By Frank on February 29, 2008
Nice post from daijamin at STB interviewing SDOT’s project manager for the streetcar, Ethan Melone. I’m particularly intrigued by the idea of running the line up Westlake, through Fremont and into Ballard via Leary.
My big concern with the streetcar, other than the obvious stuck-in-traffic issues, has been crossing the ship canal. It seems to me you’ve got two big problems there: (1) having to wait while the bridge goes up, and (2) getting stuck in the traffic jam that results from the bridge going up.
The Fremont Bridge alignment has a lot of advantages over Ballard Bridge (notably the fact that it would serve Fremont!). But two big disadvantages are the congested intersections on either side of the Fremont Bridge.
Now, obviously it would be cool if the streetcar tunneled under the canal, or rose over it at such height as to avoid a drawbridge (a la the Monorail). But both of those options strike me as expensive and unlikely.
So why not build two single-lane, streetcar-only drawbridges on either side of the Fremont Bridge? The streetcar would get its own right-of-way, and could queue right up to the bridge, avoiding the backup of cars, and also avoid the tangle of intersections on either side of the Bridge. Something like this:
Now, I realize I’ve drawn one of those lines right through the Adobe campus. And for all I know two single-lane drawbridges are more expensive than tunneling under the canal. But I doubt it.
Anyway, consider this just some Friday night fantasy-mapping for your consideration. Thoughts?
Posted in gregnickels
By Frank on February 29, 2008
The new Golf diesel-hybrid. Greener than the Prius. Not on sale in the U.S. yet, though.
Innovations like this make me even more convinced that high gas prices are not enough to dissuate the majority of us from our SOV lifestyles. You could trade in a 22mpg Ford for one of these Golfs, and gas would have to hit $11/gallon before you started feeling it in the wallet.
To take this one step further, I’m generally concerned with the idea of guilting or shaming people into density: “get rid of your house in the suburbs or the polar bears will die and the ice caps will melt!.” People are psychologically and developmentally attuned to reject those sorts of arguments.
Transit-oriented lifestyles can (and should) be spun positively:
- Nightlife is cool.
- Walking to the grocery store and not having to circle for parking is cool!
- Being able to walk home or take the bus home drunk from the bar is really cool!!
- Being assured that your teenage kids aren’t driving around drunk is extra super cool!!!
- Being home in time to help your kids do their homework and not just tuck them in to bed is ZOMG the coolest thing ever!!!!
- Etc…
You catch more flies with honey, right?
I’m not trying to discount the role of public policy here. Clearly I support policies like denser zoning, mixed use, carbon-sensitive zoning, etc. But the point is that you build support for those sorts of things by making the lifestyles associated with them attractive and compelling.
Posted in legislation, light rail, Sagrada Familia
By serial catowner on February 28, 2008
….according to Daimajin at Seattle Transit Blog, Bainbridge wants more passenger ferries.
But why would they want that? The half-hour crossing is barely long enough to grab a donut and a cup of coffee as it is.
Maybe it has something to do with the time it takes to load and unload the cars, reducing the frequency of the sailings. Maybe merchants in Bainbridge would like more customers without more cars. Maybe the passengers think a different place would be more convenient for foot passengers to load and unload. Or maybe they think passenger ferries would be faster.
The cheapest way to meet this demand is to quadruple the speed with which passengers can embark and disembark, only load as many vehicles as can be loaded while passengers get off and on, and double the frequency of the sailings.
But, before we can try that, we’ll have to try everything else first. It’s just the way we do things around here.
Posted in About This Site, Galloping Gertie
By Frank on February 27, 2008
I took the Sound Transit survey, and you should, too. I’m not sure what kind of feedback they get from these things. It would seem to bias a certain kind of person to fill it out.
Nonetheless, ST needs ammo when it goes to the legislature, and this sorta stuff really helps.
Posted in sr509
By Frank on February 27, 2008
Martin says that Portland MAX is not teh awesome!
It’s a fair point. The MAX was build more like a streetcar downtown, which is problematic for longer distances. On the other hand, Seattle’s LINK will have some of the same problems. Only the New York City Subway, with its local and express lines, really avoids this (separating longer-haul commuter rail from the subway helps, too) That was some might fine foresight, those NYCers had.
Posted in BRT, taxes
By Frank on February 27, 2008
ERG, the company that some have blamed for the delay in the ORCA card, is being criticized for similar delays in delivering the Bay Area’s TransLink card:
Shortly after the announcement in Australia, [BART controller-treasurer] Schroeder sent an e-mail to Bay Area transportation agency officials overseeing the TransLink project, urging them to cut their losses with ERG and “prepare to take whatever legal means are necessary to deal with the inevitable lawsuits that ERG will file.”
…
The Bay Area-wide launch of TransLink is now set for 2010.
The deadlines keep being extended because of various software problems, hardware glitches and concerns raised by participating agency officials who want to make sure they will get the revenue they’re owed from TransLink transactions.
Getting officials in the various agencies – each with their own administrators and governing boards – to work together has not been easy, given their desire to make sure they won’t be short-changed.
Getting the mechanics and the incentives aligned for these kind of projects is never simple, but a pattern seems to be developing here. I’m sure serial catowner will use this opportunity explain to me why this is yet another reason we need regional transportation governance. I think it would be a pretty plausible case to make.
Posted in prosperity
By Frank on February 26, 2008
I found myself on SR 167 last week and I saw the HOT lane equipment being installed. I’m pretty curious to see how this project works out. It’s pretty hard to jump into the HOV lane as a single passenger, but it’s pretty easy to do it when it’s an HOT lane. Who’s to say you didn’t pay to get in?
Posted in international rail
By serial catowner on February 26, 2008
I recently began studying the ridership and appropriations of the Washington State ferries, and that was a little bit interesting. However, I soon realized that the big picture simply crushes the nuanced analysis.
One part of the big picture is that there will always be strong lobbying for more and larger car ferries. These people don’t need any help from me and they probably don’t need any help from you.
Another part of the big picture is that, for reasons I may elaborate in a future post, passenger ferries in Puget Sound will always be big money-losers. If you’re a casino and can make up the loss in some other way, or if you’re wealthy and can join other wealthy commuters in hiring a private boat, fine and dandy. Public authorities, however, will always struggle and frequently fail in dealing with the financial bleeding.
For the reader, it’s a happy ending- there’s not much you can do, and not much you should do, about the ferries. It’s an island of calm in a busy world.
Posted in cars, System Map
By Frank on February 24, 2008
For all the sins of the Bush Administration, this is the transit-fan equivalent of killing puppies for sport:
The bulk of funding for the federal Highway Trust Fund comes from the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gasoline tax. But revenues from the tax have flattened out, likely because people are driving less due to the price of gas and because cars have become more fuel efficient in the 14 years since the federal gas tax was last increased.
White House budget officials said the Highway Trust Fund will have a roughly $3 billion surplus in the current fiscal year. But by the end of fiscal 2009 it will be running a $3.9 billion deficit.
“There are challenges,” said Christin Baker, a spokeswoman for the federal Office of Management and Budget, which writes the president’s annual budget proposal. “We can’t spend what we don’t have.”
When Congress proposed raising the federal gasoline tax by 4 cents per gallon several years ago, President Bush threatened a veto and urged lawmakers to curb spending.
In its latest budget proposal, the administration suggested as a temporary solution that money from the federal mass transit trust fund account, which is running a surplus, be transferred to the highway account to cover the anticipated shortage.
Posted in Sound Transit
By serial catowner on February 23, 2008
The first job I had was a split shift. I think it’s safe to say most people don’t find this a convenient schedule to work.
And because commuting traffic has two big spikes, split shifts are a big headache in providing transit. Driving a bus, a train, or a ferry isn’t like waiting on table at the college cafeteria- the people who drive our transit vehicles are highly skilled, and, once qualified for their routes, hard to replace.
Highly skilled and hard-to-replace workers in our society expect and usually get health care benefits, sick days, vacations and so forth. This, combined with the morning and evening surges of transit, means that marginal services are expensive. If your traffic load doubles or triples during the rush hour and you need lots of bus drivers working split shifts, you may not be making a profit on the huge demand.
In some countries you can overload the bus by 30%, refuse to pay the driver extra and not provide any benefits, and live with the service shortfalls and accidents. This is why BRT that works in South America might not work here.
This is also why WSF has so much trouble with passenger ferries- they can’t reach an agreement with the Inland Boatmen’s Union about split shifts.
Like the suspension or the driveshaft of the bus, this is an issue that usually hides below the floor of a transit discussion. But it’s never very far below the floor.
Posted in Galloping Gertie, Local Government, Tacoma Narrows
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