Another ferry route ends

Posted on by Matt Gangemi

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Last year I was excited about the Lake Union Water Taxi. It sounded like a fun way to get from downtown to, say, Fremont – ride the streetcar to South Lake Union, hop on the $3 ferry, and enjoy the ride. It probably wasn’t the fastest commute, but I was considering it as a fun end of a work evening (consisting of happy hour downtown, streetcar ride, boat ride, go out to dinner, bus or taxi home).

I missed the short season they had last year, but was prepared with a calendar reminder this year, which just popped up telling me to try this.

But sadly it won’t be open this year.

Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to wait for the next romantic commuting option to come along. I think Venetian gondolas would be a good idea – anyone have some investment capital and an accordion?

0 comments

What If We Did Just Tear It Down?

Posted on by Ben Schiendelman

I think there’s a killer argument here that’s hard to refute, and hasn’t come up yet, and in the interest of continuing this conversation, I’ll just post it!

Our viaduct options are basically a) build something else, and b) tear down the failing structure and leave it torn down. I don’t really consider the retrofit an option – WSDOT will probably shoot it down as unfeasible and unsafe.

So here’s the 2000 pound elephant in the room. For the first several years of implementation, both of these options look exactly the same. The old structure has to be torn down, and even in the best case rebuild scenario, you still have complete closure for years.

Immediately, every viaduct user finds a solution to their commute problem. They get on I-5, or they take a bus, or they plan ahead and change jobs or move before the mess starts – they’ll have plenty of lead time.

Two years later? They’re still doing it. I-5 can only carry so much traffic – it’ll worsen the most at first, but traffic will taper off after this time. Most people will have solved their problems, many more will be interested in transit and trying out the bus service we already have (and maybe ‘Rapid Ride’). I don’t know when this would be – maybe 2012, maybe 2014. Link Light Rail will be rocking our socks off. University Link will be mostly complete – everyone will be holding their breaths for subway stations. Maybe we’ll even have passed Sound Transit 2 by then, and Northgate and Bellevue will be groundbreaking soon.

Another year. Gas will be $8/gallon, or $10/gallon. Maybe speculative bidding on oil futures will have dropped off, and it’ll only be $6/gallon – this scenario doesn’t require $10 gas. A lot more of the urban condo projects will be done. Developers will be continuing to build in the core, and the renewed demand from people previously commuting across downtown Seattle will help bolster that. Again, all this is regardless of what we choose. Few commuters will just grin and bear it.

One more – say 2016. Four years of closure – the minimum on any of the WSDOT construction alternatives I’ve seen. This is where our choice matters. In scenario a), we have a new freeway. U Link opens. Some people return to their cars. The waterfront is dead – construction kills some of the businesses, and with the viaduct another 20 feet closer, it’s no longer pleasant. By this time, fewer are driving, and it looks like 5 won’t be as congested because so many people can’t afford to anymore. But we have a new freeway that we’ve already gotten used to not using.

In scenario b), the waterfront is still dead from construction, but now it has the chance to come back. Seattle has rebuilt the waterfront streetcar line, and four new mixed use buildings are on the way in the old shadow. The same pressures exist to build high capacity transit – the city is ripe for a new western corridor ballot measure. U Link opens, Bellevue is 50% complete, and Northgate is 70% complete. Sound Transit is ready to go to ballot with ST3, where North King money won’t quite cover Ballard-West Seattle, but will cover Ballard-Downtown, including a tunnel under 2nd Avenue. The city puts another measure on the ballot to build the other half. With new city residents clamoring for transit, Sounder ridership at 20,000 a day and climbing, and ST3 Link expansion promising Tacoma, Redmond, and most of the way to Everett, both pass.

22 comments

Sighing?

Posted on by Andrew Smith

I have a different take on Jim Veseley’s Sunday article than Ben Schiendelman did. In case you didn’t read the article, Mr Veseley’s argument is essentially that Americans have been adjusting their expectations downward on a number of issues, and the viaduct is the one foremost in Mr Veseley’s thoughts. Veseley says he’s “ready for a retrofit” of the viaduct, rather than a tunnel, elevated replacement, or surface option. This “lowered expectations” argument is a perspective I hadn’t thought of or heard, and it certainly is thought provoking. I think Mr Veseley gets bull’s eyes on a few big points, but I think he misses the mark on some of the details.

David M. Lampton, a much-honored China scholar and head of faculty at the vaunted School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, pointed out last week that China now has 68 subway projects under way — and the U.S. has none.

He cited the decaying Interstate Highway System that spans America, but was built in the 1950s and ’60s. A trip on Interstate 5 bears him out. If not for the patches, we’d be looking at rebar.

…
I don’t see a weakening of our hopes and values, but a realization that some of them belong back in the 1990s. One of our most intensely popular television series, “Lost,” comes at a perfect time.

Roads and transit are just two signs of our decaying infrastructure in the United States, airports and seaports also spring to mind. Still, when most of our best new highway and transit systems were built, the US was spending ten percent of its GDP on infrastructure (H/T to Frank for the link), today it’s just one percent. If a show were to come at the perfect time to describe the state of infrastructure in this country, it’d be called “Broke”.

Veseley puts a sly dig in on Sound Transit expansion:

We see that in the calls for a pause in the funding of transportation projects. Megaprojects are on hold everywhere. A Sound Transit vote for the fall has as many supporters as it has people saying give it a rest, come back to us the following year, or maybe later.

That’s not what the polling I’ve seen has shown, support is much higher for an ST2 expansion than against it. The rising gas prices certainly have something to do with that.

As for the viaduct, I certainly don’t want a large one, as a new elevated option would be, or any super-expensive option, such as a tunnel, when in my mind that funding could be better spent on transit expansions. I’ve heard a retrofit would have a shorter life span, and thus might not get much bang-for-the buck, but as long as it’s cheap enough, I won’t get upset. What about you?

12 comments

Chickens and Eggs

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Brian notes that the Seattle Streetcar ridership is up, especially during peak travel times. Still, there are no doubt plenty of off-peak runs that are empty or nearly empty. But if you read Krugman today, that’s not necessarily a bad thing:

Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.

Atrios comments:

Obviously it makes sense to focus spare mass transit dollars on population centers, but it also makes sense to change the way we think about mass transit and not have those dollars be so sparse. Development corridors could incorporate mass transit from the beginning, at the very least with right of ways preserved and zoning around planned station locations in anticipation of what is to come.

The Seattle Streetcar, for all its faults, is the rare public transit investment that anticipates future growth by trying to do exactly that. Of course, spurring infill redevelopment is not the same as opening up new land for development out in the hinterlands. But it achieves a similar goal.

[Central Link is similar, but mostly along MLK. When you take into account the full, envisioned Link to Northgate and the Eastside, it’s more about serving existing communities than trying to spur redevelopment.]

PS: I like Krugman’s column title, “Stranded in Suburbia.” People tend to associate auto-dependent lifestyles as somehow more “free” than transit-oriented ones. But that’s obviously only true as long as you can afford to keep filling the tank. Otherwise you’re… stranded.

1 comments

SLU Streetcar ridership up

Posted on by Brian Bundridge

While not official from SDOT/Metro Transit, the SLU Streetcar ridership has climbed from 960 riders a day to 1325 riders a day. With the start of the Summer tourist season, new buildings in Downtown Seattle opening, and the recently opened Lake Union Park contributing to the increase.

Per the operator of Sunday’s run, weekdays between 6am to 8am and 4:30pm to 6:30pm are the busiest, being near crush load (130-145)

Average ridership appears to be gaining as construction eases however some trips are still only 2-6 passengers.

He did mention that the City is trying to improve the signal timing and add priority queue to the Streetcar, giving the operator the ability to change the light or leave the light green an extra 15-30 seconds. By doing this, would shave the run to dramatically but SDOT is studying if this would benefit the system or not. (duh)

10 comments

Re: No Question…

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
A few points that I think were missed in this weekend’s Battle Royale about the Rainier Valley segment:
  1. Federal funding rules don’t allow transit agencies to take TOD into account when doing ridership projections. So a line through Sodo’s warehouses would have had lousy ridership projections, and probably not have earned any federal dollars. So a Sodo alignment means no alignment at all. People actually live near the Rainier Valley line.
  2. Seattle’s neighborhoods are famously risk-averse, and likely to fight a rail line that will ultimately benefit them. Poorer neighborhoods are generally less litigious and less politically active, meaning that both political and engineering risk were lower for this segment.
  3. The Rainier’s valley development pattern was unique. MLK is/was a fairly underdeveloped strip of auto repair shops and small, run-down apartment buildings, but also is two or three blocks from major arterials on either side: Rainier Avenue and Beacon Avenue. This made it uniquely suited to draw ridership from two vibrant and transit-intensive populations while still being capable of inspiring large TOD projects with minimal political opposition.
  4. I would have liked to have seen our Ballard/West Seattle contingent — leading advocates of in-city before regional rail — come out a little more strongly for the Rainier Valley segment. I think the Seattle-first argument would have substantial merit if transit were being funded by a dictatorship, but fortunately we actually require democratic assent in this country. Unfortunately, the electorate is shackled with extremely narrow parochialism. At any rate, Central Link was an opportunity to provide substantial in-city service while also meeting regional goals: the best of both worlds.
Furthermore, as several commenters pointed out, what’s done is done. If you’re concerned about operating delays incurred by the Rainier Valley segment, the proper response is to pressure the city and Sound Transit for additional safety improvements to improve operating speeds. For instance:
  • Pedestrian overpasses, instead of signalized, at-grade crossings.
  • Crossing gates at all auto intersections.
  • Fencing along the route to discourage pedestrian crossing at unauthorized points. It doesn’t have to be triple-strand concertina wire; even a tasteful, 4 foot black iron fence would be a sufficient deterrent in 90% of cases.
  • Construction of underpasses for major arterials.
Most of this stuff is relatively inexpensive, and can be added incrementally as funding and political will allow.

15 comments

The American Way

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
Buried deep in the PI business section a few days ago:

The Commerce Department reported Friday that housing construction rose by 8.2 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.03 million units. While apartment construction rose by 36 percent, building in the much larger single-family sector of the market fell by 1.7 percent, the 12th consecutive monthly decline, pushing single-family activity down to a 16-year low.

This is another data point showing that a home in the “country” and a huge yard aren’t irreducible demands by Americans, but just another taste that is responsive to economic incentives.

Bad economy or no, the population is in a very pro-transit mood right now. 2008 is the year to go to the ballot.

6 comments

Comment Etiquette (III)

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

It’s been a couple of months, so I’ll make this request again:

Please select a nickname and type it in under the “nickname” box on our comments page. Going through a comments thread with “Anonymous” is tedious and confusing. I can distinctly recognize at least two regular commenters using the Anonymous tab, and it’s annoying.

It doesn’t require getting an account or anything. Just type in a name, like SLOG.

Example above, with the correct box indicated in red. For whatever reason, Blogger doesn’t allow you to turn off “anonymous” without doing the same for “Nickname”.

Thanks!

6 comments

Widening Our Highways Will Never Make Sense – But Narrowing Them Already Does.

Posted on by Ben Schiendelman

Jim Vesely, one of the editors of the Seattle Times, commutes to work in the I-90 express lanes and on the Viaduct. On the Mercer Island to Seattle stretch, he doesn’t even have to be HOV, because Mercer Island residents are apparently worth two plebians. He has likely never ridden a bus or a train. He is one of the last remnants of a school of thought that can no longer add knowledge to their understanding of traffic – he can’t grasp that adding more lanes causes more congestion than it could ever relieve, or that congestion can never be reduced through promotion of alternatives, but only through a limitation of capacity.

The mayor of Bogota understands these things. The mayor of New York understands these things. The mayor of Seattle understands these things. Urban planners and transportation engineers know that while you can smooth intersections, you cannot reduce congestion by adding capacity, because every minute of congestion you reduce on the highway you expand, you add twice or more to every roadway it connects to – because you create an inbound and an outbound trip elsewhere for every new trip on the highway itself.

This makes sense to everyone, doesn’t it? It’s not rocket science. But Jim Vesely and his ilk just don’t get it. They cling to the ancient idea that if you add a lane to SR-520, you’ll somehow separate people from each other – but you don’t. You just make room for more people.

Now for the contrary – and this is what terrifies people like Mr. Vesely. If you narrow a highway, you will, indeed, reduce congestion. Not on the highway itself – but on all the roads around it. We’ve heard plenty of times that light rail will only carry a small percentage of traffic (a ridiculous argument anyway) – but so do our highways. The streets surrounding them carry far more trips.

So when I hear Mr. Vesely champion retrofitting the Viaduct, I can only regard it as the sad selfishness of someone completely out of touch. We have an opportunity here to change our urban landscape, to erase a horrible mistake made many years ago. Why would we accept as sound advice the opinion of someone who has been so wrong on so many issues – someone who has always come out in favor of things that benefit him personally, and damn the rest of us? It’s obvious that this man supports retrofit because it is the one thing that will delay major closure of the viaduct until after he has retired.

Don’t let those with prehistoric ideas plan our future.
We know better than that.

7 comments

Polling ST 2.1

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Goldy’s hearing things:

I keep hearing about a hush-hush poll that’s been conducted, that bodes very well for a Sound Transit Phase 2 package, should one appear on the fall ballot. Hmm… I wonder if the popular support for transit has anything to do with this?

I’m not sure who conducted the poll, or what size the sample, but I’ve been assured by those who have seen it that it wasn’t a puff piece, and that it strongly tested the proposal’s negatives. (And by “negatives” I’m assuming they mean the price and the taxes.) This leads me to believe that it was probably conducted on behalf of folks weighing the risks of getting behind an ‘08 ballot measure.

Good stuff. I like the community outreach that ST’s been doing, but it’s not the rigorous kind of stuff you use to green light a 2008 vote.

0 comments