Recent Stories with tag sound transit

Joni Earl

When Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl presented her Proposed 2011 Budget of nearly $1.1 billion to the Sound Transit Board on Thursday afternoon, she had a sobering message: Faced with a 25-percent revenue shortfall since 2008 (amounting to $3.9 billion), Sound Transit will not be able to meet all the objectives in the planned 15-year time frame for Sound Transit 2 approved by voters in 2008.

The good news is that Sound Transit's project management toolbox no longer includes hiding under the bed and waiting for bad news to go away.

"No organization can confront an expected 25 percent reduction in revenues without asking--and answering--hard questions about priorities," Sound Transit Board Chair and Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon was quoted as saying in a Sound Transit release. "It is important that we address these issues now and continue to move forward with expanding the region's mass transit system as rapidly as we can."

Earl outlined a series of program realignments designed to keep Sound Transit moving forward, albeit in a trimmer, adaptable way. In a PowerPoint presentation given to the board, she broke down the projects in the ST2 15-year plan into five categories: Design & Construct, Keep Moving, Retain Only Limited Funding, Suspend, and Delete.... (more)

An afternoon Sounder loads up at King Street Station.

The Sounder trains from Seattle to Everett and Tacoma are largely for commuters to Seattle, which is the first thing you notice when checking out their schedules (it's an hour trip for both destinations). The bulk of the runs to Seattle are in the early morning, then back to Tacoma and Everett in the evening. And of course it's weekdays only.

You only have one or two chances to make a reverse commute, depending on where you're headed, but it is possible. If you want to spend the night is Tacoma or Everett, then everything becomes easy as pie. Either way, at just $4.50 (Everett) or $4.75 (Tacoma) each way, it's a bargain, and one that you can use your new ORCA card to pay for, if you're so inclined.

If you disembark from the last train in the evening, you may hear the engine chugging away for some time. Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc., supplies the F59PHI locomotives, and tells me that the engine is usually busy recharging batteries and otherwise transitioning from its day's work. It's self-monitoring and can shut itself off when all systems are back to "green." Even idling, these are large engines and I wondered how green they really were.

Sound Transit runs 11 of the F59PHI locomotives, which emerged from the factory with an EPA Tier 0 rating. "In 2008 we switched to a low-sulfur fuel that burns much cleaner in our locomotives than the previous fuels," says ST's Kimberly Reason. "We replaced all of our Head End Power (HEP) units with a new Tier 2 unit in 2008 as well--the HEP is the smaller engine on a locomotive that provides support electricity to the coach cars for lights, heat, AC, etc."

In 2012, Sound Transit will begin rebuilding the engines to convert to the EPA's Tier 3 rating, which requires tighter regulation of oxides of nitrogen (NOx), hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM) and smoke--in the case of particulates, nitrogen oxide, and hydrocarbon, the reductions range from between 50 to 75 percent compared to Tier 0.

Because of low clouds, the Blue Angels will be flying their "flat" program today and tomorrow.

You know what you don't hear very often? Good news about Bremerton real estate: "prices expected to increase 44.7 percent from 2010 to 2014."

It's official, La Nina this way comes, and, possibly, a cold, wet, snowy winter. If floods are an issue where you live, start planning now. This fall's work on the Howard Hanson Dam is timely. Senator Patty Murray got the dam repair monies tacked onto an appropriations bill, which I believe is the kind of thing Dino Rossi is against. Just FYI.

Sound Transit is scrambling to quell a ballooning projected deficit, says the Seattle Times. Seattle Transit Blog digs into the numbers.

Transit officials in Seattle consistently under-employ rider information aids, so it's not surprising that light rail station signs are just now beginning to tell riders where the train is going. When an light rail train accident took three hours to clear this week, "certain details, such as the length of delays, didn't make it to passengers." This is a light rail line that serves SeaTac airport, and which in its shake-down year is not experiencing "rare" delays so much as regular ones. But somehow ST's protocol for delays is to let passengers know last, if at all.

Let's go to the neighborhoods for more details on the week. Belltownpeople says au revoir to the Cinerama while it undergoes a two-month 3D upgrade. CHS is looking for witnesses to a public beat-down that happened as the Capitol Hill Block Party was getting started. A Blue Angels sonic boom got the residents of the Central District talking. Beacon Hill was invaded by Spain. RVP has a photo of that light rail v. truck accident.... (more)

King County Council's Larry Phillips and Dow Constantine joined then-Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels on an inaugural Link light rail ride, one year ago.

Everyone else is doing a Link birthday post, so I am writing one, too. Link light rail is one year and six million riders old, and the enthusiasm is infectious. Mike Lindblom writes in the Seattle Times that:

Ridership has grown to an average 23,400 boardings per weekday in June, compared with 14,850 in September. Trains are noticeably more full.

At first it seemed Sound Transit would miss its 26,600 target by the end of this year, but that's now within reach.

Like the evil godmother scorned at a baby shower, the Times has been nothing short of obsessive in running down the newborn; their article on Link's opening was titled, "Light-rail trains run smoothly, if not to capacity, on first day." Their first story on passenger numbers appeared five days after Link started running. In mid-November the Times noted worriedly that:

Estimated ridership on the Seattle-Tukwila route was around 16,100 per weekday in October, showing growth but far short of the agency's near-term 26,600 target for Seattle to Sea-Tac by late 2010.

That's right. In mid-November 2009, Link ridership was "far short" of the target set for late 2010. Then ridership dipped and both the Times and Sound Politics were concerned!

Thankfully, it sounds like the white-knuckled coverage will finally be relaxing a bit. Seattle Transit Blog has been more sanguine, waiting for the public "tipping point" to be reached, but even they break out the boldface when reporting that "June represented the sixth straight month of >5% month-over-month growth."... (more)

You can see the light rail power lines in the distance. Photo: WSDOT

Buses that use the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel are in service, but due to construction, Link light rail won't be making stops at the Stadium or Downtown stations, starting tonight at 10 p.m. and finishing up at 5 a.m. on Monday, March 8. You can still pick up a Route 97 Link Shuttle bus from Westlake to the SODO station. They depart every 15 to 20 minutes. (Here's the Sound Transit alert.)

The construction, just so you know why you're being inconvenienced, is part of WSDOT's SR 519 - South Seattle intermodal access project. Crews are taking down falsework (temporary supports) for the off-ramp to Atlantic Street, and there's a danger of electrocution from the light rail's power lines. So the power's being cut.

Ever have one of those dreams where you go through your everyday routine only to find out that you've forgotten to put pants on? Sunday afternoon, a couple hundred people made their dreams a reality by participating in Emerald City Improv's No Pants Light Rail Ride.

The instructions for the afternoon ride were easy. Meet at Westlake at noon. Get on the light rail. Take your pants off. Pretend like everything is normal. Go to the airport. Have fun. Ride back to Westlake. Go home and hope your co-workers won't find the pictures of you that show up on the internet. Reminisce.

After overcoming their fear of public pantlessness, people took the ride with varying degrees of seriousness and silliness. Several gentlemen were dressed in business suits and nice shoes. A few groups of people pretended they were just going to catch a plane.  It seemed that everyone was dropping books or change on the platforms and bending over really slowly to pick it up. The rest of the participants were taking pictures, reading books, drinking coffee, or talking on their phone, just like a regular train ride in any other city, except from the waist down.

In Seattle, we've only had this particular train for a couple months. Ridership has been expected to rise with the opening of the new airport station. Sunday might have been a bit of a boost to those numbers. In the car I rode in, there were approximately 34 people. 30 of those people lacked what one might call "pants."... (more)

As of 10 a.m. this morning, you can take light rail from downtown to the SeaTac Airport in 36 scenic minutes. There's enough space under most seats to stow baggage if you're holding carry-on in your lap. The fare is $2.50 one-way. Here's a photo gallery of our preview trip. (In other transit news, everyone wants a piece of the First Hill streetcar.)

On December 15, 2009, at 10:27 a.m., Boeing's 787 Dreamliner lifted off at Paine Field for a test flight. For three hours, it flew back and forth over the Sound, until increasingly rainy weather called a halt to the flight. Testing will continue for about nine months, and involve three 787s and about a dozen flight crew. Even Ryanair's brinksmanship on its huge 737 order couldn't dampen Boeing spirits.

Other local bidness: Weyerhauser announced it's becoming a real estate investment trust, McDonald's double-dog-dared Starbucks to provide free Wi-Fi, and the Seattle Times triumphed temporarily over death (taxes).

Seattle left last week's record low temperatures behind, and started focusing on eating outside. The Mobile Chowdown will return to Interbay on January 9. City Hall and SDOT are making street-food-friendly noises regarding regulatory changes in 2010, including making it easier for vendors to set up on the outskirts of city parks. We also mistakenly pumped 10 million gallons of sewage into Elliott Bay.

Sports fans had an early Christmas, discovering Husky QB Jake Locker, pitcher Cliff Lee, and hothead Milton Bradley under their tree.

As of 10 a.m. on Saturday, December 19, there will be a SeaTac light rail station open for business. For $2.50 (one-way), you can ride the full line from the Westlake station downtown to the airport, and the Central Link segment will be complete.

It's only a three-minute jaunt from the Tukwila station, where the line used to end, to the airport station, but it cost $268 million. (The whole trip from downtown takes about 36 minutes, and trains run every 7.5 to 15 minutes, depending on the time of day.) Besides its ahead-of-schedule opening--which was originally set for December 31--the airport station has come in under budget.

The Port of Seattle handed me a fact sheet on a media preview walk-through this morning, noting proudly that the road improvements associated with the station construction cost $10 million less than budgeted in Port funds, and the pedestrian bridge and walkway came in at $1.4 million less. Altogether it's 950 feet from the platform to the first terminal skybridge, which everyone is sensitive about.

You can arrange free wheelchair service from Huntleigh (call in advance 206-433-5287), but otherwise you're hoofing it. There will be baggage carts, but nothing for you to ride on. (A people-mover was ruled out because of logistical considerations--it wouldn't really fit--and extra expense.) You won't notice the length so much on your way in; it's the return trip, when you've already hiked a few miles through airports, that the extra quarter-mile will wear on you. Still, for transit riders, a hike was already in order to get to the bus stop south of the terminal.

The Port's SeaTac employees, interestingly, may provide a good deal of the light rail regular ridership. Some 22,000 people commute to work at the airport each day, and it's hoped that some will take the new train, in addition to travelers. I'm checking with the Port on how it currently encourages its employees to take transit, and if there will be a special light rail push.

UPDATE: Perry Cooper, the Port's media officer, says via email:

We can’t predict how many employees will move to riding light rail, but we have several Commute Trip Reduction qualified employers, including the Port, Alaska Air Group, Delta and Host (who run many of our concessionaires). Another one of the largest employee groups that may take advantage of light rail are the employees of TSA, who have a significant number of employees that utilize public transportation.

 For the Port’s Aviation division here at Sea-Tac, we have approximately 280 employees that hold a FlexPass, which is good on King County Metro, Pierce County Transit and Sound Transit including the Link Light Rail. We continue to promote that throughout Port employees.

Josh found some lasers at Broadway & Denny—the Sound Transit art installation. (From the SunBreak Flickr pool. Join up and add your photos.)

I just got a tip that the Marination Mobile (which I just posted about yesterday) is rolling their Hawaiian and Korean cuisine over to the new Belltown Key Bank branch on First Avenue at Wall today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Anyone that visits the Key Bank branch--ask about the interest rates on 6-month CDs--will get a coupon worth $10 of Marination munchies. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict there will be a line.

A street foodie commented on my post about creating a street food corral downtown, so I gave Parks & Rec a call to see what they thought about my genius idea. I believe I got waved off the street-food take-over of Occidental Square, but in general they were supportive of "legalizing it." (It turns out the hugely successful "Mobile Chowdown" in Interbay wasn't permitted quite as strenuously as it could have been.)

The person to talk with about creating a street food corral may be Virginia Swanson, of the city's Special Events Committee (scroll down for contact information). The Parks & Rec... (more)