seattle Transit Blog has noted, the distance between stations on the south end of the line is much longer than in the central, north, and (planned) east portions of the line: Nearly two-and-a-half miles from station to station, compared to just over 1.5 miles for the north section and just over a mile for the central portion.

Erica is quoting the station spacing on South Link, Seatac to Federal Way, not “Central Link”, which includes long, stationless stretches outside Seattle. The actual station spacing is reproduced below:

Onward:

[Sound Transit] eliminated or indefinitely “deferred” two at-grade stations in South Seattle—the Graham Street Station between Columbia City and Othello Station, and the Boeing Access Road Station, between the Rainier Beach Station and Tukwila—in part so it could build the costly underground Beacon Hill station.

This isn’t a fact-check, but I think it’s a bad argument. First of all, BAR would be an elevated station, so it’s far from clear it would be cheap. Second of all, Beacon Hill is the highest ridership station in Southeast Seattle, so it’s reasonable to assume that Graham St. would perform worse than Beacon Hill. BAR, at the base of a runway, has poor ridership potential unless freeway express buses are terminated here to force a transfer.

Moreover, a tunnel station would be very difficult to install after the fact, whereas Graham St. should be relatively inexpensive.

Lastly:

Although Sound Transit initially estimated 3,000 people a day would board at Beacon Hill, currently, only about 1,000 do—about two percent of the total number who board the train over the course of the route on weekdays.

The link provided is broken at the time of this writing, but the 3,000 figure is for 2020, not today. The station data was taken when daily ridership was about 20,000, making it 5%, not 2%.

More on infill station possibilities here. Beacon Hill Blog also made many of the points above.

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