Tag Archives: tolling

News, Transportation

How 520’s Toll Revenue Differs from WSDOT’s 2011 Projections

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The 520 bridge tolls for thee. (Photo: MvB)
The 520 bridge tolls for thee. (Photo: MvB)

The headline in the Seattle Times says, “One year later, 520 bridge toll income, traffic levels ‘right on target‘,” but it’s difficult to tell which targets Washington Department of Transportation toll director Craig Stone has in mind. Stone says the state raised “about” $50 million in 2012 from gross toll revenues, with average weekday traffic down about 33 percent since the tolls were put in place.

But WSDOT projections, both in its 2011 investment grade study (pdf) and its toll revenue report (pdf) display a fiscal year estimate, rather than the calendar year total that Stone is reporting on. That six-month FY 2012 period was supposed to bring almost $28 million, increasing to almost $62 million in the full 2013 fiscal year. WSDOT had promised investors that these were very conservative projections.

The projections, though, assume a top toll of $3.50 with a floor of $1.60; in actuality, WSDOT has been charging more: $3.59 at peak times, down to $1.64 at night. In addition, WSDOT estimated that late-payment fees would total about $400,000 during the FY 2012 period. For the calendar year, they’ve charged $3.8 million.

Back of the envelope calculations would seem to show that toll revenue has exceeded expectations by more than that $3 million, certainly, but WSDOT says “right on target.” If you take them at their word, this would indicate that the tolls in themselves, despite the increase in price and late-payment windfall, are lagging.

Could it be traffic volumes? Again, it is difficult to say. Although the projections use average annual daily traffic, Stone has provided average weekday traffic (70,000). The Times‘s Lindblom notes that “Transit ridership on 520 has grown to 19,000 a day, up by one-fourth since two years ago, agencies say.”

In 2013, the state will study tolling the I-90 bridge, reports GeekWire, to deal with “leakage” from shunpikers. This requires negotiation, because while 520 is a state route, 90 is an interstate and federally funded. What is clear is that however much WSDOT has seen in toll revenue so far, they’d very much like to see more, as some $1.4 billion of the 520 bridge project remains unfunded.

News, Politics, Transportation

New 520 Floating Bridge’s Pontoons are “Disaster,” Inspector Tells KOMO

WSDOT photo taken during the SR 520 pontoon media tour on Nov. 14, 2012.

KOMO News has more allegations from a former inspector, who says that the construction quality of the pontoons for replacement 520 bridge make it a “disaster waiting to happen.” His fate is instructive, especially when it comes to the state Department of Transportation’s response to KOMO inquiries.

WSDOT says, for instance: “WSDOT’s SR 520 construction contracts include multiple requirements for Quality Assurance (QA) managers and other Quality Assurance staff.” That sounds reassuring, but when you read their documentation, you discover that construction firm Kiewit, the “Design-Builder,” is responsible for all “QA and QC for design.”

WSDOT provides Quality Verification (QV) staff, but they get to see the finished results, when there’s significantly more at stake in ordering Kiewit to redo a piece. In this case, with cracks–and leaks–appearing in the pontoons, Kiewit is being asked to fix them. It is not clear how the firm can “fix” instances of the wrong rebar being used, misplaced, or left out entirely.

How this process seems to have played out is that the whistleblowing QA inspector was hired by a subcontractor to Kiewit to oversee construction. After he began writing up non-compliant construction methods, he was reprimanded, he says, and finally laid off after Kiewit complained about his sticklerism. (This is a similar dynamic reported by building inspectors who report shoddy condo construction. Your dance card empties out.)

WSDOT, troublingly, seems unhumbled by an August 2012 performance audit (pdf) that noted: “In general, it appears the Quality Management Plan is not being adhered to by KG and not being enforced by QA or QV.”

This all follows on KOMO’s earlier reporting that two experts agreed the first six pontoons should be “do-overs.” KOMO’s watchdogging had already gotten a promise from Governor Gregoire that an independent expert panel would review the pontoons. (In the Seattle Times, Secretary of Transportation Paula Hammond seemed impervious to alarm, pooh-poohing the issue of cracks in the pontoons: “I have no reason to believe we are going to reject pontoons.”)

Fixed and problem solved? KOMO’s Problem Solvers have since discovered that concrete in the next cycle of pontoons is cracking, as well.

Finally, you might ask what the hurry is? WSDOT has adopted a furious pace in shipping the pontoons, despite that fact that $1.4 billion in funding for the project remains to be found. Despite predicting traffic volumes of between 90,000 and 100,000 cars per day in the first year of tolling on 520, WSDOT reported that an average of 63,500 cars crossed the bridge weekdays, January to June 2012.

A recent budget update sliced $522 million from the project’s original $4.65 billion price, reducing it to $4.1 billion, which should help slightly with subpar toll revenue. But ultimately, moving money from pot to pot leads to stories like these: WSDOT is also said to have reduced the amount it was to pay MOHAI for its land to $4 million from $18 million (when I asked for details, a WSDOT communications officer told me she’d get back to me after a meeting on that topic, and did not).

News, Transportation

With Tolls, New Larger 520 Bridge Could Serve Half as Many

Comparison of old and new bridge footprints (Image: WSDOT)

There are two substantially different rationales that Washington’s Department of Transportation has advanced for its choice of a new, larger 520 bridge across Lake Washington. First, the existing bridge is unsafe, vulnerable to earthquake and wind. Secondly, the 1963 bridge was designed to carry a maximum of 65,000 vehicles per day, and today carries up to 115,000 (but not speedily.)

While I don’t think anyone is arguing the first point, it’s jarring then to see WSDOT’s projections for the new bridge show vehicle traffic not reaching 100,000 per day again until 2032, and topping out around 118,000 by 2052. This is not to disregard time savings, but at a cost of $4.65 billion, to wonder if there might be a better way of achieving them.

Why would so much traffic divert? Tolls. As Mike Lindblom reports for the Seattle Times, WSDOT’s financial projections call for some 48 percent of existing traffic to seek other routes, thanks to $3.50 Good to Go tolls on the bridge during peak hours (that’s $5.00 if you haven’t signed up with Good to Go). The tolls are supposed to increase 2.5 percent annually until 2017, at which time they will increase 15 percent.

WSDOT has to be hard-nosed with these projections, which differ from previous estimates, because they are being used to secure investment funding. It makes sense for them to reassure conservative investors by saying, essentially, “Look, even if only half the people who currently use the bridge pay the tolls, we still raise enough money to pay you back.” (Mention of Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1125, which would likely sink tolling plans completely is absent from the financial study.)

That said, as they define the space of possibility to include such a drastic diversion, it does make you wonder what the bridge-driving taxpayers’ return on investment will be.

As every story on the bridge’s construction will tell you, $4.65 billion is so much money that the project is still missing $2 billion. Back in 2010, the Legislature authorized funding of up to $2.62 billion for the 6-lane bridge, and a 6-lane connector to I-405 at its east end. The bridge is supposed to open in 2014.

Seattlepi.com summarizes the incremental-build result for you: “That means a six lane bridge would link up with the same four-lane configuration that exists now between the lake and I-5,  which some fear will only add to bottlenecks west of the shoreline.” (“Some,” I think in this case means anyone who has spent more than five minutes thinking about it.)

People in that latter group are the Coalition for a Sustainable 520, and their attorney David Bricklin. The group filed suit in U.S. District Court in Seattle on September 2, naming WSDOT and the Federal Highway Administration, and declaring that the project’s Final Environmental Impact Statement includes:

…a failure to include all reasonable alternatives in detail; a failure to adequately describe the existing environment; a failure to adequately describe the significant adverse environmental impacts of the project; a failure to adequately analyze measures to mitigates the project’s significant adverse environmental impacts; and a failure to describe the project’s unavoidable significant adverse environmental impacts.

An email from the group adds:

The state has applied for shoreline permits for the entire 520 project, not just the partial bridge that has been approved for construction. These permits cover the areas near us: Portage Bay, Union Bay, the Montlake cut area, and near Madison Park/Laurelhurst. In general, the state plans to harm these areas, and to provide compensating mitigation further away…on the Cedar River, in Magnuson Park, uplands near Union Bay.

We believe that the environment near us should not be damaged this way. It is already quite stressed enough, and further stresses could tip it over the edge. So we want mitigation to be right in the area.