Recent Stories with tag transit
|
List
Map
Category
Date
Popularity
TagsWhen 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....
The "he said/she said" in my Twitter feed
The Seattle Times has a habit of reporting on accidents involving the light rail thusly: "Car hit by light-rail train in Seattle." (For more instances, go here.)
In reading the story, you learn that the car "attempted to make a turn onto Othello Street against the light" and collided with the train. Seattle Transit Blog writes it up that way: "Car Collides with Link."
For contrast, try to imagine if the Times reported on car accidents in ways that gave no indication who caused the accident: "Car hit by other car in Seattle this morning." Doesn't seem newsworthy does it?
But in the Times headlines, light rail is always implicitly the agent of destruction: light rail "injures two" (who tried to make an illegal left turn in front of a sign marked No Left Turn), a woman "sustain[ed] injury" when she ran into the light rail, and a girl talking on her cellphone who stepped into the trackway was "struck by light-rail train." In none of these cases did the illegality, incompetence, or obliviousness of the person who caused the accident make it into the headline.
"Light-rail train hits pickup"--making an illegal turn, as it happens. From the Times headline (not even in the passive voice this time), you'd have to assume the light rail was at fault. Otherwise you might have read an investigative story about how Seattle drivers' illegal left turns are costing a cash-strapped Sound Transit a bundle further damaging light rail's reputation for reliability.
Once again, if you want up-to-the-minute coverage of Seattle City Council doings, you've got to bookmark Publicola. They're looking into the Council's proposal to create a transportation benefit district (to assess a $20 annual vehicle fee for transportation improvements that SDOT's leaky budget can't handle). So far Publicola has four or five TBD posts up to...none from anyone else.
Ironically, last year the council repealed a $25 "head tax" that raised $4.5 million each year for transportation improvements, even though SDOT was already facing a deficit. Eight months later, it's time for a new tax to fill the budget hole left by the tax they repealed.
Let's begin at the very beginning: A transportation benefit district (TBD) can be set up by a city or county, creating an independent taxing district for the sole purpose of transportation funding. It can draw revenue from property, sales, and use taxes, and from annual vehicle fees. (Up to $20, vehicle fees don't require a public vote; Lake Forest Park, Edmonds, Des Moines, Olympia, Prosser, and Shoreline have already instituted the $20 yearly fee.)
The council's transportation committee chairman, Tom Rasmussen, proposed the TBD, reports Publicola, who characterize it as an "end run" around Mayor McGinn's transportation plans. In theory, this would raise $6.8 million yearly that the council would collaborate with the Mayor on disbursing....
It's not just light rail that people are turning to--heavy rail is growing in popularity, too. WSDOT reports that Amtrak Cascades is seeing double-digit increases in ridership compared to 2009. Second quarter of 2010 is 12 percent higher than 2009, and for the first half of 2010, ridership is up 17 percent over 2009, to almost 400,000 riders.
Explains WDOT:
A portion of the ridership growth is due to the additional service to and from Vancouver, B.C., that began in August 2009 and the 2010 Olympic Games that were held in Vancouver, B.C., in February and March.
But the Olympics alone isn't responsible for the record-breaking months of April, May, and June. The second train to Vancouver is getting use, Olympics or not. The Tacoma News Tribune quotes Vickie Sheehan, a WSDOT spokeswoman, saying, "With the economy the way it is, people are taking shorter, closer trips for their vacations."
If, as Sightline says, gas consumption has risen slightly as the price of gas has dropped, it's also true that it could clearly have risen more. (Amtrak's ridership dropped just slightly in 2009, as well.) The popularity couldn't be more timely, as the whole Cascades line is part of the planned high speed rail upgrade, which would introduce a 110-mph top speed and cut the travel time from Seattle to Portland to two and a half hours; to Vancouver, to two hours, forty-five minutes.
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."...
As you know, Seattle has big plans for a streetcar network. The First Hill Streetcar (named for glancingly passing by the eastern edge of First Hill as it connects Capitol Hill and the ID) would look a little something like this. The video looks like someone was expected to watch it, which is odd because it's only available as a .wmv file on the Seattle Streetcar site. Everyone's linking to a YouTube video The Stranger made.
The good news is that my phone expects the temperature to reach 78 degrees today. Let's focus on that for a moment. On Monday, the clouds should be back, and the city will be announcing budget cuts.
Friday afternoon brought another bank seizure by government regulators: Washington First International Bank was sold to Pasadena's East West Bank, reported the PSBJ. Commercial real estate gone bad. That would seem to make Jon Talton's Friday morning post about the possibility of a Seattle commercial real estate crash required reading. Goldman Sachs thinks our residential real estate is about lose 20 percent in value, so maybe put the money back into the mattress.
Lots of transportation news this week: a federal judge said "Oh hell no" to Patty Murray's attempt restore King County Metro special service to Mariners games. Metro is also gearing up for union negotiations by releasing incomplete information on bus operator compensation (and ignoring media requests for a fuller picture). And the King County Ferry District would like you not to notice that Argosy Cruises ran the West Seattle Water Taxi for cheaper....
To give you a quick sense of how the newly public operation of the King County Water Taxi (West Seattle version) is going, you have a choice: it either costs three times as much, or only $20,000 per month more, than before.
In a public/private partnership, Argosy Cruises had operated the water taxi since 1997, from spring to fall. Under Ferry District administration, West Seattle was supposed to get year-round taxi service, but now money looks very scarce. Total King County Ferry District operating costs for the Vashon and West Seattle runs for 2010 (for nine months) are pegged at around $5 million, with projections of $1 million in fares and $1 from property taxes.
Don't put too much trust in the "Privatization Saves!" faithful over at the Washington Policy Center, who are responsible for the tripled costs figure, but the fact remains that, with Argosy pocketing the fare box revenue, the public cost for the West Seattle run in 2009 was $808,000.
The contention that direct costs on the West Seattle run will be $20,000 per month more comes from Hank Meyers, the new Ferry District's executive director, who says the WPC figures are apples-to-oranges comparisons. This $20,000 increase comes despite raising the cash fare by fifty cents, to $3.50, and eliminating the $1 fare with Metro transfer. (I don't think that $20,000 includes the $7,500 in fares stolen by an employee: "As 26 (26!) of the vaults disappeared, someone finally noticed a problem," reported Seattle Weekly.)...
Bus driving. It's easy work.
With King County Metro looking at a huge, hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars deficit over the next few years, everyone's donning their bean-counter hats. 70 percent of Metro's operating revenue comes from sales taxes, which have fallen off a cliff during the recession. Metro projects to bring in $700 million less than "normal" sales tax revenue between 2008 and 2013.
The solution? Cut costs and raise revenues, of course. As for the first part, it's almost time for Metro to renegotiate union contracts, and what better way to prepare the ground than to release incomplete and misleading information.
"Metro's high wage scale factors into its bus-service equation," is the headline over at helpful tool Crosscut. Author Doug McDonald, former secretary of transportation for Washington, refers to the news that Metro's top pay-rate for bus operators is among the top in the nation. (See the "More Information on Operating Program Expenses" pdf.) For perspective, what that means is that the highest salary you can make as a Metro bus driver is $59,000 per year. It's not the highest salary you can make at Metro.
According to Metro, all wages make up 44 percent of its operating costs, with benefits making up another 21 percent. Metro has one of the largest systems in the U.S., so it's not surprising that labor is a large portion--it has a fleet of 1,300 vehicles. I've asked for specifics on what the average bus operator makes, along with breakdowns of union and non-union costs. (Seattle Transit Blog was wondering the same thing and also hasn't heard back. These are basic questions, and not having the answers on hand makes you suspect obfuscation or incompetence, or both.)...
Today in news of neat technological maps: Photographer Eric Fischer is plumbing Flickr's depths to create a Geotagger's World Atlas. Seattle's is shown above, with the speed of city life inferred from photos posted to Flickr. He based the color scheme on the apparent speeds of movement using the time stamps on geotagged pictures. Black represents walking (less than 7 mph), red is for bicycling (less than 19 mph), blue indicates motor vehicles on normal roads (less than 43 mph), and green is freeways or rapid transit.
Seattle's map is particularly neat for the boat and park traffic, the effect of the link light rail, and the differences between the east and west sides of the lake. Dive into the rest of the atlas for a look at the rest of the world.
(Flickr Blog via Rick Webb)
Pity the bus never showed. On the plus side, photocoyote found something productive to do while waiting for it. Fresh from the SunBreak Flickr pool. Join up! Add your photos!
Seattle's richest, most powerful neighborhoods are upset with Governor Gregoire. You can hear it in the Sustainable 520 Coalition's letter to the Governor, which opens with a demand-like request for her personal attention:
Here are the comments of the Coalition for a Sustainable SR 520 on the recent environmental impact statement for the 520 I-5 to Medina Project. They come with a request to you: please read them. You, yourself.
It will take you a couple of hours, but you will find new information which might greatly help you as you lead the state towards solving SR 520’s problems. We are concerned that you are not getting the full picture on this project and think you might find it important and useful to read our full comments yourself so that there is no filter.
Their comments on the supplemental draft environmental impact statement for the 520 replacement project run 41 pages, with appendices from A to Z (literally). Montlake, North Capitol Hill, Laurelhurst, and Madison Park residents have been alarmed at the thought of substantially more cars streaming into their neighborhoods (they are joined in the coalition by parks advocates, environmentalists, and transit boosters)--but it's been a tough slog to convince 520 commuters that capacity is fine the way it is.
Finally, a light bulb went off. Now, much of the debate now centers around the prospect of running light rail on 520 from day one (in which effort the coalition has been aided and abetted by Mayor Mike McGinn). Capacity goes up, but car traffic stays down.
This puts the state in the awkward position of claiming that the project was designed all along to "accommodate" light rail, but that adding light rail at the outset is impossible--because 520 would need to be redesigned for light rail, and a different environmental impact statement would need to be done. (Says WSDOT: "...the current analysis assumes the four general-purpose and two transit/HOV lane configuration and does not address light rail.")
Drawing a line in the sand, the Governor says that delaying 520 is "not an option." The Sustainable 520 Coalition begs to differ. They summarize nine objections to the project that, when you read them, look like material for a forthcoming legal suit. We can delay the easy way, they're suggesting, or we can delay the hard way. Your choice:...
This morning Microsoft PR weighed in on the need to move on replacing the 520 bridge, while general counsel/Nevada domiciler Brad Smith said it would not be "the right path" for Microsoft to allocate funds for construction. Four to five percent of the bridge's daily traffic is estimated to be Microsoft employees.
This afternoon Mayor McGinn responded, saying the city will spend $250,000 "to look at options for more transit on a smaller bridge," according to the Seattle Times. He also took a shot at Microsoft's (and the City Council's) commitment to carbon emission reduction, noting Bill Gates' recent push for the same.
The "Git-r-done" coalition has gotten behind the A+ option, a six-lane bridge with one HOV lane each way. Funding for the $4.5-billion-ish bridge is still over $2 billion short.
Mayor McGinn, Senator Ed Murray, House Speaker Frank Chopp, Rep. Jamie Pedersen, and the residents of Montlake would like the HOV lanes made bus-only with the eventual goal of adding light rail. Their respect and admiration for Microsoft's Brad Smith aside, the Montlakers have itchy lawsuit-fingers when it comes to the impact of 520 on their neighborhood. This "Now, hold on a minute" crowd has absolutely no interest in delivering more cars more quickly to Seattle roads.
I'd love to tell you how many cars that could be, but WSDOT doesn't feel capacity is worth highlighting in their design plans. It's mentioned several places that the bridge carries about 117,000 vehicles per day currently, but the most precisely the engineers can put it is that the new bridge "will move more people." You'd think there'd be a number in there.
If you'd like to get to the bottom of this on your own time, WSDOT is holding an Environmental Hearing and Public Open House tonight, February 23, from 5-7 p.m. at the Lake Union Park Naval Reserve Building (860 Terry Avenue North).
Yesterday I was kvetching to SDOT about the absence of any bike racks at the Westlake entrance to the light rail tunnel--either outside or inside--and I was told that I'd be happy to hear about the bike racks planned for the Westlake Streetcar Plaza. (The Southlake blog was happy to hear about the Plaza, so there was precedent.)
Construction begins this January and is supposed to finish by April.
The new Plaza is on one hand designed to improve "connectivity" between the Monorail and the streetcar, and on the other, to make the intersection of 5th Avenue, Stewart, Westlake, and Olive Way less of a confusing invitation to collisions with other cars and pedestrians. The 1.3-mile-traveling streetcar is currently averaging a little over 1,300 riders per day, and as full capacity is 12,600 passengers, it could use a little connectivity.
The plan expands the existing McGraw Square (which is clearly a triangle) to take over Westlake where the streetcar's terminus is. (You can see where the nip-and-tuck that they're going to do on Westlake is here.) This is probably a good idea, streetcar or no--currently it feels like you have to cross the street three times to go a block in that area.
I can't tell you what it will cost; I've visited SDOT's Westlake Transportation Hub Strategy page and downloaded three different pdfs (there are "big tree" and "big raingarden" design concepts for the Plaza), but apparently there are no costs associated with this project that are worth mentioning. This lack of transparency from SDOT peeves the Seattle Times ("Streetcar cost overruns"), which has unearthed $4.3 million in unannounced costs associated with the streetcar line....
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.
Picture a streetcar running through it.
The first question many people have on hearing about the First Hill streetcar is, "Huh?" But there is a good reason for the First Hill streetcar's existence (ETA: end of 2014): The neighborhood was originally supposed to get a deep tunnel light rail station, which turned out to be too expensive. So a streetcar line to the International District light rail station has been deemed an acceptable substitute.
It's ironic because the streetcar debate now raging is focused on the Capitol Hill end of the line, and First Hill concerns don't come up as much, even though the regular ridership is likely to come from First Hill's medical centers (Harborview, Swedish, and Virginia Mason) and Seattle University.
Today SDOT released some conceptual maps of where the streetcar might run. For some months, various constituencies have been pushing for a) a two-way track up and down Broadway, b) a loop of Broadway and 12th Avenue, and c) a Broadway-Boren hybrid.
Seattle Transit Blog (here's their take on the routes) argues that a 12th Avenue loop makes use of the streetcar stations much more inconvenient, in that there would be a longer schlep involved if you wanted to go north as opposed to south, or vice versa, depending on which side of the loop you lived. They are anti-couplet! But all three of the SDOT alternatives released today use an 11th Avenue and Broadway couplet that circles Cal Anderson Park. And don't rule out a 12th Avenue jaunt.
Apparently one reason for this is because 11th doesn't carry the traffic that Broadway or 12th does, and so a couplet line using 11th would be less impacted by congestion on either Broadway or 12th. This nuanced weighing of alternatives makes me crazy. If only someone I hated preferred an option so I could line up opposite!
In the event that you have an axe to grind, CHS reports that "Tuesday night, the city and Sound Transit are holding the first of three meetings to discuss the streetcar project with the community. Tuesday's meeting is at Seattle Central [Community College] from 6-8 p.m."
What do we want? Bus and library hours! When do we want 'em? Over the next biennium!
Bus service hours for the next two years won't be cut, says the King County Council. Instead, fares will go up $0.25 each year, to $2.00/$2.25 (off-peak/peak one-zone fare) in 2010 and $2.25/$2.50 in 2011.
That, combined with full bus-wrap ads (with an open strip for windows), more efficient bus routes and scheduling, and diverted funding from the King County Ferry District, will save the 310,000-odd hours that had been on the table.
Those are generic bus hours, of course--Metro is not making any promises about your particular bus route not changing. In fact, the budget crunch (Metro had been looking at a $213 million deficit for the next two years under the proposed budget) gives Metro license to use software to optimize its routes and schedules more aggressively--something I believe they have wanted to do for some time, but have held off on due to the "You moved my cheese!" response of riders outraged at things changing.
Seattle Transit Blog notes that, in other transit news, the federal government is considering letting the FTA take over safety regulation of "commuter rail, subway, and light rail systems nationwide," citing "increased collision rates, derailment rates, and worker fatalities." Federal oversight would eventually extend to bus transit systems, too. Depending on the administration, this could be either good news--federal money for safety--or bad news, if safety regulations are tightened to make transit costs prohibitive.
Seattle Transit Blog, whom I love for producing just these kinds of omnibus posts, has a bookmark-necessary post on where the light rail stations are, and how you can get to them after the recent bus line changes.
Martin helpfully points you to the Metro page on Link connections as well, before giving you a neighborhood-by-neighborhood rundown of how to reach a station. I feel dirty for even mentioning it, but there's also a cheat sheet on how to drive and find parking near a station.
Ann Peavey (aka @SeattleMaven) encourages you to think of your roundtrip light rail from Tukwila to Westlake as a $5 all-day pass. I can hardly believe this is the case, but if you purchase a roundtrip Link ticket, you can use it as a transfer on most Seattle transit all day. (One-way tickets "expire" two hours after you buy them, but roundtrip tickets are good for the day of purchase.)
Last week I sat down to talk with King County Metro chief Kevin Desmond about how technology was affecting Metro's interactions with customers and its infrastructure. Besides the popularity of third-party services like One Bus Away, we talked about smart cards, social media, and audience participation.
I brought up the question of continuing the downtown Ride Free Zone during a budget crisis, and Desmond had clearly already been thinking about that topic:
"We're going to experiment with offboard payment at the major stations on the Rapid Ride line. Community transit will also experiment with it on their Swift line. The problem is fare enforcement. You can get on via the back door with your ORCA card, but there's nothing stopping you from pretending to swipe a smart card."
While light rail is typically limited to a few lines and enforcement is a matter of a few inspectors, Desmond pointed out that "in the bus environment, we might have 900 to 1,000 buses we would have to monitor. But we do have federal money...
By coincidence, the same morning I sat down to discuss the success of private bus guides like One Bus Away with King County Metro's general manager Kevin Desmond, One Bus Away released its iPhone application.
The question I had was this--given Metro's well-documented budget woes, was there more than customer convenience to be gained from letting private software developers take on a larger role?
OBA is the brainchild of Brian Ferris, a grad student in Computer Science & Engineering at the UW. Ferris is studying human-computer interactions, so in a sense, Seattle's bus riders are living inside Ferris's experiment.
"What he's done is terrific," said Desmond, who is thin, monologue-prone, and data-driven. In fact, data is the next thing he brings up, pointing out that OBA runs on top of Metro data. "The issue for us with the private developer world is how can we better meet their needs. What standards should we use? We're planning a developer's workshop, probably in late October."
OBA's website and iPhone...
The big news today for Seattle bus commuters and iPhone owners is that One Bus Away has gone public with its native iPhone application. It opens with a check of your location, and then automatically displays nearby bus stops, with real-time bus info. You can also bookmark your regular stops, view a route's stops, and sort by a stop's routes and departure times. Seattle Transit Blog gives it a beta tester's thumbs up.
Do you have a new ORCA card yet, good on all sorts of transit (but not the SLUT or Monorail, yet)? If you do, you've most likely had all sorts of questions. What's an e-purse? How do you get a youth ORCA card? A few of you are wondering, Where'd my money go?
Seattle Transit Blog has the rundown on the Case of the Failed ORCA Transaction. Turns out that if you add money to your card online, the transaction is only completed the next time you tap your card at a transit terminal. If it takes you longer than 30 days to use your card after you load up online, the transaction fails.
This is why the transaction appears as "pending" until you ride a bus or the light rail and use the card. But it requires a certain courage to ride a bus or the light rail while a transaction is said to be "pending," doesn't it?
I think people have suggested this before, but I am going to check with King County Metro about their plans to incorporate transit user feedback into programs before they go public. We could all make a...
Most Recent Comments