Some stories we haven’t mentioned over the last few days:
Here is some news on Amtrak in the past couple of days.
Quick items from around the transitsphere:
Some news today besides the inauguration:
(H/Ts: Andrew, Monica)
I don’t have time to write a real post on the stimulus, but here’s some noise from around the internet.
I am less worried that the stimulus money will all go to highway projects than I was last time I wrote about the topic. The $12 billion number the Oberstar article states could be spent on transit would be a massive increase, since currently only about $2 billion a year is spent on by the FTA capital projects. For a comparison, the capital costs of all light rail in Prop. 1 package passed in November was about $7 billion. Still, there’s no way to know how much will get spent here, so it’s worth letting your congressional delegation know that you want transit in the stimulus package.
Photo by Oran, from the STB flickr pool.
Not much going on today!
I would like to know what the hell is still wrong with the Streetcar.
UPDATE: We have numerous reports in the comments that the Streetcar is running, but on Saturday morning the Metro website still reports it as down. In a way that’s almost worse.
UPDATE 2: As of 1 PM the Streetcar is no longer reported as out of service.
Kitsap Transit raises fares, cuts service, including all buses on Sunday.Here in DC, for example, we turn our parking meters off and have free parking downtown on Saturdays. People like convenient parking spaces. They’re valuable. And when you set the price of a valuable commodity at zero, you get parking shortages. Which is what we have on Saturdays in key retail corridors. Perversely, the stated reason for this policy of guaranteed shortages is that it’s supposed to encourage people to come downtown to shop.
Same goes for Sounder Parking, by the way.
Image from Flickr contributor Chris Moucha.
And here is a thrilling video of today’s rescue:
The SR 167 high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane, the P-I reports, is collecting about $25,000 a month from a $1 average toll. I don’t know how applicable these results are to future congestion pricing projects, but $25K a month doesn’t seem like the big bucks various transportation constituencies have been hoping for.
The article says engineers hope that volume will roughly sextuple in four years, which would start to get us into serious money.
In other news, the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration announced that passing I-985 could threaten millions of dollars of federal funding. Given that this comes from a Bush administration whose pro-transit record isn’t exactly spotless, it just goes to show how reckless and extreme this initiative is.
The Totem Lake Transit Center opens today. As some one who used to live near there, I can testify that it’s a traditionally underserved area. Bravo.
In today’s P-I, Water Taxi ridership is up 9 percent. That’s actually small potatoes compared to other transit ridership increases, but good for the water taxi. There are only so many ways out of West Seattle, so adding another one is a big deal.
And if you have the dead-tree edition of the P-I, open it to page 2 of the local section and take a careful look at the photo caption. You won’t be disappointed.