Photo by Oran

• Dave Reichert votes to gut federal transit funding, part of a decisive anti-transit turn by the national Republican Party.
• Capitol Hill getting more and more density. First Hill not to be outdone.
• South Kirkland TOD update.
• Orphan Road has some smart observations about the Route 2 debate. Also, this.
• Metro would like your comments on its beta website.
• What density opponents get wrong about its environmental impact.
• Surprise! WPC hit job on transit contains many distortions.
• Route 358 is number one for security incidents.
• City gas tax could bring in big money.
• Phone snatching on light rail, now with arrests.
• Whatcom Transit renegotiating its student pass deal with WWU.
• Density and telecommuting.
• Guerilla wayfinding.
• Maryland considers levying sales tax on gasoline, just like most other goods.
• Why American subways take so long. Yglesias reacts with a lot of good points.
• Taking a second look at restrictive Taxi policies in Portland.
• How to talk to the Tea Party about Agenda 21.

Below is a summary of bills of interest that are currently working their way through the House and Senate Transportation Committees. Like last year there are a litany of bills that limit or ban red light running cameras and this year there are a good number of bills related to tow trucks. If you would like to take a look at other active bills working their way through the legislature follow this link.

HB 1217 – This bill would allow cities to lower speed limits to 20 mph on non-aertierial roads without an engineering study, which is currently required. This bill has already been unanimously passed by the House and has more momentum in the Senate where it stalled last year.

HB 2252 – This bill essentially tidies up language related to proof of payment systems for transit agencies clarifying the language and bringing it up to date with ORCA.

HB 2370 - “Expands the existing goals, objectives, and responsibilities related to the operation of an efficient statewide transportation system to include the health of the state’s citizens.” This is a good bill that will help to add health and active transportation as a major goal of the states transportation system. The bill has a large number of co-sponsors include Rep. Clibborn, chair of the House Transportation Committee, which is always a good sign.

HB 2601 – This legislation allow Regional Transportation Planning Organization (RTPO), in our case PSRC, to establish “transit service overlay zones”. These zones must have frequent bus service, minimum current or planned employment densities, minimum current or planned housing unit density, or be a regional center. These thresholds would be set by the RPTO.

The original bill included a categorical SEPA exception for developments within the overlay zone which had fewer  than 150 residential units or fewer than 100,000 sq ft of commercial space. This provision has since been removed from the bill. From my understanding, the provision was included as an incentive for development within the overlay zone, however with removal of the SEPA exception, this bill is essentially only enabling legislation that allows inter-governmental planning work between local and regional agencies in areas around high quality transit. The legislation does specifically say “frequent bus service” which would exclude Link. I don’t know if that was an intentional decision are just slopping language.

HB 2659 – This bill deals with Transportation Benefit Districts (TBDs), limiting the ability of jurisdictions that overlap (i.e. City of Seattle and King County) to both impose TBD vehicle fees without a vote of the people, in their overlapping geographic areas. So for example if the Seattle City Council passed a vehicle fee first, the King County Council would only be able to levy a fee in areas outside of Seattle. From my understanding the idea behind this legislation is to avoid multiple jurisdictions from piling VLF fees on top of each other, however the bill could also cause a mad dash between jurisdictions that both want to implement a VLF fee without a vote of the people.

SB 6444 - Authorized variable tolling of the central waterfront section of SR 99 between milepost 30 at Atlantic St to milepost 32 at Mercer St bridge. An earlier bill would have allowed WSDOT to merge tolling accounts of all toll facilities but that provision has been removed.

SB 6215 - Allows local jurisdictions to create an optional transportation benefit district rebate program to fund rebates to low-income individuals, if they so choose. It requires the optional rebate programs to be created and administered by the transportation benefit district authorizing certain taxes, fees, and tolls. This is a fairly interesting bill because I personally haven’t seen similar bills elsewhere before. The bill has passed out of committee.

King County Metro 12 in front of the Federal Building

Tonight, from 5:30 to 7:00PM at Town Hall, is the second Waterfront Seattle open house, and the topic will be Mobility and Access; i.e. getting to, from and around the post-viaduct waterfront, ideally without a car. Much of the discussion will, I suspect, focus on transit along the Waterfront, and that’s appropriate and expected; tomorrow, we’ll have a summary of the event, with an open thread for discussion of anything waterfront-transportation related. In this post, however, I want to talk about improving one aspect of the much less sexy, but far more heavily travelled and regionally important Madison corridor, which connects the Waterfront to First Hill and points north and east.

One of the components of the Fall restructure proposal is splitting Route 2 and moving the south part of Route 2 from the Seneca/Spring pair to Madison/Marion, extending the route down to 1st Ave, where it would turn around without stopping. Route 12 would be split off from its current through-route to Route 10 on 1st Ave, and join Route 2S in the same maneuver, with schedules arranged to provide very frequent service. I mention this only by way of background, as we have debated the pros and cons of these proposed changes to death (and then some) in previous comment threads, and further debate in that vein is off-topic for this post. What we are discussing here is if this proposal (or some future similar proposal) goes forward, how we should improve this connection.

Madison-Marion Transit Island. Diagram by Oran.

Oran’s diagram above shows the basic idea: cut back the wide curb on the west side of 1st Ave from just over 17′ to 9′ (at the narrowest point), and place an 8′ transit island between the two southbound lanes of 1st Ave, both of which would remain open to all traffic. The current stop, on Marion between 1st and 2nd, would be deleted. While this would result in a nominal loss of sidewalk area, little or none of the lost sidewalk is current usable by pedestrians, due to the presence of a single 8′ wide parking space cut out of the sidewalk just south of Madison, reserved for mail trucks delivering to the the little-known USPS station inside the Federal Building. That station is slated to close later this year, and presumably that space will no longer be required.

This proposal solves the biggest problem with the current pedestrian interface between Colman Dock and the Madison/Marion trolleybuses, namely that the closest stop (on Marion between 1st and 2nd) is halfway up a very steep street that renders it inaccessible to wheelchair users or other riders with limited mobility. With this transit island in place, riders would have a direct and almost flat walk from the ferry gangway to the bus, via the Marion St ferry walkway. Just like the island on Pine & 3rd, it would have stout railings and well-lit shelters (ideally with arrival time information) to keep riders safe and make them feel safe.

I’ve heard a number of different suggestions for solving the same accessibility problem: most of them involve extending trolleybus wire down to either Western or to Alaskan Way (directly outside Colman Dock). As I pointed out in my discussion of the Southend Transit Pathways project, traffic in the vicinity of Colman Dock is atrocious whenever ferries are unloading, with Marion typically gridlocked to 1st and beyond. Any westerly extension of the Madison/Marion trolleybuses would reduce their reliability and increase their run times and operating cost.

Moreover, 1st Ave has a unique advantage: it’s the only street that’s close to the level of the passenger deck of Colman Dock, and thus the only street where a flat pathway to a bus stop is possible. Extending the bus down to Western or Alaskan would require riders to take stairs or an elevator, possibly cross Alaskan Way (which is planned to be a six-lane highway) on foot, and then board a bus that itself is probably not, on average, moving much faster than walking pace. We’d be paying more to give riders a slower trip, and possibly exposing them to more traffic hazards, which doesn’t really make sense to me. I’d rather save that money and put it towards other waterfront transportation projects, or to filling in the missing link in Madison’s trolley wire, between 19th and 23rd Avenues.

Yesterday, I had a chance to discuss with Metro staff the details of the revised Fall restructure proposal that was released last week. From that discussion,  a few clarifications to my original post about this restructure arose:

• RapidRide D’s schedule did not change at all, but the headways listed in the public documents were changed to more precisely conform to Metro’s time period definitions. In particular, the D Line will operate every 15 minutes until at least 10:30 PM, seven days a week; and every 10 minutes in the peak direction from 6-9 AM and 3-6 PM (slightly less in the reverse-peak direction). In the common segment of Routes 15 and 18 from Downtown through Queen Anne and Interbay to Leary, riders are losing Monday-Saturday midday frequency (10 to 15 minutes), but riders on 15th Ave NW are gaining full-time frequent service.
• Adding back a handful of trips to the 15X and 55 was indeed done primarily to save money on RapidRide coaches that would be used only for one or two trips a day. Metro considered operating standard coaches on RapidRide routes, but decided that would dilute the RapidRide brand more than restoring those trips. In the case of the 15X, it also served to restore coverage to a pocket of Blue Ridge. At some point in the future when Metro has more money, these choices could be revisited.
• I was sloppy in my discussion of the stop-level data for Route 37. Of the inbound riders on that bus, 20% are at stops shared with Route 56 in the Alki area; 48% are between Alki and the West Seattle Bridge, who have access to Water Taxi shuttles; 32% are south of Hinds St. The last number includes a cluster of riders around Beach Dr & Carroll St, who, depending on how far you believe people will walk to useful transit service, may or may not be considered cut off from the from the bus network if the 37 were deleted. I remain unconvinced either that this route is viable in terms of Metro’s performance criteria, or that the small number of city residents who will unquestionably lose service (west of Me-Kwa-Mooks park) provide enough “geographic value” to offset performance figures that will surely be terrible.
• The increased midday headway on the 11 was indeed a typo, and never planned in this restructure.
• Also, within the next couple of weeks, I will elaborate on what I meant when I opined that the extended Route 1 was a “mess”, as well as a modification to that extension which would, I believe, be more useful to the riders served.

Finally, this isn’t quite in keeping with the topic, but I can’t find anywhere else to put it: Metro’s application for a TIGGER grant to help pay the costs of electrifying Route 48 was, unfortunately, not funded. This project was already in jeopardy due to the failure of Prop 1, which would have provided the local matching funds.

Thanks to those Metro staff for taking the time to meet and discuss these issues, and answer my many questions.

Bus Path in Red, Key Stops Circled

Now that a number of West Seattle-bound buses have moved from 1st to 4th Avenue, there is now a nice opportunity for an intermodal connection with Link at Sodo. From northbound buses, there is a straightforward one-block walk to reach the station, allowing easy transfers to the Rainier Valley, the airport, and (eventually) UW.

Unfortunately, there is no such easy transfer to southbound buses. The only options to pick up a bus are all the way up at Walker or several blocks west to 1st Avenue. Because the only through east-west pedestrian corridor is on Lander St,  in either case it’s just under half a mile. The coming Route 50 is being diverted from Spokane St. largely to serve the station, and will turn before it reaches the existing stop north of Lander.

The obvious solution is another southbound bus stop, possibly just after the turn onto Lander. Metro’s Linda Thielke tells me that during the viaduct closure last year there was a temporary stop at Lander and 3rd, but could not confirm that any such stop is in Metro’s permanent plans.

Getting from West Seattle to the Rainier Valley is hardly the biggest deal in the system, but a new bus stop is a trivial accommodation. Although there are other reasons for the 50 to come that far north, a better connection would strengthen the case for keeping the 50 on Spokane St, creating a more direct connection between two sectors of the city.

Today, Senator Tracey Eide and Sound Transit Boardmember Pete Von Reichbauer (along with other boardmembers and CEO Joni Earl) proposed that Sound Transit commit $25 million to do design, engineering and environmental review for light rail not just to S. 272nd St. (the endpoint planned for 2023 in Sound Transit 2), but to Federal Way Transit Center.

This way, if future funding became available through another Sound Transit ballot measure, a state funding package, or federal match, Federal Way would be ready to go immediately. This still has to get through committee and a full Sound Transit board vote, but with four boardmembers present, that sounds likely.

Senator Eide also confirmed that negotiating this began before the legislative session – before Federal Way mayor Priest’s legislative temper tantrum. It was pointed out early in the meeting that Federal Way was invited to the table when revenue projections first put light rail in jeopardy – and didn’t show up. Even despite the adversarial relationship Priest has continued to pursue, Sound Transit and the state have worked together to ensure that Federal Way is served as well as possible.

The big question I asked was whether there was state funding in the works to help get Federal Way on track. Senator Eide, a vice chair of Senate Transportation in Olympia, replied – “That’s why I’m here.” Perhaps with her leadership, Sound Transit could see increased legislative support in years to come. I look forward to it!

Sound Transit is conducting a survey to help them improve their website. They say it takes only three minutes (it’s very short). So take it if you think the website can be improved.

I like the new website but there’s one feature about it that can be improved: the content of the image gallery on the home page. Consisting entirely of images of Sound Transit riders enjoying their trip and a caption, the image gallery is the most prominent feature on the home page, yet it provides zero information on current events and no links to additional information. This was evident during the snow days last month which severely impacted service. Compare the homepages for Community Transit, King County Metro, and Sound Transit on January 19 and you’ll see what I mean.

The screenshots speak for themselves. I’m not against promotional images but they’re less useful without links. You got the user interested with the image. Now make it easy for them to learn more by adding a link. Don’t make them look around the page more than they have to. If they want to use it as a promotional space, why not add the pretty photos from the RIDE newsletter and link to stories from real riders? Why not promote events accessible by transit? I’d love to see, for example, an image of happy Sounder FC fans using ST to get to the game, with a link to game day travel options.

Flow of tweets in Chicago. (Eric Fischer)

Spiffy new infographic shows where transit routes could go if they followed where tweets were coming from.

(H/T: Chetan Chandrashekhar)

This is an open thread.

Philosophically, I think we vote for way too many offices in Washington. It’s fair to say I’m a high-information voter, and I can hardly track the performance of a Lt. Governor, State Auditor, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Commissioner of Public Lands, County Elections Director, School Board, Port of Seattle board, and dozens of judges, to say nothing of the four executives and 15 legislators that represent me at one level or another.* I can’t imagine what it must be like to vote with only a mild interest in local politics. I suspect that if we abolished the entire structure in favor of appointments by Governors, County Executives, and Mayors — and simply held them accountable for performance — we’d probably be objectively better off.

Direct elections to esoteric board positions fundamentally erode accountability. Perhaps a close Port watcher can set me straight, but I think the Port of Seattle seems like a good example of an organization with an elected board and a nearly continuous whiff of scandal and mismanagement.

The bill in Olympia that would replace the appointed Sound Transit Board with an elected one has similar faults. Moreover, the wild swings possible with the mood of an electorate are particularly dangerous to any large capital project which requires steady and competent execution.

In spite of all this, many locals inexplicably like long and complicated ballots. For those people, it really comes down to institutional design. Districts might be arranged to dilute or concentrate the power of the urban core. Board positions could be unpaid or full-time positions, influencing the kind of person that runs for each. In the case of this bill, it’s a part-time position with nominal pay.

There’s a certain strain of opinion that is pro-transit and pro-rail in the abstract but believes that Sound Transit is hopelessly corrupt and/or incompetent. A lot of these people gravitated to the monorail project about a decade ago. Others have concluded that a failure of ST to adopt their preferred policy on a particular issue is proof of their perfidy. If you’re in that camp, then I suppose reforming the board couldn’t possibly make things any worse. Personally, I see ST as a well-intentioned bureaucracy that suffers under some unfortunate external incentives and constraints, and has some of the inherent weaknesses of large organizations. None of those weaknesses are actually solved by an elected board.

Furthermore, I think proceeding with all possible haste will get us where we want faster than trying to expend organizational time and energy trying to optimize governance. Writing the RTA law right in 1995 might have produced a better Sound Transit and a better rail system. Rewriting it now will do neither.

* Not an exhaustive list of elected offices!

South Seattle Map -- Fall '12 restucture

Metro has published systemwide maps for the Fall 2012 restructure revision. As before, they’re broken up in to North Seatlle (all-day and peak) and South Seattle/Burien (all-day and peak). In addition to making the way the whole network fits together more clear, there are a couple of things that stand out to me:

• Westwood Village. As you can see on the map above, the east side of Westwood Village is now a transfer point on a par with 1st & Mercer and Alaska Junction, turning it into a transit crossroads.
• Interim Routing for the D Line terminus (not on map above). I’m assuming this is due to delays in the required reconstruction of the 7th Ave NW roadway that will be used to turn around the coaches, but I’ll check with Metro’s staff.

I suspect the alignment of the 31 in Magnolia is erroneous, as I believe Metro reverted  away from its revised alignment on Dravus in favor of maintaining service on Emerson.

Please head on over to my last post on the subject to continue the debate.

Throughout Metro’s network, there are a number of common-stop corridors along which multiple routes will run, usually combining for frequent service.  Some of these corridors are scheduled to optimize the distribution of service frequency and eliminate bus bunching, others not so much.  Along the corridors with no schedule coordination, you’re likely to see several buses come at once within the span of a few minutes, then no buses at all for the next several minutes.

A lot of this is the result of other scheduling “hotspots” in the network, or timepoints and pulses, mostly at park-and-rides, transit centers, and other major hubs were infrequent and frequent services come together at one destination.  Scheduling to incorporate both timed connections at these hubs and frequency coordination along common corridors is no simple task– that’s why Metro splits up its scheduling responsibilities by each bus base.

Unfortunately, this brings up another challenge: common corridors are sometimes made up of routes based out of different bases, hence different schedulers.  At Eastgate, for example, routes like the 212 and 218 combine for frequent service to downtown Seattle in the peak*.  However, because both of these routes each come out of two different bases, uncoordinated scheduling often leads to bunching at the freeway stop, limiting the usefulness of passenger capacity the bus at the rear end of a bunch brings.

While an easy administrative solution is to simply apportion the routes along common corridors to one scheduler, I recognize that the network is much more complex, routes need to move around, and common corridors tend to straddle the edges of geographic boundaries.  That said, Metro should develop a standard for developing coordination among separate schedulers for common corridors.

I’m not aware of any other corridors in Metro’s network where this is an issue with all-day frequent service, but assuming the free interchange of routes between bases can happen at any service change in the future, it’ll be a good practice to ensure stable and reliable service along our most heavily-traveled corridors.

*I chose this selfishly to illustrate my personal commute, at the same time recognizing that it’s not a very good example, given the limited peak-only span.  If anyone has a clearer or better example, particularly with all-day service, I’d like to hear it!

Route 14 in Little Saigon

The Fall 2012 Service Change does many good things, which Bruce has covered in exhaustive detail. But I wanted to draw particular attention to the effects of the proposed service changes on the Central District. Though I support the changes to Route 2 (and as a former Madrona resident I have credibility on the issue), and though I have long supported the elimination of Route 4, the newest service change proposals radically underserve the commercial hub of the Central District at 23rd/Jackson.

In short,  with the reduced peak frequency on the 14S and the (overdue) elimination of Route 4, riders on Jackson east of 14th will have only half-hourly service to both the International District and downtown. Furthermore, by moving the 27 to Spring/Seneca, the 14 will become the only decent east-west grid connection between Jefferson (Route 3) and I-90.   I drew up a quick map to visualize the changes:

The Yesler-Jackson Corridor in 2014

More after the jump.

On the map, line widths are indexed exactly with frequency. You can see wonderfully frequent service on Jackson from 5th to 14th Ave, and frequent north-south service on routes 48 and 8, but also an inexplicable east-west frequency gap between 12th and 23rd.  Consulting Bruce’s ridership charts proves that ridership is very strong all the way to 23rd Avenue, and that CD to ID connectivity is important in its own right, independent of trips to downtown proper. Furthermore, the new through route of Route 14S and Route 1 means that trolleys will be lazily looping around Kinnear and West Queen Anne when they should be providing frequent turnback service on the 14S (though, alas, there is no turnback wire on Jackson).

One possible solution:  If the Route 1 loop goes forward, we should ask Metro to offer additional short-turn frequencies between downtown and Jackson/MLK on diesel coaches.  30-minute headways are sufficient for both Kinnear/W Queen Anne and 31st/Mount Baker, but Jackson shouldn’t suffer because of the weakness of Route 14′s endpoints.

Men went there ‘to make a figure,’ and no more dreamt of a seat in the House in order to benefit humanity than a child dreams of birthday cake that others may eat it.

From The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III

By Sir Lewis Namier

Lewis Namier’s assessment of 18^th century politicians is consistent with my own views about today’s politicians. Lest you think this view overly cynical, Namier adds something I also agree with at the end of this paragraph I quote above: “Which is perfectly normal and in no way reprehensible.” Elected politicians say they want to make the world a better place, but each one of them will tell you that doing that won’t be possible unless they get re-elected. And it’s how the system has worked for hundreds of years.

Cake or Death: Making sure we get the right decisions requires political money

Whether we like it or not, those of us who wish to set our cities in the region on a course toward transit friendly and sustainable density depend on politicians to do the right thing; if we connect their political ambitions—their birthday cake if you will—to achieving our agenda in the region, we’ll have a better chance of getting what we want. I’ve talked about an idea for the big message—Density is People—and the list of things we need to get done. Both will require political muscle.

Getting into office and staying there takes money, and without a strategy to put lots of money into the political system we’re taking our chances on what that system produces. Whatever the accolades, pats on the back, and cool plaques we give politicians for doing the right thing, nothing beats cash in their campaign accounts. And today, there is no significant entity raising and spending political money to push for density.

Yes, there are examples of individual developers who pass out political cash, but as one friend who travels in those circles told me, the smartest thing to do is hand out money to everyone. Even if they finish third, there’s a good chance most political aspirants will come back again. But handing out a little bit of cash to everyone pretty much neutralizes an effect those contributions might have. It’s difficult to hold candidates and elected officials accountable when they all get money no matter what they do.

How do we hold elected officials accountable for the decisions they make on land use? One way might be to organize a lot of grass roots support and volunteers. But something tells me that “density” isn’t going to be an organizing principle. Important aspects of density like active nightlife have motivated political action before, but that is a bit narrower than making big changes to support more density around light rail.

What developers and others who support smart, sustainable growth in cities need to do is create a political fund managed solely to spend political money on holding elected officials—especially members of city councils—accountable for their land use and transit decisions. The fund could function like a blind trust giving some distance between contributors with specific projects and the actions of the political fund. Contributors could still write their checks to incumbents while still putting money into an effective effort to defeat those candidates.

It sounds odd, I know. But I have found again and again that density advocates (especially in Seattle) are afraid to put their energy into defeating a candidate because of their questionable decisions on land use. The worry is that a contribution to a challenger won’t lead to the councilmembers defeat, and the incumbent will remember the slight later on when their vote is needed on an important project.

Overcoming this fear factor is crucial to helping pro-density candidates win and anti-density candidates lose. Something powerful has to be established to counter the loud and often angry voices opposed to change in neighborhoods.

Facts, figures, and well-reasoned arguments are important; but they’re even better when backed with a smart, nimble, well financed, and strategic political machine that ensures our side isn’t just right, but that our side wins.

Photo by Oran

• Seattle Council approves Roosevelt upzone; Godden, Harrell opposed; Licata waffles but votes yes.
• Beacon Hill and Othello upzone hearing February 29th.
• Lower speed limit bill is cruising.
• Portland appears to have solved the public restroom problem that so confounded Seattle.
• Seattle moving away from “auto-court” townhomes.
• Edmonds Mayor Dave Earling back on the CT board.
• 2011 was a record year at the airport.
• Route 7 passenger stabbed downtown.
• USDOT improving its transit funding formulas.
• Long Beach embracing bikes.
• Finding the least crowded subway car.
• Is there a “gender imbalance” in transit?
• I tend to think the DSTT is a overbuilt, but Almaty puts it in the shade.
• If you think Seatac Station is too far from the terminal, consider LAX, present and future.
• Tacoma concerned about lost event parking at the Dome.
• Using twitter to identify flows of people.

This is an open thread.

US Capitol Building dome, photo by John Colman

Tomorrow the House Ways and Means committee could move to end guaranteed Federal funding for transit. Currently Federal funding for transit comes mostly through a fixed percentage of the Highway Trust Fund, which is mostly funded through the gas tax, a guaranteed, if declining, source of funds. The bill to be brought to the Ways and Means Committee tomorrow would remove transit funding from the gas tax and thus only fund transit through general funds. This would subject federal transit funds to both the across-the-board cuts in current federal law and increased political maneuvering over the funding in each budget. The bill is clearly a move to reduce the federal commitment to transit going forward.

In our area, Dave Reichert is on the Ways and Means Committee. If you leave in his district and care about transit funding, please call his office and urge him not to vote for this bill. His office number is: 202-225-7761. Please say something like: “My name is Andrew Smith. I live in Bellevue. I have heard that the Ways and Means transportation bill threatens transit funding. I want Congressman Reichert to vote against the bill.”

Photo by zargoman

Yesterday afternoon, King County Metro released a revision to the September 2012 restructure proposal originally made public in November. These changes arise from the introduction of  RapidRide Lines C & D in September, and are guided by Metro’s new Strategic Plan which including new performance-oriented Service Guidelines. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to focus mostly on the revisions, and refer readers who aren’t already familiar with the original November proposal back to my post on the subject.

Before we get into the details, some bad logistical news: Metro has not yet released any maps other than individual route maps and narratives, making it very hard to visualize how these changes will fit together as a network. You can obtain these individual maps (and others as they become available) by going to the System Restructure page on the Have a Say site; select the map you want from the drop-down box on the right. Metro staff tell me that citywide and neighborhood-by-neighborhood maps will be available by the end of the week.

For regular readers who are already familiar with the November proposal, I’ve saved you all a couple of hours of your life by including at the end of this post a summary list of all the significant differences I could find for every single route in this revision. Note that Metro’s route-by-route narratives neglect to mention many cases where frequencies have been cut or improved; my list contains those changes.

We’ll get right down to the nuts and bolts after the jump.

Highlights by Neighborhood

To help make this a little more understandable, here is a link to a map of the November proposal for the northern part of the all-day network. This map is not up to date, but you should be able to read it along with the discussion of changes for your neighborhood below, and see what’s what:

• Ballard: No major changes to November’s proposed route structure, except some rearrangements on the terminal loops in Loyal Heights and North Beach. RapidRide D’s peak frequency is reduced in favor of maintaining the existing 15X for some peak trips, and evening frequency has been reduced to 15-30. Route 18′s midday frequency has been upgraded to 15 minutes.
• Fremont, Greenwood and Wallingford: All routes have been returned to their current configuration, except for the replacement of the current Route 17 with Route 18; however, with the introduction of RapidRide E, it’s likely that Metro will reexamine this area next year.
• Broadview, Shoreline, Northgate: Minor changes to Route 16, but the bus will still travel directly into Northgate TC via 92nd St versus looping around on Northgate Way.
• Crown Hill, Whittier Heights: Route 28 will stay on Dexter rather than travel on Aurora. No other changes; Route 28 will still terminate in Crown Hill except during the peaks.
• Magnolia: No changes to the proposed Routes 24 and 33 in Magnolia, but they now operate on 3rd Ave in Downtown and Belltown; however, see the section below on First Hill.
• Queen Anne: The Queen Anne-Madrona restructure survives, but only with a sacrifice: Route 1 is extended via a crazy zigzag to the current terminal of Route 3, at those times of day when the 2X does not operate. This is done to provide service to West Queen Anne, specifically the area around 6th & Galer.
• Capitol Hill, Madison Valley: Route 11 will no longer be upgraded to frequent service during the weekday; many other minor tweaks in frequency.
• Central District: Route 27 restored to all-day service on Yesler and Lakeview, but see below.
• First Hill: This change really deserves a map:
  

  Route 27 Proposed Change

  Route 27 will take over Seneca service from Route 2, then travel down Boren to rejoin its current alignment at Yesler; it will be through-routed with Route 33.

Similarly, here’s the November map for the southern part of the all-day network.

• West Seattle, Downtown-oriented routes: Just like for the D Line in Ballard, peak trips on the C Line have been reduced in favor of keeping a few peak trips on Route 55; evening frequency has been upgraded to 15-30. A limited number of trips on Route 37 have been retained. Shorewood and Arbor Heights still lose direct service to Downtown except in the peak.
• West Seattle, crosstown routes: The previously-proposed Route 40 (from Alaska Junction to Morgan Junction and Georgetown) is now Route 20, and now begins in the Admiral District, rather than at Alaska Junction; Route 128 returns to its current alignment. The effect is to create a frequent-service corridor that runs all the way down California from the Admiral District to Morgan Junction and east to High Point and South Delridge before the 20 and 128 diverge.
• West Seattle, neighborhood routes: Route 22 has now become an hourly shuttle connecting Arbor Heights and Shorewood with Alaska Junction via California Ave. The increases in service planned for the Water Taxi’s 77x DART shuttles have been abandoned.
• Delridge: Direct service to downtown on Route 125 has been restored on weekdays only; Route 125 will extend all the way into Downtown, rather than requiring a transfer at SODO station.
• Rainier Valley: Peak and Sunday frequency on Route 50 has been reduced, but the alignment of the route hasn’t changed.
• SODO, Georgetown, South Park and points south: Essentially unchanged.

Analysis

Here’s my initial impression of these revisions, starting with the good:

• Ballard and Fremont now have an all-day frequent-service connection.  Ballard and Fremont have become dense, multi-use urban villages with lots of jobs and housing, but transit service has not kept up. Metro needs to aggressively improve this service as funds become available, starting by extending frequent service to Saturdays. Ballard and Fremont are both nightlife centers — it’s important that transit here run late enough to capture those riders.
• Queen Anne-Madrona restructure survives intact. I’ve written about this topic numerous times, mostly because it’s such an improvement over current service in terms of usability and cost-effectiveness. There will now be frequent service all the way through the dense heart of Queen Anne, filling another big hole in the frequent-service network. The extension of Route 1 (see “Bad” below) is a steep price to pay, but is better than the alternatives.
• The “Three Junctions” now have an all-day frequent service connection. California Ave, while mostly lowrise, is the most vibrant, walkable and urban street in West Seattle, and to have frequent service connecting all its neighborhood centers will be fantastic. Similar to the 18, Metro should seek to extend the hours frequent of service here.
• Magnolia routes join the rest of Seattle’s buses on 3rd Ave. For some time, Routes 19, 24 and 33 have been oddball routes, operating on 2nd and 4th Avenues along with regional and suburban services, while virtually every other Seattle-oriented bus operated on 3rd. Fixing that quirk improves usability and expedites transfers.
• The revised network has “good bones”. There are many routes in these areas that could be designed better, and there are many other routes that need a higher level of service to reach their full potential, but while a number of good ideas from November were tossed out, some survived. This is a better network to build on than what we had before.

The bad:

• Fremont and Wallingford returned to current configuration. The routes that serve this area have a number of problems, over-serving some areas and under-serving others. I’m putting this down as “bad” rather than ugly, partly because we get to a do-over for this area in 2013 with RapidRide E, and partly because the neighborhood provided valuable feedback that can be used to make future revisions better meet their needs. I plan to write about this in the near future.
• Route 1 is now the milk run to rule them all. The Route 1 map is really the only way to really appreciate what a mess this route is now. On the other hand, there were two possible alternatives: operate a shuttle service on the alignment of the 2 to 1st & Mercer, or keep the current 2. Extending Route 1 is cheaper than either of those.
• Route 11 loses midday frequent service. While I’d much rather have frequent service on Route 18 than Route 11, the corridor Route 11 serves is another one where transit quality hasn’t kept up with increasing density.
• General reduction in frequency on strong routes in favor of coverage on weak routes.

The ugly:

• Service retained on Route 37. According to the data, two thirds of Route 37′s riders board or deboard at a stop that will be shared with the revised and improved Route 56X. On average, less than three riders per trip are on board the bus when it’s on Beach Drive, which is the only unique segment of that service. This bus should just go away. Failing that, why on earth will Metro be driving this bus all the way downtown? Why not require those riders to transfer to the Water Taxi as other riders in Alki and the Admiral District already do?
• Meet the next 42. At 60 minute headways during the day, running from Arbor Heights to Alaska Junction, I’m willing to bet that ridership numbers for the proposed Route 22 will be absolutely pitiful, and in three years time, STB bloggers will be writing stories about how Metro wants to delete this route but can’t due to the unwillingness of the King County Council to upset the tiny number of people who do ride it.
• 15-30 evening headways on RapidRide D. Uptown, Interbay and Ballard are currently connected by 10 minute daytime headways and 15 minute evening headways on the common sections of Routes 15 and 18. These neighborhoods are quite dense — far more so than on the A and B lines, which have frequent service until 10 PM — and the ridership is plenty strong enough to justify frequent service into the evenings. Depending upon what “15-30″ translates to in real life, RapidRide will more-or-less halve the level of service these neighborhoods receive. How can this be a sane outcome?
• Route 15X and 55 retained in the peak. My mind boggles at what Metro thinks they’re doing here. The whole point of BRT is to improve speed and reliability on one service pattern such that it can serve the needs of more riders, both those who are going longer and shorter distances; you can then pour all your service subsidy and branding efforts into one route rather than many. The given reason, that RapidRide buses might get overcrowded, doesn’t pass the laugh test when you consider that Metro is cutting the peak headways on those RapidRide lines: Yes, of course, if you don’t run enough buses on busy routes, they might get overcrowded! I can only assume the real reason is that Metro can’t afford enough RapidRide coaches to meet the expected demand, and is substituting unbranded buses in the peaks.
• Should Metro even bother with RapidRide C & D? Between the 15X/55 issue above, and 30 minute evening headways, RapidRide C & D are in danger of becoming a service of such average quality as to dilute any value that exists in the RapidRide brand. I realize that canceling or delaying these routes would cause a political firestorm, but it’s getting to the point where delaying C & D until they can be done right might be the best thing in the long run for the RapidRide program.

Once Metro provides complete maps for this revision, I’ll post them, but in the mean time, it’s time for you to have your say here in the comments.

Appendix: Details of Changes from November by Route

To reiterate, this list only contains changes from the November proposal, and is primarily for regular readers who’re already familiar with that proposal. If a route isn’t mentioned in this list, that means there were no significant changes since November.

• C Line: Reduce peak frequency and resurrect one-way peak trips on Route 55. Upgrade evening service from 30 to 15-30 headway.
• D Line: Reduce peak frequency and resurrect one-way peak trips on Route 15X. Reduce evening service from 15 to 15-30 headway, presumably to match C Line trips 1-for-1.
• Route 1: Reduce peak frequency from 15 to 20, extend midday and night trips to current Route 3 terminus via 6th Ave W and Galer St.
• Route 2S: Reduce Saturday service from 15 to 20 minute headways; also see route 12 below.
• Route 5: Return to current alignment on Aurora rather than traveling via Fremont.
• Route 10: Increase peak frequency.
• Route 11: Increase peak frequency, reduce midday frequency from 15 to 30 minutes; cut evening frequency from 30 to 30-60.
• Route 12: Reduce Saturday service from 15 to 20 minutes; maintain offset schedule to provide sub-10 minute headways during the weekday, 10 minute headways on Saturday and 15 minute headways during the evening and Sunday.
• Route 14S: Reduce peak frequency from 15 to 30 minutes.
• Route 14N: Increase off-peak and weekend frequency from 45 to 30 minutes.
• Route 16: Reduce peak and midday frequency from 15-20 to 20 minutes.
• Route 17X: Return to current alignment rather than jogging east to serve North Beach loop at the end of the route.
• Route 18: Rather than being through-routed, the 18 will turn up Yesler, serve Harborview, and terminate by Seattle University at 14th & Cherry. Midday frequency upgraded from 15-30 to 15 minute headways.
• Route 20: In the former proposal, this was known as Route 40. See the discussion of Routes 20 and 128 in the piece above.
• Route 21: Upgrade peak and midday headway to 15 minutes from 15-20.
• Route 21x: Revise Arbor Heights routing to make a smaller terminal loop and avoid a difficult turn.
• Route 22: Create daytime hourly shuttle connecting Arbor Heights and Shorewood to Alaska Junction via Westwood Village and California Ave.
• Route 24: Downtown routing changes from 2rd/4th couplet to 3rd Ave.
• Route 26: Restored to current alignment and frequency.
• Route 27: All day service restored to Lakeside Ave; through routed with Route 33. Leave 3rd Ave at Seneca/Spring and serve First Hill via Seneca and Boren before rejoining old alignment at Yesler. Weekends reduced to hourly frequency. See discussion and map above.
• Route 28: Return southern segment to existing alignment on Dexter.
• Route 30: Terminates in the U-District, Route 63 on Latona idea abandoned.
• Route 33: Reduced to hourly on weekends; Downtown alignment moved from 3rd/4th couplet to 3rd Ave; connected to Route 27.
• Route 37: Restored to current alignment with eight one-way peak trips per day.
• Route 50: Reduce peak frequency, cut to hourly on Sunday.
• Routes 56X & 57X: Skip one stop and reduce number of peak trips.
• Route 75: Cut from 30 minute frequency to 30-60 in the evening.
• Route 116X: Reduce number of trips.
• Route 125: Route extended all the way Downtown rather than looping in SODO. All-day service restored during the weekday.
• Route 128: Returned to current alignment. Some frequencies reduced, but see discussion of Route 20 above.
• Routes 131 & 132: Peak service increased from 30 to 20 minute frequency; weekend and off-peak frequency set at 30 minutes. 

UPDATE: We heard from Metro staff, who tell us that peak frequency on the C & D Lines did not change, but confirmed that the additional trips on 55 and 15X were primarily motivated by a desire to save money by buying fewer coaches to meet peak demand.

As people move to the Puget Sound region, less people die, and more are born we are going to have more people here. The best way to handle that challenge—more people in the same size space—is to embrace it, welcoming more people living closer together in our cities. Bruce Ramsey’s recent article in the Times bashes Sound Transit rail service from Seattle to Everett for being inefficient and expensive, but ends up making argument in support of density: more people in the same place means more efficient transit.

The punch line to Ramsey’s rather one-sided article slamming Sound Transit commuter rail to Everett is “buses, vans and other rubber-tired vehicles are better than trains.” Ramsey makes that point by repeating a local engineer’s analysis finding that the service from Seattle to Everett is more expensive than buses. But the sweetest spot in the article, the one I’ll quote over and over again is right before the punch line:

Railroads, says engineer MacIsaac, are good at moving thousands of people from point A to point B — if that is what thousands of people want to do, all at once. But in our low-rise urban area here, he says, the real task is moving people “from thousands of points A to thousands of points B” when they decide to be moved.

Thank you Bruce Ramsey and Mr. MacIsaac. That’s exactly why we can’t allow people to sprawl. MacIsaac is correct; when you have low-density development you get less efficient transit. It’s not like it was my idea to make that point first, but a while ago I made a similar argument in a post about how lack of density—thousands of people going from thousands of points A to thousands of points B—makes for very expensive transit. This way of doing transit means two thirds of its cost has to be funded with tax payer dollars.

As people look for housing in our region they run up against limited supply in the places we most want people to live, the city. If it’s easier to build new single-family housing or sell that housing out in the ‘burbs, the supply out there will be greater. Seattle’s hesitant attitude toward up zones to create Transit Oriented Development not only keeps housing prices high, but also means that costs for maintaining transit service to far-flung reaches of King County will go up too.

Geoff Patrick, Sound Transit Spokesman, has it exactly right, rail is an investment (maybe even a hopeful one)in a future when politicians start getting land use right. When they do, we’ll have a rail system in place to take those thousands of people in one place, point A, at the same time to one point B. When we do that, transit will be efficient and affordable.

I said, in an earlier post, that there are three problems facing advocates of smart, sustainable growth in Seattle and around the Puget Sound. The first was a lack of a simple message around which to build the case for putting future growth in our cities. I proposed “Density is People” or “Growth is People” as a way of shifting attention away from fighting over buildings and their height, and toward what the discussion is really about, welcoming more people to our cities.

The second thing missing is an agreed action agenda, the items that everyone in the development community and those that support sustainable growth should push for at the state and local level to help us more readily attain the broader outcome of growing in our cities rather than in sprawling outer ring communities. There are lots of good candidates for this list. I’ve broken them down into long, and intermediate and short-term objectives.

Longer Term

• Charter and Constitutional reform
• Tax Increment Financing
• Reducing limits on public credit
• Change HUD definition of affordability

These items are the items that are likely to smolder a long time before they catch fire. We have some serious structural problems in our state because our Constitution was built by people from the 19^th century; their ideas, like funding school construction from the harvest of timber from state trust lands, must have made a lot of sense in 1889, but seem ludicrous today.

Sure the document has been amended more than a 100 times, but its approach to debt and public finance is better suited for the railroad age not the internet age.

The last item, changing the way we define and measure affordability, is starting to gain ground. A few years ago suggesting that 30 percent of monthly income is an arbitrary way of establishing a normative standard for affordability brought puzzled stares. Today people are opening up to the idea of broadening the measure of affordability to include things beyond housing price, like transportation costs.

Short and Intermediate Term

• Eliminate zoning around transit stations
• Citywide Transfer of Development Rights
• Code audit
• Loosen single-family code
• Study alternative definitions to affordability

One thing the Seattle City Council could do is to eliminate zoning entirely around light rail stations in Seattle. Implementing zero based zoning—a kind of form-based code that starts with broad standards and process rather than prescriptive heights—would revolutionize land use around transit. The Planning Commission could manage a public process and give final review to proposals from private developers that wouldn’t be limited by the traditional confines of separated use, height, and density limits.

Transfer of development rights for historic buildings and cultural use is something that the Council could act on in the very near term, along with a thorough audit and rewrite of the code. Getting rid of the spaghetti like language in the code and ending the practice of amending by reference would make it easier to understand, explain and use. Lastly, opening up the single-family zones so that they look more like lowrise zones would be an important move we should start this year.

Get ‘er Done

I’ve already offered an idea for how we might implement a significant change in the way we plan and permit around transit stations. Seattle can lead by allowing neighborhoods and developers to truly innovate how station areas can accommodate more people. Rather than focusing on the height of buildings, we need to focus on creating the outcome we all want: vibrant, livable, and sustainable neighborhoods. Today the code is strangling that innovation and promoting conflict.

It’s getting late. Stations in the north end of Seattle are already coming into design and Roosevelt rezones are out of the gate. There is still opportunity in Beacon Hill, the University District, and Northgate, but time is running out. And when it comes to the longer-term fixes, those won’t happen unless we stop saying they can’t happen. As a Hallmark Card I met once said, “the journey of 1000 miles begins with one step.”

Next up: Creating political accountability

Yesterday afternoon, in a heated legislative session that lurched between political grandstanding and fumbled parliamentary maneuvers, the Metropolitan King County Council approved Metro’s June service change proposal with only minor changes. This proposal, billed as “Transit Reinvestments” by Metro, is focused primarily on deleting eleven of Metro’s lowest-performing routes, reducing service levels on a handful of other poor performers, and using the money saved to improve service quality on the rest of the network, and extend service on Route 180 to Burien in the evenings. It is not to be confused with the much broader September restructure associated with the introduction of RapidRide C & D.

No-one who has observed King County transit politics for any length of time will be surprised to learn that of all the proposed cuts and deletions, exactly one of them consumed the entire discussion: the deletion of Route 42. The recent history of this route has been chronicled on this blog, along with its complete redundancy and atrocious performance; it should simply have been deleted as originally planned, as a part of the larger 2009 Link Integration restructure. Better late than never, yesterday afternoon’s spectacle finally sealed the fate of this bus.

The structure of the discussion was somewhat complex, with multiple amendments and confusion over legislative process, but it boiled down to a pro-42 group lead by of Council Members Gosset, McDermott and Ferguson versus a pro-Strategic Plan group of Phillips, Patterson and Lambert. Arguments in favor of the 42 seemed to revolve around the putative indispensability of the bus to those who are currently using it, along with claims that Metro outreach to Southeast Seattle has been insincere, inadequate and of insufficient duration. Advocates for the Strategic Plan stressed that similar routes across the county were being deleted; that to single out one route for preservation that didn’t make the cut would amount to failing at the first test in the process to reform Metro.

Gosset’s support for Route 42 is longstanding, but McDermott and Ferguson both voted this package out of committee less than two weeks ago, and no new information about Route 42 has arisen in the interim, so it’s difficult to regard the speechifying they engaged in as anything other than pandering to an influential part of the Democratic base. Both expressed strong support for the Strategic Plan, while Ferguson himself noted that acting consistently with the strategic plan would require deleting the route. Suburban Council Members noted that they gave up 40-40-20 and made difficult votes in favor of raising car tabs based on the promise of ridership-oriented restructures.

Ultimately, the restructure package was adopted, with the 42′s deletion delayed until the Winter 2013 service change, with a stipulation that Metro conduct intensive outreach int the interim to Route 42′s remaining riders. Once the video of the session from King County TV is posted, I will add a link to it here.

With pay-as-you-leave disappearing later this year, Metro is gathering data about its operational impact on the tunnel:

Metro has been doing a series of travel-time tests both on surface streets and in the transit tunnel to determine what operational changes need to be made next fall once all passengers are required to pay fares upon entering the bus. Metro and Sound Transit are involving the bus riders in this latest test.

If you are riding a bus in the tunnel between 4-6 p.m. next Tuesday, please look for signage that directs you to:

1. Exit the bus at the back door;
2. Enter the bus from the front door;
3. Board the southbound ST Express Route 550 at Bay C;
4. Note that Bay D will be moved forward about 30-40 feet at each station to enable faster boarding on the other southbound bus routes; and
5. Watch for buses in both directions to drop you off further forward on the platform than normal.