The FTA has a new (January) report on carbon footprints of various transit modes, based on 2008 data. For electric transit, the authors use estimates based on the composition of that region’s power grid. Here are the locally relevant figures:
System
lbs. CO2 per passenger mile
Washington State Ferries
2.123
Seattle Streetcar
1.301
Avg. U.S. SOV
0.964
Metro Diesels
0.452
[Tacoma] Link
0.411
Metro trolleys
0.388
Sounder
0.369
ST Express
0.327
King Co. Vanpools
0.246
Snohomish Co. Vanpools
0.239
Pierce Co. Vanpools
0.228
Seattle Center Monorail
0.190
For comparison, the Portland MAX, a more mature system, comes in at 0.213. The national champion is Maryland’s MARC commuter rail at 0.013. Of large systems, BART (0.085) is very efficient with particularly clean energy.
Here are some miscellaneous questions and answers from my interview with SDOT Senior Engineer Darlene Pahlman. For the most part, these words are paraphrases. See also Part I of this report.
What can operators do to improve their practices? SDOT has transmitted to Metro’s training staff the accumulated best practices. If operators would like SDOT to come provide another training seminar they’d be happy to do so; please coordinate this through your training focal.
Is manual control of the signals possible? “We can remotely access the controller and can issue manual commands.”
What is the minimum achievable headway is on MLK? “We think we can successfully operate a system at 5 minute headways.”
What is the signal cycle length on MLK? 2 minutes, although there’s no firm bound on how long a car might wait.
Is there a special operating mode at late night or on Sundays? At these times we “run free”, meaning we try to grant demands to cross the tracks as they arise.
Are there any plans to expand the “running free” period? Not unless the data shows us a problem.
Is there any threshold of poor traffic flow where trains lose signal priority? That is no city policy at this time.
Would SDOT consider opening their controller configuration? No, for security reasons.
How are the pedestrian crossings working? At first, we had a lot of complaints about inability to cross MLK on a single signal. We installed the “countdown” signals and those complaints dropped precipitously.
Smaller transit systems generally don’t have the funding to have fast, frequent service, nor the demand to justify it. However, over the last few years Whatcom Transit has found a way to make their regular bus service a little more appealing.
It’s called the “go lines” program. No route in WTA’s system has consistent 15-minute headways, but there are signficant corridors where they collectively meet that standard. Beginning in 2005 with three lines, WTA rolled out a color-coded five line system (completed in January 2008) that connects Downtown Bellingham with major destinations, such as Western Washington University, the Alaska Ferry, and the Amtrak station, in addition to all of the city’s planned urban villages.
All five lines guarantee 15-minute headways on weekdays from 8 am to 6 pm, with longer waits at other times. In some cases this involved adding a few trips to meet the standard. The Red Line (to the Amtrak station) also achieves 15 minute headways on Saturdays. WTA and the City of Bellingham have also worked to give signal priority to buses on certain segments of the system.
Each of these lines (Red, Blue, Green, Gold, and Plum, map (.pdf) here) have distinctive signage. Unfortunately, “the fleet is not big enough” to allow the buses themselves to be distinctively marked, according to WTA spokesperson Maureen McCarthy. There are also some other routes that share part of a go line’s path, resulting in some potential confusion.
In spite of these problems, the Go lines have been a hit. For instance, according to McCarthy, ridership on components of the Green Line increased 260% after the go line was introduced. Indeed, in 2008 WTA had the highest ridership increase among small and medium-size systems in the nation (32%), and in 2009 experienced a 5% increase in an environment where most transit agencies had significant decreases.
Like virtually all other transit agencies, WTA is facing a funding crisis. Fortunately, they currently only assess a 0.6% sales tax, giving them room to raise more funding without involving the legislature. There is a ballot measure in April that seeks to raise taxes to 0.8% to simply maintain existing service. Polls indicate this measure is likely to pass.
Smaller agencies are often a good source of innovation in simple and low-cost ways to improve service by making it easier to use and understand. Here in King County, we already a suffer from a surfeit of bus brands, and it’s not clear we need another one. However, the Metro bus system is virtually incomprehensible due to the glut of peak-only and otherwise not-that-useful routes. Some effort to highlight more broadly useful routes (like the 15-minute map that Oran has been tinkering with) would make the system more usable for newcomers.
This isn’t really new, but Clark County’s high capacity transit study concluded last year and advocated three BRT lines and other improvements by 2030, with two of them running substantially in an exclusive lane. The study did not include the controversial Columbia River Crossing in its scope. According to spokesman Dale Robins, “One of the main assumptions of the Clark County HCT Study is that [light rail over the Columbia river] would exist as part of the region’s HCT system.”
He added:
C-TRAN is leading the effort to determine which HCT corridor of those identified in the Clark County HCT Study should be the first to be implemented. They are currently in the process of developing a 20-year transit plan, which appears to give priority to the Fourth Plain corridor [depicted above]. C-TRAN is seeking funding for an Alternative Analysis in their preferred corridor and hopes to get started on that process in the near future.
It’s not entirely clear what the revenue source would be, but last year the legislature passed SB 5540, which allows a Sound Transit-style 0.9% sales tax to pay for HCT corridors. At the time we interpreted that as a bid to allow MAX expansion, but it may very well be used to extend lower higher-quality bus service further into Clark County.
If you read Section 2 of the law you’ll find all sorts of tax constraints that make this a bit more restrictive than the RTA law that authorized Sound Transit. In particular, C-TRAN cannot go to the voters to fund this until July 1, 2012. It’s also a one-shot deal; by law, they can’t go to the voters for part of the authority and then have a second measure to use the rest of it.
Sound Transit doesn’t have a lot of extra cash lying around right now, but should that change, surplus subarea funds might be used to construct an infill station — that is, an additional station on an existing line. There are 5 such stations that come up now and then. What follows is a highly speculative review of each of these; note that all of these have the drawback of increasing travel times by a minute or two. Click on each station name to see a Google map of the approximate location.
1. MLK & Graham St.– This station would plug the biggest gap in the Rainier Valley segment and place virtually everyone within a half mile of a station, potentially allowing cutbacks in Metro service in this corridor. It would also serve a minor retail district, middle school, and in the long run probably allow MLK to become a solid line of dense development instead of islands around stations.
2. Boeing Access Road – Long mentioned and long lamented, BAR station actually has fairly low ridership estimates, as there’s almost nothing to walk to. Additionally, potential building heights are unimpressive because it’s at the foot of a runway. However, BAR is the only place for an intermodal Sounder/Link/Bus transfer point aside from King St; the connection would facilitate connections from the Green River Valley to the airport, provide a bypass of the Rainier Valley for Link riders from Federal Way, and possibly allow the truncation of bus service along I-5.
3. S. 133rd St. A station here would also break up the huge stop-less stretch between Rainier Beach and TIB. It provides a superior transfer point to get I-5 buses like the 150 off the freeway before they enter town. However, there is no Sounder connection. Since it’s in Tukwila, this station would have to be paid for by South King funds, which might otherwise be used to extend the line another stop.
4. Broad Street Sounder. A station on the Belltown end of downtown would improve anemic ridership on North Sounder by providing better connections to jobs in Seattle Center, SLU, and Belltown. It’s not entirely clear that the logistics of terminating South Sounder here work out, but if they did that would be an additional bonus. One drawback is that fixing the street grid could be messy and expensive.
5. Ballard Sounderwould bring Sound Transit service to an otherwise ignored quadrant of the City. It would provide a traffic-independent means downtown and boost ridership on North Sounder. However, the tracks run well away from the population and business centers, hurting ridership. Furthermore, this station would credibly require North King operating funds to contribute to North Sounder operations, which is a either a feature or a bug depending on what else is going on.
Puyallup is the only city in the region, aside from Seattle and Tacoma, that has two designated urban growth centers. One is the downtown area near the Sounder station, and the other around South Hill Mall. The city is in the early stages of connecting those two areas with a Bus Rapid Transit line, modeled on the Eugene’s EmX service.
It’s called EZRA (“Easy Rider Area”), named for Ezra Meeker, the 19th century founder and first mayor of Puyallup. The only online resources I’ve identified are the City website and a blurb in the Tacoma News-Tribune. See especially the pdf slideshow in the first link. I briefly chatted with Puyallup City Manager Gary McLean about the project.
The line’s proposed features, and its legal and funding status, are after the jump.
This is the sixth and final installment of my series on County Executive Kurt Triplett’s plan to solve a Metro budget crisis that now amounts to $501m over four years. The plan, when finalized in September, will serve as the basis of the budget the Council actually adopts in November, to be implemented beginning with the February 2010 service change.
