[UPDATE 3pm: Service is back to normal.]
There’s an accident involving a train south of Columbia City Station. The 8 is being diverted between Orca and Alaska Sts. Link is running in separate segments: Rainier Beach-Seatac and Stadium-Westlake, with a “bus bridge” in between.
A truck made a left turn on a red light. Apparently, there are no serious injuries. King 5 has more, including photos indicating the train won.
151 commentsHere are STB’s endorsements for the August 17th primary election. As always, these picks are meant to reflect solely the performance and positions on issues covered by this blog, not by their broader political philosophy, progressive or otherwise.
While many state legislative races are happening this year, there are typically only a few candidates that make a real, positive difference on transit and land use. If you don’t live in the districts of these candidates, we strongly encourage you to donate or volunteer for them.
STB’s editorial board consists of Martin H. Duke and John Jensen, with valued input from the rest of the staff.
Marko Liias (21st District, Edmonds) was the champion of the transit funding bill that died in the Senate in 2010. Together with Simpson, he is one of the two best pro-transit legislators in Olympia at the moment.
Chris Reykdal (22nd District, Olympia) is unusual in not only supporting more transit investment, but also understanding that more highways work directly against the objectives of that investment. His relevant positions include “uphold the core values of the Growth Management Act – focus on urban density to avoid rural sprawl”, “adopt constitutional and statutory changes that permit gasoline taxes to be used more flexibly,” and “move our focus away from increasing highway capacity and towards more sustainable public transportation options.” That’s a slam dunk.
Jake Fey (27th District, Tacoma) is a Tacoma City Councilmember and serves on the Sound Transit board. Over 6 years of service in Tacoma, he has advocated for mixed-use transit-oriented centers, Complete Streets, and the Bike/Ped Plan. Olympia needs more representatives that understand urban land use and transportation issues, as well as the issues facing Sound Transit. If that weren’t enough, he’s been endorsed by 27th District resident and Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl.
Joe Fitzgibbon (34th District, West Seattle/Burien). His primary governmental experience is as legislative aide to outgoing Representative and Senatorial candidate Sharon Nelson, one of the few legislators to understand transit and land use issues. Fitzgibbon has won her endorsement. On his website he has the most explicitly pro-transit, pro-rail platform in any race: he is for extending Sound Transit’s taxing authority to accelerate an ST3 vote, the right position on the single most important issue in the legislature for rail activists. He also wants to extend taxing authority for other transit agencies.
Geoff Simpson (47th District, Covington) has for years been the most reliably good legislator. The correctness of his positions is all the more astounding given his rural/exurban district. As a result, his seat is always under threat and he could especially use your help.
Stan Rumbaugh (Supreme Court Position 1). It’s always hard to discern judge positions due to judicial election norms, but Rumbaugh claims to be an environmentalist, and his opponent, Jim Johnson, has a horrible track record on issues important to transit advocates. With the Kemper Freeman lawsuit against East Link coming, the Supreme Court will have a big impact on the region’s future. Johnson dissented from rulings that allowed the condemnation of property for construction of the Seattle Monorail and Link. He also tried to strike down the MVET used by both ST and the SMP, and tried to enforce I-776 at the cost of impairing ST’s bonds.
Patty Murray (U.S. Senate), who as a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is well-positioned to deliver competitive federal transit dollars to Washington, a capability she has frequently demonstrated. She is one of the few central figures in getting Link built, and deserves to continue to help make our local tax dollars go farther.
Intercity Transit Authority Proposition 1: YES. It goes without saying that we’re in favor of maintaining the current level of transit service in Thurston County by raising the sales tax rate and restoring gross revenue to previous levels.
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We are quickly coming up on the opening of the RapidRide A line. While I’m very excited that Metro is testing a proof of payment (POP) system, I’m worried that the trial is set up in a way that makes eventual adoption less likely.
From my understanding the trial is set up like this. All RapidRide stations will have ORCA card readers. When boarding at these stations ORCA card users tap their card at the station and then board at any door. Those that don’t have an ORCA card board at the front door and pay with the driver. At normal stops all riders must board at the front door either using the ORCA card reader onboard or paying with the driver. All riders will be required to have proof of payment, with the implication that fare inspectors will ask to see it. I’m not too clear on this last point, and I get the feeling Metro isn’t either.
The problem with this design is that you have all of the problems associate with either fare systems without getting all of the benefits. Traditional pay as you board systems are good because drivers enforce fare payment (sort of), but as everyone knows it can be painfully slow, especially when people pay with cash. Conversely POP systems are bad because you have to employ fare enforcers, but are good because they significantly decreases dwell times by eliminating fare transactions with the driver, allowing for all door boarding, and improving internal circulation. In the case of RapidRide Metro will have to employ fare enforcers but won’t see all the time savings, because cash payments will still be processed by the driver. Additionally, this system is incompatible with the ride free area which will affect lines C, D and E and is confusing since payment process varies from one stop to the next.
More after the jump.
Continue reading “RapidRide Trial Fare System”
| 76 comments[UPDATE: I believe a couple of the YouTube labels were switched, but this post now has the clips in the proper order.]
Great City has posted Jarrett Walker’s talk last Thursday on Youtube. He already cautions that this talk is no longer exactly what he would say, as his thoughts continue to evolve.
The rest of it after the jump:
Continue reading “Jarrett Walker’s Talk Now Online”
| 6 comments(Via Gutierrez)
I’d like to say a nice word about Mayor Mike McGinn. He hasn’t gotten anything like all he wanted on this project, but had he not raised a big stink and hired consultants left and right, WSDOT would not have made the simple fixes to the spans that would allow light rail in the future, should we ever want it. Good for him.
The production values of these videos continue to increase, even as the traffic level remains utterly ridiculous.
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The comment thread of this Dan Bertolet post reveals some confusion about the transit aspects of the deep-bore tunnel plan and the most recent iteration (December 2008) of surface/transit/I-5.
The who-pays-for-what isn’t as well fleshed out in any document I can find*, but the spending components are:
Transit improvements include more all-day service than the elevated hybrid scenario. This would include increased service on Metro’s RapidRide routes for Ballard/Uptown, Aurora Avenue and West Seattle and new RapidRide routes on Delridge Way and Lake City Way. The waterfront streetcar would be replaced with a new First Avenue line between King Street and Seattle Center. Park and rides would be expanded in Burien, White Center and Shoreline. The Rapid Trolleybus Network would be expanded with new connections such as Madison Park to Colman Dock, Queen Anne to Capitol Hill, and Beacon Hill to Capitol Hill. Moderate investment would be made in other express and local routes in Seattle.
Make of this what you will, but those are the facts.
* It is, interestingly, much easier to find info about unpopular alternatives like the Elliott Bay Bridge or retrofit than live ones like surface/transit or the rebuild. See this for one take from the 2009 Nickels campaign, a take which probably isn’t constitutional.
60 commentsThis post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
I’ve already posted this as a comment at Seattle Transit Blog, but it was fun to make so I thought I’d share here as well.
My commute is less than 3 miles long. The 2x would take me directly from my work to my home, but is infrequent, packed, and slow. Here is my actual commute, in the form of a pseudo-BASIC program, which will almost always get me home faster.
1 hop on the 11, 15, 18, 15X, or 18X 2 if either of the X’s, transfer at Denny to 15, 18, 1, 2, 8, or 13 3 if 1, 15, 18, or 8 get off at Seattle Center and walk to the Met 4 transfer to 2, 2X, or 13 5 else if 15 or 18 get off at Seattle Center and walk to the Met, GOTO #4 6 else if 11, hop off near 3rd and Pine and walk to the bus stop there 7 transfer to 1, 2, 2X, 3, 4, or 13 8 if 1, get off at Seattle Center and walk to the Met, GOTO #4 9 else if 4, ride to what used to be Blockbuster, walk home 10 else if 3, ride to Starbucks at the top of the hill, walk a bit further home 11 else, ride home 12 end
This took me a few months of commuting to figure out, and I have all of the bugs worked out. But what if I needed to go somewhere other than home? I’d have to take their version of an inefficient “one seat” route – if one even exists. Why is our bus system this way? Because bus planners probably think we all value a one-seat ride. But one-seat rides make for terribly inefficient, complicated systems that doesn’t serve anyone well except commuters (and even then, only if you consider “serve well” to mean a one-seat ride).
Using a transfer-based bus system is not only more efficient, but easier to understand. It would be something like: I take the 1st Ave line to the Counterbalance line. Done. Not only that, but the 1st Ave line could be a very frequent trunk line.
6 commentsThis post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Our state created a great (if unoriginal) web site where you can suggest ways of fixing our state budget. A while back I proposed tapping into the gas tax as a temporary measure, until we get back on our budgetary feet. This idea did not do well (currently at -18 votes). Looking through the list of other loser ideas for our state, we see:
Get rid of state highway system -55 (Save money, by giving them to the counties/cities where they are located for them to maintain.)
Road tax -56 (Every vehicle should be issued a transponder and road tax collected for the mileage driven.)
For comparison: Sales tax on food is only at -50. Close the entire state government is at -41. Tax renters like homeowners is -30. Auditing the Dept. of Ecology is at +68. Taxing casinos is at +750 (can we even legally do that?).
Washingtonians love their cars. In fact, people here would actually rather tax food than their roads. Good luck even surviving in this state, transit.
1 comments[UPDATE: Part 2 of Matt’s series here.]
In the DC transit blogosphere there’s a discussion on whether the Metro is “bad”, and if so, how bad. I grew up there and travel back quite a lot, and I adore it. Matt Johnson at Greater Greater Washington is trying a more systematic approach to answering that question:
In this analysis, he’s comparing the 13 heavy rail operators in the U.S. It would be interesting to see a similar comparison of light rail systems; I’m guessing Central Link as a standalone would fare quite poorly because it doesn’t go enough places, and even then not the most obvious ones, but U-Link and the full ST2 buildout would do quite well. Once you get away from heavy rail, of course, headways and reliability become really important metrics.
Of course, the true utility of a system is largely determined by factors out of the transit agency’s control: land use policies, population of the metro area, chokepoints, competing highway capacity, resources of other interfacing transit agencies, and so on. There are three different questions you could try to answer with this kind of analysis:
With older systems the third question is hard to answer with the above criteria; with newer systems the first is impossible to blame on the transit system.
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There’s a “State Public Transportation Partnerships Conference” at the Westin Thursday afternoon, and Transportation Choices Coalition (TCC) is taking advantage of that to have some bigwigs give talks:
Join us for Summer Party with our special guests William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association, John Robert Smith, CEO of Reconnecting America and Nick Donohue, Policy Director, Transportation for America for the latest on federal transportation policy.
TCC’s SUMMER PARTY
WHEN:Thursday, Aug. 5th, 5:00-7:00pm
WHERE: 415 Westlake 415 Westlake Ave N, Seattle (between Harrison and Republican in South Lake Union). Less than 2 blocks from the Westlake Ave and Thomas Streetcar stop.Suggested donation: $50. Includes drinks and heavy appetizers.
RSVP online and purchase tickets here (reference “Millar event” in the Comments section) or contact Jennifer Olegario at jennifer@transportationchoices.org or 206-329-2336.
For those of you who don’t know, TCC is a nonprofit that shares this blog’s values. Unlike STB, they do the things that really require full-time employees: lobbying Olympia and providing a pro-rail, pro-transit, pro-density voice on various government commissions and task forces.
2 comments