Metro Fare Increase Talk

Posted on by Andrew Smith

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Image from bill98117 in the STB flickr pool
Here’s Mike Lindblom of the Seattle Times writing about the budget troubles Metro Transit is facing. It’s the same story recently we’ve been hearing recent, more people are riding the bus because of higher gas prices, but at the same time costs have gone up for transit agencies due to the same rising fuel prices.

Sort of luckily for us, King County Exec Ron Sims has promised not to cut service, but unfortunately, that means we might see either new Transit Now service not materializing or a fare increase.

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.

A guess canceling a planned service increase is not the same thing as cutting service, but it’s too bad either way.

The article mentions how the other agencies are going to deal with the budget problems.

Closer to home, Kitsap Transit has announced a 25-cent fare increase starting in August, along with cuts to routes that carry fewer than 10 people per hour, and a trim of four administrative jobs. That should cover fuel spikes through 2009, said director Dick Hayes. But he thinks fuel will continue to get more expensive. “The decisions get much harder from here.”

Snohomish County’s Community Transit has made no proposals to change service or fares. The agency will launch its Swift bus rapid-transit line on Highway 99 next year, and still is seeking bids this year for new double-decker commuter buses, spokesman Tom Pearce said.

Sound Transit can cover its fuel gap with reserve funds this year and hasn’t planned for 2009 yet. The spike affects not only its express buses, but the diesel-powered Sounder commuter trains, which carry 28 percent more riders than last year, mainly on its south-end line. “We’re not talking about fare increases or service cuts at this time,” said spokeswoman Linda Robson.

One winner is Pierce Transit, whose fleet runs on compressed natural gas, equivalent to $1.21 per gallon.

Go Pierce Transit!

So what should Transit agencies do? Take the poll below.
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Vanpools up over 10%

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

Metro’s reporting that their supported vanpools have increased by over 100 vans in the past year, to a total of 1,058 vanpools and vanshares.

I would imagine that the total number of people moved has increased even more: as the costs of driving increase, it follows that the size of existing vanpools would increase, especially since the inconvenience of setting up your own vanpool is larger than simply joining an existing one.

Given how many employees have commutes that are very poorly served by transit, vanpools are an important part of the system, and cheap because the labor is free. I was unaware that King County’s was the first such program in the nation. I’d be curious to know what burden these vanpools place on the park and ride system; it would make a lot of sense to make agreements with churches that aren’t near transit lines to allow parking there, freeing up more spaces for transit riders.

$4 gas = Light Rail Ballot in 2008

Posted on by Andrew Smith

The Seattle Times is talking about $4 a gallon gas and the possibility of a ballot measure this year, this time with a twist: the northern light rail expansion, so-called North Link, to Lynnwood instead of stopping at Northgate, and South Link going as far as Federal Way. I love it. It’s a compromise between the package from last year’s Prop. 1, and the fast-package being considered this year. If they can guarantee rail to Overlake Transit Center, the package would prove popular. Apparently, the board has until the 12th of August to decide.

I’m unhappy with a bit of the reporting. From reading this passage, you’d barely know there was a massive road expansion on that ballot measure:

Last year, voters in urban Snohomish, King and Pierce counties trounced the $38 billion “Roads & Transit” proposition that included a 0.5 percent sales-tax increase to build 50 miles of rail over 20 years.

After the loss, Sound Transit began studying a scaled-back, 12-year approach, with only 18 to 23 miles of new Link light rail, and perhaps a slightly lower tax increase.

The other thing that annoys me is this quote from Mark Baerwaldt (at least he wasn’t called a transit advocate):

Some Sound Transit skeptics argue that if the problem is gasoline, the answer is to increase buses and toll lanes, which can be done relatively fast.

“The relief cannot be provided by Sound Transit; it takes decades to complete their mission,” said Mark Baerwaldt, a leader of last year’s opposition campaign.

No challenge on the assertion that buses can be done faster? King County Metro has been waiting more than 3 years now for its last order of buses, and the coach manufacturers have more orders coming online than they did three years ago.

You learn something new every day

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

For the first time in a while, I used a Metro peak-hour transfer to get on a Sound Transit bus this morning. The driver insisted that my transfer, which had cost me $1.75, was only good for $1.50. I paid the extra quarter to avoid a scene, but didn’t think it was right.

Lo and behold, he knew what he was talking about:

Valid transfers from Community Transit, King County Metro Transit (Metro) and Pierce Transit are accepted on ST Express as a one-zone ST Express fare (Adult $1.50, Youth $1.00, Senior/Disabled* $0.50).

In retrospect, this actually simplifies things, since the different transit agencies have different fares. Nevertheless, this highlights the tradeoffs in having at least four different fare systems (and soon a fifth, RapidRide) in the three-county region. If the fare system is intricate enough to confuse someone like me, it’s too complicated; on the other hand, I woudn’t want tax-averse out-of-county voters forcing lower service levels on us in a combined Puget Sound super-agency.

On a different note, the driver also was enforcing “Pay as you enter” at the Rainier/I-90 stop outbound from Seattle. I suppose this is correct, but certainly isn’t SOP for most drivers on the 554. All in all, not a good day for me in terms of bus etiquette: today, I was the idiot without his fare ready.

Ridership Data @ Orphan Road

Posted on by Andrew Smith

I imagine that most readers have seen these charts on Orphan Road that bgtothen has put together of the ridership of bus routes operated by Metro (includes Sound Transit routes within King County, as those are operated by Metro). They are awesome and I appreciate tremendously bgtothen putting them together.

The data is great. I meant to post on this before, but I didn’t have much to add to the discussion until I read the last sentance:

One last point. The highest ridership route for the Eastside is the 550 at 19th place. The highest none UW/CBD to Eastside route is the 230 at 29th place. Pretty pitiful. This just goes to show how much wealth and sprawl kill transit.

There’s really no argument about density and transit (more density, more ridership) but the 550 route is less than ten years old (the same goes for all 5XX routes), while the single digit bus routes are ancient, and most of the double digit metro routes are old too. A brand-new service in Seattle might have low ridership as well, give those routes a little bit of time: transit also leads to density as well as getting riders off of it.

These routes lead directly into a question about sub-area equity. Why are Sound Transit and Metro wasting their money running buses in the suburbs when the buses in the city are a way better deal per dollar? The answer is because those in the burbs are paying for those buses. They deserve something for their tax dollars, and even at 10 riders per service hour, that’s cheaper for society than those riders driving.

Rail, Not Buses

Posted on by Andrew Smith

One of the common questions we get from commenters is “why are you so sure that rail is the right solution?” and “why are you so enamored with rail?” Both these questions are often followed with “buses are cheaper”. I want to explain the main reasons why high capacity rail transit gets so many more riders, is so much more effective at moving people and why it is in the long run cheaper than bus transit. I want to focus on the argument between “bus rapid transit” (BRT) and light rail transit (LRT), so I’m going to ignore the elephant in the room: most bus rapid transit does not run in its own right of way, thus adding the largest knock against bus transit: buses get stuck in traffic.

Rail transit is more permanent than bus transit. As famous conservative rail transit supporter Paul Weyrich points out, one of the main arguments for buses is their “flexibility”. But this flexibility is the source of one of the largest draw-backs of bus transit: inconsistency. That a bus is “flexible” means that the routes are also flexible, and riders aren’t sure that a bus line will remain in place into the future. If someone is making a decision about where to live for the foreseeable future, say they’re buying a house, they won’t make that choice based on a bus line that may not be there in the future.

I’ve forwarded this argument before, and people have said “when was the last time a bus route was removed in Seattle?” When I was in high school I took the 43 to my running start classes at Seattle Central Community College. We moved from Capitol Hill to Wallingford, and I could take the 43 straight from Wallingford to Broadway. Then, in the middle of the year, Metro split the line: the 43 no longer went from Downtown through Capitol Hill to Ballard: most runs ended in the U District, where the 44 route to Ballard began. I can think of a couple other routes that did this same thing, the old 7 has been split into the 7 and the 49, the old 65 now stops in the U-District. So it happens; service can stop or shift dramatically. That makes people far less inclined to change their life around the bus.

The permanence of rails also leads to more development than buses. For the same reason as above, new development near rail transit tends to be higher density than development near bus transit: if you are building a large project, part of your plan has to be transportation. That’s the reason Microsoft settled next to SR 520, one of the reasons downtown Bellevue is so much more developed than, say, downtown Everett, and one of the reasons South Lake Union is currently attracting so much development (this is the streetcar and I-5). Imagine if I-405 weren’t permanent; would Bellevue be experiencing so much growth?

Rail is much more attractive to the non-dependent rider, and thus get more riders. As Carless in Seattle has pointed out:

[A]mong bus-based [High Capacity Transit] users, more than 60% of US bus riders do not own a car. But of rail-based HCT, nearly 60% of subway, streetcar and light rail users DO own a car. (Those numbers include Manhattan, where less than 20% of people own a car, vastly depressing the number of rail users in the rest of the US who could own a car but choose mass transit).

Seattle’s highest ridership bus routes go through the most transit dependent areas. Even with those routes, ridership is no where near the ridership of a rail line. Each Link station will get as many riders as most bus routes, and some will have far more boardings than even those routes with the most riders – and these estimates do not take into account development spurred by the system. University of Washington station, for example, is supposed to get some 27,000 daily riders in 2020. Recent light rail construction in the US has almost universally has almost universally exceeded pre-construction estimates, with only one exception (VTA, in the South Bay).

Stepping on a train is enough to see why the difference exists. Trains have a smoother ride, more comfortable seats, and more space. Boarding is also far simpler – instead of a dozen people fumbling with fares, there are several doors, and payment is done on the platform where it doesn’t affect operation. Anyone who’s ever been on a standing-room-only bus can attest to the discomfort. A forty-five minute 545 ride standing up in Friday evening traffic is enough to convince people to drive to work. Here’s photographic evidence of the difference.

The most expensive part of building high-capacity, reliable transit is the right of way – with very similar cost between BRT and LRT. Even Ted Van Dyk, the most adamant BRT supporter and light rail opponent, admits that BRT costs at most 30% less than LRT to build. For University Link, for example, 95% of the costs are for tunneling and stations. A BRT system that would serve the same corridor would need also to build its own right-of-way, and would cost just as much as light rail. And since BRT ridership projections tend to be more than 30% less than LRT in the same corridors, even if the Ted Van Dyks of the world were right, LRT would still be cheaper per passenger to build than comparable BRT.

Rail is cheaper to operate per passenger than buses are. Labor is over 50% of King County Metro’s costs. Each bus needs an operator, but an articulated bus only carries 80 at maximum, compared to 800 for a Link LRT train. And with diesel already over $5 a gallon, the gap in operations expenses will continue to grow. Even in bus systems with little to no right-of-way costs, total costs for BRT are higher per passenger mile than LRT. Metro takes a .9% sales tax share now, and moves about 365,000 people per day. A fully built out LRT package from Prop. 1 would have moved that many people by 2030, admittedly a long time, but would have cost just .15% to operate. The capital costs for rail are temporary expenses – Metro will keep spending .9% to move that many people for the next hundred years, but Sound Transit would build three Prop. 1 packages with the same money in that time. Considering about two-thirds of the Sound Transit district is King County, Metro would have to move 1,400,000 million people per day, nearly the entire population of King County right now, to be as cost effective in the long run.

Absolutely rail is expensive and takes longer to build than most bus service. But the investment pays off over time in lower maintenance, higher ridership, and more dense development around stations – which can allow for less density pressures away from rail lines. High-quality transit service ultimately makes a region more affordable, more sustainable, and in some ways more fun. That’s why we at this blog prefer rail over buses.

14 Miles of Track Completed

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Sound Transit has completed 14 miles of track from Tukwila International Boulevard to Westlake Station today. There was a ceremony at the Link Operations and Maintenance to mark the occasion. I’ll post the photos I took tonight when I get home, but in the mean time you can check this link for some details and video, and here’s the official press release.
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Five board members, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, King County Council Member Julia Patterson, King County Council Member Larry Phillips, King County Council Member Dow Constantine, and King County Executive Ron Sims. took part in “hammering the golden spike” signifying the completion. They took turns offering speeches, and I think from their speeches it’s possible to glean their support for an expansion ballot measure this year.

Greg Nickels is the ST board chair, and he went first, giving a speech about how great the progress has been, but how just as this project is not finished, the road to expansion of Sound Transit isn’t either. Nickels is a vocal supporter of going to the ballot this year, and his speech showed that as well.
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Ron Sims was next, and he had no speech prepared, and instead grabbed Link director Ahmad Fazel and sort of put him on the spot to give a speech. It was funny, and while it’s refreshing to Ron Sims still have a sense of humor, it also shows how little engaged he is in Link that he couldn’t be bothered to give a speech.

Julia Patterson gave an impassioned speech about how much Puget Sound residents are going to want light rail when it gets up and running. The speech was great, I’ve never head Patterson talk but she’s got a definite knack for engaging the listener with fresh phrases, and not tired cliches. However, I wasn’t completely happy with the subtext of her message, which I felt was that Sound Transit may want to wait until 2010 to go to ballot.
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Larry Phillips I’ve heard talk before, and he has a natural inclination for straight and clear talk. He made it clear to me that wanted Sound Transit back on the ballot this year.

Dow Constantine was last, and he strikes me as a bit of an intellectual, and spoke about transportation and land use planning, and sustainability. He reminded me a lot of Ben talking.

So of the five that showed up to the ceremony, it looked like two were definitely for going this year, one was leaning against, one made no indication either way, and one looked completely unengaged.
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Ok so on to my other thoughts:

  • The trains coming out of Beacon Hill into SODO are going to have a great view of downtown, First Hill (which is getting a little skyline of it’s own) and the stadiums.
  • The Kinkisharyo cars that link will be running make an old-school “clang-clang” to notify pedestrians (and cars I guess). Kind of like a horn on a car, but some how much cooler.

Transit Up Nationwide, Funding Here at a Stand-still

Posted on by Andrew Smith

The Seattle Times ran a modified version of this New York Times article about transit use rising nationwide. The New York Times piece identifies rising gas prices as a primary reason for the rise in use.

The sudden jump in ridership comes after several years of steady, gradual growth. Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation last year, up 2.1 percent from 2006.

Transit managers are predicting growth of 5 percent or more this year, the largest increase in at least a decade.

“If we are in a recession or economic downturn, we should be seeing a stagnation or decrease in ridership, but we are not,” said Daniel Grabauskas, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which serves the Boston area. “Fuel prices are without question the single most important factor that is driving people to public transportation.”

Transit use rose the most in the West, where transit is traditionally used the least, which makes sense because a place like New York where more than half of commuters use transit has half as many people who don’t use transit compared to a place where nearly no one uses transit. In King County about 10% of commuters use transit, and in Seattle the number is about 17%.

The transit ridership gains here are impressive:

Sound Transit ridership grew 12.3 percent in 2007, according to the agency.

In 2007, nearly 14 million riders boarded Sounder commuter rail, ST Express buses and Tacoma Link light-rail trains, according to the agency.

The biggest ridership increase among Sound Transit’s three modes was on the Sounder commuter rail, with a 27.4 percent increase in 2007, according to the agency, the fourth-biggest commuter-rail ridership increase in the nation for 2007.

In Seattle, Metro ridership has grown 18 percent in the past three years, spokeswoman Linda Thielke said. She said that in the first three months this year, ridership was up 6 percent from the same time last year.

Sounder’s growth can be attributed the number of trains being run. Obviously, more trains carry more people, but a new schedule run also encourages more people to ride the other scheduled trains even if they never ride the new service. Just knowing there are more trains keeps people sure they won’t get trapped in the city without a train to take home.

Buses are getting more crowded, which has got to get painful on buses that don’t come often or were already crowded. I bet the number 7 bus is standing-room only on each rush-hour coach. The problem is that even though demand is high, funding for Metro, especially in the City, has not kept pace. The New York Times but points out a kind of catch-22 in the way we fund transit:

But meeting the greater demand for mass transit is proving difficult. The cost of fuel and power for public transportation is about three times that of four years ago, and the slowing economy means local sales tax receipts are down, so there is less money available for transit services. Higher steel prices are making planned expansions more expensive.

Typically, mass transit systems rely on fares to cover about a third of their costs, so they depend on sales taxes and other government funding. Few states use gas tax revenue for mass transit.

At least transit is a way for some people to save money. The states that use gas-tax money to pay for transit are likely really hurting.

The money quote is right at the end of the article:

“Nobody believed that people would actually give up their cars to ride public transportation,” said executive director Joseph Giulietti, executive director of the authority.

“But in the last year, and last several months in particular, we have seen exactly that.”

Imagine that.

I want to know: are any routes getting seriously over-crowded? There was a time when the 545 was always at crush load, but it’s lightened up a bit thanks to more runs from Sound Transit, and more Microsoft Connector buses.

Eastside Rails

Posted on by Andrew Smith

The Eastside BNSF Rail deal is finally done. The Port of Seattle has purchased the track from Renton to Woodinville for $109 million, and King County has purchased the right to build a bike trail there for $2 million from the Port. The Seattle Times is pleased, though I still feel that the ridership will simply not be worth the expense of refurbishing the rails, placing stations and buying DMUs (heavy diesel trains, like Sounder). Anyone seen the price of diesel lately?

I did see this article about Google on the Eastside, and it looks like at least part of the line could eventually be useful, and I noticed the Eastside BNSF line right next to where that campus would eventually be. It got me wondering, would DMUs be the right choice? What about light rail for portions of the track? DMUs work better for longer-haul trains with fewer stops, while Light rail works better in configurations that have stops every a couple of miles.

There are parts of the right-of-way that wouldn’t get much in the way of riders for either system, but the portions Bellevue and north could make sense for an eventual north-south eastside light rail line.

ULI Reality Check Liveblog part 5

Posted on by Ben Schiendelman


After lunch, we first heard about how well our urban layouts did against the State of Washington’s climate change laws – there was one table (which I hope I got a picture of) that came very close. We voted (using little remote controls at our seats) on what issues are most important for the region – where our largest challenges will be, and what we need to focus on first. Infrastructure came first – building transit and transit oriented development.

It was pointed out that of all the square footage that will exist in 2040, 60% of it is yet to be built. That does include renovations, but it’s eye-opening. We have the opportunity to completely transform our region, building TOD and high density, green buildings, and new transit investments designed to serve them.

Right now, we have a panel discussion going (in the above image), led by Emory Thomas of the Puget Sound Business Journal, and featuring Greg Nickels (mayor of Seattle), Cary Bozeman (mayor of Bremerton), Grant Degginger (mayor of Bellevue), Ray Stephanson (mayor of Everett), John “Boots” Ladenburg (Pierce County Executive), and Ron Sims (King County Executive).

They’re discussing how to handle densification – Ladenburg just talked about how to use TOD to build new communities rather than forcing existing communities to densify. They’ve been talking about who regulates growth – Sims mentioned that King County is being pressured more and more to manage growth outside the cities, and that they’re trying to ensure that there isn’t overlap between city and county in planning. Mayor Stephanson is talking about higher education – he feels that Everett is limited by a lack of schooling. He’s also just brought up Swift, a joint venture between Everett Transit and Community Transit to build BRT on highway 99 between Everett and Aurora Village (the county line) and meet up with RapidRide. He’s expecting to grow by 100,000 people by 2040, and he says Everett can’t handle that much growth without light rail.

ST2.1 Outlook

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Here is an article from the News Tribune about ST2’s outlook, and two editorials, one from the Seattle Times and one from the Everett Herald saying it’s took soon to go to the ballot for Sound Transit (neither paper endorsed prop 1 last November). Both editorial’s argument is basically that the economy isn’t great, and the first light rail line hasn’t opened yet, so we can wait to for a ballot measure in a few years.

I still think ST2.1 should go to the ballot this year, since gas has already hit $4 a gallon around here, a big election year will get tons of voters to the polls, and the sooner we start the sooner we’ll finish. The trick is really to get a ballot measure that people are really going to like. Twelve years ago Sound Transit was created by a successful ballot measure that came a year after a larger failed measure that had a longer construction time. Amazingly, the Seattle Times endorsed the 1996 measure.

This is not a perfect plan, but it represents a consolidation and rethinking of two earlier versions: a $13 billion budget-buster that never made it to the polls, and a $6.7 billion measure that was defeated in March 1995. The new plan benefits from a more-focused RTA mission and the public’s acceptance that a start must be made toward a solution.
Opponents are running out of ideas and credibility. No one believes there is any more money, physical room or public acceptance for major new highways and freeways. Republican legislative candidates who don’t like the RTA talk instead about pie-in-the-sky people-movers and other fanciful technology better suited to amusement parks than serving a bustling metropolitan area.
Another diversionary tactic is to suggest that King County’s Metro has the resources to take up the slack. Wrong. Metro is adding bus routes but pilfering its budget at the expense of relief for crowded park-and-ride lots.

All of these arguments were true then, and are even more true today. The 1996 post-election article sited “The difference, said Bob Drewel, county executive in Snohomish County and chairman of the RTA board, was that the RTA was willing to rewrite its plan after its defeat. RTA supporters reduced the scope of the plan and the time to build it.”

The measure from Prop 1 last year could be a good starting point for going to the Eastside and south to Tacoma, and maybe this year’s larger plan could be the design for going north. The lesson from the original Sound Transit vote is that the the plan has to please voters in the suburbs, many of whom will think that a system that doesn’t bring light rail to their area is a bad deal.

Now is the perfect time to go forward with a measure. Let’s hope we can get agreement on one before time runs out.

Prop 1 ST2 in November?

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Could ST2.1 just be the original ST2? In this piece by the DJC, the suggestion is yes.

Light rail extensions to Tacoma and Lynnwood are back on the table after the Sound Transit board in a surprise move voted yesterday to include the transit portion of Proposition 1 as one of three options for a package that could go on the November ballot.
Sound Transit has been drafting two stripped-down versions of the transit portion of Proposition 1, which was defeated by voters last November. Both versions would be a lot cheaper and take less time to build.
But neither of them included light rail to Snohomish County, and yesterday Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon asked the board to put last year’s plan back into contention.
The stripped-down plans “leave North King County with no fast, reliable connections to Seattle,” Lynnwood City Council President Loren Simmonds said in public testimony.

Holy crap. So my post this morning could be a real question for the board. Not everyone on the board is happy with the idea though:

King County Council President Julia Patterson said the two new draft plans, which rely on a major increase in Sounder commuter rail service between Seattle and Tacoma, are contingent on getting an agreement with BNSF Railway that is far from assured.
“Shouldn’t we have another plan waiting in the wings?” Patterson asked.
But only one board member — Everett councilmember Paul Roberts — voted against proceeding.
“There are too many unanswered questions,” Roberts said. “I feel we’re running down the street trying to get dressed.”

ST Draft Plan Summary for 2008

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Update: I had a bad version of the draft package.

Here are images of a summary draft plan for 2008, which summaries a .5% plan and a .4% plan. For Seattle, the difference seems to be extending the streetcar from John to Aloha on Broadway, which seems like a tiny difference for .1%. On the Eastside, though, .1% is the difference between Bellevue and Microsoft, which I think is well worth it. I’d guess there’s other money going to something else. What’s interesting is that ST would move about 302,000-309,000 people per day with $700-800 million total operating costs from 2008 to 2020, while King County Metro moves less than that number each day with operating costs of about $500 million per year.

Uh, Density?

Posted on by Martin H. Duke
Crosscut recently posted an essay by former WSDOT secretary Doug McDonald lamenting the fact that, seven years into our growth management plan, the core cities aren’t keeping up with the share of population growth they’re supposed to absorb, leaving the excess to places like Snoqualmie:

In King County, in the most recent years, only five percent or less of the new housing units are springing up outside the urban growth boundaries. But in Snohomish County, since 2000, the share of new housing units outside the urban growth boundaries has steadily increased. In Kitsap County, the number of new housing units outside the Urban Growth Area in recent years has bounced from year to year between 40 percent and 60 percent. In Pierce County, recent information shows that 20 percent of the new housing units are now arising outside the urban growth boundaries. Another telling indicator is that for Pierce County as a whole, growth in the unincorporated areas — some inside and some outside the urban growth boundaries — accounted for almost six out of 10 new residents in the entire county!

I assume that his data is correct, and agree that it’s a big concern. Befitting a former WSDOT (i.e., “Pavement Inc.”) chief, he completely misdiagnoses the problem:

What will be necessary to turn the tide against, well, the spread of sprawl across the region? Better urban public schools! Higher-quality and lower-cost housing in the cities, especially housing that will make all kinds of families with children eager to live in city neighborhoods! Friendlier, convenient main street shopping for shoppers of all incomes! Good streets and sidewalks, safe bike lanes, and enjoyable parks for people of all ages! For all the citizens of the entire region, these needs in the cities now are front and center as the essential, critical measures of “green.”

The underlying assumption is that we can’t find enough people to buy housing in Seattle, so we have to create more incentives for people to do so. That is, of course, nonsense: over the past decade demand has exceeded supply, and in fact developers can’t build enough units to satisfy market demand. Why is that? Because of zoning restrictions, design review boards, and NIMBYism, not because Seattle is such a rotten place to live. If you want more households in Seattle, you have to increase the number of homes, and there’s no place to put up vast new tracts of single-family housing.

Because this is Crosscut, there’s a gratuitous swipe at Light Rail:

Has anyone not yet noticed that it’s standing-room-only on principal bus routes all over the very areas where better transit services can help attract new residents? What is so hard about the obvious fact that today we must take the path of securing the Vision 2040 goals by radical, imaginative, and cost-effective improvements in bus and van services to strengthen the entire network of public transportation? Can we see the numbers, please, for our public transportation alternatives, including innovative bus and van transit services and modern park-and-ride centers, as compared to just a few light rail stops? It’s time to take action, guided by real data, to deliver transportation solutions to help hundreds of thousands of people move more easily and inexpensively everywhere in the designated growth centers.

Again, Mr. McDonald assumes that the problem is that no one wants to live in Seattle, rather than supporting transit options that support density. As we’ve reviewed time and time again, the permanence of rail attracts transit-oriented development in a way that non-capital-intensive buses never can. And since rail can carry more people than buses, the sheer number of people you can fit in a space is larger.

I’m not sure how he plans to improve bus service where articulated buses already run every 5 minutes or so during peak hours. Maybe he would take away general purpose traffic lanes on arterials, but that would be pretty unprecedented for a WSDOT guy. What he needs is a larger vehicle that can run with shorter headways, i.e., light rail. But I guess his “real data’ doesn’t support that.

Larry Philips Op-Ed in the PI

Posted on by Andrew Smith

Larry Phillips, the King County Council man for northwest Seattle and a Sound Transit Board member, has a compelling opinion piece in the PI today.

plan — called ST2 — that comprised the “transit” in last year’s Roads and Transit measure. The goal is to choose ST2 projects that can be built sooner and provide the most benefit for their cost.

ST2 will not include road projects. Highway projects such as replacing the State Route 520 Bridge are back in the purview of the state, where they belong. The state Legislature made progress this year on funding the most urgent of these projects.

ST2 will focus on important regional priorities like extending light rail to Northgate and Bellevue. Getting light rail to Northgate is critical because the Interstate 5 corridor north of the ship canal is by far the highest transit demand corridor in our state. By 2030, transit demand there will reach 171,000 daily trips — nearly half the daily trips on Metro in all corridors today.

The comments over there are all about global warming which is a red herring. Phillips is right on the money about the traffic implications, and it’s nice to read that he’s excited about ST2.

Metro announces some more Transit Now specifics

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

UPDATE: Link fixed.

King County has signed a bunch of partnership agreements with cities and employers to extend bus service all over the place. Good for Metro, getting other entities to cough up a third or more of the cost of new service.

Most of the improvements are of local consequence only, although they do include unspecified road and signal improvements to the RapidRide corridors in Bellevue and West Seattle. There’s also a circulator that runs from the LINK tunnel to the hospitals on First Hill, which may or may not provide similar service to the proposed First Hill streetcar.

The towns and neighborhoods mentioned are Auburn, Ballard (incl. Fremont), Bellevue, Capitol Hill, Federal Way, International District, Issaquah, Kenmore, Kent, Kirkland, Madison Park, N. Seattle & Univ. District, Queen Anne, Redmond, Renton, Sammamish, Seatac, Southeast Seattle, and White Center (incl. West Seattle).

The details include the year particular improvements are to occur (as early as September 2008 and as late as 2011). The routes with increased service in September are to be the 3, 4, 11, 14, 26, 28, 44, 153, and 269. The “temporary” 644 (Kenmore-Overlake) is to become the permanent 244, with a routing change to incorporate job sites along Willows Road in Redmond.

I don’t have much intelligent to say about this, except that it reminds us that Transit Now isn’t just an oversold quasi-BRT, it’s also a series of general service improvements, healing a lot of the damage that successive waves of Eyman initiatives have wrought.

Check it out to see if you’re affected.

Biofuels And Climate Change

Posted on by Ben Schiendelman

In light of this week’s Time magazine article calling biofuels a scam, I think it’s well past time to bring up that which has been touted as a savior for the automobile lifestyle.

The basic idea is this: the carbon dioxide released by oil that we get out of the ground contributes to climate change. When we grow crops like soybeans, rapeseed, and corn, we get a source of oil to burn as the plants ‘fix’ carbon dioxide from the air. The biomass that we can’t convert to oil offsets the carbon dioxide released in the agricultural process, so at the end of the growing season we’ve both generated fuel and captured some of our previous carbon dioxide emissions – and the more efficient our crop, the more we capture.

As a result of this idea, several subsidies are now available to biofuel producers in the US and other countries, and a growing number of local governments have mandated that their fleets be partially fueled by biofuels. King County Metro is one example – our buses are fueled in part by biodiesel. These subsidies to producers are intended to help switch US fuel consumers to locally produced fuels, rather than foreign oil.

Here’s where the problems begin. For starters, most of that subsidized fuel isn’t staying in the US, because the producers can make more money in foreign markets. That’s bad for us, because it means our tax dollars aren’t helping at home. On top of that, our biggest biofuel subsidies go to corn-based ethanol, and it’s becoming more and more clear that corn is one of the least efficient ways to produce biofuels. In fact, there’s some disagreement as to whether corn ethanol production even nets us as as much energy as it takes to produce.

Some of the other biofuel crops fare better in that regard. It’s been generally accepted that some of today’s biofuel crops are energy positive, such as soybean biodiesel. Unfortunately, it looks like biofuel proponents (including, in the past, myself) have been missing a key part of the puzzle. As biofuels become more widespread and more profitable, as the original niche market for used frying oil has become a worldwide industry, land is becoming an issue.

Now, every time demand for biofuels increases, it results in rainforest in the Amazon being burned down for oil crops. This is what that looks like from above – please do look. As the New York Times recently reported, two new peer-reviewed studies published in the journal Science show that clearing this land emits hundreds of times more carbon dioxide than biofuels grown there can recapture. In fact, even when growing much more efficient switchgrass rather than corn, using existing US cropland has similar results. The soybean growers groups that funded the study responded to these findings by suspending their grants to the University of Minnesota, the institution conducting the research.

It gets worse. The price of food is increasing – in part because food crops now must compete directly with fuel crops for land and fresh water. The United Nations World Food Programme estimated a few years ago that the number of undernourished people today, some 850 million, could be reduced to 400 million by mid-century. They now estimate that this number will go up to 1.2 billion. This is not to say that biofuels are the only problem – Increased demand caused by prosperity in China and India could account for some of the price increases in basic crops, as well as investors shifting their money from stocks to commodities – but a problem they are.

In addition, the loss of biodiversity caused by dramatically adding new farmland for growing fuel is devastating. We bring new diseases to the modern world by pressuring rainforest fauna into urban environments, and we seriously damage the ability of these ecosystems to adapt to hardships like disease and drought.

There could be a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s possible that algae-based, so called third-generation biofuels could dramatically reduce arable land use, using closed loop systems for water. Switchgrass-based biodiesel can use otherwise unfarmable land, but like used fryer oil, that’s a niche production market that largely serves to promote the biofuel industry.

Diesel Jettas aren’t going to solve our transportation energy problem. Personally, of course, I think the best real solution we have right now is to build electric rail transit so that we get a head start on adapting our community layout to a greener future. I hope this helps provide food (or fuel) for thought.

One more voice for Eastside Rail…

Posted on by Andrew Smith


The Everett Herald has a piece about Eastside Rail from the Snohomish perspective. Nothing new for King County Transit heads, but nice quotes like this:

A private company’s bid to run commuter trains from Snohomish County to Bellevue is gaining traction with the Snohomish County Council.

GNP Railway is proposing six commuter trips from Snohomish to Bellevue weekday mornings and six return trips in the afternoon. Supporters say the figure could someday double to 12 each way.

Growing traffic woes and a dearth of cash for road projects makes the idea is so appealing that county attorneys are drafting cooperation and confidentiality agreements between the county and train operator, County Council chairman Dave Somers said.

I don’t know much about GNP (I have sent the mails around), but if they are promising twelve trains a day, I sort of disbelieve them. Sounder costs a lot of money to operate, and they don’t run that many. Though the idea of private transit companies makes me optomistic. If a company can run transit, we should absolutely let them.

Making the Transition

Posted on by Guest Contributor

by BEN WOOSLEY

Regarding my previous post, nickb asks:

My question is how did the transition happen. Was it more just a matter of you stopped using the car and started using just public transportation?

In a sense, yes, it was as simple as using transit instead of a car. However, it takes some actual effort to discover that it is possible to get where you want without that car you’re used to. For me, it was a process of migration and discovery, each step intentional, encouraged by the reasons I described earlier, but also testing the waters to ensure that I wasn’t choosing the path of martyrs. Happily, I can attest I was not.

The important benchmarks in my transition, which may be helpful in making yours, were:

1) Using Transit as a Commuter
As I wrote, busing it to work was a given, and it served the important role of introducing me to transit here. This was a significant step for someone whose transit use was previously non-existent as a child of the suburbs, and in Austin limited to my weekend use of the E-Bus (aka Drunk Bus) which runs between the University of Texas Campus and 6th Street (infamous for its numerous bars & venues).

But then, if you’re reading this blog, you’re already familiar, so we may as well go on to step two…

2) The arrival of Google Transit
Don’t get me wrong, the King County Trip Planner is pretty good. But Google Transit (previously mentioned) does it much better, because it allows you to interact visually with your options on Google’s draggable, zoomable maps. This is a matter of night and day for anyone as visually-driven or memory-challenged (where was that street again?) as I.

Better still, it recognizes and accepts far more place names and address formats, so you need not hunt around for the address or answer questions about whether you really meant PL instead of Place. It’s free and highly recommended. To use it, you can either use the link above, or from any Google Maps directions page, click the “Take Public Transit” link in the upper left, once you have your destination plotted.

3) Taking the One-Less-Car challenge
The one-less-car challenge (also mentioned previously) offers incentives for those who commit to not using their vehicle for a set amount of time. The program isn’t active yet for 2008 (we’ll update you when it is), but you don’t need the program to get its most powerful benefit, which is the commitment itself.

Like others who have used this program, it was taking this challenge that pushed me to go out and try the other ways of getting around which I wasn’t used to; to rent a Flexcar even though I had my own car out on the street, or to take a bus to a seemingly out-of-the-way place. Only to find that the experiences where painless.

So look for the return of the challenge, or, if you’re able and willing, simply challenge yourself to go without your own car for a while. You may find it easier and more liberating than expected.

4) Renting my first Flexcar (now ZipCar)
For the foreseeable future, there will be parts of Seattle that aren’t well-traveled by transit, where either there is no route when you need it, or there is no direct route. Sometimes, those place happen also to be your destination for the night. My first Flexcar rental was also my first trip out to the (AFAIK) sleepy and suburban Mercer Island.

It was a pleasant trip, and easy to manage, in the time of computers (to find & reserve the car) and cell-phones (to extend the reservation if necessary).

I’ve since taken out a ZipCar, and the experience was the same, but a bit friendlier. For example, I find their web experience more intuitive, and there’s never a need to carry around the car’s key, because your card always does the locking.

5) Taking a bus out into the Unknown
Or in this case, Greenlake. All my time here, I’d traveled to and from my friends’ place in Greenlake via auto. But finally the aforementioned commitment pushed me to check out the other options (found via Google Transit), and I found them quite pleasant. The point being, just because you’ve never taken a bus over that way, doesn’t mean it’s inconvenient to do so. I’ve since traveled as far as Everett without incident.

A Step Not Yet Taken: Put the Internet in my pocket
The next big enabler I see in my future, which I’ll suggest to you all as an option, is the extra ease which will come once I have the internet in my pocket, via a web-enabled phone. Both for transit and ZipCar, a certain small amount of planning is necessary, to minimize waiting time and to know the route, or to find and reserve the car. Having the internet available from the street means that no matter where I am, or what I’ve been doing that day, if it comes up that I need to get somewhere unexpected, I can pull up these sites and find my way. Thus I’m a little more free, which of course is the goal.

Conclusion
So after all of these, I’ve made a successful transition. Everyone’s needs are different of course, or as they say, your mileage may vary, but I’ve found these steps are a sensible way to try things out.

Sound Transit in Pierce County

Posted on by Andrew Smith

The Tacoma New Tribune, usually a Sound Transit supporter, has warned Sound Transit that putting a ballot iniative that doesn’t light rail from Tacoma to Sea-Tac might cost the Tribune’s support. Their reasoning is explained in this blog post from the Tribune’s editorial board. An excerpt:

We are dismayed at the possibility that some on the Sound Transit board seem to be backing away from the agency’s historic commitment to a rail connection between Pierce County and Sea-Tac airport (and points north). When the region approved a mass transit system in 1996, the chief benefit for the South Sound was the prospect of a light rail connection to heart of the Puget Sound economy. The board should know: This editorial page will not support a Sound Transit ballot measure that effectively precludes regional light rail for Pierce and South King Counties. If money is short, what’s available to be used to buy right-of-way for a planned line.

In a later blog post, David Seago brings out the latest governence reform details, which now might appear in the form of ballot initiative.

During an email exchange today with Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg on that matter, he also argued that Sound Transit should hold off until 2009 to go back to voters for Phase II expansion. Ladenburg stepped down as Sound Transit chairman last year but remains on the board for the rest of this year.

All that being said, I’m still not sure this is the right year. I understand the advantage of high voter and young voter turnout, but we are falling into a national recession. Even if the local economy remains good as I think it will, the national economy may well affect the vote.

Also, it appears that John Stanton is prepared to put his “governance change” proposal forward as an initiative and fund signature gathering to get it to the ballot this year. While I think his plan is poorly thought out and dangerous for Pierce County, he has the money to get it on the ballot and distract from any Sound Transit measure.

Plus, once Light Rail opens in 2009 in King County, I think we get a lot more
people as supporters, since this is what has happened around the US in the past.

Stanton confirmed today that supporters of forming a single regional body to govern both mass transit and road construction are exploring an initiative campaign to put it on the November ballot.
…
Like Ladenburg, the TNT ed board and most Pierce County elected officials are wary of regional governance, fearing that the needs of the metro Seattle area will dominate, to the detriment of Pierce County.

I hope that Stanton initiative doesn’t make it to the ballot. And I think Ladenburg and the Tribune are right, that if an elected board came to power, it would benefit Seattle’s immediate suburbs to the detriment of both Seattle itself and Pierce County. It would be a lose-lose to many of the people who want transit the most. Here’s a little more reading about Ladenburg’s feeling on ST2.

The scary thing about a governance reform initiative is that it would be voted on by the whole state, while its effects would only be felt in the Sound Transit district.