The ORCA governing board (comprised of various transit agency CEOs) decided today to extend the free ORCA period until February 28, 2010. This is meant to speed up transactions for the rush of people trying to get ORCA cards now. Starting March 1st, it’ll be $5.
Metro has also set up a hotline for Regional Reduced Fare Permit (RRFP) holders who have questions about ORCA: (206) 205-9185. They’re also opening the service centers at 201 Jackson St. and in Westlake Station on Saturdays on January 31st and all February. And of course, online and at TVMs are a less painful option, unless you need an reduced-fare ORCA.
Three interesting factoids: 330,000 ORCA cards have been issued. There are about 400,000 Metro boardings a day, so with all the other agencies that’s probably something like one per rider. There were 86,000 ORCA boardings in December and already 154,000 this month, so the stick of ending transfers appears to have worked.
Community Transit CEO Joyce Eleanor made this video to explain directly to riders what the service cuts and fare increases are going to be. She focuses specifically on the reasoning behind “suspending” all Sunday and holiday service rather than spreading it over all days. Unsurprisingly, Sunday is the weakest ridership day, and by eliminating almost all overhead on Sunday the system loses significantly fewer aggregate service hours than the alternatives.
The annual shortfall is about $11m. $500,000 will be made up by the 25 cent DART and local service fare increase. CT spokesman Tom Pearce says a rise to the commuter fare (already $3.50-$4.50 for adults) was not seriously considered because
Our commuter fares [are] among the highest in the region. Many riders choose to use Sound Transit service instead of ours because it is cheaper*. We decided that raising commuter fares again could price us out of the market and reduce ridership further.
The remainder of the shortfall is equivalent to 100,000 service hours out of CT’s total of 610,000 (including vanpools and paratransit). This would amount to a cut in bus service of well over 17%. However, the equivalent of 20,000 hours will be saved by shutting down all support operations on Sunday. Therfore, 80,000 hoursof actual bus service is going away, of which 28,000 hours are Sunday and Holiday “suspensions.” Those suspensions will be restored as soon as the revenue situation allows, although Pearce declined to speculate on when that might occur. The other 52,000 hours are deep weekday and Saturday cuts that are unlikely to be restored for the forseeable future.
Community Transit essentially has no additional revenue options, although they continue to scrounge for grants. They levy the maximum 0.9% sales tax, and the property tax authority that King County recently exploited derives from a statute that specifically applies only to King County.
It’s worth pointing out that CT’s actual cuts are proportional to the 20% armageddon that threatened King County last year before Kurt Triplett cobbled together a plan to minimize them.
Part 1 of this video, which sets up the general revenue situation and will be familiar to readers of this blog, is below the jump.
As usual, service won’t be at full strength for the Martin Luther King Day holiday, but it’s not down to Sunday levels. See the reductions for Metro, Community Transit, and Pierce Transit. Sound Transit and Everett Transit are operating a normal weekday schedule.
At one time Metro’s RapidRide A line was to open in February 2010. With the Metro budget crisis, RapidRide disappeared from the announced February changes, and Metro said opening would likely be around the summer or fall service change.
Last September the Executive’s proposed budget (pdf, page 33) referenced a starting date of June 12, which we took as firm. As it turns out, it wasn’t; when I asked for a starting date and time to use for our countdown clock, spokesperson Rochelle Ogershok told me
While a firm start date hasn’t been determined yet, the A-Line will be launched on or around our fall service change, which this year is Oct. 4.
So it appears we’ll have to wait 9 more months to see King County’s take on BRT.
The last two days the Times has had storiesabout turning Paine Field into a real airport. Airports aren’t really our gig but I thought there were some interesting interfaces with stuff we usually talk about. In no particular order:
One of the reasons that Gov. Gregoire vetoed a $20 vehicle license fee for transit last year was that counties already could create transportation benefit districts to levy a similar fee. However, such a district requires support of 60% of municipal governments comprising at least 75% of the County’s population, although there is no public vote.
On November 3rd of last year Executive Triplett sent a letter to municipalities asking for cities to express support for such a countywide TBD by November 18th. The legislation itself claims that no cities responded affirmatively, while several directly declined.
Given the lack of positive response, the County Council voted 8-0 (Constantine’s seat is unfilled) yesterday to go ahead with a TBD in the unincorporated areas of King County, though the bill does not yet impose the $20 fee. The funding would go to a variety of projects (Excel file). Many are road projects (including the structurally unsound South Park Bridge), but there are quite a few sidewalk and bike lane improvements. However, as one might expect there isn’t much in the way of relief for Metro in this measure.
There’s another fare medium out there that I managed to miss the last time I tried to explain it. The Metro Day Pass, which is sold by drivers only on weekends and holidays and costs $4.50. It is valid only on Metro buses and not on ST buses operated by Metro.
With Airport Link now two weeks old and the 194 on its deathbed, I think it’s worth talking about what transit options are good for people who do fly late at night. Yesterday an author on the Slog had a bad experience with Link on a Sunday night trip, but she didn’t have to, and I’d like to address the concerns she raised.
On Sundays, Link runs 18 hour service instead of 20 hour service – it starts an hour later and ends an hour earlier. When the Slogger made comparisons to other cities, she compared their weekday service to Link’s Sunday service. In addition, as we’ve noted before, the last northbound train on any night doesn’t go all the way to the end of the line. From the airport, it goes to Mount Baker, then goes out of service. This is typical of any system – as Linda Robson mentions in her response to the Slogger, Tokyo, Paris and London all take trains out of service in the middle of lines.Continue reading “Late Night Airport Transit”
In a small bonus for holiday partygoers, Central Link will be operating late the night of December 31 to January 1st. All the extra Link trains will be southbound. A source at Sound Transit informs us they’ll depart Westlake at 12:44 AM, 12:54 AM, 1:09 AM, 1:24 AM and 1:39 AM. Although the tunnel will be open longer for Link, Metro service is completely unchanged – that means if you ride a tunnel route that is on the surface after 1am, it will still be on the surface after 1 am.
Remember that if you get an OWL transfer from Metro on New Year’s Eve, you may be turned away from a Sound Transit bus in the morning – assuming that ever worked. Remember to get your ORCA before New Year’s!
I developed a matrix for all North American urban rail systems, light rail and heavy rail, including info such as system length, stop spacing, average speed and City population. This post explores the implications from this matrix for Sound Transit’s Link light rail system.
Link light rail, both the initial segment and the Sound Transit 2 (ST2) expansion, has been designed for high capacity and with lots of grade separation. These characteristics have led some to classify Link as metro-light. As shown in the two charts below, its stops are widely spaced and the average speed is high compared to other systems. In fact, only San Francisco’s BART has stop spacing wider than Link with ST2. Based on the advertised travel times for ST2 expansions, Link with ST2 will be the fifth fastest system in North America. The Link system has the characteristics of a system designed to be competitive with automobiles around a large region. Will these characteristics lead to success in terms of high ridership? More after the jump.
I get asked occasionally why I blog, and why I blog about transit. I’m not going to bore you with self-analysis on whatever psychic rewards I get out of this, so instead, here’s a brief Boxing Day summary of why I think transit, and rail transit in particular, is important:
Cost effectiveness: A 4-car light rail line running (800 passengers) at 7.5 minute frequencies can carry 6400 people in each direction. At 2.5 minutes, it’s 19,200. According to FHWA, highway lane of traffic at capacity can carry 2,200 people in single occupancy vehiclesunder ideal conditions. Given that regional growth will continue, what’s a more plausible way to expand capacity in, say, the I-5 corridor? North Link, or 16 new lanes on I-5?
Positive Societal Effects: There are a bunch of societal drawbacks to driving, some well-understood and others not: air pollution, water pollution, trade deficits from oil imports, sedentary lifestyles, traffic deaths, hideous parking-lot-oriented architecture, sprawl, personal transportation costs, and congestion. Widely available transit is a partial antidote to all of these.
Quality of Life: We usually talk about the other things because they’re more quantifiable, but ultimately it comes down to quality of life. In major cities around the world, rail is simply the best way to get around. As Seattle enters that class of metropolis, residents shouldn’t tolerate the lack of such an important amenity any more than they would tolerate the absence of parks and libraries.
First, all King County Metro fares (except for the ages 6-18 fare) will go up 25 cents. For most of us that means $2.00 off-peak, $2.25 one-zone peak, $2.50 $2.75 two-zone peak.
More confusingly, there will be a dramatic reduction in the media with which you can legally board a bus. The rules below apply to Metro, Sound, Everett, Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap Transit buses only:
Cash always works.
An ORCA card loaded with either E-purse money or a monthly pass of sufficient value.
Although they are increasingly hard to get, if you have a physical PugetPass or FlexPass of sufficient value that’s still valid.
On Metro buses only, a valid Metro bus transfer. This does not include Sound Transit buses operated by Metro: 522, 540, 545, 550, 554, 555, 556, 560, 564, 565, 577.
[Update 1/4/10] On Metro buses only and only on weekends and holidays, Metro drivers sell a $4.50 day pass that is a valid fare. This does not include any Sound Transit buses. [Updated 8/24/11]
On Metro buses only, a valid Metro bus ticket. This does include Sound Transit buses operated by Metro.
On Pierce Transit buses only, a valid Pierce bus ticket (which are hard to get). This does include Sound Transit buses operated by Pierce Transit, (574, 578, 582, 586, 590, 592, 593, 594, 595) but only as a one-zone fare.
On Pierce Transit buses only, a valid Pierce bus transfer. This does not include Sound Transit buses operated by Metro Pierce Transit.
On trains it’s simpler: either buy a ticket at the machine, use an ORCA card, or walk on with the scarce PugetPass or FlexPass card.
ORCA is a step forward but it’s clear we’re not really going to get the complexity down till we get rid of paper media entirely.
After we reported the largely meaningless Link ridership numbers last week, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) just released numbers from Q3 of 2009 (pdf), revealing a continuing trend in dropping transit ridership this year. This comes a year after surging oil prices resulted in record ridership in 2008. The primary contributing factor is the unemployment rate and the economic downturn, as nearly 60% of transit rides are commute trips. According to Warren Millar, President of APTA, both public transit and unemployment rate correlate as lagging economic indicators.
Funnily enough, it should be no surprise that Seattle had an infinite increase in light rail ridership over last year (marked as a >100 percent change). Here is the APTA’s breakdown of the numbers:
Paratransit (demand response) and trolleybus were the only two modes that saw increases in ridership. Paratransit ridership increased by 3.7 percent and trolleybus ridership increased by 0.7 percent from January through September 2009.
Light rail (streetcars, trolleys) had a slight decrease less than one percent (-0.7). Light rail systems in seven cities reported an increase in the first nine months. They are as follows: Philadelphia, PA (17.5%); Oceanside, CA (17.3%); Baltimore, MD (13.9%); Memphis, TN (11.6%); Tampa, FL (7.0 %); San Francisco, CA (1.1%). A new line on the light rail system in Seattle, WA has led to more than 100% growth in the first nine months of 2009.
Heavy rail (subways) declined by 3.0 percent. Los Angeles Metro heavy rail continued its trend of increased ridership with an increase of 6.0 percent for the first nine months. Ridership on the Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority (WMATA) increased by 0.6 percent for the same time period.
Commuter rail ridership decreased by 5.1 percent. Commuter rail ridership increases were recorded in the following cities: Boston, MA (2.4%); New Haven, CT (1.4%); and Alexandria, VA (1.3%). A major extension of commuter rail in New Mexico from Albuquerque to Santa Fe led to more than a 100 percent increase from January through September 2009.
Bus ridership declined by 5.0 percent in the first nine months of 2009. In the largest bus ridership report, bus trips increased in San Francisco, CA by 1.1 percent. Bus travel in the smallest population area (below 100,000) decreased by only 1.0 percent — the smallest percent decrease of all population groups.
Nationwide transit ridership from 1999 to 2009 (click to enlarge)
Even with the recent dip, transit ridership is still historically higher than it was in the mid 2000s (when unemployment rate was at its lowest), indicating that the slumping labor markets have still been unable to offset the trips gained in 2008.
With an actual net gain in ridership since Q1 of 2007, the numbers aren’t as bad as news media like USA Today are making them sound. It’s likely that falling oil prices may have had as much to do with diminishing transit use as unemployment did.
In preparation for the grand opening of Airport Link tomorrow, Sound Transit invited members of the press aboard Link for a quick preview ride to the airport and back. With the Certificate of Occupancy signed, crews are now working on polishing up the station for Saturday’s big event. You can read Martin’s detailed coverage last month of SeaTac Station and the opening day announcement, where Senator Murray was there to break the news, along with several other dignitaries. Oran and Brian were on hand yesterday to take video and photos, along with Cian Hayes, who Ben mentioned was officially the first passenger to board a plane from Link. You can visit our Flickr Pool with some new photos of the station, as well as the video of the preview ride above, shot by Oran.
After hearing from the County Council that there would be no “significant” reduction in service over the 2010-11 biennium, I was finally able to chat with Metro Manager of Service Development Victor Obeso to get more details.
A total of 200,000 service hours are to be cut over the next two years, about 5% of the total, of which 50,000 will be this February. In terms of losses perceived by the user, about 2% of existing service will be cut over 2 years:
Scheduling efficiency
Supplemental low-impact reductions
Feb 2010
25,000
25,000
Sep 2010
50,000
25,000
Jun 2011
50,000
25,000
The “Scheduling Efficiency” side amounts to changes in how routes are allocated to Metro’s operating bases, plus reductions in layovers at the end of routes. There should be no impact on riders from these other than a possible slight decrease in reliability. Obeso is hopeful that in the February round the efficiency savings will actually be as high as 30,000 hours, sparing some cuts.
The “low-impact reductions” will, as per County policy, be doled out to subareas in proportion to the resources they receive. In conjunction with the budget, the council adopted an update to the Metro 10 year Strategic Plan which identified these reductions as “suspensions,” not “cuts.” This leaves open the possibility that restoration of the service would not be subject to 40/40/20, but doesn’t necessarily mean that restoration is first in line.
There will not be the proposed route-by-route blanket cuts, but cuts targeted at the least productive trips in each subarea. Metro is first looking at opportunities to eliminate the last trip of the night, eliminating trips that allow them to pull an entire bus out of service while not increasing headways too much, and trips where other good, nearby options exist. Obeso expects the number of riders inconvenienced to be small.
A 2% service cut targeted at unproductive trips, while not desirable, is clearly not a catastrophe for public transportation. Indeed, with Transit Now, WSDOT viaduct mitigation, and dedicated SR520-related revenue funding additional improvements, the net change is positive. However, Metro’s budget crisis is not solved, but merely deferred. The numbers are sensitive to small changes in revenue projections, but past estimates indicate about 385,000 service hours could be at risk in 2012-2013 without new revenue sources.
Under construction. Photo by Flickr user papahazama.
The House yesterday narrowly passed a $154 billion jobs bill that included tens of billions in transportation funding. Largely breaking along the same lines as the stimulus bill earlier this year, the funding works out like so:
$27.5 billion for highways
$8.4 billion for public transit
$800 million for Amtrak
Unlike the Obama administration proposal to allocate $50 billion in competitive transportation grants, this bill mostly allocates along the same lines as the stimulus — mostly through distribution formulas and with most of the money going to state transportation departments that tend to favor highway projects often far from urban areas. Most transit money will be allocated through metropolitan areas also along formula guidelines. Earlier this year, the PSRC distributed over $130 million in stimulus funds.
The Senate will be drafting a bill next year that could move back toward the administration’s goal of a more competitive infrastructure grant process that would likely see better projects receiving funds on merit rather than state politics. That could mean better results for transit. But Senators have more loyalty to their states than to the federal government, so the House bill could simply reflect the political reality.
Either way, more unexpected capital investment for public transit is always good. Based on the earlier stimulus requests, Sound Transit could accelerate construction of a South 200th St stop or North Link to Northgate with some more dollars. Metro could potentially purchase more buses and improve facilities. Local agencies and cities may have new capital projects that weren’t available at the time of the stimulus.
Up to 10% of the transit dollars could be spent on operations costs, according to Streetsblog DC.
