Tag: Bus Routes

Despite our budgetary doldrums, it’s an exciting time to be a Seattle transit advocate.  Regional planning is focusing upon performance analysis and capital investment, and at last it seems possible, through the work of the Regional Transit Task Force and others, that radical changes could come to our bus network.   Last Monday’s record-breaking comment thread on Metro’s proposed revisions/cuts makes one thing clear: there is no shortage of enthusiasm and informed opinion any time big changes are proposed.

Two weeks ago I wrote a detailed yet exploratory post about what should happen to Capitol Hill bus service after U-Link.  My proposal sought to make one fundamental point:  that comprehensively higher frequencies can be wrought simply from existing inefficiencies, a point I believe I made well.  The strength of the comments and subsequent email exchanges with readers, however, made it clear that some of my routing choices were unwise and not fully thought through.  A big hat tip to readers such as Zef Wagner, Brent, über-commenter Bruce, and especially Morgan Wick, whose criticisms and suggestions have been particularly helpful.  Useful objections included:

• Keeping the 2 on Spring/Seneca is duplicative and goes against Metro’s desire to move it to Marion/Madison.
• Keeping the 3/4 on James perpetuates unnecessary conflicts with I-5 on-ramps, and Metro has already discussed moving it to Yesler.
• Having the 11 serve the ferry terminal is an inconvenience and prohibits effective interlining with other routes.
• My Route 12 idea was defective in a number of areas, but especially the 19th Ave tail.
• Keep the 14N!
• You can’t mathematically combine a 15-minute bus and a 10-minute bus and end up with 6-minute combined headways.
• The 27 is pointlessly close to Jackson, and should be eliminated.

Agreeing with some of these and not others, what follows is a 2nd attempt.

An improved post-ULink proposal after the jump…

Continue reading “Capitol Hill Mobility, Take 2”

Just over a year ago, Mayor McGinn formally recommended the Broadway/Yesler/14th/Jackson alignment for the First Hill Streetcar. At the end of his letter to the council, McGinn also pledged support for a number of related transit changes:

• Improving transit access to the Boren/Madison area, through measures such as speed and reliability improvements to existing Metro routes;
• Developing alternatives that provide north-south transit service in the 12th Avenue corridor;
• Extending the First Hill Streetcar to the north end of Broadway, to support the economic revitalization of Broadway and improve neighborhood access to the Capitol Hill light rail station.

In Seattle political realities have often dictated that we undertake Transit-Planning-By-Consolation-Prize.  When First Hill lost its Link stop, it got the streetcar instead.  When the Broadway alignment was chosen for the streetcar, McGinn then pledged support for additional service on the neglected alignments.  As imprudent as such a patchwork approach may be for transit planning, it also opens up the broader discussion of how best to serve those markets.  So, how should the arrival of rail affect bus service on Capitol Hill, First Hill, and the Central District? To my mind there are several important guiding principles:

• How can we best emphasize high-quality transfers?
• How can we create an intuitive grid amenable to spontaneous transit trips?
• How can we eliminate redundant CBD trips that could be made on LINK or the FHSC?
• How can we add service to 12th Avenue and Boren Avenue in an intelligent and non-duplicative way?
• How can we maintain our trolley network without being bound to its historical routing choices?
• And most of all, how can we do all of this with equivalent (or fewer) operating resources?

In the spirit of Martin’s Rainier Valley Mobility proposal, I started playing with scenarios.  I intend this proposal strictly as a conversation starter: What are the pros and cons of a radical grid system in central Seattle?  The bus routes below collectively represent about 99,000 boardings per day (2009 data), and wholesale changes would not be likely without the arrival of rail. But I’m convinced that by eliminating redundant routes and making peace with single transfers, we can offer 7-15 minute service on every route without incurring additional operating costs, while sensibly leveraging our investment in rail. So here’s a fairly radical sketch to tear apart in the comments:

Much more after the jump…

Continue reading “Capitol Hill Mobility”

by TIM BOND

Last night Metro held an open house detailing the initial findings of the Trolley Evaluation Study. The purpose of this study was to determine if the purchase, operating and maintenance costs of electric trolleybuses exceeds that of diesel-electric series hybrids. The initial findings, released two weeks ago, summarized the preliminary findings, indicate that electric trolley buses outperform diesel hybrid buses in comparisons based on cost, energy, and environmental effects. This study is not about whether or not the trolley system should be expanded or what the new buses should look like (e.g. three door boarding).

The presentation provided a few more concrete numbers. It is important to note that the study was based on present-day facts and figures and not projections or speculations. For example, one citizen at the meeting suggested that ridership would improve with the purchase of trolleys over hybrids. Metro reps suggested that was speculation, and that the study would assume ridership was not affected by bus type.

The FTA standard for the vehicle’s useful life is 15 years for a trolley and 12 for a diesel hybrid. The cost difference for 60 foot buses is $1.285m for a trolley vs. $785,000 for a hybrid. Because there are many manufacturers offering hybrid buses, the figure for hybrids was easy to obtain. Since fewer manufacturers produce trolleys, these numbers were based on those paid by other North American agencies and quotes from manufactures such as New Flyer and Vossloh Kiepe. This annualized cost for this report was calculated over one life-cycle for each vehicle type. Also included was fixed-guideway grant money—something the feds give out to operators of trolley networks. This money would mostly be used to cover the difference in capital cost of the trolleys. Not included in the 2009 audit but evaluated here were the costs to decommission the trolley infrastructure ($37 million) and the costs to expand fuel capacity at the base ($5 million). More after the jump.

Continue reading “Trolley Open House Report”

One early component of Metro’s Southeast Seattle service reorganization proposal was replacing Route 39, running from Seward Park to downtown, with a Route 50 that would run from Seward Park to the Junction in West Seattle. The 50 would have had a sizeable diversion through Sodo to improve connections from both neighborhoods to jobs there.

As  a member of the advisory group for those changes, I’m sorry to say I had a small role in this idea dying. There were two big concerns: this route was more expensive to operate than the 39, and therefore would divert resources from other priorities in the Southeast; and there was an extensive and persuasive campaign from the VA hospital to keep the one-seat ride from their front door to downtown.

All that said, as the link suggests I think the VA is not a good long-term reason to keep the 39, and tight budget constraints will hopefully not last forever. Crosstown connections between West Seattle and Southeast Seattle are atrocious, often requiring a trip all the way downtown; connecting West Seattle’s transit hub with a route that crossing all the key corridors in the Rainier Valley would solve this problem.

If the 50 does come back, I hope Metro reconsiders the routing through Sodo. There’s value in providing a direct connection to the Link station and Sodo jobs, but it would add substantially to travel time and introduce reliability problems due to game traffic and the like. Shortening it to, say, Lander St., would involve crossing the train tracks at grade, creating more disruption.

Moreover, if we invoke the principle of a gridded system, it’s far more direct to briefly exit the Spokane St. viaduct to drop people off at the entrance to the busway, providing easy transfers to hundreds of buses headed north, and then get right back on the viaduct and West Seattle Bridge to head to the Junction. Eastbound, buses would use the 4th Ave offramp and two quick right turns to do the same thing.

A direct route is more likely to attract choice riders and give West Seattle residents a quality connection to Link southbound. I don’t have data, but it might also make the cost implications neutral or even slightly positive.

King County is hosting an open house to discuss the results of the recent trolley study. More information here.

In advance of next week’s trolley open house, Metro released the preliminary results of their study of trolleybus impacts last week.

The study was a comparison between diesel hybrids and electric trolleybuses with off-wire capability. All other technologies were dismissed as having either too much environmental impact or being insufficiently mature.

On environmental criteria, the trolleybuses came out ahead on every metric except visual impact. As Seattle City Light’s energy comes mostly from hydro, the Carbon footprint was much smaller. Importantly, overall energy consumption is over 30% lower. This is important because electric vehicle critics often point out that the marginal unit of energy consumed often is quite dirty, since SCL’s surplus is often sold to other jurisdictions, where the alternative might be coal.

One might argue that environmental impacts are nice, but really ought to be addressed in a budget that isn’t supposed to be used for getting people around. Fortunately, the study indicates that, barring a 70% cut in federal fixed guideway funding, a trolleybus system is actually cheaper to operate. This finding, illustrated above, contradicts last year’s audit result.