Seattle’s Funding Gap in the DJC

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Claire Enlow has a guest editorial (behind paywall) in the DJC.

We’ve got lots of plans, and many transportation needs. But when it comes to funding, Seattle has the biggest gap of any city in the nation. It amounts to more than $700 per year, per person, according to a report called Infrastructure 2008 commissioned by the Urban Land Institute. That’s how fast we are falling behind. The runner-up—Dallas—has only half that gap. New York City is tenth on the list.
Why are we first in this race to nowhere? Former Seattle mayor Charles Royer, who appeared on a panel at the event releasing the ULI report, offered his assessment: “We are very good at making plans, and really bad at pulling the trigger.”

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The room where Royer spoke was full of people accustomed to making plans and carrying them out—developers and their professional milieu. We could safely say that this group has a strong bias toward predictability and rationality over chaos.
And they are worried. Votes for transportation funding around here have been very hard to win. Deciding just what to do, even in the face of failing infrastructure like Seattle’s viaduct, is more difficult than ever.

To be fair, underlying the gap is a high expectation: 1.7 million more people in the central Puget Sound region in 2040 than there were in 2000, a figure the Puget Sound Regional Council uses in transportation planning. If they all commute in single-occupancy cars, that kind of increase could cause chaos.

At the same time that the Federal Highway Trust Fund is going bankrupt, the report tells us, a congressional commission has recommended that the country spend $225 billion annually over the next 50 years on its transportation systems.

There’s an estimated gap of $170 billion per year between national needs and funds, according to keynote speaker William Hudnut, four-term mayor of Indianapolis. Previously unthinkable disasters like the collapse of levies in New Orleans and a bridge in Minneapolis remind us that this gap is tragically real.

In the ULI report, comparisons to Europe and Asia make things look particularly stalled. While the European Union is banding together for infrastructure funding, the U.S. has yet to build its first high-speed train or even make plans to build a system.

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Capacity on our roads and highways is already passing its limits. Relief can only be found in patterns of development that are self-contained and served by transit. And that’s going to take long-term investments in a number of areas, including rapid transit and transit-oriented development.

It won’t be cheap and Proposition 1 failed to impress the voters. The Regional Transportation Investment Authority asked for approval of a confusing, something-for-everyone list of roads and transit projects.

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If regional voters are ever going to “pull the trigger” on big infrastructure investments or long term funding mechanisms, they need a convincing narrative of the post-oil future. Ongoing climate change and stratospheric gas prices should point the way to smarter development and more transportation choices. With a little more national and regional leadership, political will and voters just might be close behind.

I actually disagree that we need to convince the voters of a “post-oil future”, they can already sort of see it with gas prices going higher. I think now is the time to put a transit expansion on the ballot, and without the expensive and controversial roads portion.

1 comments

MSM and Transit

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

It’s really interesting watching the mainstream media start covering mass transit.

I think the NBC clip is pretty good. If I’d written it I probably would have added a line or two about how Americans have chosen to subsidize auto-centric land use patterns for so long. But overall, not bad.

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Rapid Ride

Posted on by Andrew Smith

The West Seattle Blog knows a lot about Rapid Ride after a brief to the Council made yesterday. Some details from the longer WSB piece:

  • Rapid Ride Routes will be given letters instead of numbers. For example, the West Seattle route will be the “C” route.
  • The buses will have space for three bikes on the racks.
  • Wi-Fi will be available on all coaches.
  • There will be ticket machines in “stations” that will enable off-coach payment. This, I think, will be the biggest improvement over regular bus service.

The troubling paragraph from the WSB is this:

The briefing also brought pointed questions from city councilmembers including Transportation Committee chair Jan Drago, who is concerned that the RapidRide bus won’t be so rapid — with a variety of stops planned in addition to the “stations” that will be about a half-mile apart. Metro acknowledged that in fact, while certain parts of the route might save commuters time, in some cases RapidRide will NOT be the most “rapid” way to get downtown — express buses will still beat it.

Not so rapid, huh.

I get this sinking feeling about Rapid Ride sometimes. I asked Sims how many new service hours Rapid Ride would have and he wouldn’t say, I worry there’s very little. And when I read things like this about Metro’s operation budget evaporating as fuel prices sky rocket:

Service increases scheduled for September are not at risk, said Kevin Desmond, Metro’s general manager. But the extent of future service improvements funded by the Transit Now sales tax could be in question. The plan, approved by voters in 2006, calls for bus rapid-transit service every 10 minutes at peak hours to five corridors: Pacific Highway South, West Seattle, Ballard, Aurora and Overlake, to begin in the 2010s.

If only we had electric rail transit. It wouldn’t have these spikes in operating cost…

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The C Line

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Details emerge on the Metro RapidRide service to West Seattle.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the point of RapidRide is not necessarily to get people to and from downtown quickly. We have express buses for that. RapidRide is designed to work more like a subway, with potential starts and destinations all along the route. Sure, some stops will be more popular than others, but serving downtown commuters is not the primary goal, as I understand it.

All that said, I think Metro is probably being too conservative in evolving this service from its standard buses. Free Wi-Fi is cool and all, but there are more important things. For example, if the goal is really to move people between destination centers, why not eliminate the stops in between “stations”?

The point of the new color and naming schemes is to signal to people “this is not a bus.” Why not go further in that direction?

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Seattle’s Transit Use Rising Faster Than Normal

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Sorry to keep posting stories like this but here’s a nice video about the recent transit ridership increases.
It’s interesting to think that transit use is rising nationwide, but even more so in our area. According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the Seattle area had the third highest net-increase in transit ridership in the first three months 2008 of the twenty largest metro areas. That’s huge.

My 545 this morning was standing-room-only, even in the pouring rain.

13 comments

Riders Swamp Transit

Posted on by Andrew Smith

As gas goes up so do the transit riders:

This month, researchers from International Business Machines Corp. surveyed 4,091 drivers in 10 U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York. With national gasoline prices averaging $3.67 per gallon at the time of the survey, 9% of drivers said they already were seriously considering other commuting options. At $4.50 a gallon, the figure jumps to 46%.

At $5 a gallon it goes to 66%. This actually a problem for transit agencies who are having a hard time finding money because of lower economic activity due to the recession and are fighting higher diesel prices at the same time. From the WSJ:

After decades trying to gin up enthusiasm for their services, public transit agencies are now having trouble meeting rising demand as more commuters dodge high gasoline prices by hopping on a train or bus.

Under normal circumstances, the surge in ridership would be a boon to the agencies, which have long argued that public transit is one of the best ways to combat social ills such as traffic congestion and global warming.

But at the very moment they should be investing to expand their services, the same driver that is ballooning ridership is crippling transit budgets: steep fuel bills. As record numbers of people board buses and trains, higher costs are forcing public transit agencies to scale back on services, further straining capacity. Local transit agencies fret that the capacity problems may squander the opportunity to convert more Americans to public transportation.

The P-I editorial board hopes that Metro won’t have to cut service, I do too. I think the opportunity that could be squandered is the good will of the voters that will enable Sound Transit to win a the ballot. Electric light rail doesn’t get more expensive when diesel prices rise. It’ll be interesting to see what happens, but if service does get cut, how will we cope with our commutes?

11 comments