Today the DJC is reporting that the 6.25 acre site of Zion Preparatory Academy in Columbia City has been sold to development company JC Mueller for $5 million.
Across a small street from the station, this property is planned as transit oriented mixed use, including continued operation of the school. With expansion of the Rainier Vista community to the north, this bodes well for future Link ridership.
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[UPDATE: Commenters are referring to the same Everett transit site that I linked to below, as if I didn’t know about it. However, it is NOT a list of changes, unless someone wants to go through each schedule route by route and compile the differences.]
On Sunday we’ll be tweeting from the Swift Opening, which we’ve already discussed. However, Nov. 29th will also be the day of the next service change for Community Transit and Everett Transit. Big changes:
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
In the comments to this STB post on McGinn’s solicitation of ideas, one of the readers links to the rapid trolley network, an idea that was commissioned as a possible component of the surface-transit alternative to the Viaduct replacement.
Matt Fiske wrote about this idea in Crosscut back in March (I could’ve sworn I wrote about it, too, but I can’t find any reference in the archives).
Obviously the buses are run by the county, but Seattle can still play a fairly significant role in getting transit through the city more quickly. Indeed, the report lists them out:
Almost all of these fall within the city’s domain and would be a huge boon for in-city transit. Sadly, none of them are included in the report’s cost estimates. *
In fact, if the network had any hope of being “rapid,” you’d have to invest significantly in the street-grid bottleneck between downtown and Capitol Hill. Almost all of the proposed rapid routes — much like the current routes between Queen Anne/Belltown and Capitol Hill/CD (2,3,4,8,10,11,12, etc.) — would waste a ton of time getting from one side of I-5 to the other, especially during rush hour. Finding a way to prioritize crosstown transit between, say, 5th Avenue and Broadway would be a big help.
* The report does calculate $142M in capitol costs for new trolley wire, improved stations, new fare collection systems, and a new electrical substation. Street improvements are outside the scope of the analysis.
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The Seattle City Council gave final approval to repeal (only McIver against) the $25-per-employee-per-year “head tax” that funded $4.5m a year in transportation improvements, notably for bicyclists and pedestrians, and exempted employees who didn’t drive alone to work.
Although Council President Richard Conlin insists bike and ped projects won’t be harmed, there’s discontent among advocates for those projects, and understandably so. That said, there may be less here than meets the eye.
There are two nice things about the head tax: one, it provides money for important projects, and two, it collects revenue in a manner that discourages socially destructive commuting.
Councilmember Sally Clark has a characteristically frank assessment of the revenue side:
The loss of revenue from the Employee Head Tax does mean we’ll have to shift some spending priorities. We’ll pay back bond debt over a longer period and, ultimately, pay more. Because the Commercial Parking Tax now generates more revenue than expected, I don’t expect the total volume of street projects completed will be any less than what was promised when Council adopted these taxes, but we’ll take on fewer “extra” projects in the coming years because we’ll use the unexpected higher revenue from the parking tax to pay off debt instead of revenue from the EHT.
One hope for further revenue is Nick Licata’s proposal to direct the Mayor to study diverting $15m in annual mobile speed van revenue to the pedestrian fund. That passed in the budget today, and Mayor McGinn will have to report by March 1st.
The other issue is the deterrent to driving, and I don’t think that the head tax was all that effective for that. Assuming the $25 incentive was even worth the staff time for the business to claim, the tax was entirely transparent to the commuter, the one that decides which mode he or she was going to take to work that day.
31 commentsThis post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
If so, SDOT will give you a pile of free stuff.
If not but you’re a single occupant commuter, promise to change your evil ways for two months and they’ll still give you $60 in bus tickets and a discounted Zipcar membership.
Already doing the right thing? Well, no free stuff for you. But thank you anyway.
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Community Transit conducted a dry run (simulated operations) of Swift BRT on Monday and STB was offered an opportunity to ride. CT is doing final testing and driver training before service begins on Sunday afternoon.
I boarded Swift with Community Transit representative Mike Allende at the Airport Road Northbound Station for Everett. The Swift bus pulled in really close to the curb and the doors lined up with markers on the platform called “welcome mats”. This process currently takes about 10 seconds but should be reduced as drivers get used to it. As to why no level boarding? CT considered it but decided to go with a slight step. One reason given was that roadway and vehicle conditions can vary, making it difficult to guarantee a level boarding every time. A fully loaded bus, tire pressure, ruts in the roadway, for example, creates a height difference. Combine that with the expectation of level boarding and people might trip when it isn’t truly level. The bus dwelled for 10 seconds and then we were on our way. Swift will make stops at every station like a light rail train. There are no bell cords but there’s a special request button for wheelchair users.
Continue reading after the jump…
Continue reading “Swift Preview Ride”
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The “Vision Line” route for East Link proposed by Kevin Wallace is fantastical, but in the real world of building effective mass transit, that is not a good thing.
The plan offers plenty to roll your eyes at. From the circus tents that would provide protection from rain if only they wouldn’t be the first thing to be cut when going to design, to the mile walk to Bellevue’s shopping and entertainment core that would depress ridership, to a watercolor rendering showing a dense urban forest growing under a concrete, elevated light rail station next to a somehow nearly-empty I-405.
The watercolored amenities, of course, will disappear from design shortly after a more prudent tunnel is taken off the table by the Bellevue city council, which may be point of the proposal. Not included in Wallace’s lowball cost estimate is the centerpiece walkway nor the cost of moving the Bellevue Transit Center away from the downtown core, which he has proposed. Mayor Degginger has noted that creating an expensive walkway could bring total costs in line with tunnel estimates.
Wallace’s route misses the South Bellevue Park & Ride and loses north of 3,000 daily riders, which he says can be made up with transit-oriented development. But you cannot develop around stations that are cut, you cannot develop on top of I-405 which borders most of the alignment, and you should not sacrifice serving an established downtown core. Wallace argues that that the “cost per rider” metric is more important than just looking at ridership, but compares segment cost with total ridership rather than segment ridership. Using the more accurate measure for the impact on Bellevue make the proposal’s cost numbers less impressive.
Continue reading after the jump…
Continue reading “Editorial: Don’t Build a Train Station Next to a Highway”
| 144 commentsThis post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Great post from Josh @ CHS on Capitol Hill’s new parking regulations, and why it might be a good idea to raise rates for street parking. This, in particular, is fascinating:
The most important thing to understand about off-street parking is that it simply is not satisfying a market demand. While trying to find a spot curbside can be a nightmare to say the least, most parking garages in the neighborhood sit empty. In its most recent Comprehensive Parking Study SDOT found that in the residential area surrounding Broadway, off-street parking utilization rates peaked at 50%, with an average at just 40% (along Broadway itself it was 65% and 51% respectively). Even validated retail parking, such as the Broadway Market, was noted by SDOT as being underused.
That’s certainly my experience. I can’t remember the last time I paid for parking on the Hill (now, I live close enough that I’m rarely on the Hill in a car). I’ll circle forever before I pay. Rational? No way. But such is the nature of the human mind. Make it a little more expensive to park on the street, and I’ll probably change my mind.
Parking is one of those subjects (like congestion pricing) where normally decent-minded liberals freak out and turn conservative. (Hint: they’re usually making outlandish claims about what’s good or bad for “families,” as if all families can all be lumped into a single bucket.) What people often fail to grasp is that no one’s proposing taking parking away, but rather pricing it appropriately so that it’s used most efficiently. Clearly, 50% occupancy for off-street parking is not an efficient utilization.
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We wanted to give Kevin Wallace a chance to address the many concerns that you had with his recent Vision Line proposal and to defend the premise behind his idea. I had the opportunity to bring forth some of the questions that arose during our open question thread and hear more about Wallace’s reasoning for picking the controversial alignment. Prior to asking him your specific questions, he briefed me on why he developed the Vision Line the way he did.
Wallace has four basic premises behind the proposal:
More below the jump.
Continue reading “Kevin Wallace Responds”
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A week ago the Obama administration proposed to take over safety regulation over commuter rail, subway, and light rail systems nationwide. Federal law currently blocks such regulation, but proponents claim safety oversight is lax in most jurisdictions. It later came out that this authority would eventually expand to buses.
The reaction from the transit community has been cautious. The man on the street has been extremely funny, as usual. Locally, Sound Transit did not return two of our requests for comment.
Although it’s good that federal money would be attached, I see this as a dangerous path.* Safety regulation has obvious benefits, but it can also impose unreasonable restrictions on operations, especially when written at a national level and ignorant of local conditions. (Consider the history of federal regulation of intercity rail, or the Bush FTA’s heinous decision to effectively kill special bus service to sporting events.) Even well-intentioned rules can end up putting more people in cars and therefore get more people killed.
Moreover, as with any regulatory power, in the wrong hands it can actively be used to destroy that which it regulates. Most Americans are entirely car-dependent, and there are going to be times over the coming decades where a transit-hostile administration is in power. Let’s not give them a very effective tool to strangle rail transit.
* To be clear, my colleagues largely disagree with me on this issue.
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