It was in 1983 that King County and the City of Seattle approved the Downtown Transit Tunnel. Construction begain in 1987 and it opened for buses in 1990. It will open for light rail in 83 days.
83 Days
Times: Tunnel Overruns “may be toothless”
I was all set to write an editorial slamming the tunnel overruns provision, but this morning the Times reports that it’s likely to be unenforceable. That explains Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis’s relative indifference to it, since coming out strongly opposed would delay things even further.
Read the article for the rest of the legislative gossip; it’s worth it, and Jim Brunner’s reporting deserves the page hits in this case.
Metro’s Tunnel Buses to Match Link Hours
According to the image above, provided by a bus driver that we’ll keep anonymous for no particular reason, Metro’s tunnel buses will now stay in the tunnel beginning on May 30th and the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel’s hours will be extended.
Metro told us that the change is “related to the coming of light rail.” They’re not kidding, considering the hours sync up perfectly with Link’s operating hours. Link light rail begins service on July 18th and will serve all of the tunnel stops with the exception of the outdoor Convention Place station.
Sometime between now and 2016, the opening of the U-Link extension that’ll serve Capitol Hill and the U District, light rail headways will become too small for bus operations and the downtown tunnel will be light rail only.
Almost Done: Budget Conference Committee
Right now, a conference committee in Olympia is hashing out the details of the 2009-2011 budget. We’re almost done – the session should be over Sunday – so we really only have today and tomorrow to remind our legislators that we’re still paying attention.
This is mostly a recap, but here’s a list of what we care about in the budget conference, and where it came from:
- Regional Mobility Grants are fine in the Senate at $40 million, retaining the competitive grant process (and Sound Transit has three of the five most cost-effective projects), but gutted in the House to remove Sound Transit’s projects entirely and cut the total down to $15 million.
- Representative Simpson’s amendment in the House gives us a good solution to the ‘asset assessment’ for the I-90 express lanes, both requiring Sound Transit and WSDOT to be at the table and funding the assessment. While Senator Jarrett’s amendment was a step in the right direction, it left holes in funding and in process that Simpson’s amendment fills.
- Representative Clibborn funded $10.6 million of R8A preliminary design work in this biennium, which keeps the WSDOT portion of the project on track. The Senate version as it stands would derail East Link entirely, but we’re hoping Senator Jarrett will help us out here!
There are other non-budget items of interest for transit as well:
- SB 5513 means I can’t get drunk and unruly on nearly as many transit vehicles as I used to (without getting kicked off, anyway). Oh well. It basically just ensures that transit workers can enforce safety measures on more than just buses.
- HB 1225 makes sure Sound Transit and other public and private transit agencies are exempt from special fuel taxes. Keeping government from taxing government!
- And of course, SB 5433, which I posted about earlier in the week, would give transit agencies new funding tools, which we need everywhere in the state right now.
Those budget items could use phone calls! And if there’s anything I’m missing, please let me know.
ST May Delay New Bus Service Hours
Sound Transit is considering delaying the full implementation of a voter-approved bus service expansion by one year. The bus expansion plan called for 100,000 new bus hours to be implemented by September 2010, but a new document from Sound Transit (.pdf) highlights a plan to extend the implementation of the plan to September 2011.
While most of the peak hours would still be delivered on schedule, Sound Transit says that the proposed Alternative 2 “delays the off-peak service improvements originally proposed for September 2009 by two years.”
The document says that Sound Transit will save $13 million by delaying full implementation of the new service hours and says that worsening sales tax revenue is to blame for the possible extension. Sound Transit 2, which includes this bus expansion, is projected to have a $2.1 billion shortfall — even though revenue collections started just this month — because the country is experiencing the worst recession in a generation.
News Round Up: Park-and-Ride Bait and Bus Bulbs
- The House has approved a bill approving the deep bore tunnel option as the preferred option for replacing the aging Viaduct. However, a House amendment pushed by Speaker Chopp puts Seattle on the line for any cost overruns. Never in the history of Washington State have local taxpayers been asked to contribute to a state roadway project.
- The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department nabbed a park-and-ride burglar by setting up a bait car. Turns out, the sheriff’s department has been running a bait program since 2007, and the amount of incidents has fallen from 82 to in 2006 to just 20 last year.
- CHS Capitol Hill Seattle Blog talks about the upcoming transit and pedestrian improvements to Pine St. Pine is a pretty strong corridor for buses, feet, and bicyclists so these improvements will be quite welcome.
- A commenter has posted a photo set of his ORCA card and related documents. ORCA is the region’s next transit smart card, which can be used as both a monthly pass or a fare storage card. Did we mention that it automatically handles transfer for you? You can get one for free at orcacard.com.
Earth Day
We like to think of every day at Seattle Transit Blog as an earth day, but today people around the world are celebrating Earth Day. How are you honoring Earth Day today?
Next Friday: Transportation Town Hall
Transportation Choices Coalition is hosting a three event series to discuss how our transportation needs are changing, how we can do things differently, and where we’re already going.
The first will be next Friday, May 1st, Noon-1:30pm, in the Bertha Knight Landes Room in Seattle City Hall. The guest list is fantastic:
Jan Drago, Chair, Transportation Committee, Seattle City Council
Kevin Desmond, General Manager, King County Metro
Chuck Ayers, Executive Director, Cascade Bicycle Club
Carla Archambault, General Manager, Zipcar Seattle
Eric dePlace, Senior Researcher, Sightline Institute
Carla Saulter, Seattle P-I Bus Chick, transit advocate
The guests cover a wide range of pro-transit options and viewpoints – from streetcars and buses to cycling and building walkable communities, even carsharing as the last step many need to consider getting rid of a car entirely.
The idea is to create a vision for what we want transportation options to look like in the next 20 years – I think most of us have clearly defined values in this regard, and we might be able to benefit the end result by going to these town halls. As a lot of us are thinking about how to serve Ballard and West Seattle with transit, what station areas should look like around Link, and how to better mesh our bus system and our new rail spine, this seems like a great time to start talking about where we should make our investments to enhance mobility for everyone.
PugetPass and ORCA, Lessons from London
How many of you have already purchased an ORCA card? How many of you have purchased one, even though you have a PugetPass, FlexPass, or U-Pass? I’m guilty on both charges, and so are a lot of other people. I purchased one today, and my card number is in the 40,000 range. Anyone have stories about using ORCA yet? All of the card readers on the 3 buses I rode today said out-of-service.
While filling out all of the information and poking around the website, I found myself looking at PugetPass options. In the past, this monthly and yearly fair structure made sense, but going forward it looks cumbersome and overly complex from a user perspective.
PugetPass costs a fixed amount regardless of the number of times it is used. That cost is based on the fare value multiplied by 36 as you can see below. I wonder why 36 is so magical. Basically if you use a certain value more than 36 times a month, you are saving money with that card.
87 Days
In 87 days, Link will have been open for some eight hours, and almost all of us will have packed onto a Link train. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find something for every day between now and then, but here’s some trivia you might not know:
87 years ago, in 1922, the State Supreme Court ruled it illegal to use anything but farebox revenue to pay off streetcar debts. That was the beginning of the end of the streetcar era in Seattle – there was nothing the city could do to save them, largely because they didn’t have the political power to raise fares at that point.
Today, you can go to the Seattle Room at the Central Library and find the city budget for 1922 (and many other years). Streetcar operations and maintenance were in the ‘office of self-sustaining departments’. Someday they will be again.