University Link – Page 2 – Seattle Transit Blog

Opening Day Postmortem

July 19, 2009July 19, 2009 by Adam Bejan Parast

It still hasn’t sunk in yet. Seattle finally has mass transit.

Just like the streetcars of a generation ago this system will forever shape Seattle’s urban form. It will connect the region like it has never been before. Unlike the streetcars of the past I feel confident in saying that this system will never get ripped out. Just like the New York subway or the London Underground, LINK will over the next few decades become an inseparable element of the city.

Lets not fool ourselves, there is lots of work to be done. University LINK is just getting underway and ST2 will be built out over the next 15 years. Development near stations has yet to occur, leaving the station areas feeling desolate and empty. It will be interesting to watch the neighborhood plan updates. In many ways while yesterday was the end to what so many people have been working towards for longer than I have been alive, it is the beginning of so much more.

I know that all of us at STB learned a lot yesterday. Hands down Beacon Hill was our favorite station. The artwork at the station was great and the station entrance was pleasant and pedestrian scaled. I love the seating and bamboo. Actually, the artwork all along the line was amazing. The only other system that I know with comparable public artwork is Stockholm’s Tunnelbana. The artwork transform the stations from a simply utilitarian places that you pass through, to a place that constantly surprises. This really shows why 1% for art is important.

What a weekend. We won’t have anything like this for years to come.

Ray LaHood Gets It, Gregoire Doesn’t

July 7, 2009July 7, 2009 by Adam Bejan Parast

Ray LaHood at Sound Transit O&M Facility

Yesterday, an assortment of federal, state and local elected officials welcomed US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to Seattle. LaHood, who has been something of an unknown quantity when it comes to transportation, is maturing into what I believe many progressive transportation advocates have been dreaming for. This comes as a surprise, due to his background as a Republican Congressman from the relatively small city of Peoria, Illinois.

The first sentences out of his mouth praised Seattle for creating such a livable city and limiting sprawl. Unlike what the name of his official blog, The Fast Lane, suggests, he has been surprisingly vocal in his support of livable, walkable, and bikable communities as well as high speed rail and all modes of transit. Last month, under his leadership, the USDOT, EPA and HUD formed an interagency partnership for sustainable communities which will coordinate and align efforts of all three agencies to improve the livability of our cities.

All of this has attracted the scorn of Newsweek’s George Will after LaHood implied that the federal government should encourage and support less auto dependent lifestyles. Obviously, George thinks that’s a bad thing:

LaHood, however, has been transformed. Indeed, about three bites into lunch, the T word lands with a thump: He says he has joined a “transformational” administration: “I think we can change people’s behavior.” Government “promoted driving” by building the Interstate Highway System—”you talk about changing behavior.” He says, “People are getting out of their cars, they are biking to work.” High-speed intercity rail, such as the proposed bullet train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, is “the wave of the future.” And then, predictably, comes the P word: Look, he says, at Portland, Ore.

Continue reading “Ray LaHood Gets It, Gregoire Doesn’t”

Guest Post Series: Rough Seas, But Finally Righted

June 23, 2009October 23, 2009 by Guest Contributor

by GREG NICKELS, Mayor of Seattle and Chair of the Sound Transit Board

Probably Central Link O&M Groundbreaking

After the passage of Sound Move on November 5, 1996 it was time to get to work. The RTA needed to ramp up from a 22 person planning staff to an entity capable of building a multi-billion dollar capital program and operating multiple modes of transit service. This is a step virtually every new transit agency struggles with and leads to a phenomenon known as “growing pains”!

The Board began to make dozens of decisions (PDF), from rebranding the agency as “Sound Transit” to vehicle purchases to route decisions. Environmental Impact Statements were begun, policies were developed, fares with other transit agencies were “integrated”, ground was broken and hearings were held.

In September 1997 the first Regional Express bus service began, in June 1998 I led the Board’s effort to identify Union Station as Sound Transit’s permanent headquarters and Sounder commuter rail between Tacoma and Seattle debuted in September, 2000. Tacoma’s Link streetcar began service in August, 2003.

Due to its size, federal funding and all new right-of-way; the most complicated aspect of the program was Link Light Rail. A very difficult period began toward the end of 2000 as tensions mounted and the Board ordered a halt to negotiations over a contract to build a very long, deep light rail tunnel under Portage Bay. The Board was concerned that the cost and risk of the proposed contract was unacceptably high and a reassessment was in order. This led to staff changes (Joni Earl became Executive Director) and eventually a reengineering of the project (splitting it into the initial Airport segment and the University segment extension) to reduce the risks.

Extraordinary political drama ensued including the last minute signing of a Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) on the final evening of the Clinton administration and light rail becoming the focus of the very close 2001 Seattle Mayor’s race. But the Board persevered, Joni restored confidence in the agency and eventually the project was back on track. In fact in February, 2003 Link’s initial segment received the highest rating of any project in the nation from the Federal Transit Administration. This was repeated recently with the University Link extension. Ground was finally broken for the initial Link light rail segment on November 8, 2003.

Train Frequency and the Downtown Tunnel

June 17, 2009June 17, 2009 by Ben Schiendelman

Every once in a while, someone asks me how long it will be before the buses are kicked out of the tunnel downtown. I bet we’ve talked about this before in the comments, but we could do with a discussion of frequency and routes.

At launch, peak train frequency will be 7.5 minutes. It’ll be listed as 7-8 minutes on the schedule – Metro’s scheduling system doesn’t handle 30 second increments. I was hoping for 6 minute peak headways, but we’ll get them eventually. As the first year of operation is only projected to average out with 20-25,000 on weekdays, I think we can wait a bit for 6 minute peaks.

I’ve been told that somewhere around 5 minute headways, there’s no longer safe time for buses to get through and load between trains, and at that point they’ll go back out to third avenue and elsewhere. That may happen when University Link opens, as ridership demand skyrockets. As we saw during the tunnel closure, surface congestion isn’t that bad with the extra buses, and a number of the tunnel routes will be replaced by rail soon after anyway. Perhaps at that point, we’ll consider further separating the bus corridor from cars.

When ST2 lines are built out, the expectation is that we’ll drop to 3 minute headways. The ST2 planning documents I’ve seen show three ‘lines’ – Lynnwood to Sea-Tac, Northgate to Federal Way, and Northgate to Redmond, each running on nine minute headways to combine to three between Northgate and ID Station. But we’d end up with headways of 3/6/3/6 minutes in the Rainier Valley, and I’m not sure 3 minute headways there would be feasible.

A little bird told me that a better option might be two six minute headway lines – one all the way from Lynnwood to Federal Way, and one from Lynnwood to Redmond. I like this better, it would cause far fewer passenger headaches. Oh, and wouldn’t it be awesome for the two lines to be Purple and Gold? It’s not my idea, but I like it.

Okay, how about the longer run? We should be able to get headways down to 2 minutes north of ID Station. At that point, in fifty years, we’re probably going to want to increase speed to Sea-Tac anyway. This is pure speculation, but I’ve mentioned in the past that it’s interesting that we leave and return to the Duwamish valley with Link. An elevated bypass along Marginal Way could save a couple of minutes for trains to the airport, serve SoDo better (with a stop near Georgetown), and allow us to add stations at Graham St. and S. 133rd without affecting longer distance users.

Consider this an open thread.

“We need to do everything possible to get new stations built quickly.”

June 12, 2009June 12, 2009 by Ben Schiendelman

The Stranger recently wrote about seven things they learned when they rode light rail for the first time. The last one caught my eye – we need to speed this up.

There’s a big shrug from Sound Transit about accelerating University Link or Northgate – we can’t do much without immediate infusions of hundreds of millions of dollars, and I keep hearing they’re already working on a Northgate acceleration plan. But we can definitely do something about ST2’s other components. We could speed up Lynnwood, Federal Way, or Redmond extensions with more cash in the next few years, and we could accelerate planning for a new line in the city. This is why we’re starting to try to talk about new funding sources.

At the national level, there’s not much. There’s pressure on the Federal Transit Administration to improve their New Starts grant process, but we’re all here in Seattle, where it’s tough to have an impact in DC. It makes more sense to me to fight for new funding at the local level – we’re going to have to go to the state, and that’s a tough task on its own.

The options that stuck out for me are the basics:

State or local MVET using a smarter approach than the tables the state used to use.
Local option property taxes, both at a city level and through LIDs.

Were there other obvious funding sources I missed? I know there are lots of other options, but these seem like they’d be the easiest. Sound Transit already collects some MVET for Sound Move, but they won’t be able to continue using that revenue after the bonds are repaid, probably around 2023. Would that be a good place to start? How about allowing local voters to double it?

51 Days

May 27, 2009 by Ben Schiendelman

According to this post on light rail on Good Magazine’s blog, Manhattan residents first voted to fund the Second Avenue Subway in 1951. They even mention East Link!

Seven weeks and two days until Central Link, and seven years and (okay, maybe) two months until University Link…

Paper Mills Get $8bn in Federal Transpo Money

April 3, 2009April 3, 2009 by Andrew Smith

This should help give you an idea of just how broken the way we fund transportation in this country is: Paper Mills are looking to get about $8 billion in Federal transportation cash in 2009, according to the Nation, and the FTA will get $10.23 billion. International Paper alone will get close to $1 billion, twice as much Federal funding as Central Link’s total full funding grant award ($500 mn awarded over years) and a significant amount more than University Link’s full funding grant award ($813 million, also awarded over years). The money is technically a tax credit for using alternative fuels, but in this case the paper industry is adding fossil fuels to their natural bio-fuels but it’s still cash, and the cash did come from SAFETEA-LU, the last Federal Transportation bill.

We have a surprisingly low-quality government.

UW to CHS Tunnels Cost $86mn Less than Planned

March 25, 2009March 25, 2009 by John Jensen

Sound Transit today announced that a lowest bid for the University of Washington to Capitol Hill tunnels came in $86 million, or 22%, less than the engineers’ estimate.

The tunnels are the the largest component of the University Link project. That project’s first construction contract came in $10 million under estimates last December.

Bruce Gray of Sound Transit noted these two bids reflected a positive environment for constructions projects. “Every day we see bids coming in lower than engineers’ estimate, as opposed to a few years ago when they were coming in higher than engineers’ estimate.”

The economic downturn has halted construction in other areas, meaning that there is less private demand for the contractors who are capable of work of this scale. Sound Transit engineers priced the tunneling project at $395,334,000. The lowest bid, from Traylor Frontier-Kemper Joint Venture, came in at $309,175,274.

Things aren’t completely rosy in the ST financial world. The same recession that has made the bid environment more favorable has also led to a projected $2.1 billion funding shortfall for Sound Transit 2 before it has even began collecting tax revenue. Still, these great bids reflect that it is the best time to make public infrastructure investment.

ST to Decide on $1.75 Base Link Fare, No Free Ride

March 25, 2009March 25, 2009 by John Jensen

The Sound Transit Board on Thursday will likely vote to set the base Link fare at $1.75. The fare would be modified with a distance-based surcharge of $.05 per mile rounded to the nearest quarter (you can read about the introduction of the distance-based fare in our archives). The maximum fare from Downtown Seattle to Seatac Airport would be $2.50.

This option was chosen over an alternative which would have had the base fare at $2.00 but given downtown riders free access to light rail in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Sound Transit staff notes that while this option would have created higher ridership because there wouldn’t be an incentive for cash-users to avoid the rail fare, the rest of the network would be subsidizing the Link trips within downtown.

Linda Thielke, a Metro spokesperson, said that the bus agency has “no plan” to change the ride free policy in the tunnel. This will create a unique situation where riding buses in the tunnel is free, but riding light rail costs money.

Light rail riders have to either purchase tickets for the appropriate destination before boarding, or tap on and then “tap off” with the upcoming Orca smart fare/pass card. Each of these methods would be much faster than the current on-board payment system on buses which can cause crowding.

The Mayor’s transportation adviser, Andrew Glass Hastings, noted that Metro decided “to keep ride free in the tunnel to maintain headways and not impact their service.” Indeed, we have argued in the past that the absence of bus fares downtown can keep things operating smoothly.

You can read the full resolution on the Sound Transit website (pdf). My favorite part is the 52% farebox recovery ratio expected in 2017 once University Link opens. High ridership and long trains operated by one person will do that.

Follow-up: We have some numbers showing the effect on ridership.

Demolition Progresses in Capitol Hill

March 23, 2009March 24, 2009 by John Jensen

1237499116-twicesolddemojpeg — Image from the Slog.

Sound Transit contractors recently began demolishing the buildings that current occupy the area where construction for the University Link projected will be staged. While it may not look like a lot was recycled from the picture above, take note from the Sound Transit CEO:

I wanted to pass along an update on our ongoing recycling efforts at the future site of the Capitol Hill light rail station.

As buildings are being removed to make way for the station, we’ve been working very hard to keep material out of the landfill. So, for example, before demolition salvage teams removed potential re-salable items, such as doors, light fixtures and railings. About 75 percent of the remaining building material such as bricks and wood will be recycled.

A while back, Sound Transit hosted a plant salvage event for neighbors to adopt some of the smaller trees or shrubs and give them a new home in their yard. Our contractor is working with a specialist to determine if any of the larger trees can be moved and used in other projects.

And even the tree stumps are being put to good use. The root-balls and stumps from the trees that are too large to be transplanted are being donated for use in salmon habitat restoration projects in the Puget Sound region.

Related to the project, the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog has posted word of a potential new cross-walk at Olive Way & Boylston. That is definitely needed.

(Picture from Slog.)