October 2009

You are browsing the archive for October 2009.

Converting the Tunnel

By serial catowner on October 30, 2009

Ben Schiendelman, in a post at Seattle Transit Blog, has argued that the proposed deep-bore tunnel under Seattle could not be converted to transit use. He tells us that any transit line through Seattle must include 5-6 stops downtown, that the tunnel, at depths of 60 to 200 feet will make the cost of building those stations as much as a billion dollars per station, and therefore, it would be simpler to build a new subway than to convert the tunnel. The only remaining question is whether any of what he says is true.

Are there any deep-tunnel type subway systems? The Wikipedia entry for the London Underground describes 7 of London’s 11 lines as “deep level”, with the Bakerloo line reaching depths of 200 feet. A deep-tunnel subway would not be without precedent.

How many stations would you need downtown? Certainly not “five or six”- LINK itself only has four. I would go further and argue that NO stations are needed for the deep tunnel.

Seattle’s downtown, as large as it may appear to Seattle residents, is not actually that large. The distance between James and Pine is no more than 3-4 stops for a Manhattan local subway or 2 stops for an express. The area around each proposed tunnel mouth is developing rapidly, with some of the largest investors making it plain they consider these areas better investments than the exact center of the city.

When we couple these developments with surface transit and the small size of downtown, it seems very possible that it would be of value to have a transit line that did not become a local for twenty minutes traversing the city core. The tunnel, after all, is being built for people who do not want to go downtown, and presumably these people will still exist when the price of gas has driven them to transit.

Ben is adamant that people will not use transit that doesn’t deliver them to their door. Fortunately, we can again touch base with reality by watching the passengers commuting by ferry. Most of these passengers used a Kitsap Transit bus to reach the ferry dock, where they transferred to the ferry. Upon reaching Seattle, where no particular transit is offered at the ferry depot, almost all of them simply walk uphill to their destination or another transfer to a bus, or possibly two, taking them to their final destinations.

By an accident of geography, any traveler from south of Seattle to north of Seattle must pass through the ‘narrow waist’ of the city, or travel east of Lake Washington. If density were to increase on existing transportation corridors, it seems entirely probable to me that some transit users of the future would prefer to use a line that hardly stopped downtown at all. Unlike Ben, I consider it very likely that at some time in the future the proposed tunnel will be converted, at least in part, to transit use.

That WSDOT Viaduct Video

By Frank on October 27, 2009

The video above was released as part of a public records request. Or so they say. It’s apparently all a big conspiracy.

Color me skeptical.

Certainly it’s possible that the video was released intentionally to sway the election. But to sway it in whose favor? Neither candidate for Seattle mayor supports leaving the viaduct intact. I don’t see how this clearly benefits either of them.

I’d be curious to know how videos are typically released as part of public records requests. It’s obviously easy enough to send the filer a PDF of a text document. But what do you do with a video? Send a VHS tape or DVD? Putting it up on YouTube is an interesting, low-cost way to comply with the request in a way that benefits the public. I can’t turn up any evidence on the internet on how videos are typically released.

Anyway, the video is best viewed with Metallica playing really loudly in the background.

TNR on the Viaduct

By Frank on October 25, 2009

The New Republic’s excellent new blog, The Avenue (which I would read more frequently if they offered full-length RSS feeds), uses the viaduct replacement to talk about whether we can build things anymore, building on the Jacobs-vs-Moses debate I alluded to recently.

As Glaeser notes, the only way large projects get built in the United States now is to grease the stakeholders (funny how a word that once meant neutral custodian of gambling wagers now means interested party) with amenities and other expensive mollifications.

Beyond new parks and playgrounds, this resulted in extensive testing and monitoring of zoo animals as Portland built light rail under its West Hills, and it meant the purchase of air conditioners, soundproofing, and comfier mattresses for residents of Boston’s North End during the Big Dig.

On our podcast this week, we wonder how it is that Barcelona can build a new, 29-mile underground subway for 2-3x what it’s going to cost to build a mile or two of tunnel to replace the viaduct. Perhaps they just don’t have to buy as many mattresses and air conditioners.

City Beautiful

By Frank on October 25, 2009

In today’s New York Times, Nicolai Ourussoff writes about the end of the 20th-century visions for urban spaces:

The more influential of these was the City Beautiful Movement in the late 19th century. Modeled after the Beaux-Arts grandiosity of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the movement was an expression of a newly confident, ascendant America — a country of national monopolies and sprawling rail networks. The homogeneity of the architecture, with its classical facades typically arranged around formal parks, reflected the desire to create a symbolic language of national unity after the Civil War. Emulated in cities like Washington, Cleveland, Denver and Detroit, the movement gave the country its first uniform vision of city planning.

The urge returned during the cold war in New York’s Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Los Angeles Music Center. These sprawling cultural complexes, cut off from their surrounding neighborhoods, not only reflected tabula rasa planning orthodoxies of their time, but all of them used a mix of modern and imperial styles and themes to portray a progressive vision of America rooted in classical ideals.

Seattle never got its City Beautiful (the Bogue plan was defeated in 1912), but we did get the “sprawling cultural complex” in the form of Seattle Center. Like Lincoln Center, Seattle Center is still trying to adapt itself to a changing urban environment.

It seems unlikely that we’ll see any more of these grand urban development projects for a while. Many are being cancelled or scaled back (see Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn or CityCenter in Las Vegas) due to financing or local opposition.

So what will the 21st Century bring? If we are to adapt to a post-carbon economy in time to avert the worst effects of climate change, we’re going to need to think big again. What that will look like, though, is anybody’s guess.

What Kind of Metro Should We Have?

By Frank on October 25, 2009

As a young-ish, healthy bus rider, I’ve long ago accepted the fact that the Metro bus system isn’t primarily designed for me. If it was, the buses wouldn’t stop every two blocks, for example, nor would it travel through the city more slowly than I can walk.

The bus system is designed to serve a plurality of people with different needs, and it takes a lot of empathy to come to terms with that. It also takes policymakers — who ought to have that empathy — to create a broad vision for the agency that reflects those diverse needs and make the tradeoffs necessary to implement them.

Doug MacDonald — with whom I’ve disagreed in the past — has a long, thoughtful piece up on Sightline on King County Metro and the policy choices it faces going forward.

MacDonald doesn’t offer many discreet recommendations, except to say that the bus service we have is the result of broad policy decisions that we’ve made (or not made) over the years. It’s not just about increasing service hours or decreasing them, but rather articulating what the agency’s priorities should be. Should we focus so much on on-time performance? What is our obligation to the disabled? Should service to new areas take priority over existing areas? Should we invest in IT infrastructure in the short term to have better efficiency in the long term?

The case made in the article is that these policy tradeoffs are not being discussed by the elected officials who should be addressing them. the Regional Transit Committee. It’s worth reading.

Maybe some day Link could get a bike car

By Matt the Engineer on October 23, 2009

Completely stolen from the Slog.

Posted in , ,

Smarter Highways

By Frank on October 22, 2009

Allow the fine folks at WSDOT to tell you about Active Traffic Management, which will keep you from being “exposed to the dangers of traffic”:

Pretty cool. I can’t wait to tell my grandkids that even in the early 21st century, the best way to find out which route to take in our car was to wait 10 minutes for the traffic report on the radio and pray that (a) they covered the highway you were on, and (b) the report came on while you still had the opportunity to turn.

More here.

Posted in

The Creation of the General Staff

By serial catowner on October 22, 2009

In consideration of Frank’s post below about regional planning, we might liken the creation of regional governance to the development by the military of the General Staff.

Before Clausewitz, and the creation of the Prussian General Staff, military line officers and staff officers were interchangeable. In fact, it might justly be said that, before the Prussian development of the staff, a strong-willed general could perform better than his staff at predicting and managing events.

What changed all this, of course, was the industrialization of war. With huge numbers of troops and supplies to be moved, the work of the General Staff became wide-ranging and critically important to mobilizing the power of the nation to war- and in knowing when not to do that. A trained General Staff became a powerful and complicated organization that could not be created in less than a decade, or quite possibly two.

And this is the evolution we’ve seen in Puget Sound. Fifty years ago we looked to leaders to get things done, but the complexity of the problems has far outgrown the ability of an individual to meaningfully manage. Huge amounts of staff work are needed to gather information and, more importantly, determine where and how the information is to be used. Just as the military staff coordinates many divisions and regiments, the regional planning organization must coordinate many jurisdictions.

The regional planning organization does not supersede local jurisdictions because those local jurisdictions never had the power to act at the higher level of the regional planning organization. To the extent that local jurisdictions implement regional planning, the role of the regional planning organization is to present the planning in forms the local jurisdictions can implement, just as the military General Staff issues orders to divisions and regiments that those organizations can do.

A lot of the controversy about regional planning is not about the form of regional planning, it is about what needs to be done. When Kemper Freeman or the contractors association pay the Discovery Institute to raise complicated questions about the nature of regional planning, it simply means they want more roads and more suburban sprawl.

Regional planning efforts can go sadly awry, as witnessed by the Port of Seattle, a major regional player and boondoggle, heavily financed by taxpayers who effectively have no say whatsoever in how the Port is managed. This fiasco should serve as a constant cruel reminder of the dangers of allowing amorphous governing bodies to grow without democratic supervision.

Regional governance is not an “option”- it is a major fact on the ground that we must deal with as best we can.

McGinn

By Frank on October 19, 2009

So I had this long blog post drafted about McGinn, Mallahan and the tunnel, and how the tunnel was costing McGinn more than it was gaining him, and how it was going to cost him the election.

Anyway, I guess it’s all moot now because McGinn’s using the unanimous city council vote to approve the tunnel as an reason (excuse?) to modify his position.

Anyway, I’m voting McGinn and you should, too. If you’re undecided, you should watch these video highlights from the Capitol Hill candidates forum. McGinn comes across as super knowledgeable, though Mallahan does seem more likeable and empathetic. Without much of a public service record to stand on, though, it’s hard to know who would be a more successful mayor. McGinn might prove too wonky and stubborn to compromise and get anything done, while Mallahan may be too “pragmatic” (his word) to do anything meaningful.

So we roll the dice.

In the end, though, if Susan Hutchison does pull out a win for King County executive (and it looks like she may), it will be even more important to have someone standing up for the city on transit issues.

Vote McGinn.

PS: For other endorsements, check out the transit riders union’s responses here.

Metropolitan Policy Planning

By Frank on October 14, 2009

Regional planning (i.e. a whole metro area collectively planning its future, instead of delegating it to balkanized cities, states, and counties) is hot these days. The Brookings Institution is all over it.

Eric at the Prosperity Blog says that we in the Puget Sound have got a good regional plan, we just need to make more people aware of it:

Rather than trying to bring everyone together to develop a new collaborative vision, let’s use the vision that was already developed collaboratively and get everyone to buy-in. And I’m not talking your standard outreach: a couple of powerpoint presentations, a luncheon, maybe an op-ed. I’m talking a full frontal assault on the region’s citizens and the state legislature. Billboards, radio and television ads, a Facebook page, Twitter, Linked-in, social media, viral video, newspapers, speeches, rallies.

That’s a good idea, as far as it goes. Certainly if the local bigwigs don’t even know about VISION 2040 (and Eric says that many don’t) it’s definitely worth telling them about it! But it seems to me that the problem is more fundamental: one of authority. Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are necessarily weak, because they aren’t directly elected and don’t have a large funding base. No politician’s career rests directly on the successful implementation of a regional plan, and so it’s never going to be top-of-mind.

This isn’t a knock on the PSRC, it’s just how government works in the US: overlapping jurisdictions with everything ultimately punted to the local level in the least efficient manner possible. Solutions to this problem are almost invariably framed as “we should put the PSRC on steroids,” i.e., give it some skin in the game by making it directly elected and in control of a sizeable budget.

While that may be a good idea (if far-fetched), it’s important to remember that, as metro areas go, Seattle actually has fewer overlapping municipalities than most. Seattle and a good chunk of its suburbs are entirely contained within a single county, and all 4 counties that make up PSRC’s domain are within a single state.* There are plenty of metro areas (mostly back east, but even Portland, OR to a degree) that cross multiple state lines, and encompass 10 or more counties. Seattle regional planning should be a walk in the park by comparison.

* And even Kitsap County is sort of an outlier, no?

Next »