I really have a soft spot for ferries. I just think they are the most “Seattle” form of transit. Today in the Seattle Times there’s an article about a group in Kingston pushing for a foot ferry down to Seattle. Right now, ferries from Kingston go to Edmonds, and so anyone travelling into the city would have to take Sounder.
I like this article because it shows citizens taking transit into their own hands.
This Article from Philladelphia talks about how streetcars are coming back to cities across the country including Seattle:
“Trolleys are taking back the streets,” says Harry Donahue, a founding member of the Friends of Philadelphia Trolleys.
Once-endangered, trolleys are experiencing a resurgence across North America.“There was definitely a perception in the ’40s that anything dated before 1940 was old and streetcars fell in that category,” Dean said.
By the 1970s, only seven cities in the nation – including Philadelphia – were running trolleys, according to the Light Rail Now Web site.
There’s more to than that, but I won’t bore you with conspiracy theories. Unless you want me to.
There’s room for streetcars in transportation systems. They serve a similar function to a bus, but they create a more permanent presense, and are more comfortable to ride. People see them as more reliable, and that sense is a huge reason why places like South Lake Union and Portland’s Pearl District look to them during redevelopment.
On the City’s website there’s a report that was commissioned to study possible streetcar routes in Seattle. We are definitely getting on in South Lake Union that may eventually stretch all the way to the U-District. We’re also likely getting one from Chinatown, through Little Saigon up to First Hill and eventually to Aloha and Broadway. The report discusses other possible routes, including extending the Waterfront line to the Interlake area and one down through the Central District. It’s a good read, and discusses a lot of the benefits of streetcars and when building them is appropriate.
Some of the advantages of Streetcars over buses:
The report goes on to mention what seems to make a successful streetcar and what doesn’t:
We’ll see more streetcars in the next 20 years as the city completes it’s density drive.
Seattle isn’t the only city struggling with growth and transportation neglect. Carlotte NC, is a rapidly-growing city, 3rd in the nation in finance after New York and Chicago and they are having growing pains similar to Seattle. And some want light rail (called CATS), and others who really don’t. They have their own half-cent tax (hey, that sounds familiar!), and their own transit vote this fall. That last piece talks about other issues involved in CATS and I won’t bore you with the details but it’s nice to see that we aren’t the only ones participating in this sort of struggle. Well, nice and not-so-nice, since we are competing with them for federal transit dollars.
Will at Horse’s Ass puts the Stranger’s Josh Feit in his place like this:
No matter how much Josh Feit protests, young families are not going to buy “in-fill density” in Seattle. Maybe some will, but they are the exception that proves the rule. You can’t force young families into condos. Not when they can buy a house in Algona for the same price.
You can, however, give people options. Let’s build transit- lots more- in the city and elsewhere. Let’s expand HOV lanes. Let’s spend a little less time telling people what they should want and more time giving them options.
I think they might by townhomes or San Francisco-style non detached houses, but we’ll see.
Meanwhile, James Vesely the Times’ editorial page editor (say that three times fast) wrote this about the “Roads and transit package. It’s a pretty long read (about 1500 words) but it has a few good points in it, like this “The asking price in November is currently set at $18.9 billion, with $14.6 billion of that from renewal of existing taxes now being collected.” If that’s true, and it really is just an exstension of existing taxes then this would be the first time I’ve heard this from our local media.
The piece also has some weird parts:
In a region looking for answers, we are getting more questions. Each piece of the $18 billion-plus bill seems to be necessary for the rest to fit. Those in favor of the plan point to a 30-year delay in building almost anything that carries wheels, the declining road stock and lack of rolling stock, and the growth of a region spilling over in good jobs and brimming with promise.
Huh?
A private poll conducted by Moore Information and EMC Research concludes:
“… A strong majority (61 percent) support the current Roads and Transit package … which includes the cost of $16.5 billion [now $18.9 billion] but not household costs.
“Support drops (to 49 percent) after voters hear the typical household costs early in the survey. Support returns to a strong majority (63 percent) after voters hear a description of the major components of the package.”
I wish I had that study. I wonder where I can get it. I suggest reading the whole thing.
I thought it was a joke, but it totally wasn’t.
In this CNN article about the U.S. Census Bureau’s “American Community Survey” it says that 17% of Seattlites commuted to work on the bus in 2005. That’s about half as high a percentage of commuters on transit as San Francisco or Boston, and less than a third as much as New York where 54.6% of workers ride transit.
Probably more commuters who don’t work ride the bus. Those would be students, the unemployed and senior citizens, but let’s hope we can get the number up when LRT is built, because we are barely higher than Boston’s walk to work percentage (13%).
Update: NL asked, so I decided to go deeper in to the numbers, but lots of the links keep breaking. Sorry if they do for you.
This is about transportation for workers just in the city. It only is for workers, so it doesn’t count students. The data was collected by mailed survey (I filled one out down in San Francisco), and they have some wildly detailed information about sample size, response rate, etc.
I’m mildly surprised that its only 17% for the city, seems low. But the big news is actually this statistic: 7.6% of people in the urban area commute by transit! Look at the map to see the area. 3% statistic is completely wrong. Even including Monroe, Issaquah, Federal Way, Spanaway and the far outlying suburbs and we still get better than 2.5 times that misquoted statistic.
Here’s a breakdown of the data for the sub-regions with in the area. This includes rural areas!
I delved deeper into into this statistic.
During peak rush hour, 6-9 am, fully twenty percent (20.2%) of Seattle commuted by transit in 2005, and nine percent of the region.
| 12:00 a.m. to 4:59 a.m. | 7.74 |
| 5:00 a.m. to 5:29 a.m. | 12.8 |
| 5:30 a.m. to 5:59 a.m. | 9.67 |
| 6:00 a.m. to 6:29 a.m. | 21.8 |
| 6:30 a.m. to 6:59 a.m. | 19.4 |
| 7:00 a.m. to 7:29 a.m. | 22.6 |
| 7:30 a.m. to 7:59 a.m. | 15.7 |
| 8:00 a.m. to 8:29 a.m. | 23.8 |
| 8:30 a.m. to 8:59 a.m. | 17.3 |
| 9:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. | 15.7 |
| 12:00 a.m. to 4:59 a.m. | 3.43 |
| 5:00 a.m. to 5:29 a.m. | 5.66 |
| 5:30 a.m. to 5:59 a.m. | 4.28 |
| 6:00 a.m. to 6:29 a.m. | 9.66 |
| 6:30 a.m. to 6:59 a.m. | 8.62 |
| 7:00 a.m. to 7:29 a.m. | 10.0 |
| 7:30 a.m. to 7:59 a.m. | 6.98 |
| 8:00 a.m. to 8:29 a.m. | 10.5 |
| 8:30 a.m. to 8:59 a.m. | 7.69 |
| 9:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. | 6.95 |
Anti-transit folks will not stop using the 3% statistic, but we know for commuters, especially during peak rush hour, it’s not the right number. In 2005, their number was already way off, and just wait until central link is finished, and let’s revisit these statistics. I bet it has already crossed 25% for the city by now, and 12% for the region by 2008.
According to the Highline Times, a tiny property tax increase is all that would be needed:
An additional penny in King County’s property tax would raise $2.5 million annually for water taxi service, said King County Councilman Dow Constantine, D-West Seattle.
I have a soft spot for ferries, as you have probably noticed if you read this blog often. New Ferries are a cool mode of service, and would work great in the interum if projects like the 520 replacement or the Alaskan Way Viaduct take years to complete.
Also in the article are this tidbit about foot ferries:
The West Seattle Chamber of Commerce is pushing for the northern half of Jack Block Park to be used for a walk-on ferry dock, replacing the current “temporary” dock at Seacrest Park near Duwamish Head.
There are about 500 parking places there that are largely unused during workdays and underused at almost all times, said Patti Mullen, executive director of the chamber.
500 parking spots? That’s insane. While the parking is nice, the park is a little farther from Alki which would be unfortunately for people like me who like to take the ferry there. Here’s Jack Block Park on a map. It looks from the map that there is also some rail going there, so it could be a problem for the port, which owns the land, if the ferry interferes with shipping there.
This Bus Chick post reminded me of the contest SF Muni (San Francisco’s Bus and Rail company) is currently running to design new bus shelters for the service. This is what current muni shelters look like. All of the possible shelter designs include a “next bus” sign with information about the next bus. Take a look at the photo below of a next bus sign in Melbourne Australia. Vandalism is probably less of a problem in Australia than it is in Seattle (and in Seattle FAAAAAAAR less than in San Francisco.
I haven’t thought a lot about what the perfect metro bus stop would be like, but it would definitely include a next bus sign, and uh, a shelter. I take the 545 at Bellevue & Olive Street (down a block from Olive Way, confusing, right?) and its great to just show up in the summer since the bus comes every 8~12 minutes and the weather’s wonderful but come January, I’d like to know when the bus is coming, and be able to stand under a shelter. Have you got anything more than that you’d like in the perfect shelter? Wi-fi is probably asking too much… Japanese train stations always have fabulous vending machines that serve a variety of cold drinks in the summer, and a mix of hot and cold drinks in the winter (actually you could replace ‘train stations’ with basically anything in that sentance). I think a perfect bus station would have a vending machine because I’m always thirsty.
I guess I wasn’t the only one (look for “VAN DYK COLUMN” about 1/3 the way down) who thought Ted Van Dyk’s opinion piece in the P-I was off.
One of my favorite parts:
Van Dyk asserts that light rail technology is inappropriate for cities with Seattle’s hills and extensive water crossings. These kinds of natural features did not stop San Francisco’s BART system from tunneling through Oakland’s hills to the suburbs beyond, or under the bay and under San Francisco itself. Portland’s popular MAX light rail system requires a long tunnel through the hills in its extension west of the city. New York, Washington, D.C., and many European cities long ago decided that subterranean construction was a necessary expense.
I hear some arguments along the lines of “Chicago, Tokyo and San Francisco were able to build rail earlier, which made it easier because they were either still developing or had just been destroyed.” (Some form of that here) But most European cities have some form of rail, including ones that haven’t been destroyed by war or fire in hundreds of years. In Barcelona (last war there, oh about 1500 years ago), they are still building rail now underneath dense neighborhoods. Just because we are late doesn’t mean we are too late.
He also says:
Van Dyk condemns Sound Transit for estimating future capital costs in 2006 dollars. But in reality, it is by now commonly understood that inflation, debt service, bond reserves, etc. will add substantially to today’s estimate of $10.8 billion for 50 more miles of rail transit in the future. But so will the region’s capacity to pay those expanded costs. The $10.8 billion figure establishes a basis for comparing the project’s magnitude with other projects — bridges, freeway expansions, etc. — whose costs will also grow the same way in those future years
This topic has been discussed heavily by myself and others. Basically, putting the numbers in future terms is far more inaccurate because 1) no one knows what inflation will actually be, if they did, everyone would have bought that house in the Central District in the early 1990s, and no one would have held money through the 1970s and 1980s hyperinflation, 2) future dollars are complete wild-guess estimates unlike 2006 dollars which people understand, and 3) that’s the normal way of doing these time-value estimates. When you buy a car or a house they don’t put in the interest in the price, the put the cost of the house now.
That’s all Sound Transit is doing.
I was actually waiting to post on this because I wanted to get more information about wi-fi on ferries, but Seattlest beat me to it, with an awesome photo to boot! The gist is that it’s harder to get wi-fi on the 55-minute run from Bremerton to the city because of the narronw “Rich Passage” between Bainbridge Island and the mainland. Anyway, Seattlest has a nice summary.
At Slog, there is an awesome put down on Kemper Freeman’s Truth About Traffic via links to sources that disprove Freeman’s factual errors. It has a wealth of great links, and if your a transit fan, it’s definitely worth a read.
Oh, and she has the video I mentioned in my previous KF post.
I want to add my two cents to this. Even the linked document’s stats ECB put in response to the 3% trip statistic are misleading, because they are measured in Vehicle Miles Travelled, which is not the same as trips. Someone driving from Spanaway to Redmond counts the same as a fifteen people riding the bus from Ballard downtown or five people riding from the city to Redmond. Plus, all other commute options (biking, walking, skateboarding, etc.) are left out.
Finally, if all you care about is congestion (as Kemper Freeman alleges to), trips taken at midnight don’t effect congestion, so why consider the 3% statistic when talking about congestion? We care about number of commute trips during rush hour, that’s what congestion is. Not the number of miles travelled by people. I can drive from LA to Seattle and that won’t cause congestion, but driving across 520 during the middle of rush hour will.
… will remain transit-only until viaduct replacement is complete. That’s what the City has told me. Here’s an old-school photo of a Metro Bus going down 3rd Ave.
Seattlest jokes that light rail opposition is just more of that same Seattle knee-jerk reactionism:
It’s a little known made-up fact that soon after the Oregon Trail was blazed a group sprang up to oppose its expansion. It’s the very first example of a long and illustrious tradition of opposing the expansion of transportation projects in our region that flows directly into opposing the monorail and the 520 and Viaduct replacements. So ingrained is this instinct to oppose that Seattlest found a petition signed by 15 local residents the other day asking that we please quit cutting across our front yard to get to the door of our duplex.
…
Of course there’s a group forming to oppose light rail expansion in Seattle, and of course their argument is that it won’t reduce congestion. Are world peace and nirvana going to be achieved by building a comprehensive mass transit system in Seattle? No? Then why bother? The fact is that opposition groups have left light rail as our last best chance at keeping Seattle a livable city, but in order for it to succeed at that it needs to be expanded and expanded and expanded some more until we can start forming groups to oppose road expansion on the grounds that it won’t reduce congestion on the light rail lines.
Emphasis added. The difference between light-rail opposition and normal run-of-the-mill “whatever you want I don’t” opposition is that there is a certain nastiness to the anti-transit folks. First, what other anti-something group puts up a site that pretends to be for that something? Well, anti-transit does just that. How many other groups just make up statistics at will with no shame?
Compare it to the anti-development, pro-“neighborhood” people. At the bottom of that link:
Kathy Goodwind, owner of the Gasworks Park Kite Shop a few blocks away, says she doesn’t mind the pit because she hates seeing more “skinny” townhouses in the neighborhood.
“I’d rather see a pit than see the city turned into cheap-looking houses that are costing a fortune for people to buy,” she said, adding that she would welcome a grocery store without residences above it.
She’s a little misinformed because the neighborhood (Wallingford) where she complains about expensive skinny houses is populated by super-expensive normal houses that can only be afforded by people who moved in decades ago or those who make incredible fortunes. But she’s not saying “I support development of super-flat, one-story housing that will be more affordable and will house just as many people.” Because that’s what the anti-light rail folks do. “We can build BRT that is as good as rail and costs $14 million a mile.”
Second, anti-transit people are incredibly well funded, and are much more dogmatic about their hatred of these projects. Kemper Freeman, the owner of Kemper Development Co (btw, I own Andrew Development Co and Andrew Enterprises International because first names are the best names!), dumps hundreds of thousands of dollars into anti-transit organizations while building 42 story high-rises because he thinks of public transit as a form of welfare. He puts more money into fighting transit than he’ll ever have to pay to build it. Why?
And why does a guy who’s building 42 story towers speak at conferences whose purpose is to “help you effectively oppose rail transit boondoggles, high-density urban zoning, restrictions on rural property rights, and other so-called ‘smart-growth’ policies”? He doesn’t care about high-density zoning or rural property rights, he just hates transit. If I can find the video, I’ll post it where he compares rail transit to terrorism. Seriously. No one has ever compared surface/transit to terrorism and been taken seriously. Why is anyone taking these people seriously?
For some reason the Cross-base highway is this tremendous deal breaker for a lot of lefties. Why? Apparently when they found out two weeks ago that it would go through the some woods in Pierce County they never knew existed they were worried it would destroy the environment. Which means they won’t vote for Roads and Transit, which would be a big win for environmentalists with its 50 miles of light rail. I am an environmentalist, and it would be awful if that road is built, but I think the good outweighs the bad in this case. And as Orphan Road has pointed out, even if it is in the RTID, it’s not gauranteed to be built.
Over in Stranger comments Tip-toe Tommy wrote:
BTW–the RTID package that builds all those new lanes actually does a few nice things for Seattle. It will help fully fund new overpasses and ramps for cars and transit at Lander and Spokane streets. These two projects will actually begin to implement some of the things one would have to do if you were going to do a surface option on the waterfront. They will be done by the time the viaduct likely comes down. The package also will help pay for improvements to Mercer that will help knit Queen Anne and South Lake Union together. The RTID also replaces the South Park Bridge, a vital lifeline to one of Seattle’s best working class neighborhoods, and the worst bridge in the state. It also builds bus lanes on Aurora in Shoreline that match the ones Metro is building in Seattle and it builds a new off ramp for buses only for the HOV lanes coming from South King or Pierce county. The Seattle stuff is almost all transit. Take a look at it again.
If Roads and Transit doesn’t pass, everyone will say “the transit side was too big” and we’ll get a second ballot with less transit and more roads. No one will say, “Roads and Transit didn’t pass because of the Cross-base highway”.
Slog has been taken over by trolls commenters and one such commenter by the name of Gomez wrote a piece about growing up in a driver’s world but living without a car in Seattle.
So the point of all that long-winded spiel was… no, despite any background with highways and roads, no, I don’t love highways, and at this point in life, I wholeheartedly support the wise integration of street improvements with transit. As much as I liked the road growing up, I like life without it a whole hell of a lot better. I could never see myself living with a car again
It’s worth a read.
http://mybus.org/ My bus shows when the next buses coming to your station will arrive, and how late/on time they are.
http://www.its.washington.edu/mybus-sms/ This is the SMS (text message) version of the above.
Google Transit (the updated version communicates with Google Earth)
Public Routes a nice tool that lets you find bus routes to and from your location.
Carless in Seattle has pointed out that the issue of travelling between the 520/Montlake Blvd and University of Washington Station has not been resolved in the current agreement announced yesterday. It’s a pretty long distance, probably about 1500~2000 feet.
I see this as one of those unfortunate situations that won’t be solved. Maybe frequent shuttle service can be the answer?
This week’s Seattle Weekly has a great article about carless road trips. It has a bunch of nuggets like this (well the monorail would have been nice):
Contrary to what those monorail morons wanted you to believe, getting out to West Seattle couldn’t be easier, on the back of the mighty Metro 54. Hop on it downtown, and it’ll whisk you over the freeway and down the length of Fauntleroy Way. At about the 30-minute mark, you’ll hop off at Lincoln Park, one of Seattle’s best—and not all that heavily used by those outside the neighborhood. Its 135 acres includes five miles of trails, including a stunner that goes all along the point under a canopy of trees; it’s one of the best Puget Sound walks you’re going to find. At the tip of the point is the park’s most famous amenity: an Olympic-size, heated, outdoor, salt-water pool that’s open summer-only. The 54 runs twice an hour on weekends.
When I was a kid, my siblings and I used to bus out to Discovery Park. I think it was the 31 we took with a bit of a walk in at the end. The other option was the 33, I think, from Downtown. When I was in college, we used to go to Vancouver on Amtrak, Greyhound and Quickshuttle. We always had a blast. Have any of you guys done a successful carless road trip?
Where’s the data that backs up these claims?
”
[A] line to Northgate now is expected to cost at least $6 billion and to not be completed until 2016. [Ed. My sources say $1.126 billion to $1.239 billion.
]…
A recent Seattle Times essay by former Washington Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge and former state Transportation Commissioner George Kargianis pointed out the multiple problems posed by Sound Transit’s drive to build light rail to the Eastside, across the Interstate 90 bridge, at a cost of another $6 billion. [my sources say $1.465 billion to $2.157 billion, and that’s the whole line part from Seattle to Bellevue’s Downtown]
Look, I am all for a good debate, but I’d prefer and honest one. This anti-transit guy Van Dyk seem to just make there numbers up out of thin air. Compare it with this nuanced anti-transit pro-highways article from the Reason Foundation. The difference is stark. I guess “reason” doesn’t sell as many news papers as made up numbers and sensationalism does. Well, I guess this is a newspaper that put American Idol on it’s cover five times in two weeks.
We have the second worst-traffic in the nation as a factor of time, and 1.5 million more people are expected to move here over the next 30 years or so. We need to think about how those people will live and work, and we need to be prudent about how we move people around. Unfortunately, we have one of the lowest tax burdens in the country and because of this we haven’t been able to afford the necessary improvements to replace our post-war infrastructure that is now mostly 50 years old or more. Instead of scare tactics designed to frighten people, let’s be reasonable with our arguments for and against transit.
